Another way to increase the player count

[toM|vendettA]

I know you're not a fan of Linux and I know it can give a massive amount of problems, but if we could get past that and work on getting DP added to the Debian/Ubuntu APT repositories, we would see a likely a number of new players.

In Ubuntu the Synaptic Package Manager allows for one-click easy download/installation of almost any application you can imagine. If 3rd party/unlicensed content (maps/textures/models etc) then only the game engine could be added, and then a .zip with all the content could be hosted here or downloaded on first start of the game. Now that fast in-game downloading is implemented, this makes it even more feasible. 

... i bring this up cause I'm on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon having a hell of a time getting DP running properly

[jitspoe]

Should be pretty simple to run - just unzip it and run it.

[ViciouZ]

I think quite a few people would be turned off with the horrendous slow first-time random number generation in linux, wouldn' they? I'd think I had installed something that didn't work.

[jitspoe]

Well, there is that, but it doesn't have anything to do with the packaging.  If it was part of a debian repository, it would still have the same issue.

[Eiii]

All that would do is increase the amount of 'help game 2 work on linux plz' threads tenfold. I say it should be working well on linux before (if) we do any repository things.

[XtremeBain]

I would've done this long ago, but I really don't want to be the package maintainer for a number of reasons:
- jitspoe doesn't like supporting linux so that makes the job 10x harder
- I don't have a suitable dev environment for Ubuntu or the hardware to test any reasonable current gaming systems
- The package would have to go into multiverse since it isn't as "free" as everyone thinks it is. (Most people don't even turn on multiverse packages)
- The game is still in "alpha" stage and will never get out of it
- There aren't really any sort of defined milestones
- There have been numerous patch fixes for Linux that've come post-release which makes me think that I'll be wasting a lot of time repackaging and retesting each time there is a little (yet necessary) update.
- I can't touch any code to fix any problems unless I get the checksum for all the changed binaries (in each environment...) to jitspoe so he's not banning people for modified clients.
- I get enough PMs as it is from people who've installed linux for something to do and want help getting DP to run.  The fact that we even have a handful of legitimate Linux users that are using wine to run this game is a pretty big statement itself.

Maybe if some of these things get cleared up, we might see our game in a real "Top 5".

[QueeNiE]

Thy god hath spoken.