The Mac version was a stretch goal for kickstarter. The size of the install base had nothing to do with it.
Losing money by creating a negative ROI is generally a bad idea.
And of course consumer choice is a bad idea (for the supplier). It creates competition which drives down prices. It can also create confusion in the consumer (some car companies are notorious for having too many packages making differentiation difficult).
That was FD's decision to offer free for all pc platforms when I purchased the game.
However when I see how they are reneging on this (no Horizons for mac, any future development for it?), it teaches you to read every FD marketing release as a lawyer would.
So the negative ROI (if it exists, I haven't seen your financial number to back up your assertion) it's by their own doing.
Speaking of twisting: You are inventing whole-cloth (hacking a straw man).
I never said, nor do I believe, anything of the sort.
FD decided that Mac was not worth keeping at the expense of what they wanted to do. I guarantee you that, had 60% of the user base been on Mac, they would have made a different decision. I never said "arbitrarily".
A feature set they chose to implement. They decided that the cost of not implementing it, in results or dev time, was not worth the small number of players they had on Mac.
Linux is the same. You are asking that they spend money to make and providing ongoing code support to a LINUX version. That should and will be weighed against the fiscal gain. I doubt the numbers look compelling.
They *could* have not put in shaders.
They *could* have kept two different code bases.
They *didn't* do either because there weren't enough Mac users to make that worthwile to them.
Do you see the similarity?
Because they chose to write the game in a way incompatible with OSX. Because they decided the cost (in design, or money, or whatever) to write a version that could run on OSX was more trouble than the small number of users was worth.
Sure. Until the next update comes.
Recall: Apple exists because of the Kickstarter stretch goal to port it. It is a lesson I suspect FD has learned from.
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What numbers? I didn't specify any real world case.
You said "Increasing consumer's choice, and expanding markets is never a bad idea". I countered that it was a bad idea if it generates a negative ROI.
Apple could make the iPhone in 90 different sizes; but I doubt that the added income (if indeed any) would offset the added costs. More consumer choice, but negative ROI.
It does seem to me that a 2%-5% increase in sales is unlikely to generate enough revenue to offset the costs of supporting a Linux code-base (both in direct costs and in the reallocation of developers from improvements to the Windows version). That's up to FD to decide though.
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FD hasn't abandoned macOS, our version is still being updated with added features.
My 2 cents for what it's worth...
Although I fundamentally dislike it as a computing platform, I am running ED on Windows 10 because Oculus Rift CV1 requires it. I have built a gaming machine suitable for this purpose and running nothing else on it. Every other computing need is met on MacOS, which I use even at work 99% of the time for stability and reliability.
We have already seen the negative impact in ever growing release cycles for updates and bug-fixes since the Xbox port came out (even though that is technically not that difficult to achieve and maintain compared to other ports). Now the UI had to have been dumbed down to cater to the lowest common denominator and significant other restrictions introduced to ensure at least adequate performance across an ever wider range of platforms at the cost of overall perceived pace of development slowing to a crawl.
If given the choice between fewer platforms, but higher quality code (less bugs) with more frequent updates and features, I'd vote for the latter to get the best overall gaming experience and see the franchise continue to evolve presenting a compelling alternative even when the Wintel-only Star Citizen is released as a final product sometime in the next few years.
Although I fundamentally dislike it as a computing platform, I am running ED on Windows 10 because Oculus Rift CV1 requires it. I have built a gaming machine suitable for this purpose and running nothing else on it. Every other computing need is met on MacOS, which I use even at work 99% of the time for stability and reliability.
We have already seen the negative impact in ever growing release cycles for updates and bug-fixes since the Xbox port came out (even though that is technically not that difficult to achieve and maintain compared to other ports). Now the UI had to have been dumbed down to cater to the lowest common denominator and significant other restrictions introduced to ensure at least adequate performance across an ever wider range of platforms at the cost of overall perceived pace of development slowing to a crawl.
If given the choice between fewer platforms, but higher quality code (less bugs) with more frequent updates and features, I'd vote for the latter to get the best overall gaming experience and see the franchise continue to evolve presenting a compelling alternative even when the Wintel-only Star Citizen is released as a final product sometime in the next few years.
My my, it's been a year to the day since I last posted in here and I can see the discussion is still as colourful as ever 
Right back to the testing, let's see if this WINE has matured gracefully over the last year, or are we still drinking mulch. Will post back any findings I have in the next couple of days.
Danny.
Right back to the testing, let's see if this WINE has matured gracefully over the last year, or are we still drinking mulch. Will post back any findings I have in the next couple of days.
Danny.
There are huge differences between Mac, PS4 and Linux.
I suggest they are going after the money, and have no intention of making a Linux port because they are ignorant about the benefits, the money, and good will they are leaving on the table.
The developers which regretted porting their game(s) to linux are few and far between.
DX10 is dead. DX11 is dead. DX12 and Vulkan are two peas from the same (AMD Mantle) pod. (as in, almost the exact same codebase)
When E: D is ported to DX12 (and they really can't escape doing this), they might as well do Vulkan, and odds are they will.
Although.. It would not surprise me in the least if they continued to snub the open-source community and went DX12 anyway.
-m
I suggest they are going after the money, and have no intention of making a Linux port because they are ignorant about the benefits, the money, and good will they are leaving on the table.
The developers which regretted porting their game(s) to linux are few and far between.
DX10 is dead. DX11 is dead. DX12 and Vulkan are two peas from the same (AMD Mantle) pod. (as in, almost the exact same codebase)
When E: D is ported to DX12 (and they really can't escape doing this), they might as well do Vulkan, and odds are they will.
Although.. It would not surprise me in the least if they continued to snub the open-source community and went DX12 anyway.
-m
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The same feature set Apple withdrew support for, yes.
The topic under discussion is a Linux version of the E: D client, not what's wrong with the OSX version of Elite. Feel free to start your own topic on that subject.
Given the direction Win8 is taking and the fact that Valve and several other publishers are currently driving towards Linux, I'd say YES to any possibility of E
Anyone uses Win 8? That's like Win ME, but uglier and harder to use.
Win 10 ftw.
Besides, can't you linux folk WINE it?
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Why update when there's no reason to? Proprietary DirectX 12 nonsense? No thanks. Windows 7, FTW.
Seriously though, that's the last version of Windows I hope to use. Works great for me for the time being though as needed.
Just for information, I did Wine bug on their bugzilla https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41972 It still crashes around shader compilation - as much it can be expected.
If you already have account on Wine bugzilla, add yourself to watchers.
If you already have account on Wine bugzilla, add yourself to watchers.
I'm watching downstream at https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/elite-dangerous there is a filthy rumour that crossover 16 will include full DX11 support. But crossover are a little reticent on the communication front.
Very willing to pay for crossover rather than stick with vanilla wine as they support upstream dev.
Sure... but I don't think it helps... Too much head movement for serious play.
[video=youtube_share;L9ROKA8Kli8]https://youtu.be/L9ROKA8Kli8[/video]
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No - DX11 is basically unsupported in WINE right now. The features are being added, but there aren't enough to even come close to a functional game at the moment.
I didn't bring up Shaders. Someone else did. Take it up with them.
I said that a Linux client seemed unlikely as FD has abandoned or is abandoning Mac, DX10, and 32-bit windows because "there isn't enough money in it".
I don't see a case that Linux is likely to be more profitable. Time to dual-boot or load up a VM.
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No reason except the ability to do better hardware optimization via lower-level hardware abstraction. Which also means more features.Why update when there's no reason to? Proprietary DirectX 12 nonsense? No thanks. Windows 7, FTW.
Oh. And DX12's reduced draw-call overhead.
And the multi-adapters support for heterogeneous GPU usage. That could be fun.
why bring up apple as a reason why FD wont do linux?
A major point in this thread being created is that linux is a means to not waste all of the effort porting to opengl that's already been done because all of the reasons why Mac support has been basically dropped dont exist for linux.
There is a reason why mac support was dropped and it had nothing to do with "not enough money" in it and everything to do with that OS controlling the graphics API that is over half a decade outdated to current technology.
That's it. Apple said it doesn't want proprietary graphics drivers and they dont have open source ones, they have their own crappy in-house ones supporting outdated old versions of OpenGL that are lacking the basic features that the game makes (and needs to make) heavy use of.
These roadblocks dont exist in linux.
That being said, I'd rather them make 1 good port than 3 they can't be bothered to make simple bugfixes to in a timely manner (like i dont know, the current game where the last release broke materials spawning rocks on planetary surfaces so that they dont spawn the rocks at all and it wont be fixed until the next release is made in January if that gets released according to plan)
A major point in this thread being created is that linux is a means to not waste all of the effort porting to opengl that's already been done because all of the reasons why Mac support has been basically dropped dont exist for linux.
There is a reason why mac support was dropped and it had nothing to do with "not enough money" in it and everything to do with that OS controlling the graphics API that is over half a decade outdated to current technology.
That's it. Apple said it doesn't want proprietary graphics drivers and they dont have open source ones, they have their own crappy in-house ones supporting outdated old versions of OpenGL that are lacking the basic features that the game makes (and needs to make) heavy use of.
These roadblocks dont exist in linux.
That being said, I'd rather them make 1 good port than 3 they can't be bothered to make simple bugfixes to in a timely manner (like i dont know, the current game where the last release broke materials spawning rocks on planetary surfaces so that they dont spawn the rocks at all and it wont be fixed until the next release is made in January if that gets released according to plan)
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"Now that the program runs on XXX, it shouldn't be a problem to make it run on Linux"
- Said every Linux user ever, since ever
What money are they losing? How many people that wish to purchase Elite, are not doing so, because they refuse to use Windows?
Seriously, I'd be interested in some hard numbers on this. Frontier has sold - what, 1.5 Million copies (rough guess) and haven't supported Linux. How many Linux sales have they missed out on? 400?
It reminds me of a time that my biz partner complained that a website I was coding didn't work well on his 6 yr old laptop, running IE 7.0 or some such thing. My answer was "I don't care about some small amount of people that just refuse to use what 97% of the world use daily, just because they're stubborn. Or whatever their reason is. Buy a new laptop. Or upgrade your browser.... or heck, don't visit that website."