Thank you! That is good to read, so it does indeed work with keyboard :D
Thanks :)

good to know! ;)
ok...let's do this. I'm at the 2nd world now!

Reminds me of the graphics of my father's old Apple IIc. We didn't notice back then, since the monitors were tiny. graphics are not a complete block for a dinosaur like me, but the reflex thing might be. I might be able to play it, but it would leave me a twitching, nervous wreck.

Could you explain this a bit? I'm reading this as "you can run a GM game using a different and unrelated GM game executable", is that a correct interpretation?

Yeah, but none of their recent titles have, hence my "currently." ;)

Absolutely brilliant game. The 3-colour limitation makes it look bad in screenshots, but after playing the game one finds that the art actually works very well. It's challenging but you don't need any special skills for this game; it's not like you're expected to beat the whole game in one sitting - just play at your own pace and see how far you get, and then challenge yourself to beat that next later. It's very addictive.

Sorry that was too cryptic. Yes, you have the correct interpretation.

I learnt this from a forum post on steam; the instructions are simple:

"* Download the game using wine or steamcmd
* Unpack Downwell.exe with your distro's archive manager
* Move all game files into a folder called "assets" and make sure the filenames are all lowercase.
* Rename "data.win" to "game.unx"
* Get the "runner" executable from another Game Maker game (e.g. Risk of Rain) and put it in the main folder"

I used the executable from the 'Fran Bow' demo; but the Linux version of any Game Maker engine game should work just fine. Everything works as intended, except (of course) achievements, etc.

Pretty frustrating that the developer isn't releasing this on Linux, when it *already* runs natively on the system!

Here's the link to the original post: http://steamcommunity.com/app/360740/discussions/0/483367798497158252/?ctp=6#c451848855017401801

I tried it after posting, since I do own a few GM games. Unfortunately, I couldn't run any with any other executable. Segfaults, segfaults everywhere. I just tried it with the Fran Bow demo (didn't even know there's a demo, neat), but neither Risk of Rain nor SuperCrateBox start. Although these were Linux versions of the games. Perhaps it really has to be a Windows version? Though since the entire point is that the files are the same, I don't see why it should make a difference.

I tried it with Ronin just now, I only have the Windows version (luckily, works under WINE) of that. It worked, but all the text is replaced with "string not found" heh. That's with the Fran Bow demo runner.

With the SuperCrateBox (recently ported!) runner, the game runs, but in the wrong resolution, and the strings are still messed up.

With Risk of Rain, it doesn't run at all, there's just a blank window, like it got stuck on loading.

I unfortunately already deleted Gunpoint and Hotline Miami, but those might be good candidates too.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this, it's quite interesting :)

Not sure about the "smooth" part, to create something like this on ZX Spectrum would pose a serious challenge (see rainbow island for example, it's not 50 FPS, just highly playable .. but not 100% smooth).

C64 and Atari800 both would cope well with scrolling the static background, but the amount of sprites looks to be a bit too much, would again IMHO require some skilled coding and trickery to make it 1:1 conversion.

But I never did C64 or A800 coding, so I'm just guessing... I did few games and demos for ZX, so I have very good idea what is possible there.

Anyway, would you say 16 bit computer... then I wouldn't have a slightest objection, smooth full framerate, and probably higher resolution. On ~100x slower CPU.

The executible (a binary file called 'runner') needs to be a Linux executible; the rest of the data comes out of Downwell.exe, which is actually a self-extracting archive.

Do you get any specific errors with the segfault?

Not that I have much of a clue, but here's something that could be relevant: When I run 'runner' under an X session through a VNC connection (I have a weird setup), it segfaults with the message:

Xlib: extension "XFree86-VidModeExtension" missing on display ":2.0".

Logging in on a physical monitor, it runs just fine; because the required XFree86 etc. package is installed.
So could it be that you're lacking some dependencies?

I'm on openSUSE Tumbleweed right now; but I've run Downwell using this method on Fedora, Arch, and Ubuntu over the past year.

If the original game exe must be present, that would explain it. That's why Ronin worked and the rest didn't.

That would be the best combo for use with this game.

My personal favorite are the right cursor keys for most old platformers i used to play like the famous loderunner (c64)
walk left and right climb decend and usually i had a CTRL key or one of the the famous z x keys.

Thats for right handed players i guess, i navigate using right (cursor keys) hand and shoot /use left hand , up and down for shooters ( there are left to right shootemup games that dont use a lot of flashes but these are very rare)
So the z x c or ctrl get a pounding while flying using the cursors keys.

I guess i will look up some old loderunners, ( without all the blasting and special effects), i really played that game a lot in the past.