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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

I think it's incredible that these games are developed for Android, Mac, PC, and Linux and available on all platforms with one purchase. I'm hoping for the day when this is the norm, when purchasing an app gives you access to all platforms. This is one thing sorely lacking on consoles that I fear will never catch up. If I'm buying Call of Duty on Xbox, I would love to play it when I go to the house of a friend that only has a Playstation. The innovation of the indie software movement will hopefully push the big players to play catch-up to modern days.

I was more than happy to pay a pretty decent amount of money to put my dollars towards encouraging this. Although I'll admit I was confused by the title thinking that this was in celebration of the launch of Android 5 Key Lime Pie...

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Not all of these were developed as cross-platform from the start. AFAIK, Humble actually reaches out to game developers to help nudge along ports on other platforms for the bundles (to what extent exactly I'm unclear on).

IIRC, there have also been some complaints regarding how well the Linux versions have worked.

One or two games have been based on Adobe AIR, development of which which has been abandoned on Linux, but they will run, if poorly.

That would be Amanita's Botanicula, I believe. Also, LIMBO got some flack for not being native Linux but the Windows version in a CrossOver wrapper.

Yeah, LIMBO was running sluggishly on some of my machines. Disappointing.

Be it Wine or Adobe AIR, I think that blaming from the community is superficial and dumb. Let's focus on the actual issue -- game quality assurance. Does it install, does it work? If it uses Wine but I never notice because it all runs smoothly, then both me and the developer is a winner.

I agree, yet usage some of these technologies seem to be indicative of bad QA. Smoke, if you will.

Some time ago I purchased The Binding of Isaac which is an amazing game, but it suffered from slowdowns on my computer. I guessed that it was Flash and this was indeed the case. It’s ridiculous that a game of that style does not run properly on a modern computer. These and similar incidents have left me very wary of Wine wrappers and Flash.

There are more serious problems - like Torchlight not rendering characters heads at all - and no one seems to be interested to fix the problems - this kind of bug would be patched on launch day on windows IF it would happen - because how quality control didn't notice that equiping any item to character head makes it disappear is beyond me.

http://i.imgur.com/bUQm0.jpg

There are even worse problems. Some games crash a lot, especially soon after a sale(frequently the first linux release). Psychonauts crashed on some of the intro cutscenes, I ended up playing the windows version in wine.

Double Fine, at least, is treating their Linux customers well. The most recent Humble Bundle build of Psychonauts is from January 2013, and allegedly fixes a bunch of bugs that plagued the original Mac and Linux releases:

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/8612/P15/#260851

And games not launching at all, too. That's even worse. That happened several times for the few first Humble Bundles. Nowadays it is usually getting better.

Well that should be true more or less with Steam. With the exception of mobile, you'll only have to buy a game once to play it on your Windows, Linux or Mac PC, or on your Steambox console.

But I agree, and I also expect to see much nicer games when mobile hardware has gotten a bit more powerful, and most of it supports OpenGL ES 3.0, and developers can just make the same OpenGL ES 3.0 game across Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac.

I'm wondering why Steam for Android doesn't exist yet. Steam for iOS is obviously impossible, but Android supports alternative app stores.

Not on all Android devices.

The Kindle Fire HD, for example, only supports the Amazon App Store and bare ipa installation.

Strange... I was able to enable third-party sources and install APKs from the web with no issues on my Kindle Fire HD. I don't think that it would be impossible to install an appstore on one.

I think appbrain worked pretty well? I remember having to sideload it, but it expanded my kindle's horizons nicely.

That doesn't make sense. How are they going to prevent you from installing a store APK?

That isn't entirely accurate. The Fire doesn't prevent you from installing arbitrary third party apps and app stores. It's just that it can't use the most important one: Google Play.

This is not entirely the Fire's fault. Play is no mere standalone app; it needs some hooks built into the OS itself. Installing it on the Fire is possible, but involves deeper magic than even the average developer can be expected to know.

You can blame Amazon for not including that support (and I do), but you can also blame Google for requiring it (and I do).

> bare ipa installation

You mean APK?

Since you can install a 3rd-party app store on Android simply using an APK (e.g. Amazon Appstore on non-Kindle devices), I don't see how Amazon could allow apps but not app stores.

It does exist, although it's not an app launcher (yet), just a store and chat client.

http://store.steampowered.com/mobile

> sorely lacking on consoles that I fear will never catch up

This is by design. Console software is made to be exclusive by default, what would be their selling point if the soft would run on anything else ? They have no interest whatsoever to define a unique standard for home consoles.

Totally agree. On that point, I'd strongly encourage everyone to make sure they check the boxes for every platform they want to play on, not just the main one. Hopefully this will let the developers know that we really appreciate the effort they've put in here. note -- you can update this after you've made the purchase.

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