Preorder DLC is a no-no. Sorry but will skip this.

I'm pretty sure the DLC will be available as a separate purchase
Trine 1 & 2 won't support resolutions past 1080p. They also require a separate download of dependencies to work. Imagine having to download a pack of dll files to get a Windows game to work. If this is your idea of an acceptable port I'd hate to see what your idea of a bad port is.
It's not an opinion it's a fact. The Linux version of the game won't even support my screen's resolution of 1440p and even on the store page it tells you that you need to download a list of dependencies for it to function. I'm sure you have encountered problems but chose to willfully ignore them. The Linux community has a knack for doing that :P

Hey thanks for bringing Trine 4 to GOG. Trine is one of my favorite franchises. A very relaxing games with tones of reply vale. When I play the Trine games I tend to lose track of time.

I just read the post of the dev, they will release it at a later point for everyone for free. Which is a cool move and I'm fine with it. So wishlisting it.
Almost missed this. Ok, I'm cool with this!

That's good to know, thanks.

Yes, check my merged post above...

That's definately better, but still - you have a lot of good faith to win back after Trine 3, and a pre-order exclusieve level (even if temporarily exclusive) was a terrible way to go about it.

I think maybe making a level that would, even if very briefly, wrap up the story of Trine 3 and releasing that as free DLC ahead of launching a pre-order for the next game, instead of a b onus level as pre-order incenitve would have been a much better move.

Please understand - I'm just spitballing ideas here. I understand there are business factors in play I'm not savvy in. I'm just talking as a fan of the series who was badly disapointed by the last game. Because make no mistake - I am a fan. I absolutely loved the first two Trines, and I want to be onboard for the fourth one.

As as sidenote - you should probably ask GOG to mark your account as a dev, and get that nice orange font to have your posts stand out.

I'm very interested to learn more about how games are developed for Linux from the developers point of view. I'm not very popular among Linux enthusiasts. I've been very critical of Linux and have no faith in it as a gaming platform. However that is still only an opinion that I have as a gamer/user. I'd very much like to hear what game developers have to say about it.

Hi Joel. Thanks for the information and clarifications. Much appreciated.

As evidenced in this thread, there's a fair amount of bad blood regarding the previous game in the series, and that's certainly going to affect pre-order numbers. I think most people do recognise that sometimes things go south and you have to cut your losses, and presumably that's what happened with Trine 3; but you are clearly going to lose sales of Trine 4 on that account.

If you really want to own the disappointments of Trine 3 and help to boost your pre-sales numbers for Trine 4, I have a suggestion for you -- give every customer who pre-ordered Trine 3, or purchased it at its original retail price, a 50% discount on Trine 4. (Edit: That doesn't include me, FWIW -- I've nothing to gain here.)

If the game is as solid as you indicate, then all those people (probably all fans of Trine 1 & 2) are going to enjoy this return to form -- and if you have disgruntled Trine 3 owners singing the praises of Trine 4 at its launch, that can surely only be good for sales.

Just a suggestion.

There's nothing unusual about needing to install certain libraries and other packages the games depend on. It's the equivalent of the DirectX, .NET, Visual C++ etc. runtimes on Windows (and that we see complaints about every so often here from users that can't figure out why a game isn't working on their fresh Windows install because one or more of those hasn't been installed).

Plus it only needs to be done once, and it typically only involves a small selection of libraries anyway which you can pre-emptively install; to this end I created a common dependencies meta-package for Linux Mint to install the dependencies that are most likely to be needed - that (in addition to the usual system updates/drivers/etc) is enough for most games to "just work".

However I would agree that the Trine ports aren't exactly the best & they do need a bit of fiddling to get working (and Trine 2 has to be run in a window as it doesn't work full-screen).

True but the problem is more of the way it's done. In fact the whole Linux method of dealing with dependencies drives me up the wall. With Windows, your .NET's VC++ and DX dll files are just done much better. They are often included in the games installer. You can download them yourself through both Windows update or even manually if you wish to archive them. You can also use tools like VC++ Runtime AIO Installer (found here https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/visual_c_runtime_installer.html )

these dll packages also have really good forwards and backwards compatibility. In short they are much easier and more consistent to deal with. Linux libraries are one of the biggest causes of pain for me.

Linux is operating system, just like windows is. OS provides some things, some are optional, and if you depend on the optional stuff then you must get user to install it somehow. We are spoiled by how windows works now. Would you consider it unreasonable if windows game required you to install directx (back when it wasn't integral part of windows) or bunch of video codecs? I remember such times, they were not that long ago - every game came bundled with different directx redist package - there were even few that wouldn't work with NEWER directx version and required their older bundled one. Not fun, but there wasn't a better way.

On linux, those dependencies are libraries with their own licences, some of them "viral" and they'd risk be exposing themselves to legal obligation to supply you with source code if they distributed them as a part of the installation package. It's a landscape that can be navigated, but it requires extra work compared to windows. Sorry, but the fault here is on linux, not on the devs. You can't expect developers to provide you whole operating system to run their game, there has to be boundary somewhere. I think listing required dependencies somewhere visible is very reasonable compromise.

The resolution limit at least looks like a valid complaint, especially if windows version supports it.

To use a tool effectively, you have to be realistic about what it can provide for you. Maybe it's your expectations that are wrong. I used to use linux exclusively at work (mostly coding, some admin stuff). I'm still running it in a local VM and doing many of my daily tasks on it. I'd feel like I'm missing a hand if I didn't have easy access to proper command line. But there are some tasks that linux isn't good at, and gaming is one of them. All the required bits and pieces are out there somewhere, but they are not unified and are in various state of being maintained or abandoned. As a developer, you can be sure that the system has some kind of libc. Probably libstdc++ too. No one would be seriously considering gaming on a system without X windows, so the various X libs. After that? You can't be sure of almost anything. If all that extra research and integration work will bring 10 sold copies (I don't think situation is THAT bad, just used extreme as an example)? I'd say "screw them, not worth it" too at some point.

DLLs work about the same way as .so files on Linux. It's entirely possible to install the libraries in a similar way on Linux, but this would be limited to a specific group of distros and there may be compatibility issues until the system is updated (just as is the case on Windows with certain redistributables & Windows Update) so noone has bothered to try doing anything like this AFAIK - it's better to just let the system's package manager handle it in the first place.

Included with game installers, adding +100-300MB with each game. Dependencies on Linux can also be downloaded manually in a variety of ways if you want to archive them (we've gone over this at length numerous times in the past so there's no point going over it yet again).

Installing all required dependencies can be a hassle though, and that's why I made my common dependencies meta-package. A fresh install with system/driver updates & my common dependencies meta-package is enough for most games here to "just work".

It helps that the DLLs provided are rarely (if ever) updated. Microsoft usually just adds another d3dx#_##.dll or d3dcompiler_##.dll.

That really depends, in most cases it would only be true for the source code for those particular libraries (although you'd have to check the specific license to be sure).
I started using Linux about 6.5 years ago and regularly played games both before and during that time. Even back then things weren't that bad & things have only gotten better (*much* better) since then. That said it's not perfect, but then again neither is Windows... and Windows is going in the opposite direction :p

If things sucked I wouldn't have written my Linux Mint Beginner's Guide and dumped Windows completely when I built my current system a couple of years ago :p

As for packaging games for Linux, Ethan Lee wrote a post about that for developers looking to ship Linux games.

Thanks for checking in and adding some useful information. That does help to change my opinions on things. I know there are people that are upset about Trine 3, but I really liked Trine 1 and 2 and would like to see more. I am still a little disappointed about lack of Linux support, hopefully that can change in the future. Based on the screenshots, I'm looking forward to this one.

Yeah I’ve been using Microsoft products since the DOS days as well, and neither Windows or DOS has ever been as annoying as Linux. If you have to compare Linux of today; to how Windows was 20 years ago. You’re kind of making my point for me.
That’s yeah, that kind of my point. 100% agree with that.
Again, there’s not a lot I can add here I pretty much agree with everything said. My gripe comes from the fact that GOG and Steam as well as game developers continue to waste time with it. Or rather continue to pander to an ungrateful community where there’s no profit. The entitlement of the Linux community; while desktop-Linux continues to remain in this fractured state both baffles me and frustrates me. I too use VM’s to check up on it now and then to see if there’s been improvements.