“I'm still waiting to get my hands on a devkit, but from what I've gathered it is running LINUX, so that means all the ports, we've done for the Nintendo Switch (Unavowed, Primordia) will be easily portable to it, and will offer controller support! I'm quite hyped about it, and I would really like to offer a steam deck version for all our games to the players!”Įditor side-note: the Steam Deck is powered by SteamOS 3 (based on Arch Linux). Q: What do you think about the Steam Deck? Install any distribution you like, I'd start with UBUNTU since it's very user friendly, and spend some time inside it, see how it feels, how it works, learn the basics and the ins and outs of it, and do port your games to Linux, in most engines, it's literally automated, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't offer a native port.” Q: For other developers looking to port to Linux, any advice for them? It is easier to support the games that way, and we're impervious to let's say PROTON being discontinued or abandoned.” As a fan of it, I want to be able to offer a version of our games that is not "oh this is the windows version". I think Linux is a wonderful OS and a very unsupported one. “Even if the games will run fine on WINE, and PROTON, I still think native ports are the way to go. Q: In the era of Steam Play Proton, do you think it's worth the effort to do so? It's a lot of small things but all together they add up. And of course setting the store pages, adding Steam cloud that works cross-platform, setting launch options. So long story short, testing the games making sure they can be completed, achievements for Steam can be unlocked (would love to be able to offer GOG GALAXY ACHIEVEMENTS, but unfortunately there's no native LINUX port of that client], was the main testing ground here for the re-porting of all the WEG titles. “The effort is quite minimal to be honest, most of it requires testing and ensuring the engine doesn't have any issues, luckily all these games use the same engine as Strangeland which was thoroughly tested after its release. Q: How much effort is actually involved in bringing Adventure Game Studio titles to Linux? The main reason to keep supporting the games, is something that I am personally invested in - I truly believe that even if the amount of players that play on non-Windows systems are significantly less, it doesn't mean we shouldn't support LINUX and OSX, because those players are equal to my eyes and deserve the same amount and support.” It's been a blast doing that, and of course a decent amount of hours, but I'm glad to say that things are less manicky on that part. That basically means, I make sure the games have no bugs, store-related things, like achievements work, and porting the games to platforms. “So, this past December, Dave Gilbert, owner of Wadjet Eye Games, contacted me and offered me a position to handle the entirety of the WEG catalogue in any capacity. Q: If I have this right, you've been something of an absolute machine lately bringing titles to Linux either new or re-porting like Shardlight, Resonance, Technobabylon, Unavowed, Gemini Rue and The Blackwell Bundle. The difficulty with porting Strangeland to anywhere lies on the fact that the game relies heavily on the use of a custom made plugin, that handles audio and various visual effects, so it was quite difficult to test the port and I ended up installing a lot of native and virtual machine distribs of Linux, including Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, I've honestly lost count at this point, to ensure the audio system and the game as a whole works under the penguin flag.” Thankfully all the bugs got ironed out after its release. “Strangeland's porting was an experiment in terms of, we had little to no time to test it out properly. Q: Mark from Wormwood mentioned on Steam, that the Linux version of Strangeland was an "experiment". I've worked on Primordia and Strangeland, both point and click adventure games released in 20, under Wormwood Studios, but I've worked on various titles throughout the years, like The Cat Lady and Downfall by Harvester Games, where I did some interface work for, and Mage's Initiation, where I worked on the combat system! I've been a gamer my whole life, so being able to work full time as a gamedev was always something I aspired to!” “My name is James Spanos, I'm a game developer, with the major role of coder for Wormwood Studios, and working for/with Wadjet Eye Games, our publisher. Q: Could you first introduce yourself and tell us about your games? Here's a chat with game developer extraordinaire James Spanos, who works with Wormwood Studios and publisher Wadjet Eye Games.
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