The Fedora RPG

A couple of weeks ago at the weekly meeting of the Fedora Design Team Mo brought an idea floating for a while inside the community: a Fedora RPG, which got a good part of the team hooked. The "game" is supposed to take the form of a badge or banner available for inclusion in web pages and being played by contributing to Fedora: creating tickets, submitting patches, building packages, helping people...

After the meeting I opened Gnote, put down my ideas about the game and then sent them to the mailing list, since the list have limiter readership, here's a copy:

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The Fedora RPG

The game is centered around a rectangular badge showing the "player" status, which can be easily embedded in a website/blog/etc.

The badge layout is as follows:

• at the top the user name/nick and general rank;
• on one side the avatar with the current set of customizations,
  customizations are enabled by honor points
• in the middle the list of classes and levels, classes are SIGs
  membership, levels are enabled by experience points and reflect activity
  inside the SIG
• at the bottom a list of medals, enabled by special quests

The name/nick is user chosen, preferable the IRC nick/FAS name, the rank is enabled by a sum of experience points, honor points and medals.
Example: Wizard Martin

As an usual Fedora contributor is member in more than one SIG, an usual character of the game will basically be a multiclass character. The level is determined by experience points, earned automatically from activity: bugzilla, trac, koji etc. - closing tickets, submitting patches, creating packages, writing wiki pages, documentation and so on.
Example: Martin is a level 2 packager, level 4 designer and level 1 desktop developer

The avatar is a panda, from a selection of initial shapes and genders with customization enabled by honor points. Customization can be items like hats, glasses, guitar, laptop, tie, can be a selection of backgrounds like bamboo, data room, disco, or can be the color of the avatar: blue panda, pink panda, green panda, etc. Each customization has a cost in honor
points.
Honor points are received from another players for activity inside the project: helping on a mailing list, writing a good blog post on planet, delivering a cool presentation at FUDCon or being the last man standing at the release party.
Example: Martin is a Blue Panda, wearing a pink cap, dark sunglasses and
having a telescope in hand.

The medals are received from accomplishing quests: winning the bi-weekly Design Bounty, bringing pizza at a release party, organizing a FAD, etc.

The experience points are earned automatically from the infrastructure, the honor points can be donated by anyone having a FAS account and medals can be granted only by players with a certain level of experience (SIG/team leaders?).

When a player starts the game he can choose the gender of the avatar (we have both male and female contributors), the general shape (we should provide at least 5-6 general body types to avoid monotony). The classes are read from FAS group membership.

Is also possible to select the badge color and maybe the graphic style (classic, modern, cartoon, sketch, etc.)

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Of course, since then the topic was on the agenda at every following meeting and with today being a relaxed day (surprisingly, for the first time ever we are not behind the schedule) we had plenty of time for discussing the game, hopefully some graphics will show-up soon. No code yet, since it is still on the design board, we don't have yet coders on board.

I think the most important elements for the game are: to be fun and to be simple. Fun so people will want to take part into it, simple so we won't get stuck in the implementation.

The question is: would you play something like this?

OpenGameArt.org

I noticed today a cool Free Art project: OpenGameArt.org is a large collection of freely licensed resources (graphics, 3D models and audio) for game development, both original creation and contribution from existing FLOSS games. It looks like fun to me:

I guess I should look if I have some stuff suitable for it...

How to get things done (really?)

Pretending we are planning the local release party for Firefox 3.5, yesterday evening I meet with a few guys from Ceata and we talking a bit about the release party and FUDCon, but most of the time we ended playing the Shogun board game, which was fun: conquer a province, talk about beer price at the party, build a castle, remember the Berlin zoo, harvest some rice, give some F11 LiveCD and so on...

Unfortunately I had to leave early, before the game ended, so I can get the last subway to home. Not sure if the guys are still playing or if they felt asleep after too much gamins, as they servers (web, mailing lists) are down without anyone noticing. Wake-up, voinicii mei!

Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Level up!

This week I am playing (an one time try) with a slightly different format (otherwise the story would not fit) and a slightly different character design (chibi). This was also the comic with the most research work behind: several days spent with ZSNES and various ROMs, I needed it tu be accurate :D

PS: the amount of testing was limited only by my own lameness, I was not able to beat and get past of the Evil Wall in FF4 and Hiryuusou in FF5... the work on FF6 is still in early stages.

December lights photo challenge

I know Christmas is twice evil being an over-commercialization of a religious manifestation and I know the New Year is a fake event with a randomly set date, but beyond that December is a time when a large number of cities around the world change their faces, being decorated in various creative ways. So I think we have the opportunity for a community-wide kind of game: grab your cameras, get out, take photos from your city and share them for all of us to enjoy.

It seems like I succeeded in persuading a few people to join the game, both Mo and Michael showed their interest, so don't be shy and join us, the "game" is not limited to the member of the Art Team.

To break the ice, here is a poor photo I made last week-end in the Bucharest city center (Piața Universității) - this week-end I plan to do some more and better, actually using a tripod, a larger area, other places...

A walking little guy

Usually I do not follow requests for graphics coming from random people for projects I am not interested in, as anyone else my plate is more than full. But this time is a small, GPL licensed little web game, so I may have a bit to spare and here is a quick animation (made frame by frame with Inkscape and animated with GIMP):

Now if I find some time to animate the guy walking in the other 4 directions... and 5 monsters (animated too)... and some walls and obstacles... and power-ups... Uh! I told you my plate is full...

Turn Based Strategy: 8 Kingdoms

Battle for Wesnoth is the Free TBS game, arguably the Free strategy game: the best known, the most played and probably the best looking. But beside it, there are other smaller, less known gems, like 8 Kingdoms, a game which got packaged for Fedora after the F8 release, so I believe it is not part of any spin or media release, but is only a yum install away...

Before the obligatory screenshot I feel I need to put a warning: the user interface sucks and the graphics are quite ugly, but I like its gameplay better than Wesnoth's and find it really addictive.

Surely, there are some other things I would like to see in such a game, like more depth, a single player campaign, a backstory and maybe some role playing elements and features which might come handy (like a movable camera angle, which one would expect from a 3D game). And less crashes.

But considering it started by some students as an university project and it has about a couple of active developers, it is really awesome. A must play. Maybe also a must contribute, too bad I know jack about 3D modeling.

Pac-Man baddies with Inkscape: clipart, tutorial, screencast and challenge

My not so secret Pac-Man project is finished, the clipart images are available on my collection as well as on openclipart.org, the tutorial is on the tutorials page, a screencast too, so now is the time to talk about them.

Ladies and gentelmen, here are some Pac-Man bad buys and bad girls:

The idea started months ago, when I made a silly cartoon about Fedora Games and I quickly realized the potential: is easy and fun (at least I think so), anybody can create such graphics and a tutorial is obvious and quick enough to be covered also by a screencast.
It got stuck in my head for a long time, screaming to get out waiting for me to get in the right mood for that. And in the end I gave up.

I started by doing a screencast (as I said, is based on a concept I was already familiar with), sorry for the Flash abuse, it is made with Istanbul in Ogg Theora and I have the original, but until fedoratv gets usable, its temporary home will be on YouTube.


Then I made in Inkscape the base shape, taking at each step screenshots for a future tutorial.

When done the next step was to create various derivatives, changing either the texture or the shape, there are many of them I like, for example the ninja-pirate duo (who would win in a fight?):

or the textured stripes and camouflage:

The original plan was to create 9 distinct images but the ideas came over and over so I jumped first at 16 and ended with 25 images (and still have a lot of ideas, but enough is enough).

Then I uploaded the images: both in a pacman gallery of my clipart collection and to the Open Clip Art Library (check the arcade tag).

After that, crop the screenshots, combine them, put together in a HTML, add some English text and the Pac-Man baddies Inkscape tutorial is made. Translate everything into Romanian language (yup, I write in English first), put everything online, including the screencast and I am almost done.

The last step is this: blog about them and throw a challenge: look at the gallery and find one baddie representing you. If you can't find one, read the tutorial and draw one yourself. Enjoy it. Show it to the entire world. Maybe upload it to the Open Clip Art Library.

And with that, enough for me with clipart for a while...

How it's made: my map elements with Inkscape

I imagine such a preamble is not very inviting, but it is the preamble of the latest article from my tutorials website:

It's been a while since I wrote a tutorial (in fact quite a while, as "wrote" != "published") and that was for good reason: I was not able to come with a tutorial fitting the rest of my my tutorial site and did not want to break the tradition . So it was a hard decision to write this piece, which comes as a conclusion to my quest to create a RPG tileset of over 50 clipart images, a decision I made mostly because I already was asked about how I made the images and expect even more questions in the future.

It is not really a tutorial, more a "how it's made" for my map tileset (available also from the Open CLip Art Library), it describe the process I used in creating those images, a very short sketch of the workflow (described in more detail in the article) is like this:

[read more]

Of course, there is available as usual a Romanian translation.

And now I can really consider this topic closed.

Quest complete: RPG map tileset

I can consider complete my quest for a RPG map tileset, 50 images are done (outline and full color), uploaded to my clipart collection and to the Open Clip Art Library (look at the cartography tag).

Now is the time to sit back, relax, upload some samples in various places (like here), annoy people with that and maybe think at the next step, which should be something different. Or should I do more pieces for the set, considering I have a long list with additional ideas? This is a good think to think about while sitting back.

I don't know how transparent is from those clipart images how much I miss the time when I used to fight orcs and be happy about that. I guess it's quite obvious (is a long time, about an year and a half).

PS: the samples above are JPEGs, the PNG version was to big in file size, so I had to use lossy compression (with high quality), but load the JPEG, change the extension and will get either PNG and SVG.

Uploading to OCAL is killing me...

So the time has come: the set is done, it have to be uploaded to the Open Clip Art Library. Unfortunately by hand, one by one, the full color image, the outline and a PNG thumbnail.
Question again: what are the computers build for? By any chance to help us automate repetitive tasks? Anyone wonders why I hesitate re-uploading my images (some hundreds) from the old site? Look at the pretty screencast (2.8MB, Ogg Theora) and multiply the operation with 50 (the number of images I have to upload):

Php coders badly needed... anyone available?

Coloring the map

The other day I talked about the outlines for my RPG map tileset, naturally I went to the next step: adding pretty colors (as planned) and it progress quite fast, it is the easy part.

I tried to get a balanced result: at the same time shiny enough but also simple enough, I could have added a lot more details but this is my current trade-off (feel free to start from the outlines and do your own colorization).

One decision I made will surely come back and bite me in the ass: I used gradients. They make the look prettier but after importing a few images with gradients Inkscape gets confused very fast (it is a known bug).

But enough for now, I spammed enough with this topic, will talk again about it when the set will be complete and uploaded to the Open Clip Art Library (hopefully next week considering the current speed). Until then I will quietly update my gallery, one by one.

Halfway to an empty pledge: a RPG map tileset

One of my many failures in 2007 was to get the people at the Open Clip Art Library into holding a "month of cartography", such a benign defeat is a good show of how bad I react at losing.

A few years ago I made a proof of concept about how Inkscape can be used to create RPG maps and a (small at the time) number of terrain SVG tiles. This showed to be one of the hottest topics on my blog, with important traffic, many reactions and follow-ups (I got many people contacting me offline about it). It can be considered a success.

Recently on the Inkscape users mailing list the topic of cartography came to attention so I got the idea about holding a "month of cartography" at OCAL, we used to have such things, but the (still unfinished) migration to ccHost shifted the focus. They are good for channeling energies, gaining momentum, generating buzz and potentially bringing new contributors and users.
My approach was to make a pledge: if at least two other people back me and will contribute, I pledged to contribute at least 50 new, original, images.

The idea didn't got enough traction, nobody backed me. So here is me bad at losing: once the idea was developed in my head, I continued working on it and created (at a slow pace, due to the low motivation) the above mentioned quantity of images. So today I am halfway to this pledge: I finished the outlines (this was the hardest part) for 50 images, they still nedd to be colored (that is the second half), see below a few highlights:

For now the images are available for download as part of my own clipart collection, after I add colors they will be uploaded (both as outline and full-color) to the Open CLip Art Library. The coloring process will follow at the same slow pace, probably I will make enough noise when ready.

The set is not consistent as style, scale, perspective or quality but, hey, I pledged 50 images, not 50 quality images... (could it still be labeled as a set?) see also a screenshot with the entire set:

When approaching the target number a motivational issue appeared and I got confused about what to do next: start coloring, as originally planned, draw more new shaped, as I have in my head a large list of items which could be drawn or just call all this thing off, freeze and upload as it is.
Most likely I will stick to the plan but he work speed may have to suffer, watch the tileset to monitor the progress.

GNOME playing cards

There is an undergoing vote trying to get better default in GNOME games, I don't know why there are so few votes, only a couple so far, maybe it was not publicized enough.
So go ahead and vote your favorite, maybe we'll get a shinier desktop.

note: of course I voted for my own set, but everyone should vote what he likes best.

Linux games: best of breed

While I find such lists of must have games an interesting read and I think is wonderful to have all those games (big thank you to all packagers), my opinion is that the focus should be on a "best of breed" selection and promotion of this particular selection.

These days I play a lot less than I used to and my area of interest (and expertise, if I may say that) has closed a lot (and is badly represented by the available Free Linux games) but I see a lot of redundancy, for example Alien Arena, Cube, Cube 2 "Sauerbraten", Digital Paint's Paintball, Nexuiz, Open Arena, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow and World of Padman are all the same for me: they are First Person Shooters. They all have they own particularities, strengths and weakness (sometime even the same engines), but for a non hardcore gamer like me, the similarities are more than the differences.
And yes, if I am an expert in one of them, I will be pretty good in the others, but honestly, I will never be an expert in the area, I play FPS games only occasionally.

What is the best of the FPS genre? I really don't know, I mostly play Open Arena because this is what I am most used to from the Quake 3 legacy.

I understand defining "best of breed" is very hard, each person has his own option. And also defining what "breed" is hard but important in this: for example for the "Strategy" genre, Battle for Wesnoth is "the best", but refining the genre in turn based and strategy, then Wesnoth is the best TBS with something else (Widelands and Glest are my current favorites) for RTS.

So, what are your favorite genres? The favorite games in those genres?

Glest - a promising 3D Real Time strategy game

Winter holidays: some are on vacancy, some are happy, some are relaxing, so I think a little post about a game is on topic.

Glest is a free 3D RTS (real time strategy) game available one yum away for your Fedora desktop:

yum install glest

I hate to use that label, as it usually indicate a game with a great potential which lacks some fundamental features (and there are no signs about them in the near future), but Glest is a promising game.

The good part: is easy to learn, with a classic Warcraft feel, nice graphics, a good concept of two factions, magic versus tech, 3D with a modern look, balanced research tree, unique units and buildings and more. It has lot of the things needed to become "the" Free RTS.
On top of that, it can be easily extended and modded: new maps, units, factions.

But, as I said, it is "promising", despite being at version 2.0.1 (with a 3.0 in alpha stage) it lacks so many things: event making the screenshots for this post was a pain - edit a config file to change the mode to windowed and modify the screen resolution, no GUI for this and no screenshot key.
Some notable missing features: no network play, no savegames, no campaign. Aa a 3D game, it may tax your computer heavily, so an in-game resolution selector is, I think, a must have, and, again for a 3D game, I expect as a must the ability to change the view, rotate the camera and zoom in and out.

But install, play and judge for yourself, I am a RTS wuss, I got my ass kicked big time in Glest.

IcedTea and games

Has everyone read the new interview about IcedTea and Free Java in Fedora 8?

Update: as Hans points out in the comments, the game was already packaged for Fedora (my mistake was to look only at the games spin live DVD).

Here is my anecdotal experience with it: being bored, I was looking at a list of Free games when I noticed FreeCol, a game based on the old Colonization, the screenshots were nice but the game written in Java. So my curiosity exploded: does it work in Fedora with IcedTea? Yes, it worked very well, see the screenshot below (so the next step was to add it to our games whishlist.

UFO: Alien Invasion

I have strong feelings about this game, so I'll start by stating my bias: I was introduced to the X-COM series with UFO2 X-COM: Terror from the Deep, which I liked a lot and played for years. After that, I tried X-COM: Apocalypse and not liked it enough: it was too complicated, too hard and had too brighter graphics (which have not helped with the mood). Only after that I discovered X-COM: UFO Defense (A.K.A.: UFO: Enemy Unkonwn), the first game of the series, which was about the same as TFTD but smaller and uglier.
Later I tried the demos of a two spin-offs, X-COM: Interceptor and X-COM: Enforcer and did not liked them: they were different kind of games.

Enter Open Source clones: I found UFO2000, a Free implementation (with multiplayer!) of the battlescape portion of UFO1 but nothing more and UFO: Alien Invasion about which I will talk in depth.

The franchise was revived with UFO: Aftermath, a games I skipped without even looking at a demo, based on reviews with its two sequels: UFO: Aftershock and UFO: Afterlight.

Now back at UFO: Alien Invasion. It uses a heavily modified Quake II engine and despite this it manages to re-capture the feeling of the classic UFO: Enemy Unkonwn.
My first encounter with the game was years ago, when I saw a small preview, containing (IIRC) only a single battlescape area, with fixed team, no inventory management, no bases, no geoscape, no strategy.

I keept in my mind and checked the progress from time to time, in 2004 the project had the so-called "x-mas release", another tech demo. I was so disappointed by its status that I totally lost my confidence in the project and completely forgot about it for a long time.

A few days ago I got a reminder about the game and went to the website and noticed the release number, 2.1.1, which gave me hope. Also, the screenshots look cool. Do I downloaded the binary installer (the game is not yet packaged in Fedora, but is on the whishlist and the Loki installer is working).

For about a few days I play it heavily and I like it: the look and feel, the engine, the implementation, the attention to detail, the faithfulness to the original, the improvements. Instead of a long review, here are some more shiny pictures:

But the conclusion is not very optimistic: I played it for a few days already, but the games does not appear winnable. It is so complete in some areas that it hurts, it could be the best Linux game I ever saw.
The hopes? According to the TODO, the developers evaluate even an engine change, so fat chance to ever see the game in a "complete" stage.

Now back with me to the playing field to see what happens next (not much, I think I exhausted the research tree)...