Mac / Linux compatibility <- NOT ANOTHER QUESTION THREAD

[deghost]

I'll begin with quoting from Kickstarter project page:

Linux / Mac stuff, we're looking into again and we'll see what we come up with. We'd really like to have a version for both but we're not sure it is possible, and I don't want people to get their hopes up about it. We'll keep you posted about that though.

Chris, guys, just let that stuff go for the moment and concentrate on the game development. Since you began with windows only, finish that one first please.

Here are my arguments for baking up my previous statement.

I am successfully running Xenonauts on wine under Mac OS Lion since alfa-8.9, which i torrented (shame on me).

And on the same setup via Desura preorder since 9.31.

I have also successfully tested Desura+Xenonauts on both Debian and RHEL based linux distributions with Wine 1.4, on open-source drivers on ATI and nVidia GPU's.

There is also CrossOver, which is easier to setup for ordinary user, again for both Mac and Linux, on which xenonauts work as well.

Finally, most games ported on Mac nowadays are wrapped in one of several wrappers (Wineskin, CXE, Cider) instead of being rewritten.

I don't know what you used to write the game (and i have enough stuff to do already, otherwise i'd even play with decompiler), but in case it's .NET, check the Mono-Project and see if you could run your code on the MonoFramework.

P.S.

If there are users here who would like to hear for specific instructions on how to set up wine on Mac in order to get Desura/Xenonauts working, and what to do next - ask here.

I assume Linux dudes will know that already, but in case there's someone who does not, be my guest to ask as well

[erutan]

Also with Xenonauts being a 2D game it shouldn't have performance issues that can crop up in cider/wineskin wrapper ports. I've just been running the game from a 2GB RAM win7 parallels VM with nary a hiccup, whereas say Skyrim gets around a frame or two a second in that setup.

[The New Romance]

Problem with this is that a lot of Kickstarter users are Mac and/or Linux nerds. I'd also say let it go and point towards emulators (or whatever they're called), but there is a chance to make a hell of a lot of additional money if you promise ports.

[Chris]

If we do port it, it'll just be a question of bundling it with a wrapper. Hopefully it won't be anything too difficult or time-consuming to do, but we'll see. Someone is looking into it at the moment.

[erutan]

That'd make a nice kickstarter update down the road. You never know until you do something once, but it shouldn't be too bad if it already runs well in a wineskin as is.