[H-GEN] Interest in a Linux game

David Jericho davidj at meesha.humbug.org.au
Mon Jul 13 23:51:30 EDT 1998


On Wed, Jul 15, 1998 at 11:57:42AM +1000, The Fuzzy One wrote:
> 
> It's a big ambitious to say "let's make a game", and hope to get anything
> concrete out of it.  I think we need something more concrete to work on.
> It would be really cool if several people could jot down their ideas for
> a specific game, and bring them along for discussion, say next humbug.

Indeed it is, but in both private email and out of the three posts I've seen
on this list, the go seems to be for something like a RTS, or a click'a'thon
as Andrae likes to call them. 

The idea of a RTS is rather easy. In most cases, it's nothing more than a few
sprites being tossed around with a clickable interface. The tricky part comes
with induhvidual AI's.

> - Unix-based, but as far as possible portable enough to drive anywhere.

For sure. But we'd need to make a few assumptions here. OSS for the sound API,
that sort of thing.

> - It'd be nice to be able to play it on anything from a humble dumbterm
>   to the high end PC, with a scaling of graphics and sound capabilities :)
>   AI units could attach to the server in similar ways to the standard clients.

AI is conceviably the hardest part. Other than path finding, I have no idea in
this field.

> - Multiplayer...

Most definitely, but this is one of the easier parts of the project.

> Personally... free warcraft sounds good to me ;)  Though that could be hard
> to play on a dumbterm without a mouse.  Something based on that kind of
> interface at least... presuming we can do it without treading on any patented
> wigets.

It's easy enough to do. I've already started on parts of program, or more an
engine to do this type of work. It'll be a while I think before I'll be brave
enough to release any of my work to the public though.

Part of my reason for posting to the list before I had any code, is that, in
short, I'm not as good a coder as I'd want to be :) But Linux really lacks a
kickass game, and it needs one now. None of this lamo Xtrek or rubbish. To
draw attention to Linux as a gaming platform, we need to do more than just ask
publishers to do a Linux version. We need one to show them it can be done. And
the source for them to look at and realise it's not that hard. 

> As to how much of this kind of thing has already been done, I haven't really
> researched.  Anyone know of code we could rip off in the name of free
> software?  :)

Craft being a GPL'ed Warcraft alike. Probably bits of xconq/xbattle. There are
a few others as well. There are certain elements of Dark Reign and Starcraft,
also Total Annihlation(sp?) that are considered a Good Thing(tm) in terms of
interface design. 

In terms of pretty graphics, I know of at least 5 people who have a hobby of
3d raytracings and so on. Some of their works are quite impressive, and I've
asked them if they'd be interested. 5 accounts of yes :)

Sounds, I don't quite know. Unit sounds such as confirmation of orders are
nowdays expected, but the rest are freely avaliable from many sources. Maybe
we can get various humbug members to record their voices and then twist them?
:)

There seems to be interest, so I'm organising for a list to be setup. Further
details announced when known.

-- 
Mr. David "Gratuity" Jericho

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