Internet early days

As that Big company released Window 98 and after that Windows XP URW started to look akward as it was still a DOS (it included graphics but still). Distribution model changed from BBS to Internet WWW-page were you could download installation package (still Shareware) and pay for full version by mail.

In this point distributional things started to rise. People wanted to buy a game with credit card and that wasn’t popular way in Finland which caused little bit hustle. Answer for that was start using ‘Albert’s Ambry’ net distribution system. It was working as expected and it had all needed facilities only problem was Albert’s Ambry got out of business rather soon after URW entered to it.

Times goes by and Internet grows

After Albert’s Ambry get out of business years has passed and UnReal World RPG was distributed through it’s web-page. Everything worked just fine until download rate began to be so huge that Internet service provider started to complain about the traffic that URW caused monthly. Time for mirrors and bigger pipes. Paypal arrived and it made credit card payment things simpler.

Distribution models changes 2013 and UnReal World turned away from old-school Shareware system. Shareware is very good model but it’s rather heavy to use. You provide two versions of your application (one that is for testing and another with full whistles and bells or one that can be modelled to full version with password). Shareware was changed to donation based system (and if you want to donate to URW please do so. All money goes to development of the game [Except that food what two cats can eat]). Donation model is easier games like UnReal World which are regularly updated. You get full game straight a head and you donate if you like it.

Modern web days

In same year 2013 URW changed from Shareware to donation based it also was ported to Mac OS X and Linux (openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian supported currently every build). Port was done by me and it was rumble as you try get DOS game to another platform but it was also ported few years back to SDL1 so it wasn’t that bad.

I assume all you gamers know there is one mammoth in modern PC game distribution: Steam. There were also smaller players like: Desura. Their idea is the same. You have distribution system that is standardized (which all games should be working) and you can buy new games to your own catalogue with credit card from their system. URW entered to Desura last year and now Desura is out-of-business. Desura was great channel delivering applications (supported Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) but I understand it’s very difficult to make money when you are wrestling against Steam.

In near future UnReal World RPG will in Steam as it get through Green light program. Hopefully it doesn’t give death kiss to that service too.

Lessons learned

Take time to make your installers as good as you can get. There is no excuse to have awful installer or Tar/RPM/DEB/DMG-package. If anyone can’t play your game straight away they will complain to you or they just move away without taking any second though. That is the power of Steam.

Don’t trust just one distribution model. If your distributor goes out of business have plan B on hand (very near if possible). If you are doing games for Apple iOS then you are out of luck but If you can use multiple ways to distribute your software do it. You need to work little bit more but more places more eyes to stare your application but. Remember these days many youngsters just play what they can download from Steam (and not blaming them from that) or some other shop that is tied to their device. They don’t know how to install game from Internet or they just don’t care.

If you support Linux (as you should). Ubuntu is biggest but also Arch people are fast growing player community (Fedora is non exist and openSUSE is mediocre). Have at least Ubuntu and provide DEB-package (in future Snappy) and if possible TAR-package (If you are willing provide RPM and Arch package). Have menu integration and do you homework with Linux. In future Linux gaming will be on rise if Steam machines take any market share and today you can buy many Linux AAA-games (over 1000) from Steam today!

Sorry to write this but truth is: In many cases user are all wrong (they just can’t understand how to play your game) but they pay the bills so make yourself a favour: fix bugs fast and give support at least at some forum. Community around the game is very hard to build and it even easier to lose. Final wisdom: last support multi platform. Mac OS X and Linux downloads are minority but do you want to cut these customers out?

Ok summer is crazy.. endless and crazy.. Peace out!

openSUSE situation

openSUSE 12.3 or 13.1 doesn’t have SDL2 from basic installation. openSUSE 13.2 and tubleweed are ok . So how to solve this without some ugly static compile hacks? One solutions is to make user fetch it from OBS and Games repository that have SDL2 for openSUSE 12.3 and 13.1.

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_12.3/games.repo
zypper ref
zypper install libSDL2

Or make them do it YaST. It’s rather easy and most of the people can do (if they have skills to install openSUSE).

Ubuntu situation

There is SDL2 for Ubuntu 13.10 and above. Problem is that Ubuntu policy is that two LTS should be supported. So in this time they are 12.04 and 14.04. Last one is no problem. SDL2 is installable with no hustle but Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10 or 13.04 are more problematic. Again problem solve by asking people to fetch stuff from other place that normal repository. Michael Imamura packs debs for 12.04 till 14.04 so you can make them get them there.

Debian situation

In Upcoming Debian 8 there is SDL2 packages but with Debian stable 7 you must use Wheezy-backports to achieve these.

Fedora situation

Fedora should be ok.

Arch situation

Arch is up-to-date distribution so you just start using.

I’m still wondering this static linking stuff. It has some good points. Time will tell when new release forms up!

Good, Bad and Ugly CURL

Curl is nice library for transferring anything from anywhere that have some kind of protocol over internet. It’s been stable for ages and have nice programming interface. So we thought this is easy new dependency for URW. We should know better.

User installed Ubuntu deb package and tried to launch URW in Arch received error  that was:

/usr/lib/libcurl.so.4: version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found

Ok very nice and constructive error message. What to do? This in the dark side of Linux knowledge. If you search from web what this means you will notice there is plenty of packages that suffers from this. mostly they are proprietary like URW and build to work with Ubuntu and don’t work with Arch. It has something to do with openSSL and how old it is but that is far I debugged it.

ARGH ARCH!

So I installed Arch Virtualbox and started to research on this. So how to find it there ‘CURL_OPENSSL_3‘ in libcurl.so.4 or not. use ‘strings’ command (now you should say, “elementary dear Watson”, so you you don’t look stupid).

strings /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4 | grep CURL_OPENSSL_3

And no there is nothing with that name but

strings /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4 | grep CURL_OPENSSL_

Gives a shot. There is ‘CURL_OPENSSL_4‘ so what to do? You can’t do nothing if you don’t get very hazardous. You can sed ‘CURL_OPENSSL_4‘  to ‘CURL_OPENSSL_3‘ but there is no promises it will work and it’s not very convenient.

You can get Ubuntu deb, extract curl.so out of it and use LD_LIBRARY_PATH-variable (how to do that?  or use OpenSUSE version of URW that works out-of-the-box.

Nor of them is very elegant. Probably we’ll have to start building Arch package also because that is most elegant version of this.

UnReal World RPG

What makes UnReal World RPG so unique? Game is huge, difficult level is infernal and it’s all about survival in north (Iron-Age Finland actually). As said UnReal World RPG tries to be as quite realistic. You won’t find goblins nor elves around but UnReal World RPG gives you elks, mooses, bears, wolves, lynxes and really long dark cold winter. If you want to survive the arctic winter you have to try little bit harder (and you probably die). If you like to get into fight you probably die or you get serious wounds and you probably die soon because you can’t make fire.
Many times this game feels a bit sadistic in modeling how hard it have been in Iron-Age Finland but developer Sami Maaranen (and co-designer Erkka Lehmus) have spent lots of time studying about old ways crafting things, building traps and living off the land in general. As said before learning curve in this game is bit steep but there are plenty of ‘Let’s play‘-videos floating in Internet to help you out and you can’t find many games that gives you so much fun. So if you like survival games this is for you.

This sounds good

And it is. UnReal World RPG is not Open Source nor it’s Free Software but it’s free to play and download (no strings attached). Developer is only asking donations and if you like the game you should really consider to donate small amount to support the development.

Little bit deeper look

UnReal World, or shortly UrW, was first released in 1992 as more traditional fantasy roguelike game. Then it evolved and evolved steadily. URW started as MS DOS ascii based game after that was VGA/SVGA DOS upper memory semi graphics version. Third generation took URW to Windows world with SDL-library. At that point notorious rewrite of graphics, sounds and user interface was proceeded, but it was heavily tied to MS Windows world.

porting UnReal World RPG

In some point people started to tell in URW forums that they are playing URW in Wine (both Mac OS X and Linux). They were happy because it worked. Playing in Wine ain’t pleasant all the time as it’s with native game.
Porting SDL 1.2 game to another platform is really nice. It only does what it states. You don’t have to worry about internals and differences between platforms you just figure out differences and make sure everything is working smooth. Although MSVC is very different compiler C than GCC’s one. There is even huge difference between Mac OS X libc and Linux libc. Even little bit bumpy ride everything went well at the end and version 3.13 was first Linux and Mac OS X native version released.
Developing multiplatfrom has its’ pains but now Linux and Mac OS X are released in same time as Windows version. I used openSUSE system as base Linux system for the port to Linux. Currently there is openSUSE RPM-version (Which is for Fedora also), Ubuntu/Debian DEB-version/Tar-ball and Mac OS X. Statistics show there is steadily growing phase of people coming from those platform to play URW. Only Ubuntu have currently 64-bit version because there is no demand on openSUSE or Fedora (people with Ubuntu just plays more games!).

Game ON!

If you don’t have anything else to do on your Christmas vacation: Go and grab UnReal World RPG new 3.18beta3 version when it’s hot hot hot. Find yourself building a cottage and swimming in lake or try to survive the arctic winter.