MegaBlueBall
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MKM no longer supports mac or linux
🕑 Added 2022-02-02 21:59:59 +0000 UTCHello everyone.
I want to make an official statement saying that MKM will no longer offer builds for mac or linux going forward, and by extension I as a creator will not offer support for those platforms with neither my current nor future games.
This is unfortunately terrible news for people who exclusively use those two platforms, and while I sincerely apologize, there really are no excuses: this one is on me because it was a bad mistake on my part and so I take full blame and accept your scorn if you think less of me as a game developer for this decision.
And in that spirit, if you're one of the users who are affected by this decision and feel slighted by it then please contact me via direct message here and I will workout for you to receive a full refund on your pledges; it is the least I can do since you gave me your trust in the form of your support during all of this time.
I'm also in the process of removing information about those platforms and updating the landing pages here and on itch.io to reflect this decision, so that it's clear for everyone that the game will not support those platforms anymore.
This is all for this official statement.
Best Regards,
Laek
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With that formal statement out of the way, what follows is my reasoning that led me to this decision. Not as a form of excuse, but I do owe everyone an explanation in respect of your support and as a show of openness with you from my part as a game developer.
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When I choose Unity as my game engine of choice years ago, one of the reasons for it was the advertised ease to create builds for other platforms such as mac and linux, among others.
Unity does take care of the heavy lifting; when making the executable builds of a game, you can simply select a different target platform other than windows and Unity will automatically output an appropriate game package to be run on each platform.
You see, I personally have near zero experience with both mac and linux, but when I learned and saw that for myself that Unity could just spit-out builds for these platforms, I naively thought that I would be able to support both those platforms while developing MKM.
But once I made builds for those two platforms and uploaded it for people to play, I soon realized the problems: these users where reporting a plethora of bugs that were exclusive to either mac or linux and the problem is that I had no means to play-test them to reproduce or properly debug those builds.
The thing is that while Unity does take care of the heavy lifting when making those builds, the engine can't automatically account for certain "code assumptions" that doesn't work on different platforms.
I work and program the game using a windows machine which carries some small assumptions and ties in the code itself that breaks when run on those different machines. Worse still, mac builds require a special signature in code that is literally impossible to create from a windows machine.
Here is the thing tough: it is quite possible to code a game in such a way for it to be platform independent, but since I don't have neither a linux dedicated machine nor a mac one, and on top of that, I have little experience with both systems anyways, it results in me being unable to provide decent or proper support for players who report bugs to me, and I'm rendered unable to fix and adapt the "errors" in code because I can't personally play-test them in the correct machine to mold them to be able to work on those other systems.
As you know, some amazing patrons came forward to help mac users and made a tutorial for how to run those builds by following a series of steps to give permission from within their mac system. But even then after they are able to launch the game, they will run into these normal gameplay bugs that I can't reproduce nor test from my end since they don't happen in the windows machine, which is quite frustrating to me as a game developer who wants to help those users and make playable builds.
So to summarize the whole issue:
I naively thought that those Unity builds would work without any input from me, but I was mistaken. Since I have basically zero experience working with those systems and no readily available machines dedicated to them, I'm unable to support these users.
And as I don't want to maintain a situation where I can't fully control or fix things, and I don't want for "false advertise" nor I don't want to leave it on "limbo" like it more or less was where I either have to count on the goodwill of other people who has a mac (which obviously have no obligation to work with me 24/7) or I had to leave users playing with a half-working buggy version of the game.
Finally, being honest with you as always, I sincerely have no intention right now to dedicate the extra time and effort that would be required to learn and use those systems, for reasons that are neither here nor there.
Which leads into my decision to officially drop support for them.
It's not pretty and I feel bad about it, but I'd rather cut the cord clearly and upfront right now, rather than keep a facade of half-support and empty promises that I just can't deliver for the good people who expects a playable game.
Thank you for taking the time to read it all.
Laek
Comments
Dirk Dagger
No problem! Don't beat yourself up over it. Well done for trying!
Vik Virtue
Ah, well I remember when you were having porting issues a while ago, and when you were getting advice for it too. I don't use mac, but it sucks that you had to call it quits for it though. But like you said, it's better that you were able to know when you couldn't do it any longer, rather than try and keep it afloat with no fruit.
I completely understand this, and wish you all the best!
Zawkian Puppy
I feel ya buddy... the only way i manage to make a MAC and Linux builds of my own game is because it does automatically. Keep on going buddy your work is awesome! ^-^
