I know, I know. Probably been suggested many times before. I searched but only found threads about running on Wine.

I think the direction this game takes would really appeal to a lot of Linux gamers and probably sell very well in something like the Ubuntu software centre.

Most Linux users at present are technical types who would really appreciate the amount of work put into the physics simulation and generated sounds.

Linux users are also very generous. Check out the payment stats on http://www.humblebundle.com/
Average 'pay what you want' for the Humble Indie Bundle games:
Average Windows:$7.84
Average Mac:$9.27
Average Linux:$13.78

Except for the years that scawen would need to spend recoding LFS in OpenGL and using non-DirectX libraries for Sound, Forces and Input.

Not worth it.

Yes, the fact that LFS wasn't designed to be cross platform from the beginning is a big block. However there are plenty of other developers that successfully make cross platform games. I think all the games in the Humble Indie Bundle I posted above are cross platform. Vendetta Online, with a dev team of 4 successfully maintain their game for 4 different platforms. Also, OS X and Linux are on the rise.

OSX is (and I'm the biggest advocate of OSX on these boards), however it's not worth Scawens effort for a few reasons:

First off, Hardware developers have offered shitty support for OSX and Linux. To get a G25 working properly with Linux involved a bunch of compiling, patching and hacking of your own input libraries.. not really an optimal solution.

Second: DirectX offers a relatively complete package for Networking, Graphics, Sound, Input and Force Feedback. On Linux and OSX, this doesn't exist. You need to manually implement your Graphics from scratch (in OpenGL, possibly with an aide like GLUT), where DirectX offers a lot of helpers for this.
Sound you need to decide what to support. OpenAL? Core Audio? ALSA? This raises platform issues and keeping multiple sound engines working similarly across platforms.

Input/FFB (I'll group them as they're related). DirectX offers a lot of frameworks, to the extent that it's like "Oh hai wheel.. force = 10345" and DirectX does the medium work to send the correct signal to the wheel. Linux/OSX doesn't have such luxuries, so you need to either leave the feature out, or limit your support to specific devices that you've targeted.

Plus, it's just not worth their effort. I'm an OSX user, I only own Mac computers, yet I'm still a passionate LFS fan. If I want to play LFS, I make it work by running Windows when I need to.

Additionally, LFS truly only has 1 "developer". There's a Content dude and a Web dude, but Scawen is the only developer so to speak. So his time must be spent on what will benefit the simulator. Adding support for things that won't really benefit him or the community is a wasted effort.

Driver/software support is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. If you buy a Mac or use Linux, use supported hardware. I've heard all you have said before but my suggestion still stands of course Others do it so cross platform game development is possible.
I understand your point of view though...

Except this:
"Adding support for things that won't really benefit him or the community is a wasted effort."

Supporting additional platforms will expand the community and the number of paying customers.

Yes, it's possible, but as LFS is already established as a heavily Windows biased game (The whole core is written with windows specific libraries). Porting this isn't really worth the gain IMO. There are more customers, maybe.. but that's too speculative to put in a lot of hours into it. Sim racing is already a niche, if people want to play LFS, they'll find a way to do it.

The cost is far far far more than the profit in such a port.

Most cross platform games are niche. This is a niche title that would fit well in Linux.

Except when you need to feed yourself, you want to produce it where people will be able to use it. The time and effort isn't worth it when there's already LFS working well in windows, plus working well in Linux and OSX using Wine. Why waste time with those developments,when things that the community actually can use get postponed?

Because world is not enough...

Quote from Wordan :

Average 'pay what you want' for the Humble Indie Bundle games:
Average Windows:$7.84
Average Mac:$9.27
Average Linux:$13.78

i don't know who those people are, but one of the primary reasons people use linux is so they don't have to pay for software... and the easiest way to give back to the developers is to provide support for fellow users, as well as testing beta versions and reporting bugs. i'm not saying i wouldn't pay money for something i found to be useful and/or entertaining, but most of the time if someone develops a pay-application for linux, someone comes up with a free alternative. i mean, look at transgaming and their cedega/cider garbage... (i realize that wine came first in this instance, but wine is still leaps better in many cases. :shrug

Bunder, Cider/Cedega is just a commercial fork of WINE.

Quote from bunder9999 :

i don't know who those people are, but one of the primary reasons people use linux is so they don't have to pay for software...

Oh you are so wrong. RHEL is not free as in free beer. And people still use it.
I could get my distro for free, but I order every release on CDs/DVD instead of downloading it. So do many others. Is it so hard to accept the fact that many Linux users use it because it is better than anything else out there for us?

Quote from Wordan :

Others do it so cross platform game development is possible.

I think the point Dustin is getting at is that those titles are more than likely designed from the ground up as cross-platform games. LFS is so far into its development (12 years now?) that it's just simply not worth throwing it all away at this point to appeal to an even smaller niche than it already does. Were LFS just getting started then it would make more sense, but not at this very, very late stage of development.

Quote from xfirestorm :

Oh you are so wrong. RHEL is not free as in free beer. And people still use it.

only the corporate morons who think paying for support is actually needed.

Bunder, corporations pay for support because they don't have people with the necessary skills in their company to do what they want to do.

Back on topic... MAGGOT, yea, I do understand Dustins point. How much work needs to be done depends on how LFS was designed. If it was viable to port it(I realise there are many variables here....), then making it available in places like the new OS X app store and the Ubuntu software centre would bring in a lot of new people.

Vendetta Online recently got added to the Ubuntu Software Centre. They also just finished porting to Tigra powered Android tablets (ie the Xoom) which has brought in a welcome influx of new people.

That's just the thing.. you start off saying "Devs should port to linux".. but it's really not viable at all. Releasing updates that include content and things people will pay for is a better expenditure of time rather than "Oh hey, all 5 linux gamers can now play LFS with a mouse or keyboard because there's no wheel support".

Plus as people have shown, WINE can do an excellent job of emulating LFS and even with the right patches, having equal hardware support of the wheel and stuff. If this is the case, why bother having Scawen go for a native version? (He has actually been a bit linux friendly, in the case when he redid the shadows.. did it in a method that's more friendly to WINE's DX8 implementation.

Quote from bunder9999 :

only the corporate morons who think paying for support is actually needed.

In case of RHEL, "precompiled update binaries" is part of "Support" too. And CentOS / Scientific Linux are like half a year behind RHEL (hi CentOS 6? nvm)

We will just agree to disagree Dustin. I never said it was viable, because I don't know that, and either do you. But if it was, it would bring in a whole lot more than '5' paying customers. Wine is ok but it is a last resort because it is a bit troublesum, lacks performance, and doesn't make the game particularly accessible to new players. Being able to put the game in an an app store on the other hand would make it very visable to a lot of new people.

Actually, I do know that it's viable to not port LFS. I've been around it as a player for a long time, I've gathered a lot of information regarding the technical details from Scawens posts. Plus I understand the kind of job porting from DirectX is due to general knowledge regarding various libraries (not indepth, but I know enough to be informed).

Quote from Wordan :

Bunder, corporations pay for support because they don't have people with the necessary skills in their company to do what they want to do.

you mean, corporations can't hire a system administrator who knows how to run up2date or yum on a weekly basis? at work, we've been using rhel for years, and never once have had to contact them for support, aside from an issue arising from up2date not letting us download updates. (it turned out to be something account-related that rhel screwed up on their end)

on that note, we've never had to call hp about anything hp-ux related either.

Quote from E.Reiljans :

In case of RHEL, "precompiled update binaries" is part of "Support" too. And CentOS / Scientific Linux are like half a year behind RHEL (hi CentOS 6? nvm)

i hardly call hosting a repository of package updates (precompiled or not), support. they're merely updates.

as for centos being behind rhel, that's only in major releases. i've talked to some centos people, they said on average security updates are a day or two behind what rhel does. so my question to you is, "so what"?

long story short, corporations are so ingrained to pay for product support that they'll continue to do so, even though they don't really need to.

Quote from bunder9999 :

as for centos being behind rhel, that's only in major releases. i've talked to some centos people, they said on average security updates are a day or two behind what rhel does. so my question to you is, "so what"?

How come CentOS is 3-4 days later than Scientific Linux is at updates, then? Are you implying that Scientific Linux gets updates before upstream?

Quote from E.Reiljans :

How come CentOS is 3-4 days later than Scientific Linux is at updates, then? Are you implying that Scientific Linux gets updates before upstream?

Don't believe me? Check the centos wiki yourself.

Coincidentally, the SL wiki says the same thing.

Whichever gets it done first entirely depends on the distribution's developers.

Quote from bunder9999 :

Don't believe me? Check the centos wiki yourself.

Coincidentally, the SL wiki says the same thing.

Whichever gets it done first entirely depends on the distribution's developers.

Hmm, seems like things have changed alot since last time I used CentOS. Well, that's definitively a good sign

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

OSX is (and I'm the biggest advocate of OSX on these boards), however it's not worth Scawens effort for a few reasons:
Second: DirectX offers a relatively complete package for Networking, Graphics, Sound, Input and Force Feedback. On Linux and OSX, this doesn't exist. You need to manually implement your Graphics from scratch (in OpenGL, possibly with an aide like GLUT), where DirectX offers a lot of helpers for this.
Sound you need to decide what to support. OpenAL? Core Audio? ALSA? This raises platform issues and keeping multiple sound engines working similarly across platforms.

Input/FFB (I'll group them as they're related). DirectX offers a lot of frameworks, to the extent that it's like "Oh hai wheel.. force = 10345" and DirectX does the medium work to send the correct signal to the wheel. Linux/OSX doesn't have such luxuries, so you need to either leave the feature out, or limit your support to specific devices that you've targeted.

http://www.libsdl.org/

Quote from yankman :

http://www.libsdl.org/

Sorry for bump but, sure you provide a link to a library, but that is the same point at converting LFS to opengl. Scawen would have to rewrite most if not all of LFS to get it ported into a cross platform library, that would just take too long.