Marble It Up! Ultra for Linux

At last, a Linux-native version of Marble It Up is now available on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/864060/Marble_It_Up_Ultra/

As part of this release, the game is now also Deck Verified, so you can expect it to run really well - we even added Steam Deck-specific graphics to the UI!

This release is pretty special for me, for a number of reasons:

1. It's the first release I've had in... checks notes 9 months?! Oh dear, sorry about that... I'm surprised nobody's messaged me with "dead dev" with a gap that large!
2. I've been a fan of Marble games since Marble Blast Gold, which turned out to be one of the very early Linux-native commercial games, so it's nice to be able to revive that support over 20 years later!
3. This was a really good example of why keeping in touch with developers over long periods of time can be beneficial - long-time followers may recall that a few years ago MIU was in the news for the opposite reason, which may be surprising in retrospect! Around this time I got in touch with the studio about native support, and since that time we've been in correspondence - this allowed me to get the port done when the decision was made to support Deck with as much care as possible (which, unless you have Valve's personal attention, means taking the native route). So in just a few years, we went from that article to this one! This is how I've always felt about building the platform - building these bridges instead of burning them down, solely because burning them down might seem more convenient in the moment, I think will do a lot of good for native builds... and I'm still working on building many more. Just think: If I had taken the other path, this release might not have happened!

Enjoy my latest Linux release, and if there are other games you'd like native versions of, don't hesitate to forward my portfolio to the studio!

FNA3D D3D11 Linux: Alpha "Release"

This post has been archived.

flibitBuild

Want to replicate my build machine? Grab a RHEL8-based OS and have a look!

"RHEL-based" OSes include RHEL for Developers, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux.

Your OS minimum will be "glibc 2.28+, 64-bit only".

# Update base install before doing anything else
dnf update
# Add EPEL
dnf install epel-release
crb enable
# SDL2 dependencies
dnf builddep SDL2
# All the base build tools!
dnf install bzip2 bzip2-devel chrpath clang cmake freetype-devel gcc-c++ \
    git gtk3-devel libstdc++-static libuuid-devel libvorbis-devel \
    libxml2-devel meson mingw32-gcc-c++ mingw64-gcc-c++ ninja-build \
    ocl-icd-devel openal-soft-devel opencl-headers openssl-devel patch \
    perl-IPC-Cmd svn unix2dos zlib-static

# libdecor
curl -O https://gitlab.gnome.org/jadahl/libdecor/-/archive/0.1.0/libdecor-0.1.0.tar.bz2
tar xvfj libdecor-0.1.0.tar.bz2
mkdir libdecor-0.1.0/flibitBuild
cd libdecor-0.1.0/flibitBuild
meson .. --libdir=lib -Ddemo=false
ninja
su -c 'ninja install'

# PipeWire 0.3.42 (Highest version usable with meson)
curl -O https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/archive/0.3.42/pipewire-0.3.42.tar.bz2
tar xvfj pipewire-0.3.42.tar.bz2
mkdir pipewire-0.3.42/flibitBuild
cd pipewire-0.3.42/flibitBuild
meson setup .. --libdir=lib -Dsession-managers= -Dpipewire-v4l2=disabled -Dv4l2=disabled -Draop=disabled
ninja
su -c 'ninja install'

# Also:
# Configure SDL with PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig ./configure
# The CMake config provided by SDL2-mingw is terrible, delete the block
#  that starts with "if(NOT TARGET SDL2::SDL2)".

flibitBuild AArch64

This works fine on the latest Fedora. Your glibc minimum will be 2.34.

# On Fedora...
dnf install qemu-system-aarch64
dnf group install --with-optional virtualization
virt-builder fedora-35 --arch aarch64 --size 32G \
    --root-password password:!!YOUR_PASS!!
virt-install --name fedora_aarch64 --arch aarch64 --ram 3072 \
    --disk path=fedora-35.img,format=raw --os-variant fedora35 --import

# Inside the VM...
dnf builddep SDL2 libgdiplus
dnf install autoconf automake bison bzip2 chrpath cmake gettext-devel git \
    libicu-devel libtool python tar unzip

Wait, a "plan"?

Well, this is a .plan file, so here's my TODO. Expect nothing from it, ever.

In Progress
    Marble It Up Ultra Launch

Waiting Room (2023)
    Codename TupTip
        - Passed cert, waiting for launch
    SDL 3.0
        - SDL_ActionSet is what sponsor resources are going towards
        - SDL_StorageContainer is whenever I feel like it
        - Wayland/PipeWire are waiting on external components
    Coding History
        - On call throughout development
    VVVVVV 2.4
        - Giving the localization project as much time as it wants
    Super Hexagon Neo Part 2
        - Occasional merge work
Waiting Room (Heat Death)
    ScoreRush PC
        - Need AppAdmin for publish, crosshair for mouse
    Proteus "Neo" Rewrite
        - Retirement project