Well, a lot of you have been waiting for Shadowgrounds Survivor. For all of you waiting, we have a nice surprise for you.
Late in the porting of Shadowgrounds Survivor, it became fairly clear that it would be little work to also bring the original Shadowgrounds game to Linux. We discussed it with Igios, who were doing all the hard work, and we decided that we would also release Sha
dowgrounds.
But, being the sneaky Linux Game Publishing company that we are, we decided to keep it secret. I guess, I just wanted to give everyone a nice surprise, and get a new game out that none of you were expecting. As it has the same game core as Survivor, it didn’t need the extensive beta test, making it one of the few times we would be able to release a game without a beta to let you all know it was on the way.
Later this week we will be releasing Shadowgrounds Survivor, and so we felt that the best thing to do for Shadowgrounds is to make it a budget title on release. We have decided to set the retail price at just £10, partly because it was easier to port and so the price being lower is fair. Also, and I’ll be honest here, I want lots of people to buy it, get hooked on the gameplay, and just feel that urge to buy the higher priced Survivor. I’m not going to claim to be completely altruistic, we ARE a business afterall {:-)
Now, one thing that will disappoint some players is that neither Shadowgrounds, nor Survivor, come with the co-op multiplayer option that Windows has. This is because of a conflict in the game design, and the design of SDL. It is actually technically impossible to provide the multiplayer (which on Windows requires two keyboards and two mice) with the architecture as it stands, and by the time we realised this, it would have required a complete rewrite of the whole game core to get this working.
However, good news, is that the next version of SDL will contain all we need to get co-op into the game, and Igios has committed to releasing a patch to provide this functionality as soon as SDL can do it.
Shadowgrounds has taken a lot of dedication from the guys at Igios, so I’m counting on the community to do their bit, and buy the game, give them some thanks for the long hours of work they have put in to bring this game to you. You can buy it boxed, or it will be available to download, either for purchase or rental.
Tags: boxshot, download, igios, multiplayer, new release, rental, SDL, Shadowgrounds, Survivor
Cool surprise!
Just posted the game on The Linux Game Tome.
Two keyboards? It needs two…keyboards?
Only for co-op play. Each player has one.
Will there be a demo released for Shadowgrounds and/or Survivor? :)
Yes, either today or tomorrow, depends when we run out of steam in the office. Its ready to go just needs packaging up.
Just bought the boxed version.
Really looking forward to this : )
Can’t wait but i will wait until the demo is out, still waiting for X3 demo too ;).
Was a lovely suprise and i made a news post for you here:
http://www.gamingonlinux.info/?show=topic&t=54
Thanks to IGIOS, 2 more addictive games on Linux.
Michael, I hope you will continue to work with them…
awesome news! good job!
Now, this is a nice surprise… I got a copy of the original shadowgrounds for windows some time ago (which was just 5€) but I may just buy the native port again :)
Btw, what about porting Torchlight (http://www.torchlightgame.com/) next? It looks amazing and seems to be used Ogre3D for graphics, so maybe not too hard to port? Also, given that the game is set to be sold for $20, maybe the license for a port will be cheap, too?
hey that game looks really nice and interesting :)
only one minus, i cant find anything about multiplayer on their seite, but the trailers very good to me
i would definetly buy that one for linux :)
As for multi player: Torchlight is single player only, for now. The team will work on multi player version (set in the same universe etc) as a separate product after the single player game is done.
Never heard of Torchlight before (I mostly ignore the non-Linux gaming scene), but a quick bit of research has me adding my “yes please” to this suggestion!
I bought Sacred hoping for something as addictive as Diablo 2. It’s a nice little(!) hackfest, but I find myself still pining for the old classic occasionally. Torchlight looks to be more in the Diablo vein (they do have Diablo devs on their team after all!). And it looks pretty dang cool.
Though I’m kinda hoping that this is something LGP are already involved in on the quiet, and they’ll surprise us all with a simultaneous Win/Lin release.
Well, I can dream. :)
I’ve never heard of this game before, but it looks like a nice game.
@Michael Simms:
Thank you very much for also bringing the first Shadowgrounds to Linux. I always wished the first Shadowgrounds would be released for Linux, so I could play through the whole Shadowgrounds story, instead of only the second part.
The only thing I don’t like:
I already placed an order for Shadowgrounds: Survivor at a German reseller and I’ve already paid. Now I have to e-mail them to change my order and I have to transfer the additional money to their bank account (because I’m not from Germany, I have to pay for every bank transfer to German banks). Well, being able to play the whole Shadowgrounds story makes me forget the hassle of changing my order and the additional money for the international bank transfer.
I’m still missing X: Beyond the Frontier in my Linux Collection.
I doubt that it’ll ever be ported though, since it’s just way too old and I’d probably be the only one to buy it. :P
Heh, Id like it myself, but its not possible, unfortunately.
I just came across another I’ve never heard about, but looks very interesting. The game’s called Dreamkiller and it’s a game like Painkiller.
The game is developed by Mindware Studios (you know from Cold War) and runs on their Meng engine. LGP already knows Mindware Studios and their Meng engine and they’ve got experience porting their games, so I think it won’t be very difficult to port this new game.
Some links:
http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/116
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-yuS1XK5U
Mindware did the Linux version of Cold War themselves, so my guess would be that they will also do so for Dreamkiller (my guess for the next announced LGP game :-) )
Fantastic!
I’ll buy both games after Survivor will be released.
Thanx!
Really great news! Definitely going to buy a boxed copy soon :).
Does it support widescreen resolutions? This was missing in the Windows version if I remember correctly.
Yup, it supports all resolutions your graphics card and monitor manage
That is good news also, i am tempted to get some of the other older titles but the resolution really bugs me especially since i am on a 22″ widescreen.
Wow, the other guy called Max is back again, because that post was definitely not by me. I wouldn’t write thanks with a x…
Well, I tried to buy Shadowgrounds as download with tuxgames yesterday, but it did not take my creditcard…. So I used the same card with LGP today and ordered it there…
I’ll try to buy the rental download tomorrow, so I can play it while I wait for my disc.
I’ll probably rent Shadowgrounds survivor at first and then buy it next month.
Well, depending on how much time I need to get through Shadowgrounds, probably not too much time.
So was Shadowgrounds actually the “secret” title you mentioned a few times this year already, or is there still something else in the bush?
Oh, well, I actually did not even write what I came here for, I just did some reasearch on the multiplayer of SG, it sadly had no online MP so my first hope was that you guys did your magic witht he coop and made it online with grapple and penguinplay. That hope is already gone now I guess, so I was hoping that at least the Coop on 1 PC would be in, using a USB gamepad, but…well, now due to your blog entry that hope is also gone. :P
Now I gotta wait for the next version of the SDL, whenever that is gonna be released…
Oh we have more to come {:-)
X3TC?
/hides under a table
Are you planning to add online MP?
No, that would be changing the game, we will offer the same multiplayer that the original offered, as soon as SDL can do it.
It does NOT need 2 keyboards. I played through the campaign with three players and ONE keyboard. You will in fact need more than one controller. My friends had gamepads.
But nevertheless… I am happy that you will patch it later.
Regards
will LGP also have the down-loadable version or is that TuxGames only ?
LGP doesnt offer downloadable versions, only the resellers can do that
Going to buy possibly both in a few days when work is a little less busy(Thursday). Any announcements for the next LGP port?
hehe, nope, but I can tell you there will be a new guess the title competition!
Any ideas on a timeframe for the next port then?
There is still the Bandits release remaining…
And as totally unannounced titles I’d expect there’d be X3:TC, Sacred 2 or maybe even Postal 3, who knows, maybe RWC approached LGP or vice versa.
Who knows, maybe you guys came up with something entirely different.
I’m looking forward to whatever is comming in the future, as long as it’s no digital Version of Chess, Poker or Mahjong. :P
I am not going to register on your site just because I want to report a bug. Why don’t you provide a bug report/support mail address?
Anyways. This is what the Shadowgrounds demo does for me:
—————————–
$ ./shadowgrounds_demo
[WARNING] Out of OEM specific VK codes, changing to unassigned
[WARNING] Out of unassigned VK codes, assigning $FF
(shadowgrounds_demo:13219): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_x11_atom_to_xatom_for_display: assertion `atom != GDK_NONE’ failed
—————————–
A window titled “survivor launcher” comes up saying “DESKTOP_SESSION environment variable not found!”.
I use XFCE on Archlinux with nvidia drivers and OSS.
Launching the bin directly, gives:
shadowgrounds-demo$ ./shadowgrounds-bin
./shadowgrounds-bin: /home/hannes/kram/spiele/shadowgrounds-demo/lib/libuuid.so.1: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libSM.so.6)
but seems to load fine. When the game loaded (after “New Game”), at some point the mouse arrow appeared but there was nothing to click on. Also the text at the bottom was cut off. I clicked around, pressed space, enter etc and finally got some swirly screen. Then it went to a sound loop and froze. I had to kill the process. This I found in the terminal afterwards:
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 129 (XFree86-VidModeExtension)
Minor opcode of failed request: 10 (XF86VidModeSwitchToMode)
Value in failed request: 0×420000e
Serial number of failed request: 181
Current serial number in output stream: 183
I use 1680×1050 as resolution. I got this crash and others with no message several times randomly. This is most likely not the game’s fault but nvidia’s or my graphics adapter’s.
Im not sure why you think you need to register, support@linuxgamepublishing.com is fine for reporting bugs.
Thanks for your reply. I thought so because //www.linuxgamepublishing.com/contacts.php? says “For problems with your order from our store” for that mail address. I assumed it was sales related.
Please ignore everything about crashes in my post. Only the resolution issue and the error message are interesting I guess. :-)
This needs to be fixed actually, DESKTOP_SESSION needs to be set to something. Anything will do, fish, blurgle, iamaturtle, its all the same. That will make the launcher work if you get that error message, until it gets fixed
I would consider buying Survivor but I downloaded the demo and it crashes quite a lot on my Ubuntu 9.04 system. It’s just happened again with: Caught std::exception basic_string::_S_construct NULL not valid
Last night I tried posting on the LGP IRC channel with other crash reports but no one was answering.
Got signal 11 at 0×1 from 0×8179709
Again…
We handle bug reports at support@linuxgamepublishing.com
I gotta say that it’s quite fun with those physics, I turned them to high and every single bullet seems to have an effect on the enemies and there there are all those boxes flying around and so on, it’s just nice to watch. Ah, and when and enemy loses a body part, that lost part is actually also interacting in the physics system, when I played it the first time I used a grenade on some of those aliens and then pushed some arms and legs around in front of the marine.
The graphics and lighting are also nice, especially seeing all those shadows on the walls when you have the flashlight activated and walk past a bush or some weird constellation of tables and chairs and so on.
I really like the demo, but it keeps crashing in the second level. Just happened for the third time.
Crash No.2: Got signal 11 at 0xaa035000 from 0xb6cdf324
Crash No.3: Got signal 11 at 0xaa432000 from 0xb6b62364
I’m on Mandriva 2009.1 up to date and latest NVIDIA drivers. Anyone else experienced this?
We handle all bug reports at support@linuxgamepublishing.com
A little request – can you please put an rss feed on the actual news on the main lgp website please :)
My Shadowgrounds arrived today and towards the end of level 4 it crashed. :(
I could not find any log data though. Next time I’ll make sure to log all the output to a file when starting it.
I was on the way from the radar station to that military base to meet the professor and when there was another one of those cutscenes with that tech-eye-alien, the game locked up and I had to restart x.
The story is way nicer than I expected though. It actually has a real story.