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Vadi
December 4th, 2007, 02:50 PM
To share some background: there's a game, called AstroMenace. It's based on those old shoot-'em-up games, except the enviroment is completely 3D and you can upgrade your ship (or buy completely new ships) as you advance in levels. The game has a native 64bit version, and even works with resolutions higher than 1024X768.

But it doesn't stop there. The game is 110% linux friendly - there are both linux, and windows versions of it. Well, in fact, it was developed on Ubuntu (along with the use of SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL and other technologies). What's even cooler is that the devs open-sourced the code under GPLv3.

And if this isn't enough, the linux version of the game is completely free. No tricks, the full version of the game, is free (the windows one is $20 USD). Instead you can donate however much you want! Pretty much, this is the best case for a linux game, isn't it?

Well, the lead dev also has a blog, and after reading it today, it turns out that their efforts haven't gone to waste either - which I bet will make all of us happy. Read the blog entry here (click (http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.viewizard.com%2Fblog% 2Fitem-7.html&langpair=ru%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8)). (The blog is in russian, so that's a google translate link... I translated some of the funny translations google gave, but they didn't show up right away. I guess they need to be verified or somesuch).

So lets keep it up. This is excellent news :)

argie
December 4th, 2007, 04:24 PM
Hey, this is pretty damn cool. It looks really good. I'm downloading it now and will donate what I can if it works. What an interesting idea, charging nothing for the Linux version. Quite the exemplar for cross-platform development too: SDL+OpenGL+OpenAL.

Tomosaur
December 4th, 2007, 04:29 PM
Astromenace is a brilliant game :)

DoctorMO
December 4th, 2007, 06:04 PM
+1 for FLOSS games, There is no point in just seeing the code :-P

SaltyCrak
December 4th, 2007, 06:25 PM
that is really good news.. hopefully this means the future is bright for linux games! :)

Game_boy
December 4th, 2007, 06:43 PM
I'm sure you could port the freely available source code to Windows to avoid paying $20. It relies on Windows user ignorance, which happily is widespread.

Vadi
December 4th, 2007, 06:45 PM
"avoid paying".

This isn't taxes here, dude.

markusf21
December 11th, 2007, 03:39 AM
I really like it. Great game

p_quarles
December 11th, 2007, 03:50 AM
I really like it. Great game
Same here. Been playing occasionally for the past few days since Vadi alerted us to it, and it's a lot of fun.

I'm about half way through the 30 mission scenario. Anyone beaten it?

Vadi
December 11th, 2007, 03:52 AM
30? There are only 15 missions I think.

I'm on like 13, but I started reading the missions manual anyway to create some more.

The folks are working on a new game too, you can track the progress on the blog (it's in russian, but google translate will suffice ;))

FuturePilot
December 11th, 2007, 03:59 AM
That's awesome news!
Now I want to play :p
Will the repo work on Ubuntu?

p_quarles
December 11th, 2007, 04:04 AM
That's awesome news!
Now I want to play :p
Will the repo work on Ubuntu?
That's how I installed it.

@Vadi: You're probably right. I'm not sure why I thought there were 30 levels. I guess I'm much closer to beating it than I'd thought (on 12 or 13).

Vadi
December 11th, 2007, 04:11 AM
Yeh. There's a manual though on the website for making your own; so I'm thinking up of a pack.

Velcor
December 11th, 2007, 04:41 AM
Looks pretty cool, think I'll try it out tomorrow.

Velcor
December 12th, 2007, 10:51 PM
Sorry about bumping this topic from whatever page, but whenever I run the game all I get is a white screen that fades to black. The music is on but I can't get anything else to work.

Anyone have this problem before?

Vadi
December 13th, 2007, 12:05 AM
Maybe you're missing a package. Do the following:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian libopenal0a libalut0 libogg0 libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 libvorbisfile3 libjpeg62

Wiebelhaus
December 13th, 2007, 12:09 AM
"avoid paying".

This isn't taxes here, dude.

lol , I just choked on my drink , good one mate.

sloggerkhan
December 13th, 2007, 12:30 AM
On my machine no matter what the graphics settings are at, it has a massive sinusoidal variance in FPS. 50 -> 5 -> 33 -> 10 and so on. Not sure why. I tried it this summer and didn't have any problems then.

Vadi
December 13th, 2007, 12:32 AM
Tried setting the graphics to be lower and such?

sloggerkhan
December 13th, 2007, 12:34 AM
yeah, the problem seems to be unrelated to graphics as it occurs at all resolutions and levels of detail.
Plus, other games don't do it.

Velcor
December 13th, 2007, 12:36 AM
Maybe you're missing a package. Do the following:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian libopenal0a libalut0 libogg0 libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 libvorbisfile3 libjpeg62

Hmm, that it says they are all at the newest version. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I am unable to play games that I installed on wine. Those however wont even start up = /

Vadi
December 13th, 2007, 12:58 AM
Unless you're trying to play astromenace in wine, this shouldn't have effect.

I don't know, post on their forums. You'll definitely get a reply within a day.

Velcor
December 13th, 2007, 01:11 AM
Unless you're trying to play astromenace in wine, this shouldn't have effect.

I don't know, post on their forums. You'll definitely get a reply within a day.

I'm not trying to play it on wine, I'll do that, thanks.

Wiebelhaus
December 13th, 2007, 02:34 PM
The game is fun and the GFX look really good , I'm getting some weird crackling noises from the audio but it looks like it could become addictive.

coolen
December 21st, 2007, 02:08 AM
I just realised that I've been playing this game for four hours straight :P

Very nice. Sweet graphics, good sounds, nice atmosphere, good gameplay. I'm on level 13, and I must say, I'd like a longer campaign to build up a good ship. One nice feature is that replayed levels yield less and less each time you have a go.

I'm so in love with this game right now :D

Vadi
December 21st, 2007, 02:12 AM
Cool. Feel free to comment that on their site, I'm sure it'll help ;)

FuturePilot
December 21st, 2007, 03:57 AM
The game is fun and the GFX look really good , I'm getting some weird crackling noises from the audio but it looks like it could become addictive.

Try this out. The second one worked for me.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3152472&postcount=8

fedex1993
December 21st, 2007, 04:23 AM
looks like a cool game i will try it on my desktop doesnt run good on a laptop

tomauty
December 21st, 2007, 05:55 AM
Fun stuff

Chal
December 21st, 2007, 06:01 AM
wow i like this game
installed it with the repo and everything works like a charm
thumbs up!

Blindraven
January 6th, 2008, 06:53 AM
I'm sure you could port the freely available source code to Windows to avoid paying $20. It relies on Windows user ignorance, which happily is widespread.

Most of the older, mature and more giving of the Linux community would rather donate to the cause then "avoid" it altogether. furthermore, Linux is not an operating system for people who don't like to pay for things, a common misconception, its an operating system for people who want to be empowered.

argie
January 6th, 2008, 07:34 AM
I donated a couple of dollars. More when I have more money.

If you want to run it on Intel drivers, I think you have to add the -noAA command line option or something like that to turn on Anti-aliasing because it doesn't seem to work otherwise.

Vadi
January 15th, 2008, 03:14 PM
Wooh. Updates. They fixed the cursor bug that would happen if you were playing windowed.

forrestcupp
January 15th, 2008, 03:48 PM
What an interesting idea, charging nothing for the Linux version.

GCompris has been doing that for a while now. If you want to play it in Windows, you either have to pay, or use a version that doesn't include all of the games. I don't really know how I feel about that tactic. It's almost as bad as the web sites that intentionally block Internet Explorer to prove a point.

@ all of the people giving Game_boy a hard time about "avoiding payment" He brought up a good point. If it's GPL, anyone can just take the code and compile it for free. That's how GPL works. If someone has a problem with that, they really shouldn't release it under a GPL license. The only problem is that you can get the code for free, but you may not be able to get your hands on the media content that the code runs.

coolen
January 15th, 2008, 03:56 PM
I'm inclined to agree with you, forrestcupp. It seems like this is trying to force people to Linux, which is not what we want. We want people to try Linux because it's a great system, not to save $20 on a game.

Also, it's kind of saying that Linux is the FOSS system, which isn't true at all.

In the end, it's FOSS software. Why not let people marvel at just what you can achieve using this model than try to force them into compliance? If someone wants to use Windows, that's fine by me: don't punish them, just play nice, and hope.

Vadi
January 15th, 2008, 06:33 PM
The media content is all free too, they took pains to get it so (because it wasn't initially, and they had someone else do them). Now in their next game, they're doing all content themselves because of that.

So, I'm convinced that they're trying their best to juggle survivalability / open source.

Edit: They made $200 off the Linux version. Let's be serious here, the game wouldn't exist if the windows copy was the same. Nobody is trying to use anything here. If you use windows, here's the windows version. Or if you're on linux, here's the linux version. What, will you claim they're telling people not to use macs?

forrestcupp
January 15th, 2008, 06:58 PM
No, but why not even the playing field? Why not make it commercial for Linux, too? Be fair all around. There are commercial games that are made to work with Linux. But everyone has the mindset that all Linux software has to be free of charge.

Vadi
January 15th, 2008, 08:57 PM
It's not free of charge. It's you pay what you want. So, you decide how even do you want it to be. Want to be as even as windows? Pay $20. Want more? Pay more. Want less? Pay less.

I really don't see anything wrong with my freedom to pay what I want.

forrestcupp
January 15th, 2008, 11:52 PM
There's nothing wrong with my freedom to pay what I want. There's something wrong with a Windows user's lack of freedom to pay what he wants. Let's not be hypocritical here.

Vadi
January 16th, 2008, 12:41 AM
Let's not.

Windows users don't have the freedom to pay what they want for a majority of the software anyhow. I don't see how this is a problem, and I really don't see that any windows users were offended. They're simply used to it by now.

This is a pointless argument anyhow, so, tada! I'm off to play the game.