Author: Gianfranco Berardi

Categories
Marketing/Business

I Hate Being Sick

I somehow came down with something yesterday. I woke up, my throat was sore, I got to work, spent the entire day feeling slightly warm, then got really warm and felt terrible on the train ride home.

I ate some dinner, drank some water, and went to bed. So much for Development Night.

Of course, I was so sick that I couldn’t just fall asleep. I needed to sleep, but I guess my breathing was weird. My heart was beating pretty fast for being stationary. Eventually I did fall asleep, but now I’m wide awake, it’s 10:45PM, and while I’m feeling a bit better, I feel like crap for not being able to sleep AGAIN.

Oddly enough, while I was waiting to go to sleep, shivering in bed because I was so warm and my room is above a garage, I kept having delusions about how my game business was going to work. I imagined what it would be like to have a FAQ that talks about my company. I imagined that GBGames was a lousy name and that I was working on a new one. I imagined talking about how much more trust my business model put in the customer compared to say Sony or Valve: “No DRM here!” I imagined talking to other developers, and I was actually a role model for a number of them. I was a serious competitor to a lot of businesses as well.

I had a number of other images, and I am upset because I would have loved to write all of them down, but every time I became conscious of them, I would immediately forget. It was like I was dreaming, realized it, woke up because I had to breathe (stupid stuffy nose), and forget the important points.

I hate being sick, but I really got excited thinking about the near future. I smiled despite the crappy way I felt. I actually dreamed about the success I was going to have.

Now to make an action plan to make it into a reality.

I’m writing this still feeling a bit sick, so hopefully it isn’t too rambly. I’m just awake enough that I can’t lie in bed anymore, sick enough that I can’t do too much, and my back still hurts enough that I can’t sit up and read a book.

Categories
Game Design

Game Design Resources

Even while I continue to work on Oracle’s Eye, I am looking forward to working on my next game project. Since OE took so much longer to develop than I expected, I can imagine that something similar will happen with my next project. I’ve also mentioned that I want to create a game for the next Independent Games Festival. I want to make sure that I dedicate enough time to that project, so I might as well get a jump on designing it instead of postponing it.

I’ve set a deadline by the end of December to get a basic idea of what kind of game I want to make. Of course, I’d like to be able to come up with more than just “it’s got spaceships and explosions and stuff!” I’ve realized that game design is a complete discipline in and of itself. You can’t design games just because you’ve played a lot of them when you were younger, just like you can’t be a high school educator simply because you went to high school and “know all about it”. While hacking it out is great for getting things accomplished quickly, it is also hard to know what it is you will end up with by the end. Also, I’d rather avoid potential game design pitfalls if I can help it. While reinventing the wheel is good for learning how it works, I wouldn’t mind reading about how other people might have messed it up before getting it right. I’ll mess up enough as it is. I’m all for taking risks instead of stagnating with what is safe, but I don’t have to ignore potentially helpful experiences that other people have been thoughtful enough to document for me. B-)

And so I decided to look up game design. I went to GameDev.net first and checked out the Game Design articles since I remember going there years ago. HOLY. COW. I don’t remember having access to that many articles on the subject! Maybe I just appreciate how important the topic is these days. Maybe there really has been that many new articles produced in the past couple of years. There are definitely a number of new game design books.

And I definitely have a lot more reading to do.

Categories
Game Development Politics/Government

Future Copyright Developments

Ernest Adam’s The End Of Copyright on Gamasutra focuses on a very touchy subject. I don’t know if I agree that copyright will end completely, but I do like that Adam’s actually did what most people seem to be afraid to do: he looked at different possible business models. He also appreciates that copyright is not the inalienable right that some people make it out to be.

Obviously the traditional business model of selling a single copy to each player isn’t the only one that exists. MMO games, even before Everquest, show that subscriptions work just as well. Some people will pay for better features, improved items, or just faster servers. Some people would pay for the privilege of having a better quality experience. Imagine if a Mickey Mouse movie came out that wasn’t by Disney but was 100 times better than anything Disney ever produced? Sure, if there wasn’t any copyright, anyone could then redistribute it, but I’m sure you could make some decent money by charging for the privilege of seeing it when it is only released in a select few theaters that you control, right?

I don’t think copyright should go away, but even if it did, I don’t think it would be the end of innovation and science. People will still want to create. They will still want to design. They will still work. I really don’t see everyone falling on their knees and crying out “What do we do now without the protection of copyright?!?” Oh, I don’t know, you could just make money by being the sole provider of an original work?

Of course, without copyright you won’t even have open source software to blame for your inability to profit from your work. If people didn’t want to give away the source code, they could keep it a secret. People do so now, anyway, but without copyright there would be no legal recourse to get access to the source. Open source and proprietary software both benefit from copyright law, contrary to what some would report as fact.

Anyway, it is good that a big name is actually taking a look at the industry and saying, “Hey, you don’t HAVE to do things the way everyone else is!” The idea that the most popular business model isn’t necessary is still a “crazy” one to a lot of people.

Categories
General

Back from Thanksgiving

Now that I’m back, I find that I have a lot of reading to do! Lots of blog updates, lots of email, lots of regular mail, lots of magazine articles, and lots of game playing. Ok, so the last one isn’t strictly reading, but still, it must be done!

Oh, and Christmas shopping.

Categories
Game Development

Oracle’s Eye Development: Movement Code Improvements

Already I’ve improved the movement of the Player and the Ball.

Essentially, what I am supposed to do is make any moves, then walk through the Kyra Tree, then check for collisions and respond accordingly; however, my hardcoded movement code moved the Player, then walked the Tree, then moved the Ball and checked for collisions. The Player worked out just fine, but the Ball would get stuck in the Wall.

Then I changed it so that the actual movements wouldn’t happen until the update code ran. When you push the arrow keys, the Player’s Direction changes accordingly. It will only change positions during the update, and it does so at the same time as the Ball. Then I walk the Tree, and so collision detection is a bit more accurate.

Also, the Player only moves in four directions now, so it isn’t possible to move twice as fast on a diagonal. For this game, not being able to move diagonally shouldn’t be a problem, but an adventure or action game might require such movement in the future.

The Ball currently changes Direction when it hits a Wall. It’s actually kind of cool to watch the Ball bounce back and forth between the Walls. If I start adding more Walls throughout the middle of the level, it could actually be fun.

It’s amazing what can be done when you don’t have to worry about ruining the code base. I’ve been using Subversion all this time, but psychologically I’ve been concerned about doing the wrong thing. I basically convinced myself that I’m going to be writing code that needs debugging anyway, so the “wrong thing” will most likely be a bug that needs to be fixed to make the right thing. So far, I haven’t had to rewrite whole sections of code, or if I had, I haven’t noticed it as hard work.

Thanksgiving is here, and I’ll be out of town for the rest of the week/weekend. I’ll probably have a bunch of spam comments to delete, and I won’t likely have time this weekend to approve any. Still, keep the comments coming. I love the feedback. B-)

Categories
Game Development

Oracle’s Eye Development: What’s Left?

While I have pretty much made the game “feature complete”, I feel there is still a bit of work to do. As most developers would put it, I did the first 90%. Now I have to do the remaining 90%. Except I feel like I did the first 20% and still have 160% left. B-)

What improvements and additions can I make?

  • Sound. Right now, the game is completely silent. It shouldn’t be. Even simple beeps would be an improvement.
  • Improved collision detection. If the Ball hits a Wall, it is possible that it can become stuck. It shouldn’t.
  • Level loading. It’s very boring in its current state. It has only one level, and it is a trivial one at that. It should be able to load an arbitrary level layout from a file, which will allow multiple levels to be created. Any players should be able to load an arbitrary level from a menu.
  • Graphics. Why is the Ball always rotating in the same direction? Why is the Player’s sprite just a static stick-figure? Why not spice it up and create some animated movement?
  • Better quality code. My code doesn’t delete memory properly. When I create a Room, it is made up of a series of sprites that get owned by the engine, and the engine deletes the sprites just fine when the engine is deleted, but the Room itself isn’t deleted. I couldn’t delete the Room without causing a seg fault since I shouldn’t delete the Tiles in the Room. I’m sure there are other places that could be improved.

With all of these improvements, why leave Oracle’s Eye alone? I admit that I want to start working on something I can knock out relatively quickly, such as a Space Invaders clone. I’ve learned a bit while working on this game, and so I should be able to improve on what I’ve learned by working on something new. On the other hand, I feel like I would be quitting while there is still some good educational value left in developing this current project.

It’s obvious that I can’t really call Oracle’s Eye “complete” when there is so much left to do. I have decided that I will continue to work on it for the rest of the year. With holidays coming up, and the fact that I don’t work for more than a few hours a week in the first place, I don’t exactly have a lot of time to work on it, but I’ve surprised myself with how much I could accomplish so far.

At the very least, I should replace the stick figure with a living, breathing character of some kind. B-)

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical

Free Sounds

My friend Becky Kramer tuned me into The Freesound Project, a “collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.”

Basically, all the sounds in the project are available under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license. You can creatively change a work and use the derivative work commercially or noncommercially. You could take the original and distribute it in a noncommercial way.

Sounds great to me, especially for my early projects. I’ll pay for my audio needs when I think doing so will help sell my games. For now, when I am just trying to make simple games for myself, these freely available sounds will be good enough.

Categories
Game Development Linux Game Development

Oracle’s Eye Development: Technically Completed!

That’s right! If you look at the plan for Oracle’s Eye, I finally completed the tasks that I originally wanted to have completed at the end of the second week of August. B-)

  • The Player moves in four directions. Actually, it moves in eight, although it is coded badly and so the Player moves faster diagonally than on the four main directions.
  • The Room is currently empty and hardcoded. I wanted to be able to load Rooms from a file, but for now I’ll deal.
  • I have a Ball that can be kicked around the Room. It obeys the Walls, although it will get stuck. The Ball also passes through the Player instead of stopping upon impact.
  • When the Ball hits the Goal, the level ends. Well, the program itself just closes, but still.

It’s ugly. It needs work. It’s definitely unpolished. But it runs, it works (for the most part), and it is pretty much “complete”. The question I have now is “Do I stop?” Should I continue to work on it and make it more appropriate for mass consumption, or should I just stop here and work on something else? Right now, you just move the stick figure towards the Ball, and upon touching the Ball, it moves towards the Goal. You could play around with it before it gets there, of course. It’s not very interesting, I know.

Download files:

codenameOraclesEye-r90.tar.gz, 8.0 MB
codenameOraclesEye-r90.zip 8.5 MB

To build, you will need libsdl1.2 and libsdl_image. Go into source/kyra_2_1_1/kyra/engine/ and run ./make. Then, you go back to source/ and run ./make. To run, ./oracles-eye.

Only available for Gnu/Linux, but there shouldn’t be too much needed to get it to run on Windows.

Categories
Game Development

Oracle’s Eye Development: All Day Development Ruined?

I was fine last night.

I was fine early this morning.

But today I got this incredibly sharp pain in my lower back. I lay on a couch with a heating pad and read a book, but I really wanted to get on development. My morning was shot, but my afternoon and evening could still be productive, right? I have to admit, I was tempted to call it off. I should lie down and relax.

Well, screw that! With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, I’ll have plenty of time to relax. Today is my day, and I will work on Oracle’s Eye. Maybe I’ll take more frequent breaks, but I am not giving up a great opportunity to get plenty of quality work completed on this project.

I’ll let you know how much of a folly this decision is later. B-)

Categories
Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Politics/Government

FOSS Is Not To Blame For Piracy

Linux News says Digital Rights Management Picking on the Wrong People is an article to defend Free and Open Source Software against the charges that they are the ones who promote piracy.

I was surprised to hear from someone on the Indie Gamer Forums many months ago that all of the contact he had with FOSS was with people who only wanted things for free and would pirate everything from movies to games. There is also a lot of animosity towards FOSS in the ASP newsgroups, and a few months ago there was even an article in the newsletter about how FOSS was supposedly bad for business and didn’t offer any benefits to the public.

My experience is very different. I have a friend who refuses to buy DVDs because he doesn’t want to support the media cartel and the digital restrictions management used in most DVDs. I know people who pirate games and movies, but I also know people who refuse to use anything to do with Windows. If it isn’t available, they do without. After all, if you can’t play a game on Gnu/Linux, what would be the point in pirating it? Rather than break the law to watch his own movies, my friend just decides to be very selective with his DVD purchases. Revolution OS is one of the only DVDs I know that doesn’t use stupid region encoding, something that does nothing but punish paying customers while allowing commercial piracy to still occur.

In any case, it seems to me that most people who use Free and Open Source Software are fully aware of the licensed terms under which they may use their software. They are the ones who refuse to use Windows Media Player because they would prefer that their software doesn’t change the way their computer works without them knowing about when, how, and why. You can read the WMP EULA and see that it is pretty absurd what you have to agree to allow Microsoft to do. If anyone is committing piracy, whether casual or not, it’s more likely the people who don’t realize what it is the license allows them to do. Why would FOSS supporters be part of a group of people who ignore licenses and EULAs?

Sure, there are those who don’t care about the license and just want everything to be available at no cost. Open source usually is free-as-in-beer, and so if you want freely available software, it’s definitely safer than trying to get away with copying software illegally. Still, some people are going to make illegal copies of Windows, or games, or office software, or even shareware, and it is definitely possible that those same people might support FOSS.

But what a broad paintbrush we would have if we made the assertion that FOSS users in general are the ones who will most likely copy software illegally. It really makes no sense that people who consciously use FOSS to avoid vendor lock-in or support software freedom would at the same time pirate software that was proprietary or work only on a proprietary system that they are not using.

I guess I don’t interact with enough people outside of the FOSS community. I haven’t heard of too many people who believe that we’re all criminals or out to destroy the livelihoods of software developers or that we’re just anti-Microsoft zealots, but those people exist. Somehow they “heard” or “learned” what they believe FOSS is all about. They get almost as shrill defending what they think as people do when you try to tell them that copyright infringement is not the same as “theft”, and it is probably because the two issues are so related in their minds.

Maybe it is just because it is an issue related to copyright, which is fairly complicated and even people who think they know about it can be wrong. Maybe it is because FOSS is really different; when you’re driving an automatic all your life and someone gives you a manual, you’d freak out at first because you have no idea how to drive. “Why is it so complicated?! I just want to get from point A to point B!!” Or, since a lot of you are probably geeks likes me, it’s like when you give someone vi or emacs after they have been using text editors like Notepad or Pico for years. It’s a different way to think about typing. Similarly, FOSS is a different way to think about software.

Some people dismiss FOSS for their own good reasons. They’ve at least thought about it, researched it, and come to their own conclusions. But it seems that when I do meet people who “don’t get it”, they really don’t get it. They don’t understand that Free, with a capital ‘F’, as in Freedom, is different from free, lowercase ‘f’, as in “no cost”. “But why is it such a problem to pay for it?” It isn’t! There is no problem with paying for FOSS. People can’t wrap their heads around it because of the unfortunate double-meaning of “free”.

But people for some reason have no problem making the leap from “FOSS means no cost”, however erroneous that thought is, to “FOSS means stealing software”, which is an even worse assumption. While I believe some might have an agenda and would purposely lead people astray, and some other people might honestly feel that they are fighting a good fight to defend non-FOSS, I think most people just attack what they don’t understand.