Humble Bundle Blunder

<rant>

Goodbye, Humble Bundle.  You won't be getting any more of my money.

The pitch: pay what you want for a set of quality, cross-platform (including Linux!) indie games while helping a charity.  Sounds like a solid idea... which is why I paid much more than the average for two separate bundles.  So why do I have such a bad taste left in my mouth?

The ports that are released on Linux are, in many cases, broken and STILL not fixed.  I understand that software will have bugs -- it's inevitable, but one of the big advantages to playing on games on a PC is that they can be easily patched on the user's end.  But, obviously, the developers have to release fixes/patches in order for me to be able to apply them... which hasn't been happening for many of the Humble Bundle Linux ports.  This leaves us with no options but to play the Windows versions under Wine (usually with decent performance hits), or to dual boot Windows and play them there -- both of which defeat the whole idea of supporting cross-platform games.

I've gone down every support channel that I can think of to bring these issues to the developers' attention, but in too many cases, these support requests are seemingly sucked into a black hole and are never addressed.  Here's how I understand the Humble Bundle process to work: the studio that originally developed the Windows version of the game vies to get their title in an upcoming bundle, once that deal is made, they contract a 3rd party developer specifically to create the Linux (and probably Mac) versions of their game.  Since the original studio contracted this work out, they're not directly responsible for supporting these "step-child" versions of their game.  Therefore, it's typically useless to contact the original studios directly for Linux support and you're usually told to direct your support questions to Humble Bundle directly (this is first-hand experience).  Then, you send an email to the generic Humble Bundle support email address, which usually nets you a timely, courteous, yet unhelpful (since they're not developers), reply.  After that... it's just silence... then they're on to releasing the next bundle and your hard-earned dollars are stuck in a few half-complete, and support-less, native games.  This isn't what I signed up for.

Let me give you a few specific examples that you can see for yourself, instead of just taking my word for it.

1. Torchlight (Humble Bundle 6, 09/18/2012)

• http://forums.runicgames.com/viewforum.php?f=24
• This one had a pretty rocky start comprised of hard crashes (several of which occurred at certain points of progression in the game, which meant that you couldn't complete it), missing sound/music, and the player characters missing their heads.  I believe all of the sound issues and  crashes have been fixed, so at least you can finish the game.  The heads are, however, still missing -- this issue is usually the top thread in the above linked forum.  It looks like people are still, occasionally, posting on that thread, hoping for a fix -- I've given up hope.

2. Dungeon Defenders (Humble Bundle 7, 12/19/2012) 

• http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?88074-Linux-Version-FAQ
• https://bugzilla.icculus.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=Dungeon+Defenders (official and inactive bug tracker)
• Just take a look at the bug list for this one...  I can confirm several: broken gamepad support (which limits you to one player -- keyboard and mouse only), broken LAN multiplayer support, Gamespy online play doesn't work (all versions may be affected, fault may be on Gamespy's side), each level starts on a wave that's not the first (starting on wave 2 of 6 for example), erratic window and mouse behavior on game start -- mouse isn't captured by the game and/or doesn't respond to clicks (usually resolved with an arbitrary number of clicks and alt-tabs), mana crystals aren't pulled toward the player (gathering mana during and between waves is a big part of where you spend your time)...
• Those first three bugs that I listed, together, limit your game play to SOLO.  I've spent some good time with this game (the Windows version is much more usable), and I will tell you that this game is not meant to be played solo -- it gets old, fast.

3. Vessel (Humble Bundle 6, 09/18/2012)

• https://twitter.com/humblesupport/status/278589326344982529
• The bundle was out on Sept. 18, 2012 -- but the game wasn't released until December 11, 2012.  I haven't even played this one yet, but a two month delay, in itself, is a bug in the system...  In all fairness, Humble Bundle did eventually offer a full refund for the bundle due to Vessel taking so long, if you were that bent about it, but shouldn't the game be ready for the pre-determined release date?

4. Shank 2 (Humble Bundle 7, 12/19/2012)

• http://forums.kleientertainment.com/forumdisplay.php?18-Shank
• Many bugs at launch, including (very) broken gamepad support (which is a huge deal with this game -- I like playing games on a keyboard and mouse, but this one would have been unbearable), and a bug that prevented progress on the last level.  These issues, I believe, are all fixed now, but it took about a month, and several revisions, to iron them all out.

Many of the games are seemingly relatively untested when they are released to the public, which creates a cycle of: download, install, play, crash (or run into another bug rendering the game unplayable), create feedback about the issues, wait and incessantly check the Humble Bundle website for an updated version, download, install... and repeat.  And that's if you're lucky and they actually fix the bugs.  That being said, there are a few games that I've played specifically that have given me ZERO issues from the beginning, which deserve some praise:

Dustforce

Rochard

...

Actually, I think that's it for now.  I've still probably only played about half of the games from the two bundles which, in itself, says something about this whole Humble Bundle project, considering the number of issues I have to report...

I know there are die-hards out there that will continue to support Humble Bundle solely because they're bringing more native games to Linux.  But if the games are broken, what's the point?

I think the fix lies in Humble Bundle's hands.  They really need to take the reins and set some hard rules and deadlines for these games.  Continuing on without more of a hardline approach will keep making them look bad.  They need to tell developers, "Your game isn't complete AND tested by the time the bundle is released?  Too bad.  You missed out on a big opportunity."  Even if this results in fewer games making it to a native Linux port (although it shouldn't, as it only requires a bit of planning ahead...), we will have a higher percentage of QUALITY and COMPLETE games as a result.

The developers (or studio) need to be held to a certain level of post-release support for the games -- even if the target for this support level is fixing 100% of bugs on any one target distribution (Ubuntu seems to be the popular choice for this).  I'm sure that all of the studios behind the Bundle games are making enough money to provide a decent level of support afterwards.

TL;DR:
To Humble Bundle:  I don't want a refund, I just want the games, that I paid for, fixed.

</rant>

If anybody actually reads this, please share your experiences in the comments.


You've gotten better at skimming! (1)

Creating Wine/PlayOnLinux Steam Game Shortcuts on Your Desktop

After my recent invite to the DotA 2 beta (/cheer), my Linux gaming interest has been reignited.  I already had a working install of Steam via Wine (via PlayOnLinux), which is the platform on which DotA 2 is distributed.  Consequently, the regular installation of DotA 2 from Steam went smoothly and the game ran without a hitch (Wine v1.5.13).

When you install a game through Steam, a shortcut is automatically placed on your desktop in the form of a .url file -- at least this was the case with my Fedora/KDE/PlayOnLinux combo.  The shortcut seems to work just fine, but there were a couple of issues with it for me, aesthetically.

That picture alone should tell you exactly what's wrong with it.  For installed native Linux games, you get a nice desktop link to the binary with the intended icon... with a Steam game shortcut, you get a globe on a paper with a rolled corner and a ".url" on the end of the game name.  This will never do for those of us who have an interest in the more aesthetically pleasing things of this world OR those of us who have large Steam game collections... and especially not those of us who fall into both categories.

DISCLAIMER:  This fix is specific to the KDE 4.X environment, although other desktops surely have a similar method for implementing this.  At the very least, you will find the "Command" for opening a game through Steam via Wine useful.

Enough rambling.  What's the fix here?  Well, the file that we have is a URL shortcut with contents like

[InternetShortcut] 

URL=steam://rungameid/570 

ICONFILE=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam\games\c0d15684e6c186289b50dfe083f5c562c57e8fb6.ico
ICONINDEX=0

Even if we change the ICONFILE line to a more Linux-appropriate path and file type, we still won't be able to change the icon.  Also, you can go into the Properties dialog for this shortcut to change the icon, but this will change EVERY .url file to use the same icon... not ideal.  So, we essentially need to create a new type of shortcut for our games for which we can configure an icon on a per shortcut basis; this can be accomplished with an application shortcut.  For starters, open a windowed terminal session and cd to your user's desktop directory:

cd ~/Desktop

Then do a cat of the shortcut that you intend to replace:

cat Dota\ 2.url

The output should be very similar to what I've posted above (in the [InternetShortcut] section).  The number at the end of the URL=steam://rungameid/... line is what we're most interested in here.  This is the unique number that Steam assigns to each application, and we will be creating the new shortcut using this number.  Now, right click on your Desktop panel and Create New > Link to Application...  Fill in the field at the top of the "General" tab that currently contains "Link to Application" with whatever name you'd like to appear for this shortcut.  Then, click on the application tab and fill in the "Command:" field with the following:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/user/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/Steam" wine "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\Steam.exe" -applaunch 570 -no-dwrite

Here, you will fill in the WINEPREFIX portion with the root of your Wine drive.  In my case, I'm using PlayOnLinux to manage several Wine drives.  If you're using straight Wine, yours might look more like "/home/user/.wine".  You'll also need to make sure your Steam.exe is in the same relative location as mine.  Then, the last thing will be to change the number (570) to the application number that you got from the previous step.  Also, the "-no-dwrite" portion is to disable the dwrite.dll library to fix the "no text" issue in Steam for Wine versions >=1.5.10 ... so that is optional.

Now, hit the OK button and you'll have a fully functional application link that goes straight to your desired game... but we still haven't resolved the issue at hand.  Right-click on your newly created shortcut and go to Properties.  This time, there is a question mark icon to the left of the shortcut name and it will be clickable.

You can click it to open the dialog for changing the icon.  One last gotcha... you will either need to download a new icon from the web by doing a Google Image search (eg "dota 2 icon") OR browse to the ICONFILE location in the "cat" step, open it in the default image editor, and save it back as a .png, .xpm, .svg, or .svgz;  this is because you can't use a .ico file as an icon in KDE.  Either way... click the question mark icon, click the "Other icons:" radio button, then click "Browse..." and browse to whichever icon graphic you desire, select it and hit "Open".  Now hit "OK" to get out of the dialog, and... you're done!  Mission accomplished!

You've gotten better at Linux! (3)