June 21, 2013 – As you probably know by now I’m using the Wintermute Engine (WME) to create H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon, and as you maybe also know, this engine currently comes in two flavours: the original version, which runs on Windows platforms and supports more fancy stuff like 3d characters, lightning and geometry, and the later offspring called WME Lite. That version added support for both OS X as well as iOS, however it is a bit more limited when it comes to features, most notably no support for 3d characters — which is not a problem for Dagon, since I’m not using 3d characters.

What does that mean?

That means that, in theory, I can offer the game for both Windows and OS X/iOS (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad). In theory because, while I’m currently developing for both Windows and OS X, the iOS version is different in terms of user interface and the performance of the devices, so, for now, I’m sticking to the desktop version and will port to mobile later.

So, what about Android? And Linux?

Good questions! Both platforms are becoming more and more important, and although WME doesn’t support them natively at the moment, there is good news.

First, since WME is open source, a developer has taken it upon himself to create a native Android port for WME Lite, and from my tests on Android 2.3 and 4.2 devices I can say that the results already look very impressive. Secondly, for the second year in a row, WME support for ScummVM is a part of Google’s Summer of Code, meaning that a developer gets some funding to integrate WME in the ever growing list of engines supported by the great ScummVM project (see http://www.scummvm.org/ ). A lot of work was on this last year, and this year, additional bug fixing and new features will be added.

I have tested an early build and again, the results already look very promising.

What does that mean for me, the player?

Although I can’t promise anything yet – because both projects are still works in progress – there is a very good chance that H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon will be available on more platforms than I initially hoped, most notably, of course Android, but also Linux (and ScummVM seems to run on anything that has a screen).