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

[renter25]

Are you playing Tryst?

Are you playing Tryst? it is an upcoming RTS game being made by indie BlueGiant Interactive.

-mmohunter-

[Janell6754]

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).

[b15hop]

A binary binary what?

I personally look forward for games based on the penumbra engine which is now open source.
http://github.com/FrictionalGames

Binary blob as in the slang for binary based distro.

[ChrisXY]

binary blob

A binary binary what?

I personally look forward for games based on the penumbra engine which is now open source.

http://github.com/FrictionalGames

[V!NCENT]

Think about the gamplay first! Make it blockish as hell and ugly as fsck! Is it fun? No? Scrap it! Is it fun? Yes? Make a game out of it!

"I want a game where I am a super hero, where there are zxombies and massive sharks with freakin' lasers!" <- Nice setting, but don't even bother making a game. You already failed and it will not come out of beta as you will realise it just sucks when it shapes up!

Make sure the initial stage comes first! Think about what you like about certain games! How many objects do you want to controll? How many objects do you want to controll simultaniously? Do you like agility, timing or rather being smart? Figuring out puzzles? Strategy maybe? Do you want turn-based or realtime continues interaction? Etc. etc. etc.

After you came up with something, what setting do you want? Now comes the awesome part! Zombies, gigantic laZ0Rs? Whatever. And how could you make a story out of it?

Repeat repeat repeat!

N?w you've got a game! After that... program a prototype with the most ugly models evah and test it. tweak it. perfect it.

After you have done th?t... make a demo in C/C++ instead of python and Blender.

Then!... Show it to a concept artist. They can prototype a setting in the form of art. Then you create your story. You throw the thing out there and ask designers "Hey look at this. This is what I am making!". Then see if you can get artists to dress it up with their artwork.

[Yfrwlf]

I am working on a prototype for a game inspired by the legendary Magic Carpet.

That was a good game. I think it may have even had at least one other game attempt to duplicate its gameplay, but I remember playing that game for hours on end. Very unique. I think perhaps the best ordering for a good game is focusing on gameplay first, story second, and graphics last though graphics certainly helps draw attention and shore things up. Ideally they all sort of come at the same time but definitely a strong focus on gameplay is the most important part IMO.

Perhaps copying existing games is the right way to go, but ignoring what the big commercial houses are doing as well? After all they tend to churn out the 'commercially viable' variations on a theme (aka WW2 FPS or indeed First Person Shooters in general). But where are the Carrier Command's, Midwinter's hell even Millennium 2.2 & its sequel Deuteros? Yes, even the old point n' click adventure games.

Whilst classics, what was missing from those games that could be expanded on thanks to modern hardware (increased screen resolution, CPU grunt and RAM availability) and I don't just mean graphics? Perhaps CC with a better resource management aspect?

People still play things like Ultima 7 because they were fundamentally good games that told a good story and/or were enjoyable in the long term. I think that's what FOSS gaming needs. It's version of Ultima, it's Carrier Command... something which a) works b) is playable c) stands there and goes "You wouldn't make this, so we bloody well did it".

I mean if you could panel beat the Vega Strike engine hard enough you'd have a bloody awesome Elite/space trading game.

There are so many great gameplay styles which are not done anymore because too many CEOs said "oooh 3D shooters and violence and explosions sell!!!!!" and that's how the business world works, they latch onto the status quo instead of thinking up new ideas. There are an infinite number of gameplay concepts you can come up with which have never been tried in games before. I find that Nintendo has been a fairly decent driver of gameplay creativity but there has certainly been some on the other platforms as well.

Point and click adventures are essentially a series of puzzles plus a story, and each puzzle can be a form of gameplay in its own right. Look at the Ratchet and Clank series, they've easily managed to create a puzzle and decent gameplay in the mini-games that they've included in each release of the series. It's honestly not hard to come up with gameplay concepts like that which is why I believe if there was more focus on gameplay creativity, the graphics and story would surely follow (though choosing the right graphics engine to build your prototype on is an important decision I'm sure) and gaming in general would be a lot further along.

That, and making it easier for normal Linux users to create those games to begin with. See Blender and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=324248

[b15hop]

I suppose you are talking about the Linux-gamers.net Games LiveDVD, it is (or used to be) based on ArchLinux. For the "desktop" they used Fluxbox IIRC. Here's the link: http://live.linux-gamers.net/

Unfortunately the first team dedicated to the family suited games failed in finding a good live distribution which could be taken to create a base system fitting our ideas. But luckily the second team was successful. They created a live DVD based on Arch Linux.

That is correct. It still uses Arch Linux. Arch has always been a more higher end x86 binary blob distro. Currently they're a x64 based distro as well as i686. Back in it's hey day, the only available binary i686 Arch Linux, was faster than all other i386 distro's. Most distros were either i386 or i486 and I wanted something that was faster than windows. After trying Gentoo, I got sick and tired of recompiling all the time. Portage is in my eyes, both the best and worst thing about Gentoo. Eventually trying Arch, I realised that Arch is even faster than Gentoo with -Os or -O3 settings. ... ( what many Gentoo see as optimisation bling) Arch doesn't have the bloat issues that other distro's have. Given time though, Arch is growing into a mature distro.

[Thetargos]

I'm sure Arch Linux has something along the lines of a LiveCD where this was done. I'm sure I remember it working pretty well too.

I suppose you are talking about the Linux-gamers.net Games LiveDVD, it is (or used to be) based on ArchLinux. For the "desktop" they used Fluxbox IIRC. Here's the link: http://live.linux-gamers.net/

[b15hop]

Shh... Don't let anyone get any ideas here... You might cause trouble...

Linux pre installed into PC, no need for windows as the BIOS is already ~cough asus~ Linux enabled. xD

[b15hop]

The Quake engines are getting old these days. Engines like the ones used by Bethesda (aka fallout 3) are showing more promises. To me this engine is really good, as it also proves that good graphics can work in conjunction with good game play.

I would like to create something of a DeusEX style game. A first person shooter with RPG-like qualities and a Cyberpunk'ish storyline.

This is the style of RPG that I have always liked. It's by far the most advanced for its day out of many other FPS games. Coupled with some modern graphics, on a GNU platform, a game like this would kick ass. As someone stated earlier, someone needs to write a good storyline.

Of course live cds can use swap partititon, but you really count peas. You will gain no speed when using something else than KDE. And as soon as you would start a kde tool, then all kdelibs are loaded as well and you even LOSE memory as usually have another toolkit loaded before.

Heh... KDE is going to be a problem. GNOME will be a problem. Heck, EDE or Enlightenment would be a problem under the right circumstances.

The reality is, do you 'need' a desktop environment for a "console-like" gaming live-CD? Or, would something a little lighter (Down to just booting into the game, lighter...) suffice?

If you want game save move ability, etc. you'll need SOME sort of UI- but a UI app framework for the desktop, something like KDE or GNOME, is just too freaking bloated for the task. You don't need "app integration". You don't need "printer support", etc. That's what both KDE and GNOME bring to the table for you. In a game, unless you NEED that sort of thing, you just don't bring it along. It's been asked how SONY managed so much with so little in the case of the PS2. It's dead simple. They KEPT it simple. If you're going to do the same thing with this stuff, you're going to have to do much the same thing.

Now, as far as games go, it's up in the air- and you should be able to make a title run on the live-CD as well as a desktop for it to be "useful".

I use Fvwm with Arch64, and find that its much less strain on the PC compared to the likes of KDE. The way to resolve the system loading KDE libs is not to install any of them or any associated bloat with them. Same for gnome.

I'm sure Arch Linux has something along the lines of a LiveCD where this was done. I'm sure I remember it working pretty well too.