Now I know what Android users feel like when people announce endless iPhone-only mobile apps. I was super bummed that I missed the last Humble Bundle, since it was chock full of games I had been meaning to buy. This one is smaller, though, and the having the "cool" feature targeted at a group I'm not in makes me feel like the bundle isn't really worth paying attention to.
This is the first time I have ever felt left out by not using Android. I think I'm going to more seriously consider needing Android versions of projects. The feeling sucks.
It makes sense to include Android in the Humble Bundle, since it is the only popular PC platform that was not already included. It is not really possible to deliver a iOS or WP7 app without DRM, so they cannot extend the offer to applicances.
But also offered it for all platforms in a DRM free format as well. Steam was just an option because people (like myself) find it convenient. There's no way to give away a DRM-free version for iOS.
That's what he was looking for, a nice snide response.
EDIT - I'm guessing from the downvotes that the Hacker News community finds it acceptable to refer to iOS and WP7 as appliances? I'm sorry but that's BS. Every definition of computer appliance I can find excludes devices that can have programs added after the fact, something that is definitely possible with both operating systems.
EDIT 2 - If people feel so strongly about this I really would appreciate a reply instead of just a downvote. I thought this place was about discussion over simply dismissing?
People are downvoting you not because they disagree with your opinion, but because it adds nothing to the conversation. That's frowned upon in HN. The response you replied to was perfectly valid: there's no iOS or WP7 bundles because they are contrary to the philosophy of the bundles; this is a valid point that no one had mentioned. Complaining that the response was snide, OTOH doesn't say anything that's relevant to the topic at hand.
A better response would have been to say that you think referring to those platforms as applications is wrong, and probably some explanation as to why.
> People are downvoting you not because they disagree with your opinion, but because it adds nothing to the conversation.
I disagree, I think there was a valid point made in a comment that overall had an arrogant tone and some inaccuracies and that should be addressed like I chose to rather than just ignored.
Dispelling inaccuracies adds to the discussion, or at the very least attempts to prevent someone else from detracting from the discussion. To act like I just came out of left field with this or something is just ridiculous.
> The response you replied to was perfectly valid: there's no iOS or WP7 bundles because they are contrary to the philosophy of the bundles; this is a valid point that no one had mentioned.
Which is why I didn't take issue with or mention that part. I took issue with referring to iOS and WP7 devices as appliances when they aren't.
> Complaining that the response was snide, OTOH doesn't say anything that's relevant to the topic at hand.
It was both snide and inaccurate because of that, I assumed that was implied or obvious. I didn't think I needed to lay it out so blatantly.
> A better response would have been to say that you think referring to those platforms as applications is wrong, and probably some explanation as to why.
Like I said, I assumed that was implied. I did cover why in my edit. It's simply incorrect, no definition of computer appliance backs it up and it smacks of arrogance.
The "appliance" bit is of course an insult. However, the main point of what he was saying is that you cannot publish an app for iOS or WP7 without DRM (it is part of the platform), and one of Humble Bundle's major points is "DRM free".
I get that, understand it and agree which is why I didn't take issue with that part. You see the "appliance" bit as an insult as well, so we are in complete agreement.
His main point is correct, and I took no issue with that. Hence, it still doesn't really clear up for me why I'm being downvoted so heavily.
Being a long time Linux user, I am very aware of the "I don't want you as my customer" feeling.
Being a software developer, I have never understood the decision on why to essentially limit the number of customers you can have. I think the only thing worse than not supporting the majority of platforms is not making them have feature parity.
While I can understand not porting e.g. a DirectX game to Linux/OSX or any other program which heavily relies on OS specific libraries/features, I could not yet understand why not to port it when it is possible with little effort. I'd really like to hear an explanation from someone with knowledge in that matter, unfortunately the only example I can come up with at the moment from the top of my head is WoW/Warcraft/Starcraft. It runs on Win/OSX but has no Linux client. I do not understand why Blizzard would not release a Linux client for which no support will be available. A small team could probably achieve a port in reasonable time and create the update infrastructure around it.
How ironic that Blizzard, by far the brightest star in releasing simultaneous Mac AAA titles, is being singled out here.
I'm going to pull a justification out of my ass: if you support things halfway and do things halfway the brand suffers. Before they'd make a linux client they'd do X-Box then PS3 then Wii for sheer ROI reasons. They aren't doing those either though even with larger consumer bases.
ISTR that they have some fairly sophisticated anti-cheat stuff running (esp. for WoW & Starcraft) Warden, I think it's called.
Essentially, a sort of background process monitor/snooper that tries to detect cheating behaviour and block or report it. I have no idea if that could be ported to Linux, and whether in doing so they'd:
1) Get grief for requiring it to run as root
2) Fail to detect all sorts of 'easy' cheats, ruining the online services and leaderboards for everyone
3) Interact horribly with the general fludity/flexibility of a Linux system.
I'm told that WoW works pretty well in Wine, so I wouldn't think those are valid reasons. Warden only has to inspect the running game process, which does not require root. It also looks at the list of running processes, which doesn't require root.
AFAIK it doesn't require root/administrator on Windows and Mac either.
2. "Have to" offer support for Linux to maintain brand image - very hard
good example of this is with HoN (Heroes of Newerth) where I believe the guy that looked after the Linux port left, leaving S2 having to outsource all their updates every week. The community is fairly good at hacking their way round day to day issues, but it's far hassle free and I'm sure is costing S2 more money than it's making them.
If I had to take a guess, it would be that it probably has something to do with the wild constellation of libraries any given Linux machine could be using, not to mention version of those libraries. Do you build your game to support ALSA, or OSS, or Pulse Audio, or all three? (I'm not a Linux dev so these examples might not be technically right but it's in the spirit of my point.) Do you use the dependencies present on the system or include your own? Does the user have good drivers for their hardware? Do you target OSS or proprietary drivers, or both? Often proprietary drivers have showstopper bugs on Linux that take forever to get fixed, if they ever do.
When your Linux customer complains to you that your game doesn't work on their version of the ATI proprietary driver, what do you tell them? "Sorry, wait till ATI gets off their ass and fixes their driver, otherwise, you can try entering this arcane set of CLI commands to see if it helps, cross your fingers you don't bork your existing driver in the process, and if not here's a refund?"
It's probably just not worth the support headache. After fighting with Linux driver and dependency hell more than once I don't blame them.
Edit: even some of the past bundles have had Linux problems. I think only half of the games in the last bundle would even install on my stock Ubuntu laptop. More than one of the games--the two Shadowgrounds, I think--in an earlier bundle needed some arcane hacks to get sound working. It ain't easy supporting Linux.
If there is one thing the Humble Bundles have proven, however, its that you CAN port your game to Linux and make money. Linux users have traditionally paid more for the bundle, and there are very few good reasons why a game cannot be ported to Linux. So many great games in the Bundle series are available on Linux, so clearly its possible - and clearly there is money to be made.
So its really just a matter of groupthink about "Linux isn't viable" thats the block, here.
That was 4 years ago. Braid finally got a port in 2010 for a previous Humble Bundle. Braid is just a small Indie game. Imagine trying to port some of the big budget productions we have now.
There was Loki back in the late 90s early 2000s that did Linux ports, but they didn't last long.
That was back when most games were developed for single platform though, namely Windows for most/all titles Loki was porting. Today, almost all AAA titles are multi-platform with a console being the lead platform; and lots of indie games are developed somewhat platform agnostic, as well, in order to support OS X or mobile operating systems.
The first mobile platform all of these games were released on was iOS. Most of them have been there for over a year. The only one that is relatively recent is Anomaly, which was released late in 2011. You can't get them as cheap as the HIB, but they are available. I'm actually surprised that they're not offering iOS keys as well for all of them, but these are all iOS bestsellers anyway.
EDGE is $2.99, World of Goo is $2.99 for iPhone or $4.99(I believe) for universal, Osmos is $2.99, and Anomaly is $1.99 for iPhone and $4.99(I believe) for universal. I don't have prices for the universal apps because I've already bought them for my iPhone.
The downside is that if you install the Android games on your Android phone you won't get any updates they release on the Android Market for them. You'll have to get a new APK from the folks making the game with each update.
We are currently beta testing an app that will organize your downloads and provide updates in a central spot for Humble Bundles (like the Amazon Marketplace), which should be ready for the public in the next couple of days.
Additionally, the apps themselves will notify you if there is an update, akin to how Sparkle works on Mac OS X (Adium, et al. use this).
Finally, you can download updates from our website similar to how it works for PC.
> We are currently beta testing an app that will organize your downloads and provide updates in a central spot for Humble Bundles
I'm sorry to be a downer here, but this really bothers me. The Android Market is built such that 1) each version of each app has reviews, 2) each version has permissions, 3) updates for all of my apps come from the same place, 4) the apps come from a single trusted source, signed, and 5) I could continue forever listing the advantages of the Market.
> Additionally, the apps themselves will notify you if there is an update
No, no, no! One of the main advantages of modern app distribution is that we don't have 100 apps each telling us to update. We have one OS that manages this and updates according to our preferences. I understand that you consider your app distribution needs special, but each time a large, active and popular company/developer does this, it hurts the platform as a whole.
Edit: I purchased Osmos on the Market, at full price, yesterday. I love the game and I'm very happy with it! I'm already addicted. For feedback from here, I'd like to add that I'm very happy to have bought it on the Market and that I wouldn't consider getting it from somewhere else, even if it's cheaper, if that means circumventing the market. What if you release an update that causes a problem? How will I know if I cannot easily access the Market reviews to make sure that the new version is at fault? Alternatively, what if I drop offline someday and attempt to play Osmos, only to find that there's an update? Having the Market version I don't have to worry about that since the app will (according to my preferences) already have updated itself. Anyway, keep up the good work and I thank you very much for Osmos!
The Market doesn't allow gift codes, there's simply no way to do anything like the Humble Bundle on Android without sidestepping the Market. Your blame should be at Google, not the Humble Folk.
Also, if you absolutely must have centralized distribution for each and every app, there are other platforms that are more than happy to provide that.
I think ultimately the solution is for the Humble people to talk to Google - and to Apple, for that matter - and say "we do this thing, it makes a lot of money, how can we do it through your servers?". If they can get the owners of the official marketplaces interested then something will happen.
They could add a slider to control the percentage of your purchase prize which goes to the App Store owner. Except you can't adjust the slider, since it's fixed at 30%. Ouch. I'd much rather continue giving those 30% to the EFF.
> I understand that you consider your app distribution needs special, but each time a large, active and popular company/developer does this, it hurts the platform as a whole.
It would be slightly weird to have the humble bundle in a walled garden on a platform that allows to live without the walls.
I couldn't buy the bundle on Market (since my device doesn't have it).
(On a tangent:) The market-URLs for android apps all over the web are annoying enough already (esp. for free apps - just put up the darn .apk file somewhere, at least as an alternative!)
There's nothing stopping you from buying the apps on the Market, and using the Humble Indie Bundle website solely to donate to the charities. Beauty of a pay-what-you-can model.
I love this business model. As a customer it makes me feel like such a winner through every aspect of this transaction. I give myself a deal on quality DRM-free games that I can play on a phone AND on Linux. I wish you crazy amounts of success.
Just a question: have you tried this with apps? You could bundle apps according to theme.. so you could have a Photography Bundle, Office Bundle, Fitness Bundle... etc
You will get future updates as well (although not on the marketplace.) We are currently beta testing our Android app which will make it easy, which should be publicly launched in the next few days.
I don't know why iOS users are in this thread complaining. This is barely indicative of anything, except that developers don't have unlimited promo codes in the App Store so iOS isn't eligible for this style of promotion.
Last time I looked all of those titles are available on the App Store right now, and they have all been on sale for a dollar at one point or another. They were still published on iOS before any other mobile platform. Most of them I already own and don't even have on my phone anymore. They have been available in the App Store for well over a year, some for over two years.
Maybe it's just me but I'm not exactly getting much of a left out feeling from this bundle. On top of all that, as we are seeing it's hardly a perfect system. They have to design an updater because the Android Market can't be used to update non-Market APKs. IMO it's more trouble than it's worth.
Incidentally, this site is almost unusable on an android phone. Flash and detail popups that are always floating off the side of the screen, despite scrolling.
It would also be nice if there were links to the market so I could read reviews of the games.
I'd start picking a different challenge mechanic than "Beat the average" since the average is sensitive to distribution bring dominated by poor Redditors and incentivizing "Pay us $5.50" does not result in hugely more successful outcomes. How about hiding the average and offering the bonus to anyone paying $25+? Or even $10+?
I totally agree. I think they're leaving money on the table with this particular strategy. I even told them so last week to their face (their office is 4 floors below mine). The answer I got surprised me.
First off, they test the hell out of everything. They've tried dozens of variations with different offers, forms, and copy. This is what won. "Beat the average" is a compelling call to action. Think about it, would you rather "pay $10 to get X" or "beat the competition with $10"? The latter has bite to it.
It's also about brand. The only way theses offers stand a chance with consumers and developers in the long run is by staying Humble. It's in the name after all. These guys take it VERY seriously. And it's been paying off - their bundles have been doing better and better because people know the name. They trust the name. And they want to give money to support it, along with charity & game delopers.
Does the road end there? Certainly not. But I have huge respect for these guys. I totally trust that they know what they're doing here.
Looks like you can't give all your money to them though. You can only control the ratio between tip/developers/charity. Which means you'll end up giving half your money to Child's Play, even if you go full charity.
This sort of thing always makes me so darn optimistic. I wish I had enough money to contribute $256 like that one guy(poor college student here). Best of luck to everyone involved.
Nexus owners: Edge didn't work on my Nexus (neither Edge Classic nor Extended). The other HD apps seem to work great.
Permissions: All apps except Anomaly only asked for Network Communication. Anomaly needs Network Communication, Modify/Delete USB storage, and Prevent Phone from Sleeping.
Support was pleasant but didn't have any solutions. The rep I chatted with indicated that the upload dates for any updated installers would be visible on the website, unfortunately that info isn't displayed on the Android/mobile version of the site.
Doubled my originally intended contribution given the availability of the soundtracks. I wish all games came with the MP3s of the music used within. Game soundtracks are a staple of the music I listen to when I code.
There's a similar music albums bundle sale at the moment, but it's not exactly the same (not pay as much as you want, but 10$ for 10 albums, which is great also!)
That doesn't make any sense; there's a lot of overlap between different people's music tastes and across genre fans. Even so you could also easily have things like a punk rock bundle, rap bundle, electronic bundle, etc and that might even be more lucrative.
Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time?
Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?
Write your code in C++. Use OpenGL 1.x for graphics. This will allow you to easily target pretty much every platform in existence now. People used to use SDL as a general wrapper for OS specific stuff like setting up your window context and getting UI events, though I'm not sure if it's still in vogue now.
That said, writing games is one of the hardest types of software engineering task, in my experience. On top of that, all but the best games tend to have a very short lifespan compared to other kinds of software.
You've really got to love making games to stick around in the field long enough to get good.
I guess Apportable is building a framework to manually port iOS to Android.
"Apportable is a venture-backed team of six engineers, looking for a few more. We're solving some ridiculously hard problems porting iOS to Android. Our software is already being used by some of the world's largest and best game developers"
I don't know about proprietary games, but Free Software games commonly make use of very good libraries and APIs, almost all being cross-platform. SDL, Qt, and OpenGL come to mind. Also LUA as embedded language for scripting, and highlevel libraries for various programming languages such as PyGame.
You can use OpenGL & Qt for that matter. You can write proprietary software if you purchase a Qt license.
In fact, programming with Qt is usually write once, compile for: Windows, OSX, Linux, Android. Most of the time, you will not need to adjust a single line of code for it to work. Given that you keep the other platforms in mind while designing your e.g. UI.
You can write proprietary software if you purchase a Qt license
As of at least a year or two ago Qt as been LGPLv2 and thus you can write proprietary software with the free Qt license as well. The only thing you can't do (without releasing your code) is make changes to Qt itself.
Unreleased builds of Unity compile to Native Client, and the Unity 3.5 beta can compile to Flash. I saw some reference to an unfinished internal build that made Linux binaries a while back, but that's probably a ways out. Compiling to Flash is probably your best bet right now.
What about those of us who already bought Osmos and Goo several times over in previous Humble Bundles? If I bought this it would only be for the Android ports.
Both Edge and Anomaly are really high quality. The bundle is worth more than the average just for them alone. Plus, it's traditional for an additional title or few to be added a week or so after release.
Well, I don't know why, but I just hate it when Humble Bundle puts in a game I already purchased in previous humble bundles and all games being in the same steam key as well. However, having an android app this time lessen the pain by a little though. Although I not owning an android currently.
As a Linux/PC gamer (non Android user, at least at this moment :)) this is the first time I have doubts whether to buy the bundle. Two of four game we're already featured in previous bundles.
I'm interested in `Anomaly: Warzone Earth` can anyone give an opinion on the game?
I went ahead and bit the bullet but I haven't been able to give that one a test. It currently is segfaulting for me so I'm waiting on a response from the developer and/or getting my normal machine back up and running (down for backups) to test it somewhere other than my laptop.
Tried all the games on my Touchpad running ICS (Cyanogenmod 9 Alpha 0.5) and they all ran flawlessly (except for the video playback in Anomaly but that's a known issue). Great stuff!
and.... the humble bundle is dead. good while it lasted.
clicked the very first icon there, and the movie ONLY had cinematics. not a single slipt second of gameplay.
Indie games came a long way, but they are now just the same as big studios. milking any branding they can. humble bundle unfortunately being one of them :(
I assume you're talking about the Anomaly icon, which is the only one without gameplay (and is also the third icon, but maybe that changed). I'm not sure why you'd base your opinion of a game, let alone the continued success of the bundle and the indie game industry itself on the content of a single video link. The Humble Bundle continues to provide what it always has, and the game it promotes continue to be created by small independent studios, distributed DRM free on a large number of platforms. The choice of using a cinematic rather than gameplay video hardly impacts these other factors.
If you're concerned about the game itself, it's been out for a while on a number of platforms and is well-reviewed, so finding gameplay videos should not be difficult.
That video is certainly a poor representation of Anomaly's gameplay since it is just a cutscene. I will make a note to find a better one. Thanks for the feedback!
This is the first time I have ever felt left out by not using Android. I think I'm going to more seriously consider needing Android versions of projects. The feeling sucks.