GBGamesGregg Seelhoff recently posted about Beyond Pong, a student documentary about the maturation of video games.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to view it on my system since it requires a later version of Quicktime than I have. Still, if you have 40 minutes to kill, it will probably be worth your while.
Greg Costikyan posted a link to the NetHack song. You can find the lyrics and an mp3 of NetHack.
And, of course, the game is teh awesomes.
I have been using Steve Pavlina’s advice on business plans for indie game developers. I have found it to be a good guide, even though I think it is geared towards existing developers. There isn’t much talk about what to do if you’re just starting and you don’t have a product yet.
Luckily, Juuso Hietalahti recently wrote The Basic Marketing Plan for Indie Games. Even though it isn’t as detailed, it is a good supplement to Pavlina’s document.
For this week’s Thousander Club update:
Game Hours: 86.75 / 1000
Game Ideas: 357 / 1000
Target: 357
Well, my week was very unproductive. Until Friday, I didn’t do any work at all. For some reason, I had trouble waking up in the mornings. Normally I try to get up at 5:30AM, and if I get up late, it is still 6:30AM at the latest. I still have plenty of time to get ready in the morning. For some reason, I kept waking up after 7AM this past week. It wasn’t like I was staying up late, either. I went to bed early enough. I just had trouble waking up. And so the rest of my day was pretty messed up. It is interesting how much of a connection there is between waking up early and getting things done.
On the other hand, I did use this past week to catch up on magazines and other readings that I’ve let stack up. My inbox is down to manageable again.
Friday I was tempted to lie down and relax after coming home from my day job, but Uhfgood from #gamedevelopers suggested I work on OE’. I figured I would put in about 30 minutes at the most. Once again, starting something allowed me to keep the momentum going. I ended up working almost two hours. Once again, #gamedevelopers helped keep game development at the front of my mind.
Inc’s One-Person Business Resource Center has a number of links for the person running his/her own business. One example is the article “Marketing on a Shoestring” which give some effective tips on marketing to your customers.
While the website is not targetting indie game developers in particular, I’m sure there is plenty of useful information.
A friend pointed me to this article: Sun Promises to Open Source Java.
If Sun does make Java open source, it is good news for people who prefer to run Free operating systems. It’s one less technology that they have to do without. Existing open source solutions are always behind the one provided by Sun.
Now the choice for Free software developers is “Do I switch to Java or do I continue to use the language I have been using?”
It is interesting that Sun’s main concern is fragmentation of the codebase. When you give people the right to redistribute the source, it is bound to happen; however, the worst-case scenario nightmare that opponents of Free software think of is not typical. There aren’t exactly hundreds of forks of the Linux kernel, for example. Everyone basically works off of the main branch of development. If someone wants to take Linux in a different direction, they are free to do so. Of course, if everyone is sticking with Linus’ original project, then the fork won’t exactly be a problem in terms of “fragmentation”. And with Free software, forks are free to merge back into the original project anyway. Contrast the situation with software under the BSD license, which would allow someone to fork a project without giving anything back.
For this week’s Thousander Club update:
Game Hours: 85 / 1000
Game Ideas: 336 / 1000
Target: 336
I managed to work a bit on Oracle’s Eye. Since I finished the text-based board game, I wanted to reuse the techniques in OE. Rather than make massive changes to the game engine, I decided that I should start a new project. I dubbed it Oracle’s Eye Prime.
Yes, it is risky to redo the engine. I know the countless stories of hobbyists who never finish a game because they decide to redo the engine over and over again. Finishing a game is what counts. Still, I think that what I know now compared to what I knew when I started OE back in August is enough to justify the risk. When I was adding features to the board game, they fell into place very easily because the code was so easy to work with. Compared with OE‘s current engine, which would require significant refactoring and editing to add any feature, and I think it makes sense to redo the engine.
Since I’m so good at project scheduling (“That’s a joke, kid.”), I’m going to estimate that it will take me about a month to get the new codebase up and get OE’ to the same point that I had OE. Ok, maybe three months.
Game Idea:
Creation and Destruction
Premise
Maintain the Balance by keeping good and evil in equal parts.
Huh?
I don’t remember how I conceived of this idea, but basically I thought, “What if there was a constant battle between Good and Evil, and whenever that balance was tipped too far to one side or another, chaos resulted? What if it was actually harmonious for Good and Evil to exist together?”
Possible Game Here?
One possibility is that there are a certain number of angels and demons. Perhaps their relative numbers are important. In that case, your job is to make sure that any increase or decrease on one side gets matched on the other. If an angel is born, you must find a way to spawn a new demon. If a devil is slain, you need to do something that results in the destruction of an angel. You might even be able to convert one to the other. An angel is a pure being, so if it does something wrong, it becomes a demon. There is no halfway with these beings. It’s all or nothing. The death of two demons could be balanced out by converting one angel into a demon.
What if the population wasn’t as important as the number of good or bad works they do? Perhaps the proximity of a being to more densely populated areas will result in more activities of the being’s persuasion. An angel in downtown New York will result in more good works than an angel in a rural community. A demon in a sports stadium can wreak more havoc than one in a remote mountain cave. The strategic placement of various beings can help to tilt the scales towards Good or Evil. Perhaps it isn’t the placement of the beings themselves so much as the converting elements mentioned above. Either way, the point is that the effect on the human population from the actions count the most.
Perhaps you take the role as a warrior for one side or the other. Maybe the balancing element is a problem, and both sides want to settle the score once and for all. You can recruit humans to your side. Their actions can influence their peers, so finding charismatic humans is very important, but you’ll also want a strong will to avoid losing them to the other side. Actual battles might take place between the humans since the angels and demons can’t do anything directly. On the other hand, if they could fight each other directly, maybe the battles take place on the shoulders of the individual humans.
What if Good and Evil had to join forces? What reason would they have to do so? Would there be some third force, such as Non-belief? Would they need to work together to convince Humanity that they still exist? Can they still do so without fighting each other?
Summary
I think Good vs Evil is a very familiar topic to most people. While some games, like Populous or Black & White, cover the story in similar ways, I think there is more that can be done with it.
Hackenslash had posted Is Linux Gaming Plausible?. It makes for a good read, although I felt it was light on details and didn’t provide much of a definitive answer.
However, a major disadvantage for Linux gamers is the availability of DirectX in Windows, a multimedia tool that allows developers to create applications easier for the Windows platform.
“Unless DirectX runs on a different platform, it (Linux game development) might not really take off,” Gotangco said, adding that Linux gaming and game development would most probably remain an “indie” or independent industry.
DirectX is a Windows technology, and as such it is platform-specific. I don’t see Microsoft opening up access to their API to other operating systems. Since some major games, notably Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004, have been ported to Gnu/Linux without the “advantage” of DirectX, it shows that Gnu/Linux game development is entirely possible and doable. Like DRM, DirectX isn’t a requirement for game development.
Multiplayer game servers are almost always provided for Gnu/Linux, and so the porting effort shouldn’t be too difficult for the client software. Unfortunately, when a developer uses a platform-specific tool such as DirectX, the porting effort becomes difficult. To create a version of the game that runs on a different system, you essentially have to gut your game code to remove the DirectX-specific parts and replace them with something available on a the target platform. Most developers will decide that the rewards would be too little to justify the expense of making such drastic changes to the code.
Still, I don’t believe that game development will be so dreary on Gnu/Linux.
A few Linux gamers actually have ways of circumventing the cross-platform issue of playing an enticing Windows game to Linux, without having to port it. One answer is just emulating the game for Linux. But according to Zak Slater, this isn’t an accepted industry and he said it is better for users to buy Linux versions or directly create Linux-native games.
I am 100% in agreement with Slater. I am not a fan of technologies like Wine or Cedega. It’s great when it works, but I would rather have native support for my platform of choice.
While the Linux gaming industry would not certainly be able become as big as traditional PC gaming, both Slater and Gotangco agree that Linux gaming is there to stay. They suggest that Linux game developer-hopefuls can get their Linux game fix from Icculus, Pompom Games (www.pompomgames.com), Tux Games (www.tuxgames.com), among others.
I’ll also note that the Torque Engine from GarageGames is both inexpensive and cross-platform, so games like Orbz and Dark Horizons: Lore can have native Linux-based clients right out of the box. With more indie games like those, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem if game development on Gnu/Linux remained an indie industry.
Also, using open source engines will probably become more common in commercial games. The infrastructure of a game isn’t the game, yet developers always spend a lot of time on recreating it. Using existing tools just makes sense, and using open source tools gives you a number of advantages, including the ability of your more technical customers to give you more than a simple bug report.
I believe that gaming on Gnu/Linux is definitely plausible. It’s very difficult to tell how many Gnu/Linux gamers there are since there are hardly any games available for them and they’ll likely pay for their games on the Windows system for lack of a better choice. They WANT native games for their preferred OS, and so far there aren’t many options.
The Canadian Music Creators Coalition is a group of Canadian musicians and artists who have gotten together to say that they aren’t being represented by the multinational record labels.
[L]obbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels’ control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels’ foreign parent companies.
If you look at the link that says what they stand for, you’ll find that #2 says the following:
Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
Artists do not support using digital locks to increase the labels’ control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music or laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures. The government should not blindly implement decade-old treaties designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers. Laws should protect artists and consumers, not restrictive technologies. Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.
Good on the Canadian musicians for taking a stand for themselves and their fans! And good on them for taking a stance against DRM. What customer actually wants technology that reduces the value of their purchase?
Also on the CMCC site is Steven Page’s A Barenaked Guide to Copyright Reform in PDF format.