Linux Port (some questions)

[namuol]

I understand that the Linux port is being done by Ryan Gordon (from the notorious icculus.org, I assume).
I have a few questions about the Linux version:
- Will be developed concurrently with the other platform-versions?
- Will there be alpha/beta testing as with the OSX/Windows versions? I'd love to be a Linux tester.
- Should I expect a different release date?

Also, let me know if I should be asking Icculus these questions.

Cheers,
- namuol

[Jeff]

Icculus is handling the Linux port. I think David contacted him and there should be alphas as long the way along with the Windows and Mac alphas, although this first one may take longer.

One thing to note though, there will be no UI in the Mac and Linux builds for a while. This is because the UI depends on Google Chrome, whose core we use for the UI. We are hoping they will be ready soon, but it is impossible to tell with Google.

[Alorwin]

Does that mean that Windows is the main development platform? Or something to that effect?

[Mango]

What parts of Chrome are being used, and what for? I thought it was just Webkit. This is new to me.

[Jeff]

Does that mean that Windows is the main development platform? Or something to that effect?

No, it just means that Chrome is Windows only right now. David, Phillip, and I develop using both platforms. John and Aubrey use PCs.

[Jeff]

What parts of Chrome are being used, and what for? I thought it was just Webkit. This is new to me.

The Webkit part of Chrome.

[Mango]

Oh, didn't realise they were any different

[namuol]

I would expect that Safari and Midori would suffice for OSX and Linux, respectively, since they both also use WebKit.

I suppose I'll need to look into Chrome a bit more (I'm very wary of Google these days, especially when they release Windows-exclusive software).

Will Chrome be a system requirement?

[Jeff]

No, the necessary parts of Chrome are embedded directly into Overgrowth. You don't need to be running Chrome or anything. Safari and Midori will not work, although the Cairo branch of WebKit would be a good start. The thing about Chrome is that the rendering layer is abstracted with Skia so we can render it to a texture and display it in an OpenGL scene. This is a non trivial task, but thankfully Google has done all the necessary work for us. We are going to have to wait for this core to be ported to Mac OS X and Linux.

[namuol]

Ah, I see.

WebKit sounds extremely useful.

[VerdantPlanes]

Forgive me if I'm being obtuse here, but will you guys be able to release test versions to mac users? I mean, if I have a mac, which can't use chrome, will I not be able to help test overgrowth?

[Jeff]

You will not be able to test the WebKit GUI until Chrome works on Mac OS X. The rest works fine.

[Nuky]

Didn't even know they were going to port it.
What happens if they don't?

[Madd the Sane]

It sounds like only select parts need to be changed and/or implemented in order to get the GUI working. Have you tried talking to Google about this, and if you have, then what did they say about it?

[Riba]

Googling around a bit, it seems Adobe has made some work in offscreen-rendering with Webkit and it seems Clutter (an OpenGL GUI toolkit) has a Webkit-plugin.

Other than using Chromed Webkit, Alpha1 seems to be using SDL and OpenGL, so I wouldn't think porting it to Linux should be a problem. Anyway, you really should get a Linux workstation to test your code on, continuously during development. Ryan can probably get you started, but AFAIK he's very busy with lots of projects. (Or at least I'm hoping he's not slacking around with porting UT3 to Linux, etc...)