Maybe Next Year

I have a few Linux books on my bookshelf. I want to use them, but every time I look through them I hesitate. It's hard to explain why, but I think this post by Miguel de Icaza just about sums it up: What Killed the Linux Desktop.

When I was a kid, I got into programming on the Apple IIe. I practically mastered Applesoft BASIC, toyed around with UCSD Pascal, and then moved into 6502 assembly language programming. I sunk a lot of hours (er...years) into software development on my own time (read: unpaid work). I built my own word processor which I used to write school papers and created a basic 3-D drawing program. I also built a 2D drawing program which I hoped to someday bundle with the word processor (along with a music program). I also tinkered with creating my own programming language and tore apart the DOS 3.3 operating system with the hopes of rebuilding it into something I could call my own. This was back in the late 1980's.

Then the development world shifted drastically under my feet. One word changed everything: Macintosh.

I didn't have a lot of information at the time, but I could read the writing on the wall: the Apple II was not forever as some articles had indicated. That pretty much ended my interest (at the time) for developing on the Apple II platform. I later shifted my efforts to the PC world. I also dove into C and C++ development, and tinkered with a lot of different development environments from Turbo C++ to Visual Studio to simpler tools. Windows programming brought its own set of challenges...one of them being increased complexity.

Then one day I discovered Linux. It reminded me a lot of the work I did years ago when I attempted to build my own operating system on the Apple II. I toyed around with a handful of distros from Knoppix to Ubuntu. I even picked up some Linux books and installed a dual boot partition with Windows and Dapper Drake. I thought to myself, "if I could only combine my dream of a 3D environment with Linux, I might be able to build something really special." Unfortunately, I was hoping to swing for the fences and make something game changing...in other words, Visicalc-like special.

Yet the more I worked with Dapper Drake and looked around at the various development environments that were available, the more discouraged I became. I found myself spending more time getting everything up and running than actually coding. Of course, more distros kept coming out of Canonical, too. Canonical is now up to Quantal Quetzal (12.10) with the most recent long-term support product being Precise Pangolin. That's a lot of releases in six years. I have enough trouble testing the game engine on the various Windows versions out there. As far as Linux distributions, I'd be at a loss trying to figure out where to even begin testing.

Now, I'm all for improvements in applications and operating systems. I also understand it is a difficult tradeoff between security, innovation, and backwards-compatability. Unfortunately, I also know what it is like as a third-party developer to put years of work into a product, only to find the foundation beneath you has shifted.

It feels like a huge waste of time.

So, in the short term, I will not port this engine to a Linux distro. I wanted to at one point, and in fact, I wanted to create a dream IDE just for game developers that could be used in conjunction with Blender to make great games on Linux...and maybe even Linux only. Then I looked at the endless hours of testing I would have to do and cringed. I don't have infinite resources.

That said, the engine I'm working on has the potential in the future to be ported to Linux. It is built on OpenGL, which opens up a lot of possibilities down the road, and doesn't tie it to a particular platform. Yes, there are some DirectX components, but those can be easily swapped out. Who knows...someday it might happen. Someday this studio might even grow into a bigger house. But until then...as the saying goes..."maybe next year."