Categories
Game Design Game Development

GameGame 1.0 Released

GameGame announced the release of GameGame 1.0, a brainstorming tool to help with game design. It’s a card game that you can play to make a game.

Each card represents game design elements, such as a Goal or Theme. When you want to have something for the player to do, add a Game Mechanic card. When you want a place, add an Environment card.

Using a game to come up with a game is a cool idea. I printed out the cards and instructions myself since I figured they would be fun to try out, although it would be weird to use the Publisher card to put the kibosh on my own ideas.

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business

Manifesto Games

I remember when I first read The Scratchware Manifesto detailing the problems with the game industry’s economic and development models. I thought that it was a nice read but probably written by someone who might not actually know about the game industry.

Then Greg Costikyan reveals that he was the author of the piece, shocking many in the game industry who also thought it was written by some wannabe game developer. He wrote a few articles for The Escapist about the topic as well. They all boil down to rants against the current model which stifles innovation and creativity and will not be sustainable for long. Of course, everyone knows that there are problems, but not quite so many people are doing much about them.

Now, he decided to quit his job at Nokia and startup a company to help make his dreams for a better game industry a reality.

From his recent blog post announcement:

The new company will be called Manifesto Games; its motto is “PC Gamers of the World Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Retail Chains!” And its purpose, of course, will be to build what I’ve been talking about: a viable path to market for independent developers, and a more effective way of marketing and distributing niche PC game styles to gamers.

It sounds exciting. Heck, it’s exciting anytime someone starts up their own business venture. Indie game developers seem to have issues with marketing their products. Not everyone can make a Bejeweled or Snood. And those that make something like Darwinia struggle to get noticed. I can see Manifesto Games being an Amazon-like one-stop shop not only for indie games but also for those niche hardcore titles that retailers won’t carry.

I’m not sure if I’ll like how it will get implemented. I’m mainly afraid that game developers will insist on Digital Restrictions Management everywhere. That would quickly make Manifesto Games really crappy for the customer, and I wouldn’t want my games to have any part of it.

But Greg will be blogging about the startup, and so he’ll likely be looking for feedback. I wish him luck.

Categories
Geek / Technical

More Collective Knowledge: Wikibooks

I found this news item on ZDNet: As the Wikibooks website says, it is a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit.

Wikipedia already has a huge amount of up-to-date content, and so I wasn’t sure what the difference would be. After all, they both use MediaWiki as the server software, so wouldn’t it just be a duplication of effort?

Of course, Wikipedia covers topics as an encyclopedia would. Wikibooks will have books on the various topics. While the former would have an entry giving a broad overview of a topic, the latter might have entire books that go deep into the subject matter. For example, Wikipedia’s entry for the Ada Programming Language talks about the history of the language and its main features. It provides plenty of links to tutorials and other sites of interest, but the entry doesn’t provide any useful information to the student programmer. Wikibook’s entry for Ada Programming, however, teaches you how to program using Ada. It even has a link to the Wikipedia article!

People are getting excited about Wikibooks. For one, expensive textbooks that are outdated by the time they reach the classroom might be a thing of the past. Publishers might need to adapt, although I personally think that nothing can really replace solid hardcopy that you can read away from the computer. Another possibility is that classroom research might involve working with Wikibooks. Assignments might look like, “Go to the Wikibook entry on Set Theory and add any missing information to the Axioms section.”

It’s also scary. For example, Joe Schmoe might think he is an authority on usability and edit the appropriate page. If he has it all wrong, how will you know when you go to learn about it?

Of course, that same possibility exists for Wikipedia or the Game Programming Wiki, and those seem to work out pretty well. At the moment there are over 11,000 books in the database, and more will likely be on the way. They will likely get updated in a timely manner and will be superior to regular textbooks in terms of accuracy. Typos and errors will be fixed IN the book instead of on the publisher’s website under an Errata section. Perhaps most importantly, it is also freely and easily available knowledge! I’m sure Wikibooks will make a lovely addition to collective knowledge of the world wide web.

Categories
Geek / Technical Linux Game Development

An Open Source Alternative to Google Earth

NewsForge reports on NASA’s World Wind project. While the images in Google Earth of higher quality, the functionality is mostly the same.

Apparently World Wind is still Windows only. It was written in C#, which wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it also uses DirectX, which is. But it is open source, and so Russian programmer Vitaliy Pronkin created a port called WW2D that uses C++ and OpenGL.

WW2D is currently at version 0.99.5, has binaries available for Windows and Gnu/Linux, and has the source available. Apparently a Mac version shouldn’t be too far behind.

I’ve been waiting for a Gnu/Linux version of Google Earth for some time. Apparently a lot of people have. And a port shouldn’t be difficult to do since they already have Google Earth Fusion running on Gnu/Linux. I haven’t had a chance to look into WW2D yet, but the idea that people can make their own custom applications based on the code is exciting. While Google has released the Keyhole Markup Language, developers can’t make tweaks or add functionality to Google Earth.

These are exciting times.

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development

Oracle’s Eye Development: I Broke The Build

A few days ago I updated my Debian Gnu/Linux system. Today I sat down to get some really productive work completed for Oracle’s Eye. Since I didn’t know where to start, I decided to build the project, run what I have, and then make a decision on what to do from there. Sounds good, right?

Except that when I went to build the project, I had a linker error. Unfortunately I lost the actual message, but it basically said that the library for Kyra didn’t reference std::basic_string.

Eh? How did the Kyra Sprite Engine lose access to the C++ Standard Library? Am I reading that error message correctly? Maybe the packages I updated were broken? Well, according to an active developer on #debian, he builds his projects just fine. So did the Kyra installation get corrupted or something?

Oddly enough, the Kyra demo still runs perfectly fine. Am I just building it incorrectly?

To make a long story short, I ended up removing Kyra 2.0.7, installing the latest 2.1.1, and finding that it won’t compile at all. Finally I decided that since I did updates to a number of packages, some of which might be graphically related, I might as well restart my display manager. When I did so, I reinstalled Kyra 2.0.7, and my project compiled, linked, and ran perfectly fine, just as I left it.

Of course, I didn’t want to stay up too late, so I am not really going to be able to do anything useful tonight. This problem really wasted a lot of my time. B-(

I’m going to bed. I just wanted to document this bug for the benefit of people like me who might be searching for a similar error and hoping to find a solution to their problem.

Categories
Linux Game Development

Learning Kyra: A New Version Released

Recently I received an email from the Kyra mailing list announcing the newest update to the Kyra Sprite Engine. It is now at version 2.1.1, and the tutorials and installation notes seem to have an upgrade as well.

A big change is the license. It used to be dual licensed. You could either make use of the GPL or the LGPL. Now it is under the LGPL for any purpose and without the requirement to display a splash screen.

One of the new features is Isogen, a tool for quickly and easily generating seamless tiles and walls for isometric games. It looks pretty cool and makes me think about the possibility of developing isometric games.

It can compile with Gnu/Linux, BSD, and MinGW32. There is the ability to compile for Mac OS X, but apparently the run-time performance leaves much to be desired…but the source is freely available to those who would be able to submit patches!

Another thing I’ve been interested in is learning the Python programming language. People have been suggesting it to me recently, and I think after I finish Oracle’s Eye I will look into the language. The cool thing is that I won’t necessarily have to find a new graphics library since there is a Python binding called PyKyra. It isn’t new, but I just noticed it was a possibility.

I’ll need to check and see how much it breaks backwards compatibility with the old version, but I am really looking forward to giving Kyra 2.1.1 a spin.

Categories
General Linux Game Development

The Death of John “overcode” Hall

Returning from Grand Rapids, I was shocked to learn that John “overcode” Hall had lost his war with stage IV melanoma on September 17th. I had posted about John Hall’s battle previously. He is the author of Programming Linux Games and used to work at Loki.

From his War blog:

One of my main purposes in blogging this is to alarm people into getting suspicious moles checked out by a doctor immediately. If you are even remotely concerned about anything on your skin, please make an appointment with a doctor today. You definitely won’t regret it.

Definitely good advice that merits repeating.

A number of people close to him have written on the subject, such as Ryan Gordon and Jamie Fristrom.

It was Stéphane Peter‘s post that really threw me for a loop. Up until I saw it, I didn’t realize how young John Hall was when he had died. I had assumed that he was young, but still a bit older than I am. I thought he was maybe 40 years old. It turns out that he was born only a year before I was. A YEAR!

In about the same span of time that I’ve been alive, the man became a pilot, a published author, a game programmer, and a musician among other roles. And on top of it all, he put up a valiant fight against cancer. According to people who knew him, he was enthusiastic, ambitious, and incredibly motivated. He was also a good friend and family member. I wish I would have known him or at least talked to him on IRC.

I didn’t know him, and yet the news of his death really hit home. Family members have died without stirring so much emotion in me. I didn’t know why it affected me so much, but I thought about it for some time. I’ve determined the following possible reasons:

  • For one, I’ve had almost the same amount of time as he did on this planet. Nothing stopped me from accomplishing great things in that time. How did I squander it? What did I do besides graduate from college?
  • For another, while I have been interested in improving my general health, I’ve been procrastinating with seeing a doctor for a physical as well as getting new health insurance to replace my expired plan. The application was frustrating to fill out, to be sure, but it was not so bad as to have delayed me for over a month. My eyes have been bothering me for months (I can read but I’m not sure why it is somewhat more difficult), but I haven’t gone to have them checked out. One of my knees was painful for months at a time, and I never went to see a doctor about it. It cracks loudly when I extend my leg these days.
  • Finally, what about my major goals in life? What are they? What’s taking me so long to define them and start making progress?

I feel terrible thinking about my own mortality because I feel like I am doing his memory a disservice by talking about me. On the other hand, I think the death of a person who has some connection to you, no matter how surprising the connection may be, is cause for introspection. It puts things into perspective. In the end, I know I have no excuses for what I have done or haven’t done, but I also know that I can’t just wallow in my past failures. My life shouldn’t be wasted by waiting for the perfect time. My life shouldn’t be wasted by waiting for the perfect circumstances. I’m living it, whether I’m ready or not. Time will pass, whether I’m happy with the moments or not. In the time I can do so, I would like to actually make a difference.

My thoughts and prayers go out to John Hall’s family and friends. He sounded like someone to look up to, and I know at the very least that he has inspired me.

Categories
General

Report: Grand Rapids Schmooze 2005

I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan on September 15th, 16th, and 17th for the Grand Rapids Schmooze. The GRS is basically an informal get-together of people involved in the shareware industry. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured it would be good to hear from people already in the industry I want to get into. I made my hotel reservations, printed out the directions, and away I went.

First Day

At the last minute my girlfriend decided to accompany me, and we both drove out from Chicago. I thought it would be a four hour drive, but we didn’t have to stop for gas. We got there with half a tank left, and plenty of time to spare. No traffic! We checked into the hotel. I brought my Gamecube, and we both brought plenty of books. Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect.

I was there fairly early, but I got to meet a few people, including our host Sheila Manning. There was plenty of food and drinks throughout the Schmooze, which is good because hotel food is expensive. B-)

The first day was full of talk of the Shareware Industry Conference and other events about which I had no idea, but I figured I would pick up on the inside jokes soon enough.

Second Day

After breakfast (read: donuts), a number of us went to see the ITT Game Design Club (WARNING: heavy use of Flash). We got a tour of the ITT campus as well as free lunch. I got a chance to talk to a few of the students and faculty there. I thought I wouldn’t have much to say compared to some of the other Schmoozers, but I was surprised to find that my throat was getting dry by the end. I was asked about what classes I would have found useful, and the discussion eventually turned to a number of topics including games in politics and female gamers. I even managed to procure a small toy cow provided by the Schmoozers from Tucows.

After returning to the hotel, we spent the rest of the time schmoozing. Some of the people from the ITT GDC came by and played Magic: The Gathering while a number of people went out for dinner. I missed out on going to Big Boy, but Applebee’s was good.

I found another fan of Total Annihilation, and everyone always gets a kick out of hearing about my fairy ninja in Wizardry 8. I also heard that Homeworld 2 had some serious flaws, but I’m still interested in getting a copy of the game. It’s a blast to hear some of Gregg’s stories from the trenches of Spectrum Holobyte and Thomas Hruska‘s TI-82 games.

Third Day

Besides Schmoozing during the day, Gregg Seelhoff hosted a campfire. A number of us attended, including my girlfriend, Thomas Warfield, Tim and Sharon Thousand, and Loren and Kim Brewer. We successfully started a campfire, successfully grilled some hamburgers and hotdogs, and I successfully got the beanbags through the hole of the game that Loren and Kim brought. And I just lost The Game.

While most of the people brought tents to stay the night, I drove back to the hotel with my girlfriend and Thomas Warfield. Before going to bed my girlfriend and I stayed up a bit to play more Wind Waker. We finally got the first piece of the Triforce!

The Return

I meant to go to the Schmooze Room to help Sheila clean a bit before leaving, but when I got there the room was locked. I assume she left earlier. Traffic was great on the way back…until we hit Chicago. It honestly felt like the trip time doubled once we got in the city.

I realize that the above is not very exciting, but since most of the Schmooze is basically Schmoozing, it is kind of hard to describe in detail. You had to be there. B-) I’m definitely attending the next one, which is apparently going to be in Indiana. No Big Boy there, unfortunately. If it is anything like this one, it should be a lot of fun.

After being gone for so many days without access to the World Wide Web, it is natural that I would miss out one some news. These items don’t all have the same relative importance, but I am simply listing them here:

I’ll have something to say about the last two items in separate posts. The last one especially shook me up pretty bad, and I didn’t even know the guy personally.

Categories
General

My Blog Software Has Been Upgraded

While I figure that people reading in this post in the future will find it confusing, my webhost finally moved my site to the new server, and I found that I could finally upgrade WordPress to version 1.5!

Of course, it means it will be awhile before I decide on a new template and customize it a bit to make it more like home. Later, I will post an update on what’s been going on for the past week, including information about the Grand Rapids Schmooze and the news I missed out on while I was there.

Categories
General

Grand Rapids Schmooze

I’ll be gone for the rest of the week. Also, my webhost will likely move my website to a new machine on Saturday or Sunday, so I will be making this blog static until I return home. By static, I mean that I won’t be able to accept comments or trackbacks, nor will I be making new posts during this time.

I will be attending the Grand Rapids Schmooze, which should be a great opportunity to meet shareware developers. The ITT Game Design Club will be hosting a luncheon and SophSoft, Incorporated / Digital Gamecraft will be hosting a campfire.

It should be great fun, and I’ll be sure to post about it.