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.

A gem in the street: laptop stolen flyer

On my way from home to work I saw this gem:

A flyer saying "Laptop stolen from car, reward offered". To be of any use, I think it should have said something about the reward, which must be above the [black] market value of that laptop. Can you imagine the thief contacting the owner with an innocent face: "I found this laptop in a thrash can in the park" ?

To make the gem complete, the flyer is glued on a phone booth with the inscription "displaying forbidden".

Unbloat your Inkscape made SVGs

This should be common knowledge, but I see it often not used, so maybe a blog post will increase the awareness a bit.

Long story short: when trying to fit all the packages on a live CD every bit matters, so a number of strangely large file size for some SVG icons got noticed: a directory with 50 icons, 3.0 MB (in g-p-m, if that matters). Puff: run a "magic" script (an one liner), the size is decreased to 986.0 KB, the new version is commited upstream and everybody is happy!
It looks like a good idea for everyone using SVG icons to "unbloat" them, the space saved may be significant.

As any Inkscape user that's wort his salt should already know, the script is something like this:

for i in *.svg; do inkscape -f "$i" --vacuum-defs --export-plain-svg "$i"; done

Or, for one single file from the GUI, File > Vacuum Defs and save as Plain SVG.

Now some boring details: when working for a long time on a complex document Inkscape may vreate a lot of definitions and some of them may get ununsed, like you fill an object with a gradient and delete the object later. The gradient definition is kept, you may want to reuse it later, so a complex file may gather a lot of such unused definitions (even more if you import another files, each with its duplicate or unused definitions). Vacuuming them is a good idea, it may reduce the file size.

Another (small) file size reduction can be achieved by saving as "plain" SVG. By default, Inkscape will put inside the SVG some atributes useful (but not essential) for further editing (window geometry, guides, metadata and so on). Saving as "plain" SVG will remove them.

One of the worst offender was initially 281.1 KB, it decreased to 56.4 KB after vacuum defs and to 48.6 after saving as plain SVG.

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?

Fries? With that?

All the cool kids are campaigning for one or another codename for the upcoming F9, can I keep myself from acting like a monkey and try to pose as a cool kid by weighting about the issue?

First, as many others, I am not very happy with the selection, between really bad ones (Chinga-something, Asperger) and some for which I don't feel anything (probably because I don't get the cultural reference), I see myself with one option for which I can imagine producing cool **** about: Mayonnaise.

I am sure people expect from me some more visual campaigning, but I do not have such hard feelings for that name either so I would pause my cartography quest (which approaches completion, BTW) for it.

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.

Romanian translation: OpenOffice.org Getting Started / Ghid de initiere

Most of the translation work and the compilation was made by ghrt, a preliminary version of the Romanian translation for the OpenOffice.org Getting Started / Ghid de initiere is available for download (a 6.9 MB PDF) in the project's documentation page.
It is still in an alpha stage (without the "Base" and "Quick Keys" chapters and with some inconsistences), but it is our first release in a "book" format.

Fedora 9 themes - Round 1

The deadline for Round 1 of Fedora 9 theme submission was a couple of days ago, on January 8. Round 1 in intended to gather concepts, so do not expect polished graphics, only sketches and ideas.

Here is what we get so far (as required, the proposals with a formal mailing list introduction and wiki page), listed chronologically:

• CODE 9TO9, by Jiri Jakub Masek, a theme based on one line drawn 9 pointed star, endless, cyclic, algorithm 9483726159;
• Freedom, by Michael Beckwith, following the motto of Infinity Freedom Voice that Fedora uses, and with Fedora 8 using Infinty, it propose Freedom, supplying some other ways that Freedom could be represented;
• Waves, by Martin Sourada, "Waves could symbolize infinity, freedom, voice, ..."
• Night, by Mola Pahnadayan;
• Electric Sphere, by Mola Pahnadayan;
• At Last, by Andrew Healey, the image of a person with their arms thrown up in triumph having symbolism that ties directly to the Fedora ideals and also with the feeling that using a human image in the theme helps personalize Fedora;
• Shoowa, by Luya Tshimbalanga, a raffia cloth textile from the Kuba, a people from the central Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing the diversity of the Fedora community through the use of art from different cultures.

Thoughts? Comments? Praises? Compllaints? Any kind of feed-back?

RHM top 10, or 2 ouf 10 for Nicu, or Desktop Linux

I noticed Red Hat Magazine published a list with the top 10 most popular articles in 2007.

Much to my surprise, I see two of the articles in this top are mine: 2-nd place, GIMP 2.4 preview and 8-th, How to use Inkscape’s new blur filter (this one written in collaboration with Mo).

I know this is not due to my great writing skills and style (or the lack of it most likely), but about the subject, I touched some area of popular interest: Desktop Linux, yet another proof 2007 was one of the mythical years of the Desktop Linux.

Inkscape about screen vote

Inkscape 0.46 release is nearing, now is the time for the community to vote for the new "about" screen.
I don't have an entry in the contest and not a clear favorite, but I did my part and cast a vote.

So what's the year of Desktop Linux, 2007 or 2008?

So was 2007 the Year of the Desktop Linux? Will 2008 be?
I pretty much agree with the points (and I could add some myself) about how 2007 already was that mythical year, only with a caveat: I think "the year of the Desktop Linux" is pretty much a 2 years thing, with not necessarily two consecutive years.
The first year was 2007, with a lot of new deployments (OLPC, Eee PC, Dell, etc.), the next step for those is to remain Linux installs (and not be replaced with Windows once they get into the end users hands) and to grow beyond the hardcore existing Linux users, getting to the general public. When this growth will pass a certain market share (dunno what, probably at least more than OS X), that will be the second half of the Desktop Linux. And it may very well be 2008.

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.

The real question: who's your daddy?

Everyone talks about Matthew Szulik stepping down as Red Hat CEO and being replaced by Jim Whitehurst. Max inform us Jim uses Linux, even Fedora, at home, but I think the real question is what OS does his father run on the desktop?
After all, maybe 2008 will be the year of the desktop Linux :p

D-Link tech suport

I had recently a boring task (it took me away from some cool clipart work) to configure a hotspot with 3 Access Points put in WDS mode to increase the area covered. It was very consuming as they have to be put in large a building with thick walls and my experience in the area was not that great.

Skipping the useless details (about how it worked well with 2 APs and bad with 3 APs and how all the documentation talks only about using 2 APs), I didn't find anything useful in the manufacturer (D-Link) Knowledge Base, so I used the contact form on the support website to ask for advice.
The reply was quick, but totally useless, with 3 advices:

• - turn off security; Why would a sane person leave the wireless network open?
• - change the channel number; I may try this, but I see no point: the hotspot is in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to produce interferences;
• - and the most useless one: they recommend the demo of a Windows-only software which "simplifies Microsoft Networking and may allow you to trouble shoot your network on your own" (emphasis mine). Duh! The contact form asked for the OS (info not needed for setting up an AP with a web interface) and I specified Linux and I don't need there Windows file and printer sharing

A new release name

The process for Fedora 9 release name has started, this time much earlier, hopefully early enough to allow artwork and marketing to tune up the message.
For now, we are in the collecting stage on the devel mailing list, it will be followed by a legal cleaning and a public vote.

If I am asked, I tend to go for a darker and aggressive name, but from the proposals so far, I like best the completely opposite "unicorn" (even if I don't have any idea on how it could be implemented in a good desktop theming, I can thing only at excessively cheesy things).
However, I think I would like some more complex names, I find "Pink Unicorn" a better name than just "Unicorn" (and, of course, "Unbelievable Unicorn" much worse).

Hero by accident

This is how an obscure blogger, writing on an obscure blog can get the most know Romanian blogger by accident (pun intended).

Long story short: afternoon, Sunday December 16, a Bucharest covered in snow. A Romanian ministry drives his car, returning from a party, loses control of his car, hit another car and a pedestrian (supposedly on the pedestrian crossing ans supposedly hit only lightly).
A newspaper get a clue, but is not able to verify the story: the ministry denies everything, the police denies it, the ambulance service does not confirm any victim, in what seems to be the perfect cover-up, so no story get in the press.

And here goes the real accident: a young girl passes by, see the cars crashed, makes some photos with her mobile phone, learn about the ministry's involvement, takes more photos and get home and blog about them (link in Romanian language).

The newspaper learn about her blog post, use it as a confirmation for the story and the truth start to be revealed and new witnesses get courage to talk : first the ministry acknowledge he was in the city, then he acknowledge he was involved in a car incident but without any victim, then the police acknowledge a car incident without victims happened, then 30 hours later (!!!) the ministry get to the police to tell his story, then the ambulance service acknowledge it was called at the accident, then the police acknowledge they got an emergency (112) call, then they acknowledge a victim.

Today, 3 days after the incident, it is on the first page on all traditional media. And all this because of a pesky blogger with a camera on the mobile phone.

Narro: a web based translation tool

Narro is a web-based translation tool (with a Romanian interface) made by alexxed and used to translate some applications (OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird) to Romanian, it is a wonderful tool and it grow on me each day.

To demonstrate how much it grew on me lately: I do not use any desktop application translated into my native language (and don't plan to start using), I prefer any time the default, English version. However, there are times when I so unmotivated, bored and sucked of energy, that I am not in the mood do do anything. But in those times, I find myself going to Narro and translating some strings...

And here is a psychological observation from using the tool: OpenOffice.org is translated about 18%, Firefox 3 90% and Thunderbird 2 93%.
If very un-fulfilling to translate OOo strings: it is such a behemoth (70,336 strings) that even if you translate a lot of strings the result is unnoticeable and its status at 18% makes the end look so far and unattainable.
By the contrary, with FF and TB you can easily see the light at the end of the tunnel, half an hour of contributing makes a difference so the process is much more motivating.

So guess where I am translating most of the time...

No more bug reports from me

Inkscape changed the bug tracking system from SourceForge to Launchpad: I don't feel compelled to create an account at the closed system from Ubuntu only to be able to make a bug report and occasionally some triaging (I used to do that on sf.net), so for the time being I will step back and become a simple user.
This is somewhat unfortunate, there are bugs that bother me a lot: the autopackaged nightly builds don't work on Fedora since F8 was released due to bad dependency requirements and reporting on the mailing list seems not enough (for those wondering, this is the reason I didn't published any Inkscape tutorial lately: I want but I objectively can't, the stable version has an obsolete GUI, is OK for own usage but not for public tutorials).

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)...