If you were to create a FLOSS game, how would it be?

[ivanovic]

Ehm, if a it is a Free/Libre Open Source Software, then the *release* will be a tarball with all the data. There is no need to provide any binary. The binaries are created by the distributions and included in the normal distribution package manager. So installing is nothing more than running eg emerge gamename, apt-get install gamename or *whatever* your packagemanager uses. So why care at all about things like a lokiinstaller when using the packagemanager is so much nicer.

I would not like to have to rely to a binary version when using some open source software, since if you have the sources, you can compile it yourself and it will work, so the distributions can include it.

For some closed source software there is of course no real way to directly provide binaries that include in the package manager for all the distributions. That is the only situation I do see for things like a lokiinstaller.

One example for things doing the FLOSS way is wesnoth. You will find it in basically every distribution directly in the package manager and you can get the sources and compile it yourself if you do not want to rely on the binary version of it, or if you don't find the version you want in the package manager.

[niniendowarrior]

I wonder if this thread will spark some form of collaboration of sorts.

"Phoronix - the game based on the popular website"

[yoshi314]

If you were to create a FLOSS game, how would it be?

it would provide a good base for heavy modding. and be written really well (as small as possible memory footprint, clean and fast code, no massive library dependencies etc).

[supergamer]

I was thinking of slax actually with kde stripped and flux or even use DSL...just some ideas thowing around..I already make the SuperGamer series of LiveDVD's and we are getting to a point of getting into the enough ram to load everything. So I have been tossing around the idea of taking it to a simple end and just have one demo per iso to free up enough ram for more enjoyment. I can actually fill a cd with 2d games for everyone and then have seperate cd's for the bigger names. As for saving settings the usb stuff might not be the best route but I am looking into multi-session burns. I would have to specify to on-disk on how to burn these but that would be a minor issue

[Svartalf]

As for saving settings the usb stuff might not be the best route but I am looking into multi-session burns. I would have to specify to on-disk on how to burn these but that would be a minor issue

This presumes that the machine it will be on has a burner available to it. USB saves, while evil, are unfortunately a reality you're going to have to deal with- not to mention when the disc is used up, you're done being able to save anything. You'd have to burn a whole new disc from time to time- only DVD-RAM will bring you something resembling the ability you're looking for there.

[Thetargos]

KDE for a Live gaming system is (IMO) a bit too much of a memory hog. Why load everything up into RAM? Sure it helps to speed things up, but it also leaves little room to maneuver. Why only load those parts absolutely necessary as infrastructure and (with DVD's anyway) rely on the rather speedy access modern drives provide (16X/20X drives are capable of 20+ Mb/s transfer rates, good enough to start games). Older drives may have more trouble (12X and older), and pretty much a DVD drive is, if not the standard, the status quo in terms of modern computing. For those without a DVD drive, there's always the chance to cook a quick CD. LiveCD will be MUCH slower than DVDs as even 52x drives will only transfer up to ~7.5 Mb/s, they key question would be how to best harvest the transfer speeds of DVD drives for gaming? Just like how did Sony get away with an impressive system such as the PS2 with only a 12X drive, and yet the games didn't have long loading times, or didn't have loading times at all (depending on the title). But all these considerations are for Live games discs only.

[1stFlight]

it would provide a good base for heavy modding. and be written really well (as small as possible memory footprint, clean and fast code, no massive library dependencies etc).

That's already taken care of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

[Kano]

I think it is a bit wrong to say that KDE is not good for gaming purpose, usually a gaming pc needs to have lots of ram, especially when you want to play games from a live cd/dvd without swap. I really don't think that a few mb more or less matter. I do not count those tiny games you get with KDE/GNOME, but I mean real 3d ones.

[Thetargos]

I think it is a bit wrong to say that KDE is not good for gaming purpose, usually a gaming pc needs to have lots of ram, especially when you want to play games from a live cd/dvd without swap. I really don't think that a few mb more or less matter. I do not count those tiny games you get with KDE/GNOME, but I mean real 3d ones.

Problem are games such as Warsow or Nexuiz (about the two most demanding games available in the Open Source world, there may be others, like XPlane or Celestia, but they're simulators, not games as such [IMO]). A Live System could be made so that if it detects a Linux SWAP partition it may use it (if needed), and try to leave as much memory free for games as possible. KDE compared to the *box WMs is HUGE, I'm not familiar with the "light" version, though. XFCE should be also a good GNOME substitute, if a full blown DE might be required.

[Malikith]

Problem are games such as Warsow or Nexuiz (about the two most demanding games available in the Open Source world, there may be others, like XPlane or Celestia, but they're simulators, not games as such [IMO]). A Live System could be made so that if it detects a Linux SWAP partition it may use it (if needed), and try to leave as much memory free for games as possible. KDE compared to the *box WMs is HUGE, I'm not familiar with the "light" version, though. XFCE should be also a good GNOME substitute, if a full blown DE might be required.

Yeah KDE does use alot more ram compared to Fluxbox or any of the other light weights. I thought XFCE would be a good option, but I also forgot about fbdesk for Fluxbox, which gives Fluxbox desktop icons. I think desktop icons are nice for live cd/games, at least within this idea. Makes launching a bit easier, however you can also simply add it to the Fluxbox menu as well. But I don't think fbdesk takes up more than maybe a meg or two of ram. So I'd say Fluxbox. Its practically free when it comes to resources. At least if you have 256+ mb of ram. I actually just started running Fluxbox (I've tried it before but didn't really dig into it), you can get some pretty cool effects customizing it.