At Long Last: Stable Version of FreeCraft Game Engine

jimmcq writes: "After two years of active development the long awaited stable release of FreeCraft is available. FreeCraft is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It is possible to play against human opponents over LAN, internet, or against the computer. The engine can be used to build C&C, WC2, SC and AOE-like real-time strategy (RTS) games. It successfully runs under Linux, BSD, BeOS, MacOS/X, MacOS/Darwin and MS Windows. Souce code and binaries are available from SourceForge."

Comments

More free games!

[TakeMyName]

We Need more free games now a days. Great Work!

Re:More free games!

[SnAzBaZ]

Why on earth would someone want todo this when you can download a pirate copy of your favourite commerical RTS for free! ;)

Oh wait...

Re:More free games!

[nomadic]

Nothing like a 10 year old game to bolster the reputation of OSS.

mmmmm tasty

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds deliscious....cant wait

GOOD!

[Anonymous Coward]

woohoo, first post...um to stay on topic i like me them RTS thingies...

So the engine's out...

[ringbarer]

But where are the games? I presume there's a few projects on the go, but which one would people recommend as a good introduction to the engine?

Good as Starcraft?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's as good as Starcraft, I'll be impressed!

How long before Vivendi sues

[Aexia]

for circumventing their fun-generation process by bypassing the purchase of their products? Releasing something for free? Why they're practically thieves!

Re:How long before Vivendi sues

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop bitching about your karma problems. Once you realize that it's for the benefit of the reader and not the poster, hopefully you'll change your sig to something meaningful.

Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[geoffsmith]

Let Tigert loose on that game and it would be great. FreeCiv could also use a graphic overhaul. Unfortunately geek and graphic artist do not often go hand in hand. Even if we had one graphic artist who could come up with a decent isometric tileset, it might be possibly to recycle that tileset between games like FreeCraft and FreeCiv.

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[raahul_da_man]

We do have some decent graphics for Freeciv. There is the Cevo tileset, which looks quite good. Head
and shoulders above the rest.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[nonos]

No ! A ascii version is all what we need !

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[ciryon]

There are really good graphic artists in the open source community. Just take a quick look at KDE Look and you'll see what I mean.

Would be cool if any of these talented guys wanted to help out with a open source RTS game. Then it would surely look as good as commercial ones.

Ciryon

Re: Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Black Parrot]

> We do have some decent graphics for Freeciv. There is the Cevo tileset, which looks quite good. Head and shoulders above the rest.

Unfortunately, the consensus is that Cevo contains copyrighted material that would be illegal to distribute with Freeciv.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is ugly tho...Gnome gfx have always owned.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye. Dat be true.

KDE icons have always been confusing. The home icon is the worst... the door looks like it's protruding from the house - simply bizarre

KDE3 is better, but they still need to grow beyond their tonka stage. There's a style interia to overcome.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Morgahastu]

OpenSource projects will probably never attain the commercial level of art that comes with commercial games. Sure you can have a couple dozen people submitting great images but they could all be of a different style and not work well together. Thats exactly the problem in FreeCiv, the graphics are but ugly and none of them go together. Some are at different views! You need a structure, you need a lead artist who will determine the style and you need people working for him.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[tzanger]

Even if we had one graphic artist who could come up with a decent isometric tileset, it might be possibly to recycle that tileset between games like FreeCraft and FreeCiv.

There seem to be plenty of great graphics people in the OSS world. You only need to look at kde-look.org or themes.freshmeat.net. The default icons that come with kde are quite good and BeOS had some incredible isometric icons.

I think there are plenty of graphics people who want to participate in OSS but don't know really where to go or what to do. Nabbing some of them for FreeCiv would be a good idea, IMO.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[jrincayc]

The thing is KDE-Look needs far fewer graphics. FreeCraft needs about 60 different views of each unit. There are maybe 40 units so a complete set of graphics probably requires 2400 or so drawings. This can be somewhat simplified by creating 3d models of the units, but still each animation requires lots of work to make it look smooth and realistic.

Compared to two years ago the graphics have improved greatly. Most of them were non-existant or poor quality. The current push is for trying to get any graphics for all the units and buildings. At somepoint this will be done and then quality will take first priority.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao, theres a bit of a difference between 3d models(even if just setup as 60 or so 2d renders) and a gui..lol

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[JAVAC THE GREAT]

Actually, if you've looked at the screenshots, it's not just the units that need work, it's the tileset and even the GUI itself. I swear it would look twice as good if they would just fix the bottom panel too look like something other than the blurry greyscale mess that it is.

Re:Looks Great, Needs Graphic Artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, and exactly what does BeOS icons have to do with the OSS world?

What hobbyists can do

[ObviousGuy]

Take a look at this screenshot and tell me that hobbyists can't make games with as much quality and well-done graphics as the pros.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha... I guess its true... You get what you pay for!
-James

Re:What hobbyists can do

[syrinx]

tell me that hobbyists can't make games with as much quality and well-done graphics as the pros.

Um, okay. Well, I can't tell quality from a screenshot, obviously, and I won't contradict you there (mmm... Nethack...) but as for graphics, that screenshot looks about 10 years old. *shrug*

I know graphics aren't really the measure of how good a game is, but you can't stand there and say that 'hobbyist' games have just as good graphics as professional games. Well, you can, but I won't believe you. Not without proof anyway.

I really wish I had artistic talent enough to volunteer for some of these projects that have great gameplay etc but just need overhauling in the graphics department. But I don't, so.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that engine looks like (censored). I dont even know why this is being posted on Slashdot... people make engines like that all the time, with much better quality. What a waste of time.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really very sorry, but graphically speaking I think that screenshot sucks. On the bottom-half, the image on the background doesn't tile very well, and the screen-layout on the top-half doesn't exactly compensate for that.

Personally, I would describe this screenshot as functional, nothing more. Or, to be more precise: There's room for improvement :)

However, kudos to the team. I think they've done a very nice job.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[red5]

I know graphics aren't really the measure of how good a game is, but you can't stand there and say that 'hobbyist' games have just as good graphics as professional games. Well, you can, but I won't believe you. Not without proof anyway.

The post was sort of a softcore troll. He was being sarcastic get it. :)

In the grand scheme of thing it's better then goatcx I guess.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

The game was made to work with the actual Warcraft2 data files, the free artwork is just there for people who don't want to buy War2.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Jorrit]

Also check out the art work at http://www.planeshift.it
This is an Open Source game. It is still in the early stages of development (just released their second tech demo a week ago) but the artwork is really very good IMHO.

Greetings,

Re:What hobbyists can do

[jukal]

Yeah, it seems like back in the days of Ultima VI, or maybe VII. But I quess the beauty will come, if the engine proves good.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[ozzimark]

But you must understand, when you go out and buy a game, you expect it to look good, they had a lot of people working on the development, and they all get paid some good money. But when you make a game, you don't expect the same quality out of it, you just get the thrill of making it yourself, that comensates for the apparent lack of other necessities in the game.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you make a game, you don't expect the same quality out of it, you just get the thrill of making it yourself, that comensates for the apparent lack of other necessities in the game.

Yes, but what happens when a game looks incredibly sub-par compared to its 1996 commercial counterpart?

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

This screenshot looks state-of-the-art -- for about 10 years ago.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same deal with "FreeCiv" -- why anyone would play that buggy ugly piece of crap when they can buy honest-to-goodness Civilization II for $10 and play it under their ubiquitous Windows dualboot or Wine beats the hell out of me.

Maybe this stuff is fun for the developers to hack on, but "advocating" it is like asking people to eat a turd sandwich. Stick to what you are good at, kids.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Good LORD that's ugly. This is 2002. I'd return a game as defective if I bought it and it looked like that.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Anonymous Coward]

These particular hobbyists haven't made a game with as much quality and well-done graphics as the pros.

That's the best I can do.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[Durindana]

Ummmm - that screenshot looks like ass. There, I just told you.

Re:What hobbyists can do

[kesuki]

Hobbyists can meet the quality of modern games easily, almost every modern commercial game I've played has crashed on me, outside of id software games.
As far as 'well done' graphics goes, that too can be matched, however, to get that kind of artwork quality. However, that picture is basically only a hair better than Warcraft II. A quite old game, as anyone who's been waiting for 7 years for Warcraft III can tell you. However, I was as a hobyist working on graphics for an RPG that would have had better 2-d graphics than any commercial game, except the project fell apart.
Of course, RPGs moved to 3-d real-time rendered polygons with pre-renedered backgrounds, so there wouldn't have been any parallel, until bladur's gate. And I was working on those level of graphics in 96, as a hobbyist.
The problem is that hobbyists move on, and the ones that stick to it, don't really care that they aren't on the cutting edge.

BTW

[ObviousGuy]

Are those little faces various representations of RMS? I'm serious!

Re:BTW

[Decimal]

Are those little faces various representations of RMS? I'm serious!

They're pictures of CowboyNeal.

OpenIsoTiles?

[ringbarer]

That sounds like a great idea. Although wouldn't games like FreeCiv and FreeCraft have a different scale, thus making it tricky to design something that works for both?

Either way, has there been any progress towards making a Free-To-Use (Add your fave license to taste here, IANAL) tileset library?

And if not, would anyone like one? I'm crap at programming but I can knock up some graphics for starters.

Re:OpenIsoTiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, an iso tilset is gonna be the same scale always(w = h*2), just have to scale it larger or smaller, so make the large one then scale it down to keep resolution.

Screen shots link.

[red5]

It looks to me like it's a complete game screen shots. Because it's opensource you can take the engine and build a game with it if you REALLY want to.

Re:Screen shots link.

[JAVAC THE GREAT]

Those graphics are really bad though. I know, programmer art and all, but this project seems pretty popular -- couldn't they get some decent artists to help?

Re:Screen shots link.

[red5]

Those graphics are really bad though. I know, programmer art and all, but this project seems pretty popular -- couldn't they get some decent artists to help?

I agree. If you can do any better I'm sure your more than welcome to give it a try :)

Re:Screen shots link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately it also looks like the graphics are really, really badly drawn too. Kind of a shame :/

Oh dear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it, this makes the original Warcraft look good.

Can't wait, but...

[bonch]

I can't wait to see what is produced with this, but I really hope we don't start seeing a bunch of Warcraft/C&C/Starcraft clones (sadly, I know we will).

I'd much rather see something fresh and new, with its own identity. A whole new game with its own units, storyline, game world, and so forth.

Otherwise, people trying out some human/orc game called "FanCraft" will just note how it looks like a lame ripoff of Warcraft and go back to Battle.net. But if there's something new and innovative, there would be a reason to stay and play it, and you might just have a "killer app" on your hands.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Drakin]

Exaclly... I'm hopeing someone manages to put together a good game that has more focus on strategy than "Build and swarm"... difficult to do, but, it should be possible.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Decimal]

I'd much rather see something fresh and new, with its own identity. A whole new game with its own units, storyline, game world, and so forth.

Sounds good. What have you come up with?

Re:Can't wait, but...

[krmt]

While I also like the idea of having a fresh and new idea, I don't think that should in any way block a project like this. Warcraft and Starcraft are still fun games, and there's no reason at all why there shouldn't be a high quality free engine to make them.

Just because something isn't new and exciting doesn't mean it's not fun. FPS's are essentially Wolf3D rehashed over and over again, but they are still fun for many people. Computer RPG's like Baldur's Gate are rehashes of old tabletop gaming systems, but they're still fun. And yes, even ancient games like chess still manage to be very worthwhile, even though they're neither fresh or new.

I'm personally hoping that someone decides to be really bold and take a lot of the original ideas for Warcraft III that got scrapped and make a game that includes them. RPG and adventure elements in an FPS would be a very good thing, and now some great tools are out there to do it.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[MisterBlister]

I'm personally hoping that someone decides to be really bold and take a lot of the original ideas for Warcraft III that got scrapped and make a game that includes them. RPG and adventure elements in an FPS would be a very good thing, and now some great tools are out there to do it.

Eh? It took them this many years to get the engine up to the Warcraft II stage... Its not like you can go and implement those Warcraft III features in a weekend with this engine...It would require years more effort by multiple coders....I won't even get into the art requirements..this is just on the coding side.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[krmt]

I'm not saying it's a weekend project, or even an easy one. But it's definitely a possibility for someone who's inclined to do it. Just because a project can take a long time doesn't mean that it'll never get done.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Hundred Years War for something different. It's not free, but it does includes a wargames handbook that is.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Stonehand]

There's always the TBS classic Xconq. Unfortunately, although the engine appears to be quite flexible (supply lines, unit regeneration, zones of control, stacking rules, different combat models, et al), the AI (at least in the most recent version) appears to be extremely fubar when it comes to concentration of force. You know the AI is weak when one can easily wipe out the AI in multiple scenarios (Gettysburg, Magnuszew, Operation Cobra, Cherbourg...) with minimal losses... from either side, first time through.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[ceswiedler]

My favorite way to play AOE with my friends is with High resources, but disallowing (by agreement) any economy--that means no mining, no chopping, no farming, no relics. So you start out with enough for one small army and a tiny city, and you have to fight with that.

It makes your spending very careful! Instead of "build the biggest things you can" you get a lot of milage out of cheap units. And you're damn careful to let units live so you can regenerate them back in the TC/Castle.

I think all of these Craft games focus too much on peons and resources.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[nusuth]

I can be reasonably happy with a starcraft clone with a clean unit AI/unit command (programmatical) interface (as opposed to original's evil script language -which actually works on strategy level.) I dislike tactical combat depended on reflexes (specifically I hate microing magic users) but with the original SC there is no other way. If you are slow with manipulating units, you have to have a big strategic advantage to stand a chance.

I would like to have more intelligent units, so that I can concentrate on the war, rather than battles. Even with still dumb units, tactical burden may be lessened a lot. With current SC one can't give units times orders ("wait 2 seconds, then attack"), suspended orders ("nuke when orange trigger happens) conditional orders ("if you see 6-12 mutas, flee to base. Otherwise fight.") build armies (group commands follow an "and" type relationship, rather than an "or" type) or explicitly define paths (stacked waypoints are not a good way) Such a clone would allow me to write such interface extensions and perhaps some AI enhancements. I guess most of strategy types will prefer that to the original (provided a nice BNet alternative exists) perhaps including you.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[shannara256]

> ...I really hope we don't start seeing a bunch of Warcraft/C&C/Starcraft clones...

The purpose of making Freecraft (note the name? it wants to be one of the *crafts) was to clone Warcraft 2, then later C&C and Starcraft and AOE and so on. The people behind it are good programmers, and so are lazy (?). Instead of writing a seperate engine for each game, they wrote one engine that could power all the games. It can be used for other games, ones people make up on their own, but its primary purpose is to clone the major RTS games.

Personally, I'd much rather play a free version of C&C, and be able to play with anyone, on any platform, regardless of whether they own the original game, in high-res goodness, instead of fighting Windows or WINE to show the modem I have on IRQ 6, COM 7 to an old DOS game who has (well, had) to support it directly.

(sorry 'bout the rant... I'm really looking forward to the C&C clone, as you may've picked up)

Re:Can't wait, but...

[zCyl]

I'm hopeing someone manages to put together a good game that has more focus on strategy than "Build and swarm"

Yes, and then they could call it "Warcraft II", the game this was modeled after. Granted, it IS possible to build and swarm in WC2, but if you try that strategy in the company of good players, you will be crushed. A really good game will permit the elementary strategies, and they will work, but will be balanced ever so slightly to the strategical side such that a player who chooses a more complicated strategy and executes it correctly will always defeat the elementary strategy.

That was the whole reason I liked and played WC2. The balance was tipped in just such a manner. The learning curve was low, but the potential for complex strategy interaction was high.

Well, I looked at the screenshot and

[Aexia]

Hobbyists can't make games with as much quality and well-done graphics as the pros.

At least not this particular hobbyist. No offense, it's far better than what I could do, but let's not oversell things here.

Re:Well, I looked at the screenshot and

[nagora]

but let's not oversell things here.

Well, it's not for sale, so let's not undersell it either!

TWW

[OFFTOPIC] StumbleUpon...

[Kynde]

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]

Have you actually read their license? I suggest you do and reconcider it's use. The idea is great, but...

Re:[OFFTOPIC] StumbleUpon...

[geoffsmith]

The license has no more stringent terms than the Google Toolbar.... I suggest you do a comparison. Is there something in there in particular that bothers you?

The license is designed to prevent others from commercially exploiting the code, and to disclaim liability over whatever evil uses users may find for the toolbar ;-) It's not like some sort of horrible Microsoft EULA where you're not allowed to review the product after using it.

Re:[OFFTOPIC] StumbleUpon...

[SpaceJunkie]

Offtopic- but interesting enough for me to take a look... What a nice demonstration of the natural serendipity afforded by internet access.
And to think someone likened it to a "poor mans library".

Does art work in Open-Source?

[reachinmark]

Take a look at this screenshot and tell me that hobbyists can't make games with as much quality and well-done graphics as the pros.

I think the problem is bigger and more widespread than just this screenshot. I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap. And i'm not referring to technological quality of the graphics - open source artists are not as good as professional artists. It seems that if an artist is good enough, then they won't work for free or in their spare time - unlike programmers.

Or is it just that the whole open-source concept breaks down when applied to things like art? Can you have 10 artists collaborating over the internet to produce a high-quality/professional looking product?

I'd also question the ability of user interface design to succeed - not only are the graphics awkward in products like this, but they seldom have the "slick interface" present in commercial games.

Maybe i'm shallow, but I require a minimum level of quality in the art/interface of a computer game for me to feel happy playing it. I'll be avoiding this one :)

Re: Does art work in Open-Source?

[Black Parrot]

> I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap.

So what's wrong with nethack? On my screen the symbols are drawn very clearly and elegantly.

> Or is it just that the whole open-source concept breaks down when applied to things like art?

That's an interesting question. Is it the case that programming is easier than drawing, with the result that programmers are easier to come by than artists? (If so, let's not let HR find out!)

Re: Does art work in Open-Source?

[ObviousGuy]

It's much more likely that artists (in the painting/sculpting sense) get laid on average infinity times more often than geeks. This leaves them little time to devote to creating art for its own sake.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It seems that if an artist is good enough, then they won't work for free or in their spare time - unlike programmers. "

They are not stupid, like programmers :)

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[slaida1]

Well I for one don't care about graphics if game is good, take Nethack for example.

There's so much to do other than graphics that not one commercial game has ever done at once: perfect LOS, moral checks, "everything affects everything else", gridless engine, true ballistics for ranged weapons, tens of different materials with real characteristics for penetration, explosions, resistances and combiantions of those all, hundreds of different weapons and defenses with real differences in useabilities, smoothly changing environments like from plains to forests to hills to mountains and everything between, plants in all various sizes and attributes (edible, construction material, flammable...), huge worlds wich'd take literally weeks to travel around at once, the underwater, the underterranean, the sky and the moon and and *faints*

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Lars Arvestad]

I'd also question the ability of user interface design to succeed - not only are the graphics awkward in products like this, but they seldom have the "slick interface" present in commercial games.

I am by no means a gamer. In fact, I rarely play computer games. But whenever I have actually sat down in front of a game, I have been utterly confused as to what I am actually seeing on the screen and how to make things happen. I have yet to see a "slick" user interface!

I mean, standard widgets does not seem to be used, and the designers seem to prefer using unreadable fonts in order to get as much info onto screen and/or look good/cool/ethnic/timely. Also, I have not been impressed by the use of colors to help users discern what is going on.

Am I the only one to feel this way? Or am I simply too uninformed to state my opinion? I'll admit that I have not tried a game in a couple of years, but I do look at pretty pictures on the web and in magazines once in a while.

What I am actually trying to say is that this is an area where open source could actually make an impact. While writing a game engine is hard and designing graphics is cumbersome and requires artistic skills, hashing around different fonts, widget placements, quick keys, and views could well be possible without too much expertise.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[werschi]

> I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap.

What about Tuxracer?

OpenGL does look nice if done right.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[red5]

I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap.

Actualy the games that come with KDE don't look too bad. The reasion that MOST OpenSource projects lack good art is that it's usually done by one of the programmers in his spare time.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[trollbot]

It seems that if an artist is good enough, then they won't work for free or in their spare time - unlike programmers

OSS 'programmers' don't have jobs, that's why they are OSS 'programmers', and not professional software developers.

not only are the graphics awkward in products like this, but they seldom have the "slick interface" present in commercial games

By 'slick', do you mean usable?

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[trollbot]

is it just that the whole open-source concept breaks down when applied to things like art?

Code is art. So the answer is yes, it does.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[evilviper]

I'll be avoiding this one :)

Oh, wait... You must not have heard about their 30 day money back guarantee. But you have to act right now before this offer expires.

And, just because they really want you to try this game, they'll throw in, at no additional cost, an operating system on which to play it. And even if you decide to return the game for you full refund, they'll let you keep the operating system as a free gift, just they're way of saying 'thanks' for trying the game. So ACT NOW!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[J�r�me Zago]

I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap.

Have a look at Frozen Bubble then.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Rogerborg]

• It seems that if an artist is good enough, then they won't work for free or in their spare time - unlike programmers

I'd guess that's because good art is instantly recognisable even by guys in suits. Good code is recognisable only by the absense of broken parts, and that's something that takes weeks of analysis or testing to prove.

• I require a minimum level of quality in the art/interface of a computer game for me to feel happy playing it. I'll be avoiding this one

Um, did you miss the point? The graphics are up to you. If you don't like them, you can change them. Yes, you. Not the guy standing behind you.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[jeremyp]

Noooooooooo!

Code is not art. Code is more like engineering in that you do it to perform a practical job. As a bi-product, it might have certain aesthetic qualities in much the same way that a well designed bridge is beautiful to look at.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[jacoplane]

Compared with SSX Tricky on the Xbox it does look like a pile of crap.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not say open source artists can't make high quality graphics. A quick look at some currently very popular icon themes show the complete opposite, so no quick conclusions to draw there.
However I agree that graphics in open source games often look a bit crappy.

What I think it boils down to is this:
Artists are much more emotive about their artwork than programmers are about their code. Artists want credit and appreciation for their works.

Let's take the example of icon themes.
People choose their icon themes. If there is an icon theme you like you download it, and eventually also drop the author a positive comment. In games the artist is depending on other people's work (eg a well working game engine) and his/her work won't reach the masses in the same timespan that an icon theme would. Also, project management may not always be the very good. Artists are afraid of their work being caught in a mismanaged or stagnating project.

I think that's the reason we see many highly skilled artists in the icon theme arena, but not in open source game department.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[stevey]

I'm an open source programmer - and I suck at designing graphics. This is why I asked other people to design logo's for me.

Thankfully there are capable artists who are prepared to give their work away for free, (or perhaps for recognition .. who knows?).

I have to disagree with your claim that open source games suck - picking an arbitary example Armagetron (a 3D tron game) looks great

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I *might* look at a bi-product...

Oooohhh...

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[stevey]

Wow - that's stunning; thanks for the link!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[BigJimSlade]

I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap... open source artists are not as good as professional artists

Which means you haven't seen Frozen Bubble. This game looks fabulous! If you had seen it, you (hopefully) wouldn't make sweeping generalizations about the artists in the open source community.

People, if you know any artists that have some free time, ask if they would be interested in getting involved in projects like these. Having a game under your belt, even for artists, can be a great portfolio starter to get you involved in the gaming industry.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people are not so stupid that they give their work away for free, only some programmers are that dumb.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[SA3Steve]

I think a major factor here is the difference in pay for artists and software developers. Software developers are paid much better than artists are (normally...I know there are exceptions in both directions) so they are probably more likely to give away their work for free at times. A lot of times, artists can't really afford to put a lot of time into making something that looks really nice...and then not get any money at all for it.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[MKalus]

I think the problem is that most people are simply not good artists, and when do programmers usually talk to artists? Exactly.

I admit it, I am not a programmer, I am not a graphic artists, but I am told I am a pretty decent writer (as a hobby mind you), so creating a background for a game wouldn't be all that hard, but even a good story without a halfway decent graphic wouldn't go anywhere (man do I miss text adventures).

Michael

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW I haven't seen graphics that cool since i sold my 16-bit nintendo five years ago!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh guy, those logos are crap. I've created better logos for my "Corporate Snitch Rewards Program" using Fireworks, and I have no artistic talent whatsoever.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[shuffle40]

No, that is not the point.

I hope that you are not stating that because the game is open source, that the development of quality graphics is solely up to the user.

Apply that logic to nearly every slashdot reader's quest to have open source software accepted as a mainstream commercial alternative.

"Mr. Manager, please implement this open source security solution for blah blah blah reasons, and oh, none of the security features have been set up yet. The framework is there, but it will easily take you weeks if not months to complete the rest of the setup."

Seems absurd doesn't it? Why are games any different? You want open source to succeed and compete with it's commercial counterparts, then you have to model the usability and ease of use of commercial software. Or at least come as close as possible.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

From that link:

Full-featured, colorful animated penguin eyecandy, 50 levels of 1p game, hours and hours of 2p game, 3 professional quality 20-channels musics, 15 stereo sound effects, 7 unique graphical transition effects.

You can immediately tell that the A/V in this game was done by a developer.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Glytch]

I was about to point to GLTron as a good free game with great graphics, but then I realized those graphics were already designed by professionals when Tron was made.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[nehril]

I think the reason why you dont see many "open source" artists is that programmers generally make much more money. It's ok for them to give away their time because the paychecks are there anyway.

most artists on the other hand, find it hard to make ends meet, and so find it hard to "give away" the stuff that is barely bringing in the bread anyway.

In any case, how many hardcore artists read slashdot and even know there's a need for art in any particular open source effort?

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a couple of years more and programmers will not be paid much.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't really afford the time?

They're probably getting laid.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[RaboKrabekian]

I am by no means a gamer. In fact, I rarely play computer games

While I'm not trying to attack your comment, as it is a valid point, wouldn't the above statement mean that you shouldn't be the one to judge computer game interfaces? If you're not a gamer and don't enjoy playing games, are you really the type of user that a game interface should cater to?

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a good piece of code is art, then a well-designed toilet or well-engineered automobile is art. A building is art. A circuit diagram is art.
Tell me, where does this madness end?!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[rasjani]

How about Tigert ? I know for sure that he's great artists and not just "freesoftware doodler". (I work in same company that he used to). Not to mention my companys (java)games (allright, not "opensource" but "free to to play") which look really nice for that certain genre. (Note, tigert didnt do the graphics there)

The thing is, its really easy to claim to be "artist" because you can clain "artistic freedom". But it takes a real master to please the crowd with your work. And ofcourse, its so easy to start up "doodling" in the new gimp canvas... And because of this, real good artists are hard to find.

But if you really want the proof that there are really good artists that are donating their work freely, check pretty much any pc/amiga demo..

More and more im thinking (and writing this), its just matter of channeling the efforts. Most really good artists want to do their own work and not put their efforts in some games because it might restrict their freedom. Same thing happens pretty much with coders. Or have you seen OSS coders to post "Looking for project to work with, any project will do!!" messages ? No, if they/we have an itch, it will get scratched.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

So play it because it's free. Yeah right.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

:P

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Cuthalion]

I think the biggest cause for this is that most open source games are made by one or two people. If you don't have any coders, you don't have any game. Therefore, those people tend to be coders, not musicians, visual artists, 3d modelers, or managers. It's possible, but uncommon, to be extremely good at everything. It's possible to involve more people, but that does make the whole project way more complicated and difficult.

I speak as an independant (possibly open source) game developer trying to work with an artist. Managing various resources is at least as hard as writing good code, and I have it easy in that I already know someone who's good at computer art in the right style for my game..

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Tepic]

There have been a few replies to this thread trying to explain why there seems to be little good art, compared with code. How about this for a possible answer (I know that contained within are sweeping generalisations):

• Free/Open source has not reached great penetration onto the desktop and general use, and mostly attracts programmers, heavy duty and/or highly technically literate computer users at the moment (the people for which the advantages are most relevant to).
• Artists are generally not programmers and tend not to be highly technically literate, or care excessively about the freedom of the software they use.
• There are few high quality graphics programs for Free/Open source systems.
• Artists are generally satisfied, and possibly fanatically loyal to their current desktop system. ;-)

So the set of people who are artists does not intersect by a great amount with the set of OSS/Free software users. Which could be why you see a disproportionate amount of good code, to good art.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[edbarrett]

I think the problem is bigger and more widespread than just this screenshot. I have never seen an open-source style game that didn't look like a pile of crap.

Then you haven't seen Falcon's Eye (Screenshots here).

And, at the heart of it all, it really is nethack!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[jfeasel]

Try Black & White - it has a wonderful interface. I'll admit it takes a bit of getting used to, but the game starts with a very helpful tutorial on how to navigate, and continues to help you play throughout the game.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Joel Ironstone]

He's not missing the point. I don't want to make my own game. I just want to play the game and have it look pretty. Sure I could film some sock puppets and watch them later, but really I would much prefer just sitting down and watching tv.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[snak0rific]

sponsored by mandrake? smells like professional work to me. :>

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[spectecjr]

If a good piece of code is art, then a well-designed toilet or well-engineered automobile is art. A building is art. A circuit diagram is art.
Tell me, where does this madness end?!

Oh, it comes full circle, back to those artists who think that splattering paint on paper is art, or that a solitary brick in the middle of a room is a sculpture.

Yes, a well designed toilet may be art. The well engineered car may be art. A building may be artistic (if you don't believe me, check out the Experience Music Project in Seattle -- personally, it's not my idea of good art, but there you go). A circuit diagram is indeed art.

The madness ends when you realize that art is all about evoking sensation and emotion in the viewer.

Simon

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, how about an open-source game that isn't a total rip-off of a commercial game?

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[fferreres]

I think maybe the problem is that programing a game is a different thing than either scratching and itch and also, you have no posible way of getting a revenue: no services to sell, no support, no nothing except the feeling that you contributed some fun to the masses.

So it's hard to see really good games. Remember some games cost between $5 to $50 million. That's a hole lot of money. Games must be sold at a price. A realistic price. I'd love to have contributed to Loki or maybe Transmeta. I just don't play much (nowadays).

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[MKalus]

I think the problem is different.

The problem is that in order to get a project like this done the people in charge would need to be the artists, not the programmers, and that is where I see the problem happen. Why? Because most programmers who donate time want to do what they like, not what might be needed.

You can create a good game in open source if you get people involved who know what they are doing, and by that I don't mean programmers.

Michael

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[fferreres]

Well, then then problem is not so different.

"Most programmers who donate time want to do what they like, not what might be needed."

Of course, that is a problem with part-time, volunteer open-source projects. If you are not doing something really noticeable, where everyone will remember you and thanks you, then the incentive goes down. There are exceptions, but it's not the general case.

However, some products like the kernel, Apache, MySQL are done in a really profesional manner. They are backed up by real _money_ (not a lot, but enough). And they have specific goal. For example, MySQL exists because their "contractors" asked for a solution, not for the code. And the MySQL team believed in open-sourcing it.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind paying for games or WHATEVER, as long as buying the source and able to modify it as i see fit.

There must be some way to broaden the appeal of open-source games.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, his name is 56ker, and he goes both ways.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[eshaft]

artists don't get paid shite for money anyway. why not release stuff that they've done, but never worked for clients, etc.?

maybe there's just not a good open-development, modular, artists' collaboration environment so that they can work together and get things accomplished.

-e.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuxracer is _closed source_ man!!

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[MKalus]

Let me quote a fellow writer: "Everybody has ideas, but nobody sees how much work it is to make it sound good." That was in reference to people who all have those great book ideas.

So in order to make something good and opensource it:

- Get a Projectmanager (or be one yourself)
- Get a writer to create a universe / story.
- Get an artist to do the graphics.
- Get a musician to do the music.
- Get Programmers to do the Game Engine.

Yes, it is not a lot of glory in programming a game (unless you develope THE killer 3D Engine), and in the end the programmer does not really have a shot to call, but that is the only way you get a GOOD game done. It's about the atmosphere and not about the beauty of the code because nobody outside of the programming world really cares about it.

Michael

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[I. M. Bur]

Is it possible that you are talking about Morrowind? :)

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good response. +1 Artful.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...Didnt you forget something...Namely, the game itself..Everything you mention is technology and nothing to do with Games.

THe open source games are made by Programmers in the main who love technical challenges. Games are not about technical challenges. Hence why the only decent (and I use that word liberally) open source games you will see are copies of commercial games in which the gameplay is already mapped out and hence implementation is the only issue.

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Blue23]

Code is not art. Code is more like engineering in that you do it to perform a practical job. As a bi-product, it might have certain aesthetic qualities in much the same way that a well designed bridge is beautiful to look at.

Amusingly, I'd take your example and use it to say coding CAN BE art. Some coding is the same as those painted bowls of fruit and flowers that some people hang on their walls. It's functional and decorative, but it isn't art.

But go look at a well designed cathedral, and see how architecture really is art. Coding can be the same. Art does not happen to only non-functional things, anything CAN be art. All it has to be is beatiful, or thought provoking, or ...

=Blue(23)

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

You call Mandrake professional?

Re:Does art work in Open-Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

This one isn't too bad. The only one of the bunch I liked.

KDE-Look

[tunah]

Link was broken.

KDE Look

license

[cyborch]

I would have like to have it released under the LGPL license so I could use it w/o GPL'ing my game.Would the LGPL license not be more appropriate for a library of this kind?

AFAIK I cannot write a game, which is not GPL'ed and uses a GPL'ed library. Is that not so? In order for me to release a game that is (for example) free to use on top of an open source OS but costs money if used on a proprietary OS (read: windows users should pay - the rest of us should go free!)

I could convince my employer to start making a game that is free for non-windows users, but I would be unable to convince him to go ahead and make a totally free game - he wants to earn some money off it (and could still be convinced to ignore the OSS users).

So, for this to be usable for me I would like to have a less restrictive license on this project

Re:license

[ObviousGuy]

Build the component as a dynamic linked library and release those changes. Use the new library in your closed source app with no fear from the GPL gestapo.

With the library safely locked into its own binary, you don't have to worry about the code infecting your code.

You do have to release the code to the modified library, though.

Re:license

[cyborch]

From the GPL license:
If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission.

Does this not include linking to the program?

Re:license

[ObviousGuy]

Nope. At no point does your source code touch their source code, if you link at runtime instead of compile time.

The key phrase here is into other free programs. 1) Your program is not Free (in the meaning that the FSF means the word) and 2) at no point are your binaries mixed with their binaries. Theirs are completely self-contained within the DLL binary.

You don't even need to distribute your code with their library. Distribute them separately and there can be no confusion regarding licenses at all.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

umm what about the part of the license referring to a "derived" work. I would think that building their code in such a way that it requires those dlls would make it a derived work. Isn't this why the lgpl exists?

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. Only if you don't include any of there headers.

Frankly though this kind of GPL avoidance scheming should be shot down in flames, and the perp's chestnuts slowly roasted on an open fire. If the authors wanted to support closed-source development *they* would have *chosen* LGPL.

Re:license

[jeremyp]

The developers wrote it, it's their intellectual property. I think they should be allowed to impose whatever conditions they like on people who wish to take advantage of their hard work.

If you want to make money out of this, I'll point out that for the average Windows user it is a long way from having the source code to having a compiled and running binary. Just obtaining a working dev environment for Windows is not cheap.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you link this against has to GPLed. (Ignore that stupid person who thought that by creating a library you avoid it, you cannot it's still a derived work). However, there is nothing that requires you to release your datafiles. So, if
you want to release commercial game using this, you
basically just release some data files, which can
be though to be separate from the engine. Looking at their screenshots what they'd need is commercial version of this with decent looking graphics.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

You are only allowed to do what the license offers.
You are assuming that you have permission to link because you are not asked to write to the author for permission.
Um no.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Get on going.
You got copyright on all material you make! Maybe the engine is open source, but the content (graphic/sound/storyline) isn't.
And this project EXACTLY shows that a good game engine doesn't make a game.
Go make your game with this engine, and you can sell the content the way you want.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Now go tell your boss that, and make a great game we can buy.

Re:license

[kubrick]

I would have like to have it released under the LGPL license so I could use it w/o GPL'ing my game.

"For those concerned about the 'virality' of the GPL, a suggestion: Write Your Own Damn Code."

Re:license

[halfnerd]

You don't have to license your data; graphics, levels, sounds, etc. And if you hacked this engine to include a scripting language, you could remake most of the game, like AI in the scripting language, and that would not either have to be licensed under the GPL

Re:license

[j7953]

Nope. At no point does your source code touch their source code, if you link at runtime instead of compile time.

While this means you're not required to redistribute the game under the GPL, you're also not licensed to redistribute the FreeCraft engine with your game -- unless you redistribute the game under the GPL.

From section 2 of the GPL:

"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program."

I.e. you may redistribute your game under any license you want, but it must not include the FreeCraft engine unless the license you want is the GPL.

I have read an article written by a lawyer who claimed that for libraries it would be better to use the LGPL because it is questionable whether the above section would hold up in court while the LGPL's terms for the redistribution of works using the library were more clear. This was in reference to German copyright law, though. Also note that IANAL, this is not legal advice, and you ignore that section of the GPL at your own risk. Even better, don't ignore it, because even if it were legal, it is probably not what the authors want you to do.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming that you have permission to link

So, does this mean that all programs that link to kde/gnome libraries have to be GPL? How about programs that require glibc?

Re:license

[johns98]

Exact! You pay us using our code by releasing your code changes to the public.

But your graphics / sounds / videos / story / scripts can have an own license. FreeCraft can be configured with text files and scripting (in scheme).

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

If you take KDE for example, it uses Qt. Qt is available on GPL. The whole business model of Qt is that if you want to build GPL software out of it, then you do it within the GPL framework. If you want to build commercial non-GPL software out of Qt, you must purchase a license.

I don't know what the policy is for KDE, but that's irrelevant since KDE is using Qt, so you are toast if you want to build commercial non-GPL out of KDE, for sure, you must pay at the very least for Qt.

As for Gnome, I don't know, but it would seem to me that if you are using it for GPL software, you are safe... but for everything else, you should call the gnome foundation and inquire.

Basically, never assume that you just can pick a library of the web and use it the way you want. By default, you can never use code you found on the web, especially not for commercial gain. You must have some kind of agreement with the author.

Re:license

[SLi]

So, does this mean that all programs that link to kde/gnome libraries have to be GPL? How about programs that require glibc?

For KDE, yes.

For Gnome and glibc, no, because they are not GPL, but LGPL, which permits linking them into a non-free program on some conditions (mainly they must be separate so that everybody who wants to change the LGPL library and run the binary with the modified library can do so. Using a shared library (.so or .dll) does fine).

Actually, most of the base KDE libraries are LGPL too so you can develop non-free programs for KDE too, but in that case you'll have to obtain a commercial Qt license from Trolltech.

Did this answer your questions?

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Sez you. You seem to be parroting a bunch of RMS interpretation of the GPL and not what the (untested) licence actually says.

Particularly, there's no bit about headers in there, and lots of languages (Java for one) don't even need headers to link code. Even with plain old C, you could reverse engineer (a practice fully supported by the FSF) the interface with no copyright infringement.

The fact is that the FSF wants to have their cake and eat it to, so they've kept the GPL purposly vauge on this topic. Link with MFC? OK by them. Link with QPL Qt? Bad Bad Evil Bad.

If Microsoft copyrighted an API and imposed restrictive licencing on it, everyone would be up in arms. But that's exactly what RMS Lore says that the GPL does with regard to libraries.

Re:license

[Anonymous Coward]

Course, now that it's *their* hard work, they're all concerned about people ripping it off. Too bad for all the programmers who put all that hard work into the original.

Re:license

[cyborch]

Did this answer your questions?

Yes it did indeed answer my question, thank you. I'm sorry to hear that i won't be able to use this library and therefore is less likely to be paid for making a game. I'll just have to continue making a living off other proprietary code and hoping that I someday might be making a game.

Re:license

[cyborch]

These are very good points and I will be taking them to my employer in the hopes of getting to make a game!

And I would very much like to release any further development on the project to the general public. But would my work not still be a derivative work if it was build on the FreeCraft scripting language, and therefore forced to be under the GPL?

Re:license

[Prior Restraint]

One option I didn't see anyone suggest is to contact the developers and see if they'd be willing to offer you a different license. For example, maybe they'd let you license it under LGPL for a fee.

Lack of Mac

[building7]

Even though it says on the main page that it supports Mac OS as well as OS X, no files. Go to sourceforge, no files. Has BeOS, which is cool'n all, but if they say they have stuff for macs, then maybe they should actually have it. Did I miss an obvious link somewhere?

Re:Lack of Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

often the builds for other operating systems take a couple of days. You could go right ahead and build it your self but often only one or two of the programers have "OS BLA" so you have to wait till they have time to build and optimise it for the OS. Sometime they know it will run on "OS BLA" but none of them have that OS so there isn't anything they can do apart from hope that someone else will build it and realease ie

Re:Lack of Mac

[Tyreth]

Just because it says it supports Mac OS and OS X does not mean that it has binaries. Maybe it just means that the current source code will compile and run on Mac OS & OS X?

Re:Lack of Mac

[znu]

The README says it requires X Windows on OS X. If they ever hope to get a serious number of Mac users using it, they're going to have to fix that. And they're going to need to wrap it up in a nice OS X application bundle, so you can just download, decompress, drag to /Applications, and double-click to run.

Re:Lack of Mac

[Swumpy]

Don't worry, I'm sure they don't care enough about OS X to do all that work just so they can get a few Mac users.

Nice...

[WWWWolf]

I certainly hope, though, that the Warcraft II datafile compatibility is there. The Debian version only seemed to support the free data files that had many, many missing pieces.

I could have tolerated that, but I just thought it was a really big shame they couldn't get Bill Roper to do the human voices - the sounds weren't anywhere near the intent of WCII =)

Wasn't CS art and levels done that way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't CounterStrike art and levels developed like this?
Even though CounterStrike isn't opensource, it is free and was initially created in the developers free time.

How do you play this game?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think, installed really easily, but how the heck do I play?? :)

Are there any docs about that tell me about the game play?

souce code?

[zozzi]

[snip] The engine can be used to build C&C, WC2, SC and AOE-like real-time strategy (RTS) games. It successfully runs under Linux, BSD, BeOS, MacOS/X, MacOS/ Darwin and MS Windows. Souce code and binaries are available from

Souce code? Yum yum!

Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[micahjd]

I'm a big fan of Blizzard games, so I've been keeping an eye on the Freecraft project for a while. However, while many people have already noted that the graphics need work, IMHO bad quality sound and music are an even bigger problem.

The first thing most players will notice upon starting the game is the IMHO pretty cheesy MIDI music in the background. If there's no good music, leave the background music out completely, or give the user an option to point the game at some MP3s..

That said, are there any musicians willing to help the open source cause? Musicians are far less common than good Gimp artists.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[Anonymous Coward]

it does...
I just took a quick look at their site, and you can play MP3/OGG background, or from music cd... no more excuses now ;-))

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I noticed this too. It's not even a matter of bad sounds, it's about bad *quality* sound. I've been seriously considering borrowing the Good Microphone from a friend and getting a good sound set in there.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[lambsonic]

Yeah, great music is more addictive than cool graphics, although it is much more difficult to produce. Why not use musical works that are already in the public domain? I am sure that I could make a lot of good loopable MIDIs extracted from Bach's "Art of Fugue". Of course, I would love to submit my own loopable MIDIs, but I have always felt that there is already so much stuff that is perfect for gaming. Baroque music is great because it doesn't require a strict instrumentation, and is therefore very "cross-platform". Portability is an art whether it is in computers or music.

I am definitely going to look more into this.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[micahjd]

Part of the problem is that MIDI music generally sucks for gaming. Not everyone has a kick-ass wavetable synthesizer on their card, or a driver with software wavetable turned on.

Sure MP3/Ogg music is too big or too hard to produce.. but whatever happened to using good ol' Amiga-style MOD music in games? MODs are similar in theory to MIDIs, except that they contain wavetable information in the file, so they always sound about the same on any system. They've been popular in the demoscene for quite a while, and even games like Unreal Tournament use MODs for their soundtrack.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[lambsonic]

I think that we wouldn't have such diffulty if the MIDI standard were more discrete. I would like to see a new draft that defines patches by aural primitives rather than by instrument. Look at how game developers deal with video. Games use visual primitives all the time, and it seems to have worked pretty well. If OpenGL were designed like MIDI, you would have to draw all of the monsters out of trees and rocks, and the weapons would never look the same.

MOD could be used as a decent default until the standard is adopted, kinda like Quake's software rendering. You could even texture aural primitives just like in video. I don't mean like soundfonts, but more like envelopes, reverb, and other meaningful effects.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[WWWWolf]

At least in last version of FreeCraft FCMP data I tried, the music was in .mod format =)

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[zeno_2]

Well, I am kinda hoping that the actual engine behind Freecraft is what most people are working on. A lot of gaming companies out there license an engine and create the art/music/sound for it, and maybe modify the engine a bit to accomidate anything special in their game. Look at the Quake3 engine, or the Unreal engine, sure, both those companies have games to back that engine up that look great, but when another game company license that engine from them, they are taking a large part out of the development process and getting straight to the 'goods' you could say.

Now, i don't know that much at all on how games work internally, but I would hope that Freecraft would support better looking tilesets and higher quality music. If thats all the engine can work with (and I hope I put that correctly, and im referring to the 'outdated' graphics and sound) then id say they have some problems =P..

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[deadl0ck]

I'm a part time musician with a nice Ensoniq KB. I saw the info on the front page a few weeks ago about wanting musicians. But alas, Not link or readily available info. I poked around a bit, found some info on sound samples, then gave up.

Are they really looking for music or what?

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[nalfeshnee]

right you are. anyone with a bit of a background in classical music knows that there are piles of stuff waiting out there that most of the game-playing world hasn't heard. most of the *world* in fact. midifying some of it would be an excellent idea.

i wonder if there isn't already a companion project to lilypond or mutopia for MIDI or other simple versions of classical tunes..?

nalfy.

Re:Nifty engine, but sound and music need work

[Anonymous Coward]

Try The Classical Music Archives. Almost 19000 classical MIDIs.

What opensource games need:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) _Graphics_. They need better graphics! Why do 98% of opensource game projects look far worse than Sim City and Castles on my 1980s Amiga? Programmers tend to have very poor graphic & ui design skills - they shouldn't have to do this work when there are so many wonderful art designers out there.
2) Co-ordination. There is too much chaos out there. There is no kernel.org or kde.org as such (ok, I know there are a few good newssites, but it isn't the same).
3) To co-op Mac users. Cross platform Linux/Mac OSX games are needed to bring the art design crowd. These guys more often than not don't use Linux. It isn't that they don't want to help out, just they are out of the loop.
4) To increase production and be taken seriously. Linux needs games more than 15 different webbrowsers to bring more users. More opensource games for the platform will also make commercial companies take it far more seriously for releasing their own games on it. It is a ton harder to get programmer interest for a oss game project than anything else, I've tried and couldn't catch anyones attention so had to dump the project.
5) To have clearly structured and well designed games. I think most projects have been more about the joy of programming (nothing worng with that!, but) than the endgame.
6) To aim higher. Most game projects are making things of the scale seen in the commercial game industry in the early/mid 1990s. Projects of the scale and quality of games from at least several years later is needed. 5 big projects is better than 100 small ones which make yet another version of tic tac toe.

I think there needs to be some kind of opensource games initiative. And one which is taken seriously. There are too many dead sites like http://opengames.sourceforge.net unfortunately.

Re:What opensource games need:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just close the projekt, hire 20 people and make it a real game that people will actually buy?

Re:What opensource games need:

[connorbd]

We do need more graphic artists, but I have to make a comment about #3:

YES! YES! YES!

See, here's the thing. The Mac could have been a great gaming platform; a lot of developer houses wanted to do Power Mac work in the beginning. As it is, we get good games, but not enough of them. The game world is still Windows-based, and probably will be for quite some time to come.

The situation is this: the Mac needs these games as badly as the Linux world does.

I also agree with #6 though I might point out that some of these games don't even reach that high...
/Brian

Re:What opensource games need:

[nalfeshnee]

what opensource games have that commercial ones don't:

-- NetHack
-- Angband and its million and 1 variants.

oh, you were talking about games with a graphical interface. graphics ain't everything though :=)

nalfy

I disagree.

[cbr372]

Yes, it's true that a fresh, new game could be produced with an engine like this, and that would be a great thing. But...

A WarCraft clone could be very cool. With the added ability to hack the source and add your own content to the game, it would be awesome. Ultra-customizable games - that might also be a killer app.

Worldforge

[Anonymous Coward]

Another similar project maybe worth notice is Worldforge. Also some of their screenshots seem to have quite cool graphics.

Re:Worldforge

[codeguy007]

World forge is an attempt to create an Opensource MMORPG and has fairly limited play. (You compete at raising pigs). Yes the graphics may be better but the game play is somewhat limited.

Make your own game

[nuggz]

If you want to make a game make one, just don't expect people to help you for nothing.

If you want to build on their GPL software project, accept the fact that you are working on a GPLd product.

Don't bitch and whine that you're not getting something for nothing.

Re:Make your own game

[cyborch]

If you want to make a game make one

I want to make a game, but I also want to be able to pay rent and eat food. Therefore I would like to see an LGPL'ed library that I would be able to convince my boss to let me work with. In using LGPL'ed libraries, corporate business would actively fund the further development of those libraries. This is a Good Thing(tm). Having GPL'ed libraries that force my company to keep using proprietary code means less corporate funding for open source software. This is not a Good Thing(tm).

Re:Make your own game

[nuggz]

By using proprietary code instead of the GPL code that is available will drive up the relative cost of proprietary project.

This is a good thing, when GPL becomes the cost effective way to license code more code will be free.

Re:Make your own game

[BadmanX]

You are going to have a damn tough time convincing this crowd that the GPL isn't good for games. Trust me, I've been trying for a while.

"Write your own damn game!" Right, and duplicate massive amounts of effort that has already been locked (that's right, LOCKED) into GPL game libraries. I want to write a GAME, not an engine. I don't see why, just because I want to keep the option of selling my game open, I have to start from absolutely nothing.

But that's the way it is in GPL-land. Nobody ever talks about how the GPL actually makes you LESS free than other licenses - how it limits your options.

Thank GOD for the SDL. Now if somebody would just do an LGPL 3D engine...

Erm...

[drsquare]

I don't mean to be negative or anything, but that screenshot is terrible. It stinks of amateurism. The text is awkward to read. The buildings look lobsided and skewed. All that grey stuff at the bottom is just a complete mess. The buildings don't look like they fit, but like they're merely floating above the ground. The little icons at the top are hard to see.

You could have at least chosen a better screenshot than that.

Graphics...

[Shade, The]

Many people here seem to be commenting on the graphics of the screenshots. Um... hello? This is a game engine - a device for driving games. Just because you don't like the test graphics doesn't mean that it's a bad program. Furthermore, there are quite a few Opensource games with good graphics, like Vegastrike or Race or Armagetron to name three.

Re:Graphics...

[myspys]

you must be kidding?

Re:Graphics...

[SpaceJunkie]

Well said. Anyway - ever notice how nobody really comments on the sound quality of a game?
But seriously- like Shade said- Screen Shots are meaningless to an engine. Fair enough it may come with a basic tileset renderer(I assume for now) but you may able to plug in a different graphics engine.
What I am interested in is the level of networking/multiplayer support, tech trees, unit complexity, scripted storylines for campaigns(single or multiplayer co-op and competative).
I think I may download this and have a good long look - its far too interesting to pass up.
Oh another important one is how modular/well written the code is. I have spent to many hours writing games with hacky/dodgy code. The kind of code which could be entered into the Obfuscated C contest(someelse will provide a link I am sure) really should not be submitted in open source projects - that kind of defeats any collaborative gain.

Re:Graphics...

[Rogerborg]

• Many people here seem to be commenting on the graphics of the screenshots. Um... hello? This is a game engine

OK, let's comment on the engine. It's not a "game" engine, it's a "Warcraft 2" engine. A cursory glance at the many hardcoded rules, behaviours, actions, messages and object types verifies this. There's nowhere (that I can see) to add behaviour hooks; you have to expand or modify the code. Modifying it to act as a DuneII or Starcraft clone, for example, would be a substantial rewrite. That means that when people add and submit their own rulesets and object types, the code base will bloat and/or fork.

A far better long term solution would have been a thin and generic object handling and UI framework, with plugins for UI, object behaviour and world rules. OK, I know the goal always was to produce a Warcraft clone, but in that case, the developers shouldn't claim that it's a generic RTS engine, because it simply isn't.

All that said, it's a well organised and very readable and clean piece of code. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning the basics of how to write a game. But keep in mind what was done wrong: too much integration of engine and behaviour (leading to lots of special cases for what should be generic behaviour, see the network "Send..." code, and the enumerated missile types), and (IMHO) loads of "object" manipulation in C, when C++ would have been more efficient.

Oh, and please remember to use a Unicode string table and not hardwired ASCII English strings. You'll save yourself a hell of a lot of trouble in the long run, especially if you get Deutsch translations done early on. German tends to be rather long winded, and doesn't abbrev. well. ;-)

Re:Graphics...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...German is long winded...Very much so.

Anyway, I plan to mess around with this when I get Linux installed in a day or two, and I do have some sort of graphical skills. So, I could work on the graphics a bit and try to make them acceptable to those who do want a good-looking game. Of course, NetHack is great fun, and its graphics are nonexistent...

Re:Graphics...

[mikeee]

It's not a "game" engine, it's a "Warcraft 2" engine. A cursory glance at the many hardcoded rules, behaviours, actions, messages and object types verifies this. There's nowhere (that I can see) to add behaviour hooks; you have to expand or modify the code. Modifying it to act as a DuneII or Starcraft clone, for example, would be a substantial rewrite.

Yeah, and Linux wasn't originally intended to be portable to non-386; decent code that works is the key, the rest can follow.

Re:Graphics...

[SuperLiquidSex]

But linux is linux across all the platforms, it behaves the same(mostly). He's mentioning the fact that this has to behave the same without massive rerights and therefore it's not really a generic engine.

Re:Graphics...

[zCyl]

A cursory glance at the many hardcoded rules, behaviours, actions, messages and object types verifies this.

I read through the source a few months ago, and I agree. It was poorly designed if the intent is to be a general game engine, since the object behaviors and interactions are so specificly hardcoded into the code. If the object type is named peasant or peon, let it build a new structure. That's by no means general, and if you wanted to whip up a similar style game where knights can build their own blacksmith, then you wouldn't just be able to edit the character and building data files, you'd have to hack away at the source.

But I have faith in the future potential for FreeCraft, and I invoke the Torvalds Defense, "It works," as proof of its potential. One of the best platforms to develop a project from is a working example. It's much much easier to modify a working WC2 clone into a general game engine than it is to develop a general game engine from scratch.

It's just that now we know that no matter what happens, it isn't vaporware. It's a project with promise and a atable release that needs talented people to work on it.

No scripting engine

[plarsen]

I don't get it. When looking at the code it seems like it's not even using a scripting engine. I thought that was rule #1 to create an easy extensible strategy game.

Re:No scripting engine

[plarsen]

Sorry, I wasn't looking hard enough. There actually WAS a scripting engine there.

Do we really need Graphic Artist?

[T.i.m]

All the time since i played C&C back then I have asked myself. Why do they put so much effort into graphics?
Wouldnt it be more fun to have a red square as a tank and a blue circle as a human if we instead could hav better strategy?
Where we need good supply lines, where the distances is more acurate to the time. Where the amount of damage is more real.

What I am trying to say, I think, is wouldnt it be alot of fun with a war simulator instead of a war game? Regardless of the graphics?

Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Rogerborg]

It's 2D, it doesn't run under WinXP, it's buggy (sound keeps switching itself on, units keep disappearing), it's missing features that appeared in commercial RTS's years ago (unit queueing, and fullscreen. Hello, FULLSCREEN?).

I wrote a comparable engine using DOS4GW/allegro back in 1995, and canned it because it was obsolete back then. Seven years later, I'm not seeing any great improvements, nor any incentive to bring my commercial games development skills to this project.

This is a neat hobby project, and probably a great learning experience for the dev team, but that's about as far as it's going. I showed it to my (non-OS) coworkers and they laughed their collective asses off. One guy asked me if it was a GBA emulator, and if so, how come it sucked so much compared to Advance Wars, and I really had no answer for him.

Look, don't get me wrong. I'm an open source developer, and I support good open source project when I see them (like the Demeter terrain engine), but if it looks like a turkey, and walks like a turkey, and sounds like a turkey, then it is a turkey, and all the cross platform compatibility in the world (except for WinXP, of course) won't turn it in to an engine that anyone other than the development team would really choose to use.

Two final thoughts:

• Writing a full game that people actually choose to play is damn hard, and it's getting harder every year as expectations rise. Trying to clone a full commercial game is egotistical folly. Try something like Advance Wars, which is twice as much fun with half of the features.
• Better yet, stop living in the past. Aim a couple of years into the future (high polygon 3D) otherwise you'll lose another player or developer every time the Upgrade Fairy pays someone a visit.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

...you do realize that winXP is unsupported by choice (not because the developers don't know how to do it) ?

a lot of developers who like the gpl seem to have a profound dislike for winXP (wonder why...:o))

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

I once wrote a game, it sucked ass but that was by choice too.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Junta]

Runs under XP, the autho says it is unsupported, but it works, so basically he won't even acknowledge help for confessed XP users, but it runs fine.

Unit queuing is not there, but hell, neither did warcraft, and they are trying to recreate the feel of warcraft, not invent a wholly new game engine. I'm sure there is a more interesting game engine somehwere if you want more modern RTS features.

Fullscreen is a problem, but a tip is here:
change line 154 in sdl.c from:
(VideoFullScreen ? SDL_FULLSCREEN : 0));
to
SDL_FULLSCREEN);
and you will always have fullscreen. There is probably somewhere where that setting can be toggled, but it isn't documented well..

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Jorrit]

Even though I am the project manager of a 3D Engine (Crystal Space) I strongly object towards your critique that it is 'only a 2D game'. Good games are NOT made by graphics. Good games are made by content, storylines, addictiveness, ... Good graphics are nice and certainly a very big plus but NOT essential. And 3D graphics are certainly not essential either. Some games are simply not suitable for 3D.

I still play Nethack (and I consider it one of the best games ever) and it is only ASCII (not even 2D).

Games don't have to be 3D to be good.

Greetings,

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you by any chance Derek Smart?

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Rogerborg]

• I strongly object towards your critique that it is 'only a 2D game'. Good games are NOT made by graphics.

As implied by my praise of Advance Wars for the GBA. Please do me the courtesy of reading the whole post before replying. Incidentally, I also nethack, but that doesn't mean that I'll kid myself that Joe Player will downgrade from decent 3D or even good isometric graphics to something that looks like a refugee from the Commodore 64.

Compare for example, Stronghold, a pure 2D/isometric RTS that nearly made me mess my pants when I realised that it could handle hundreds of units, with archery volleys that looked (to me, a reenactment combat archer) absolutely flawless. Contrast with Freecraft's "PointToPoint" missiles, and see how far they have to go to catch up with the commercial standard of six months ago.

Yes, I know that I'm praising graphics and not gameplay, but in this the two go hand in hand. The tiny and painfully obviously tiled and flat world of Freecraft looks painfully primitive in comparison. I'd play Freecraft, but only if I had no other choice. I'm not going to contribute to it, because I think that it's stuck in the past, and it can't be saved bar a major rewrite, which isn't going to happen now that it's been released as stable.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Sycraft-fu]

"Games don't have to be 3D to be good."

No, but they do need to be well designed to be good, and from messing with Freecraft, I have to agree with the orignal poster that it has serious problems.

While I certianly don't feel that a game needs to be 3d, or even graphical for taht matter, ot be good it DOES need to have a good look, feel adn interface in whatever it's chosen medium is. Zork is good, despite being text, because it does text WELL. It is intiutuive to speak to (if a bit pickey at times) and the story and descriptions are good. It really feels like an interactive novel, and the text medium feels appropriate.

FreeCraft is just, well, ugly and clunky, and it has nothing to do with being 2d. There are lots of great, modern, 2d games out there. Baldur's Gate 2 and Civ 3 are my current favourites. The thing is, they both look good, and they both have good interfaces.

When you get right down to it, FreeCraft is ugly. This doesn't mean that it lacks graphical eyecandy, it means it's ugly, pure and simple. It is valid to make a game that uses simple icons and represeantsations instead of detailed graphics. I believe Army Men is a current title that does that. However this is not what FreeCraft does. It just has ugly 2d graphics that want to look Warcraftish, but don't.

There is no justification for this either. The reason older games used to have poorish quality graphics was due to system limitations. You could only work in 320x200 with 256 colours, so you had to make sacrafices. This really isn't true anymore, I have spare parts from old systems I don't even use any more that can easily handle 800x600 at full 32-bit colour.

For a good example of what's I'm talking about, look at the interface panel. It is hideous. The background is horrable, if that's the best texture they can do, they should just go with no texture at all. The font is hideous too. It looks all wrong, they are doing a drop shadow, but in white not black, which just looks wrong to us (it's a shadow, supposed to be dark). The layout is also rather poor, clumping objects together. I'm no graphic artist, but I could do a much better job on the interface panel with the slight amount of arts training I have.

What it really comes down to is that no matter what visual theme you pick for a game, it needs to look good. If you want to do a 2d overhead or iso game, fine, but you need to take the time to make it look good. Now maybe you can't, because you don't have the talent, that's fine we all have our skills and weaknesses. However in that case you need to try and find someone who does, and who can help you, and not try and make up excuses for why poor graphics are ok. Or just do the game in a non-graphical medium. Like you said, NetHack kicks and it's all ASCII (I guess it's kinda graphics, but not really).

This is important to OSS projects as well because people DO judge based on appearence. This just screams amature. Now you could ahve a really great technical engine and fun game under there, but the graphics are going to scare people off because they are so childish. It's just the way humans are, look are just about teh first thing we judge on, and often people have trouble getting past that. Espically gamers.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[I_redwolf]

Ummm, you can pry pac-man and puzzle bobble from my cold dead hands... Only after you do that can you tell me that 2D games are in the past, infact thank god for the Mame team.

People have this misconception that somehow 2D is old.. It's just a dimension, doesn't mean you can't make fun games in 2D. IMHO 3D is overrated simply because there isn't a game yet with the amount of detail you can get with 2D; at least not without extensive amounts of work and hardware; simply 3D just isn't there yet. It's being primarily used in the FPS arena, and thats where the innovation is being made ala J. Carmack. However, I think most people like a good game, 2D, 3D, reality, hop skotch, rockpaperscissors or whatever it doesn't matter.

Writing a full game that people actually choose to play is damn hard, and it's getting harder every year as expectations rise.

Someone take the engine throw in some graphics and think of a cool story line. If it's fun and challenging; you've made a game that will be played, it's that simple; don't let the above sway you, it's hard to get a good idea for a game; it's not hard to write a good game that will be played.

For the commercial gaming industry, gamers, old, new or whatever don't really want a game they can be beat in a couple of hours. What the fuck happened to the all night gaming of Mario trying to save the princess. That shit took weeks, the right timing and alot of fucking deduction. It provided a good, wholesome, quality game where you actually had to think sometimes. Can we get some more of those?

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[pohl]

If you want to do a 2d overhead or iso game, fine, but you need to take the time to make it look good...

One could finish this sencence with "...before it goes into shrinkwrap." This would make your comment sensible, because with commercial software you have the expectation that eye-candy consumers need motivation to buy. In the free software world, however, you do exactly what you have time to do, and you always release it, warts and all, so that it's available for download/play by anybody who wants to. Release early, release often. If you have high standards and don't want to touch it, that's fine. But you must understand that you sound silly telling open source projects that they "must do foo" before they release it. Ok, so you didn't explicitly say "before they release it", but you imply it strongly.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Sycraft-fu]

No, what I am trying to say is they need to work towards this at all stages of the project if possable. Unfortunately often when things like graphics get put off until "later" later ends up being never.

This was more directed at the respondant who seemed to feel that the graphics are ok as is. Basically I think he is making excuses. It's perfectly ok to say "our graphics suck, we'd like to make them better, please help". However the respondant was basically saying "they are fine as is", or at least that was my interpretation.

I just don't like seeing people making up flimsy excuses for OSS when there are quality problems. I have NO PROBLEM with developers releasing as eairly as they can and working towards a goal, I have a problem when they (and other) try to rationalize over problems rather than fixing them.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Aint running on my copy of XP.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[david.johns]

I think you're failing to see the point of open source gaming in general.

Open source software does not usually lend itself to the massive production costs necessary to create a game. There's just no way, except ID's way. These people are not ID; they're building a game for love, not for money. (Although they may just get some money out of it. We'll see.)

So, they're crafting an engine for handling an 'old' Warcraft II style interface, and you're bitching that it's not polished in general.

Now, take some of your polish complaints, and apply them to the original Warcraft, or Warcraft II. But it doesn't have X! But the default AI for troops is SO AWFUL! But this! But that!

You can't fix the problems you see in Warcraft II - like the fact that Lan mode just magically doesn't work on my network in the Battle Net Edition. I bought software that DOESN'T DO WHAT I WANT, and my options are to a) suffer. IF FreeCraft doesn't do what you want.. you can make it better. Maybe I can add Total Annihilation-esque AI to a Warcraft-esque engine so that I don't have to micromanage my troops quite as badly as I do in say, Starcraft.

This isn't a 'released game' - this is a stable release of a game engine that the developers proclaim finally works well enough that the first game written for it is fun.

So, you can go ahead and beg for Warcraft 3 from Blizzard, with the pseudo-3d interface that adds NOTHING to the game, and the graphics that are virtually impossible to resolve as a result of bad gamma correction and the confusing attempt at 3d.

I expect that Freecraft will eventually provide for a host of better games than that. And if I can't see, because the person who tweaked the engine is an idiot, I can go change it.

For an example of an open source project that doesn't get the 'polish' points but still trumps the original games, see freeciv. You know why freeciv rocks? Because the network play ACTUALLY WORKS. Civ3 developers apparently realized that every network-enabled civilization series clone, from Civnet to Alpha Centauri, has had TERRIBLE network support. So they just left it out.

And, the things that Civ3 added to the gameplay that people actually ENJOY can be added as options to freeciv with alarming speed. So the graphics aren't the best in the universe. As soon as I win the lottery, I'll hire an art house to do some better graphics for it. In the meantime, I will still play this wonderful game.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Lemmy Caution]

At the core of gaming is pleasure, and visual pleasure is one component of the game. I will agree with the observation that 3D is not the end-all and be-all of either game-design or even compelling visual aesthetics, and can in fact interfere with it, for the same reasons that abstract expressionism or cubism would probably be ill-served by photo-realistic technique. A lot of primitive, by today's standards, video games are still visually compelling - like Tempest, Pac-Man and even the original Space-War.

But the graphics in FreeCiv are just bad. No blame - it's an engine, ultimately, and he calls for real designers to sign up and make it pretty. I'm sure that it can and will be improved. But let's not pretend that the deficiency isn't there.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

My one attempt to play network FreeCiv on Windows resulted in many crashes and wierd bugs (sometimes I could move my guys out of the proper order). I've had much better luck with Civ II Multiplayer Gold, which I got on ebay for almost nothing.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[terrorist-a]

1. It does run on XP. Next time try it yourself before you write something.

2. No Unit Queing? I played the game some mins ago with fcmp and could queue the production of various units with no problem. Next time try it yourself before you write something.

3. This guys deserve all my respect and gratitude. Doing _that_ for free... Keep it going, you are great !!!!

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[SystemOfTheAnimal]

it sounds like you're saying advance wars is good in spite of having poor graphics.
i would submit that advance wars actually has EXTREMELY good graphics. both the mechanical/character design and execution are top-notch, and if anyone who thinks otherwise should try firing up photoshop and making a graphic of, say, a tank that rivals advance wars. then you'll see first hand how incredibly talented and skilled the pixel artists behind SNES/GBA/Saturn 2D games are. really, it's a whole lot harder than it looks ^_^

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

His critique is dead on. It is a 2D game. This carries with it an enoumous bias that must be overcome in graphics, features, and sound. This engine doesn't come close in any area.

Nethack was cute, 10 years ago. As you can tell from the extremely limited player base, it is not the be all and end all of gaming. Hell, I played Mule, Minataur, and CHQ for ages, but there is so much more available today that they rarely even cross my mind any more except if I am feeling nostalgic.

Good games in this age of computing involve good stories and plots, engagement of all the sense so that players become immersed in the game and suspension of disbelief is held through out gameplay, and replayability (which you missed btw). Graphics are indispensable in creating an immersive environment, as is audio. Good games must have this to sell units and be fun to play.

I would argue that games today are different than in 1992 or so. They have a different audience with a different social background and attention span. They do have stories and plots and contents. A good example of this is Max Payne... this game is somewhat innovative, very engaging, has an excellent (if cheesy) story line, and would not be possible to do in 2D.

Your comments are grounded in your experiences of another era, one which you are still somewhat stuck in. Games don't have to be 3D to be good, but games that are not 3D are not as good as they could be given the need for immersion and suspension of displief in this age of quick information and fun.

Re:Yesterday's games, tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

-f in command line or ctrl f in play ...

Wrong scene

[MuMart]

Thinking back to my "scene" days, I remember seeing free games and demos with incredible graphics. Demos however are just eye candy, and the games were inevitably shoot em ups etc.

I suspect that you will find good artists still designing demos for Windows scene groups.

I just think that geeky strategy games don't appeal to most people, and that's the reason you don't see good graphics on freeciv etc, the artists aren't motivated to get involved.

Do you smell what Vivendi's cookin?

[hage]

"I'm sorry, but the word 'craft' is a licensed subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, Inc. Please go directly to legal hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and please, please please don't call a lawyer, ok?"

Re:Do you smell what Vivendi's cookin?

[CaseStudy]

Close, and a pretty good guess considering most Slashdotters know nothing about trademark law except that it suppresses their fanfic.

Calling a RTS game "FreeCraft" is very likely to confuse users into thinking that this is a Blizzard-created free version of WarCraft, akin to what Id has done with some of its old games. If users are likely to be confused, there's a trademark violation. That's what trademark does--prevent consumers from being misled by product names (with a secondary effect of preventing business from cashing in on the good name of a competitor).

This doesn't mean that they own the word; they can't successfully sue someone's crafts store, and they probably can't even win against non-entertainment software (i.e., if they haven't filed an ITU for business software, and you create a publishing program called PageCraft, too bad for them.)

It's different from Freeciv in that Blizzard/Vivendi have an entire line of games in the -Craft series, whereas "Civ," as far as I'm aware, isn't even trademarked, and has its own unique situation due to Avalon Hill's game. If I talked about a hypothetical game "TankCraft," you'd already have an idea about who published the game and what it would look/play like.

Cross-platform?

[dogzilla]

Oh yeah, that's right. I keep forgetting that Linux and Windows are all /. needs to call something cross-platform. Still no MacOS version. Useless.

Re:Cross-platform?

[Enahs]

I suppose BeOS and MacOS X are just liberal conspiracies.

Re:Cross-platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it so hard to port stuff to the MacOS? Why doesn't Apple make it easy to port applications to their system? Why don't they for example provide a DirectX compatible API? Nobody wants to work their asses off for a couple of Mac users porting their app to an exotic operating system.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

That's not fair

[pommiekiwifruit]

at my work there's a coder who gets laid at least three times a weekend by interested parties. He also washes regularly and wears clothes he bought in this century.

Of course, everyone just assumes he's an artist...

Re:That's not fair

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted code to 4 GNU projects (the main ones, with the G prefix) and I am a long
time commiter for a BSD.

I think I am the only coder who gets laid like a rock star. Actually, I am a punk rocker ;P

No Windows XP support?

[W2k]

This looked like a cool little project, shitty graphics nonwithstanding, but then I read (in the FAQ):

Q: Why is Windows XP not supported?
A: Because I decided it. I do not support any product, that forces anybody to register it. Please read the FreeCraft (GPL) license and visit www.boycottxp.com (down) and more boycott.

This is pure idiocy. Firstly, shutting out XP users from FreeCraft will not make people ditch XP, it will make them ditch FreeCraft (and any game which uses it). Thus, game developers who use FreeCraft will undoubtably want to remove the XP block, and if that's not possible for some reason, many will choose another engine. There are a LOT of XP users, and a lot of people who will be upgrading to XP from 95/98/Me/2000 soon. Shutting them all out is stupid, stupid, stupid, no matter what you personally think about Microsoft or Windows XP as an OS.

Second, while I have not personally seen the source of FreeCraft, I doubt that what's keeping the engine from working with XP is hard to fix (it works under Win2000!) - I wouldn't be suprised if there's just a bit that says "if( bWindowsXP ) Crash();" at the beginning. Isn't the FreeCraft team just lowering itself to Microsoft's level (remember how early versions of Windows purposefully wouldn't work on DR-DOS?) by doing this?

Anyway, let's hope that for some future release, the FreeCraft team stop with this silliness and more importantly, stop discriminating against the thousands of people who have chosen to use Windows XP - or, maybe more commonly, had it pre-installed on a new computer.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[wowbagger]

Besides, restricting the users of a program based on which OS they use goes against the spirit of the FSF - you are not allowed to restrict users or uses of the program based on the intended use - you cannot be GPL and still say "you cannot use this to develop weapons", and you cannot say "you cannot use this under WindowsXP."

It is a bad decision by the authors of the program. It won't make people ditch WinXP, it WILL restrict the distribution of the game. It goes against the ideal of freedom in coding.

This is not the way, people. Don't talk down to Windows users, don't call them lusers, don't snigger when they get the fourth virus infection this week. That doesn't win "hearts and minds". Show them the cool games they can get legally, show them the alternative mail clients that are secure, show them the other browsers. Show them, nicely, that they have a choice.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[Omnifarious]

From other posts I've seen here, it looks like XP actually works, but is unsupported. I can completely understand the author's reasons for this choice.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[aderuwe]

you cannot say "you cannot use this under WindowsXP."

Are they saying you can't? I think not. All they're saying is: "if it doesn't work on XP, don't come to us for help."
Nothing wrong with this, using software developped by volunteers should not be considered a right, but a privilege. You encounter something you don't like, you fix it.
I bet the FreeCraft author wouldn't mind if someone came forward to maintain the WinXP port.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[wowbagger]

Yes, they are indeed saying "You cannot run this under WinXP" - they are explicitly testing for XP and refusing to run if they detect it.

True, you could remove the test and make your own version, but the average Windows user won't be able to do this.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[GoatPigSheep]

and you can't forget the hoards of people who pirated winXP corporate edition, and never had to go through that registering crap.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[Lemmy Caution]

"Unsupported?" What does "supported" mean for a GPL, free to download game? There's a help desk for it?

Re:No Windows XP support?

[wedg]

This is pure idiocy. Firstly, shutting out XP users from FreeCraft will not make people ditch XP, it will make them ditch FreeCraft (and any game which uses it).

How come no body ever says this about games that come out for Windows-Only? "X won't make users ditch Linux, it will make them ditch X." Strangely enough, most people still use Linux, and simply by having a dual boot.

And furthermore, they're saying they don't *support* Windows XP. E.g. They will not answer questions about XP, etc, etc. My cable internet provider says the same thing about Linux. It isn't supported. Doesn't mean it won't work. They just won't help you with it. But strangely enough `dhcpcd eth0` still works fine. Go figure.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[higuita]

What does "supported" mean for a GPL, free to download game
no, GPL you can sell the game if you want...
GPL means other things:
-free to use in ANY way
-you can have the source
-you can change the source
-you can distribute the binary, a patch, all the source

in return you have to give the source to any program you distribute in binary form and keep the GPL license always

There's a help desk for it?

if they want to build a helpdesk they can...
but usually means that if you have problems, questions and thinks like that they TRY to reply to you and solve the problem...
its like one true helpdesk and most of the times work better
but remeber, they do that because they want, they are giving away their free time, and 99.99% of the time they get anything back

unsupported means that they will not reply to that questions, so dont even try (and if you try, almost always the ony reply you get is "its unsuported")

Re:No Windows XP support?

[higuita]

have you find the code to do that?!

if yes then it must have a big bug, several people here already said that it works for then in XP too!!

they say "there is NO support, we dont care about XP", where they say "we block XP from running, you are forbiden of running the game there"

before talking about things you dont know, try to read/test/study about the subject, ok!!

Re:No Windows XP support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Most people don't use linux at all, genius.

Re:No Windows XP support?

[higuita]

learn the diference between unsupported and block

there no code for crash the XP!!! many people already said that it runs in some XPs

now unsupported means that they will not try to find and fix the bug, if you find it, please make the patch and send to then, it will probably be accepted, but again, they will not lose time supporting XP, no help, not special things, noting
if you want it, code it yourself, the source is there and the GPL license gives you that right

they are FREE to code and support what they want, if you dont like it, code and supporte what you like, or PAY someone to do it for you

i dont see you complaning when a windows game come out and say "(some OS, like even windows 9x) not supported" or "graphic card Y not supported" and you PAY (or at least should) for the game
not you have a free game and want even better support than comercial games!!

There are a LOT of XP users, and a lot of people who will be upgrading to XP from 95/98/Me/2000 soon

sadly the are many "not very smart" people... why the hell use XP?! win2k is no douth the best (ie: less bad) windows out there and win98 the best game machine OS, why people want XP... to get the latest virus?! to be able to change Themes?!
bah... do we really want people like this using ANY computer at all?!

Re:No Windows XP support?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the reason for which win XP is not supported is very simple. No one in the dev team has XP on his machines, so we cannot reproduce/test XP stuff...
If someone wants to take the time to do this, everything it's opened. For the momment, no XP support.

Quite pretty

[pommiekiwifruit]

And the original arcade game has wonderful gameplay. If you're going to rip off a simple game, it's a great one to learn on (other examples being Bomberman or Pang).

Art vs Fun

[intermodal]

Art and slick interfaces may help, but it's by far less important to some people than fun gameplay. Then again, if I were of a similar mindset to yours, I wouldn't have replaced my dying 8-bit nintendo with a refurbished one and I wouldn't still enjoy playing Pac-Man and Pitfall. While I agree better graphics would be a definite plus, if it's fun to play, graphics won't stop me.

Ideas

[linzeal]

Civil War RTS; Imagine the south having slaves working on the farms and the union having to pay farmers. Be the first to own your own submarine!

Hippies vs police in the 60's,70's and 80's; Resource gathering for hippies will start out as bead shops, selling marijuana from their apartments. Police will use more and more advanced detection methods at airports where hippies can attempt to run Jars full of LSD, suitcases filled with uppers for loot. Hippies win when they can elect a mayor that will legalize drugs, cops win they bust all the hippies (who are hidden amongst the general populace). This is accomplished through a "convincing" system that randomly generated people on the streets "think" about either side. If for instance crime becomes rampanent and hippie kids turn into gangbangers in the 80's than the game will lean toward police action (which will be allowed to be more severe, think pre-civil rights movement) as violence is on the increase.

Units for Hippy Game;
Housing

Hipster pad | units of these can be built to attract more potential druggie denizens. Unit produces small time drug dealers, you can sell pot. Only drug dealer that requires no connections but produces a limited amount. *Visual* Small one bedroom apartment with 4 wee marijuana plants growing. *Sound* Mainstream pop music throughout the decades.

Drug Dealer Pad | Produces "real" drug dealers that can sell one of any of the hard drugs or sell all of the soft ones. *Visual* Outlandish contemporary fads, like tiger rugs hanging on the wall or blow up furniture. *Sound* R and B, funk, house.

Advanced Drug Dealer | Connects drug dealer that can purchase (x amount) soft drugs per month from the labs, growers, and connections. Your game starts out with one of these. Can make connections with soft drugs. *Visual* Tasteful upscale dwelling on the top of an apartment complex. Music Edgy Music like velvet underground, phillip glass, and brian eno.

Kingpin | There can only be one kingpin and you can create connections for hardcore drugs but can not directly sell any drugs. A connection can be made in any drug but takes a certain amount of turns to create. *Visuals* Adjustable like in the civilization game. A small 3-D room with prefab objects and sounds that are adjustable. Reports can be auto generated in real time with the most advanced method of "tallying" at that time, (60's, Handwritten font on sometimes stained paper shows how your loot is being generated; 70's, Typed up mimeograph like in quality; 80's old blinking green CRT (that you will be able to play DOS games on :)); 90's, etcetera) with the attendent radio selection from online streaming oldies stations you can just chill while your empire grows.

Police Housing

Beat Station with DARE patrol cars
Police Station
Sheriff's Office
Swat Team
Mayor's Office (who can call in federal agents for drug busts)

Resource Gathering and Creation

Hippies

Bead Shop

If anyone wants me to finish this, say so, I have more time later this afternoon, but right now the RAID array is making my pager dance across the table. :( Anyone else having problems with the 73lp's from seagate?

DLLs

[pommiekiwifruit]

Everything you link this against has to GPLed. (Ignore that stupid person who thought that by creating a library you avoid it, you cannot it's still a derived work).

by your logic, everything that runs on Windows is the property of Microsoft, since it (dynamically) links against kernel32.dll and user32.dll

I think there are several software companies that would disagree.

Re:DLLs

[SLi]

There is a difference between being allowed to use and being someone's property.

And yes, the post you replied to is correct.

Probably not.

[orkysoft]

You see, the whole concept of a "war game" is that it's a game (unlike those war board-games, which are simulations).

If C&C / Starcraft were more realistic, it would also get more boring.

Example:

Once upon a time, my brother made a custom scenario for Starcraft, with marines with only 1hp. One shot would kill them. This is much more accurate than the normal game settings, where they can survive several "short, controlled, bursts".

It was also very boring to play.

I'm not saying that a game needs good graphics, or really simple ones. I'm saying that if it's a game, its most important property should be that it's fun to play, not as accurate as possible. That's the simulation's job. But then again, simulations don't usually make fun games.

Re:Probably not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, I remember I made a bunker level for Worms 2 where most of the map was dirt and all of the worms were underground. The only weapons available were unlimited airstrikes and one pistol that was as unaccurate as possible but shot fifty times. What a boring level.

Re:Probably not.

[T.i.m]

If C&C / Starcraft were more realistic, it would also get more boring

That is a powerfull statment. The sole reason I quit playing those games was that the unrealism made them boring.
I think they get boring because it gets so easy to figure out the optimal strategy. There was no real thinking in neither C&C of the follower Red Alert. The whining strategy was, and still is tank rush. Close your eyes, build as many tanks as posible and pray.

pretty much te same problem with AOE a few years later. The wining strategy is more often then not to focus on one thing and produce an imense amount of that particular thing.

In short, I think that alot of people would enjoy a game where you really have to think, and plan your killings :-)

Maybe 12 year old Joe Quaker wouldn't enyoy it but, as sadly as that is (:-)) a whole lot of the hardcore gamers of today are well past their 20...

Re:Probably not.

[orkysoft]

Yes, C-) )

Re:Probably not.

[orkysoft]

Yes, C&C and Red Alert are quite boring indeed. But Starcraft is different: there isn't one winning strategy.

E.g. if you have a lot of Terran Siege tanks, and nothing else, the enemy can destroy them all with air units (unless you level his base first, which, given enough tanks, isn't all that impossible ;-) )

Re:Probably not.

[KILNA]

So you're saying it was like the war in Afganistan?

Even the best Linux titles...

[Anonymous Coward]

are just knock offs of old Windows software.

How sad for Linux.

Re:Even the best Linux titles...

[paganizer]

And the VERY best windows titles.... are just knock off's of old Amiga titles. How sad for idiots.

Re:Even the best Linux titles...

[belg4mit]

Eh hemm, some are knockoffs of old DOS games ;-)

Game graphics, OSX and XP

[theolein]

Some are complaining that the game is not good looking or 3D, doesn't run on XP and that there is no OSX source:

1.It's GPL'ed, which means that nothing is stopping you from *making* it run under XP. This is of course theoretical and ignores some of the difficulties, such as GCC incompatibilities under XP, but theoretically, you could make this work with MSVC++
2.Since it has Linux (and I presume *BSD) source, it means that porting it to OSX, while not trivial, won't be the end of the earth.
3.As many have mentioned, the graphics in the screenshots look bad. This says practically nothing about the developers, who are not graphics artists, and a lot about the consumer mentality of the general public that is gladly willing to use a game if it is free, but are less inclined to accept a different level of quality even if they don't pay for it.
4.At the same time, such comments about the quality of the graphics should not be met with disdain by OSS developers. The general public is very unforgiving and will match OSS products with their commercial competitors, no matter what! While I should point out that anyone can change the graphics of this game, it should serve as notice to OSS developers to place a lot of emphasis on presentation. Apple doesn't do well for nothing.
5.To those who claim that this game is in the past, not high-tech enough etc, I should point out that the popularity of a game is not as dependant on it'stechnology as some may think. There is a commercial game on OSX called Escape Velocity Nova that is a simple 2D space adventure game, but is extremely popular. The game depends on it's playability, not on it's technology. The GBA is another example. I have a feeling that a lot of especially PC commercial game developers, have the idea that their game will only be successful if the technology is cutting edge (vis the post further down from the commercial game developer). I beg to differ. High tech FPS/RPS/RTS games have the immense difficulty in gaining acceptance in the gaming market for thesimple reason that there is very little real difference in the games and in the heat of the competition content and a good story get lost by the wayside. I think that a game can be very successful if the story is enticing and the game has depth. I personally think that the lack of Riven type games (which were extremely popular) or at least the fact that very few developers even bothered to try to take this genre further is a good clue in where the game market is weak.
6.As a lot of gamers know, the ability to mod or expand a game is one of the most important features in a game gaining success. Very many fans like to tinker with their games. Think about it. Expandable games that were/are popular -UnReal/Quake/HalfLife/Homeworld/Myth/EVNova etc.
7.Don't forget that tetris is still popular, as is online backgammon etc.

Something needs to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux gaming is not working. This is one of that biggest problems Linux faces right now.
We need some genius hero to sort this out. Any takers?

Oops!

[orkysoft]

The &-character, followed by a lot of text, and then a semicolon, caused Slashcode to collapse it into nothingness (the lot of text wasn't a valid character name).

Ever heard of Tuxracer?

[codeguy007]

This is not true. There are several Linux games that are unique and not knockoffs.

Tuxracer and Hopkins FBI come to mind as excellent games.

The reason games are ported or copied to Linux is because people know them and want to play them.
As a Developer, I have a much better chance of selling Quake for Linux than some Linux only game that I have invented.

Text adventures aren't dead

[ColGraff]

Check out ifarchive.org, xyzzynews.com.

What do you think of this?

[ColGraff]

Why not have a game where the object is not to GAIN territory and resources, but to lose them? Seriously. Say you start out with a certain amount of infrastructure - weapons, territory, energy plants, etc. - which will allow you to do all the standard RTS things. But all this pollutes horribly, or maybe it's radioactive, so it's slowly killing your side. But if you unilaterally disarm, the other side will destroy the uber-structure you need to keep from being destroyed in order to win the game. So the object becomes to build the smallest possible army you can to accomplish the job at hand - killing the other guy - and then destroying your own base as fast as you can. In other words, this makes huge armies and unit-hoarding counterproductive.

What do you think?

Re:What do you think of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm.. what do I think? I think I wouldn't pay for it. I think I wouldn't waste bandwidth or HD space downloading it. I think I'll save the world from such an abomination by killing the idea right here, right now.

Never speak of it again.

Re:What do you think of this?

[chromosundrift]

and you could set it in late 20th century technology industry. You could call it Restructure!

Re:What do you think of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic problem: once you've killed the other guy, you've "won", even if your own side subsequently self-destructs.

exactly

[spezz]

ms. pacman
best. game. ever.

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

(Sorry, but I didn't think of this till after I posted the first one).

The real graphical beef I take to the developers at this point is the interface. For teh sprites, there is a prefectly good reason they don't look great, they need an artist. However you should NOT need an artist to develop an interface taht isn't an eye-sore. I'm sorry but the interface really is ugly, and it is simple things, that need ot graphical skill to do, that will make it better. I gaurentee if they removed the texture from the background and made it a solid colour, did a light-on-dark dropshadow as is normal, and moved teh dropshadow to teh lower right as is standard, it would look a hell of a lot better. No artwork involved here, just minor changes. However it make it ever so much more clean and readable. Then from there more tweaks can be made to continue to enchance it's looks. We aren't talking about any artwork here, just doing what looks good with what you have.

I just feel, from looking at the interface, that they really put no thought at all into its asthetics. I'm really honestly not sure what they were thinking. To me, it just gives the apperance of not caring.

Re:Also

[pohl]

I understand what you're saying. Still, it's clear to me from following the link that the contributors to freecraft know this already, and that they know that they're lacking the requisite skills to address the situation...else they wouldn't be putting out such a loud call for graphical artists.

part of the problem ...

[afxgrin]

Generally "artists" tend to like the idea of making game graphics, but game graphics are a pain in the ass and somewhat tedious.

Like, it's one thing to design a game character, it's another to go draw the animations of the character frame by frame. Or textures, yay - making hundreds of textures that most people don't normally think about sounds like lots of fun. 3d models are at least somewhat more interesting, and the skins are usually made by someone else. It's just a matter of attracting more of the modding community to the OSS community. If they can get excited enough over an OSS game then we can obtain a large group of model designers and texture artists.

Two words...

[Echelon309]

Two words... Frozen Bubble

Re:Two words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough with "Frozen Bubble!"
Let's see some more examples.

Re:Two words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete ripoff.

It is not opensource

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the code is open source, the media is under a very restrictive propriatary license

Nightmare

[AdmrlNxn]

What is most upsetting is the lack of XP support by choice. I was going to try it out but alas I cannot for I use XP. What is even more upsetting is the lack oif knowledge on the XP activation feature. Microsoft doesnot force you to register with them but they do ask you, not force you, to activate Windows XP.

Granted if you do not activate XP it will fail to work in 30 days but still there is no registration process. Activation is just a new way to type in your CD Code. Except it takes a digital picture of your motherboard and completely relates it to your copy of XP. So that copy is only for that said motherboard and can only be changed under certain circumstances.

When I bought XP I was running an Asus somthing or other that had an older ALI chipset that was completely incompatible with my nVidia GeForce 2 MX 400. (Except under Win98 but even then the stablility was horrible due to the fact of the conflicting card and chipset, XP and W2K were even worse. At least it wasn't an OS problem)

End result was I had to go out and buy an Asus A7V266. Everything is swanky but inorder to run XP I had to call up MS and say look this was the problem, now give me a solution. They did with out hassle and without me having to buy a new copy of XP. They just had me re-activate under the telephone section of the activation process of XP and they switched everything for me so that my copy of XP and my new motherboard were complimentart of eachother. This took no longer than 10 minutes. (Including the time I was on hold)

Other than that. I guess all I have to say is that FreeCraft has potential but what is holding them back is the graphics side of the game. (Horrible) Looks like a spin off of Microsofts Age of Empires. Even as old as WarCraft 2 is, it looks way better than FreeCraft. This also displays how the game base for Linux is really lacking. FreeSoftware is not in ever case in every area better. This just shows how it can be worse. Lack of developers dedicated to one project. It is free so the people developing for it aren't getting paid. It is slow death. Breeding in weakness.

That is just my 2.5 cents worth

Re:Nightmare

[Pituritus Ani]

So it's OK for Microsoft to impose conditions after the point of sale, so long as they claim you're anonymous in the reg^H^H^Hactivation process? (If you activate via the net, your IP is known--there is no way around this. If you activate by phone, ANI logs your number for billing. If you use a pay phone, you're too paranoid to be using any version of Windows.)

I find it quite admirable that the team refused to support XP. If there are knowledgeable enough people who want XP, they can port and recomplie. If they're arent, then I guess that tells us something.

I would, however, support an XP port if I could be assured it would cost Vivendi (DMCA wielding scum that they are) more than it would gain Microsoft.

Re:Nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

We ride on the back of the bus here and drink from water fountains you assign us to drink out of.

And rightfully so, troll.

No MacOSX support

[boyko]

Sorry to hear it, but there doesn't actually seem to be any MacOSX support - I can't find a download. And I'm not technically inclined enough to compile.

However, if it got ported over, I'd seriously consider throwing my graph-artist skills over to the program. Brian.

Re:No MacOSX support

[idust]

Yup. The readme says you need XWindows... but how many Mac users actually have that installed (besides me)?

Re:No MacOSX support

[Strog]

I do too but most normal Mac users don't though. I'm running OSX on a stock 8600/300 so I can have a development machine to play with. I guess I'm not in that normal crowd. :P

GIMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone noticed that the latest GIMP release for Win32 crashes if you don't choose to save your image? Granted, there is a patch, but this is still highly unprofessional and something you wouldn't see in any decent commercial application. Why is that?

puzzle bobble ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if it wasn't such a blatant ripoff of Puzzle Bobble. As it is, I liken it more to using tracing paper to make an AWes0Me 31337 |>r@w1|\|g!!!!!!!!!

Pure propaganda...

[Da VinMan]

I'm playing it right now on this laptop that runs XP. Everything seems to work fine. It's not as if it's doing anything really tricky after all.

*shrug*

Oh, THAT WC2...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly realizes that WC2 != Wing Commander 2...

Re:Oh, THAT WC2...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I wish people would start using war2 instead of wc2...after all, wasn't the warcraft 2 executable even called war2.exe?!

I encourage the effort, but...

[Master_Flash]

The graphic quality is fair at best. This was definitely not done by a pro. Even between pro's the difference is amazing. After I have few work for me for a the last couple of years you learn to see the difference

I need what you are smoking!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, put on your glasses and take another gander... while I am impressed that a non-pro shop has released such a cross platform engine, the graphics you refer to are seriously unattractive and way behind the times. If you read the specs on the engine, you will discover that it too is way behind the times in terms of features and rendering technology.

Um, what are you smoking...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just took a look at those three links you provided based on your supposedly well informed opinion on the quality of their graphics. Vega looks simply attrocious. Race looks like a badly written SNES game. Armagetron looks okay, but then TRON like graphics are not very intense. I wouldn't term these good, especially vegastrike, but rather acceptable at best for a 486 or P75 era computer and graphics.

Are you mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

sadly the are many "not very smart" people... why the hell use XP?! win2k is no douth the best (ie: less bad) windows out there and win98 the best game machine OS, why people want XP... to get the latest virus?! to be able to change Themes?!
bah... do we really want people like this using ANY computer at all?!

I do hardware and game reviews for a very large and respectable site. Besides the fact that XP, when properly configured and optimized by the knowledgable user which gamers are, is indeed a more stable and FASTER gaming platform, XP is also superior to Win2K for HOME use. Especially XPPro!

I have been running multiple XP boxes for going on six months without a crash or reload. In fact, I have one system set up as a serious home studio, running of all things a custom MacOS emu so it can handle programs like Composer, and it has yet to even be rebooted! These are always on computers, connected to a fat pipe cable internet connection. They are used for gaming, email, surfing, graphics work, web development, and a litany of other things and I have yet to have one problem with viruses or incompatibilities.

Hey - remember open source?

[Durindana]

It's not up to you to second-guess someone about why they choose to disable their project on a particular OS. If the licensing terms allow it, you can of course change that.

Wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, unlike the crap posted on originally, Worldforge is not final. One of the projects, utilizing the UClient code and graphics capability, intends on building a freeware/gpl MMPOG with the features of UO and a few others with a world scale of 1/16 the size of our planet Earth and the ability to support up to 100K players.

Why Open Media Lags Behind Open Source

[chromosundrift]

Open source developers have a culture with momentum. Artists who are not programmers (most) don't feel at home on Linux. If it looks like shit to a designer (as X does) they'll avoid it.

Something as simple as bad font kerning to a graphic designer is equivalent to putting a big sign on the front saying OUT OF ORDER.

It's no coincidence that Apple's industrial design and corporate identity design is so great (even in the opinion of graphic designers who use Windows). Many graphic designers don't even distinguish between Windows and Linux, they just say "Mac vs PC".

The way to get graphic designers into these projects is to design solid GUI tools for theming the games and making them cross platform so they don't have to overcome scary programmer-land linux in order to contribute. It's a more modest goal, and it's a start.

That's why Mac OSX is such an exciting development. It may allow developers to give graphic designers what they need to share the culture of open source.

I think the Tenco case says not

[pommiekiwifruit]

My memory is vague, but Tenco made their own cartridges for the NES, which Nintendo didn't like. One of the points the Judge made was that Sony didn't have a veto on Nintendo being connected to their televisions, so why should Nintendo have a veto on cartidges being connected to their console.

Of course the current state of play with the console manufacturers may show that your argument won the day.

Re:I think the Tenco case says not

[SLi]

I believe there's a crucial difference between making software which runs on some platform and linking with someone else's code.

For example, making programs which run on Linux (the kernel is under GPL) is not considered making a derivative work. I think this is quite logical since the kernel just sits there, one image, providing services to the program through a narrow, specific and well published API.

When you link some executable with a dynamic library, in this case one distributed under the GPL, you're making a derivative work - at least the resulting image in memory is definitely a derivative work, combined of the codes of the two different products. Making a derivative work is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

The GPL is obviously written to and considered to prohibit even linking non-free code with GPL code (where LGPL allows this), and even a lot of companies originally in violation have had to submit and either remove the portions licensed under the GPL from their producs or release their products under the GPL. Somehow I assume that the founding principles of the GPL would already have been challenged if they weren't legally quite watertight - instead the lawyer who (I think) wrote GPL has stated he has found it easy to enforce without the need to take the issue into courtroom.

I believe you can find better legal interpretations from some relevant mailing list, after all I'm not at all that well versed in US copyright law (simply because I'm Finnish, though I've had to deal a fair bit with US copyright law anyway :-).

My mistake - try Galoob vs. Nintendo

[pommiekiwifruit]

My mistake in using the word property, which includes the ability to transfer (sell) as well as control usage. However, the lesser point still stands, that by your logic Microsoft should be able to dictate who can and can't write programs for Windows.

Perhaps better than the temco/tenco (sp?) case is the game genie one: http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/cases/Galoo b_v_Nintendo.html which perhaps should mean that a program dynamically linking to a library does not make it a derived work.

Running under X11 != runs under Mac OS X

[mactari]

I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about Project Foo running under Mac OS X when it requires X11. If you have to have X11 installed, most Mac users can't use you.

I don't have any problem with people saying you have things running with Darwin on a PPC architecture (there is a Darwin for x86, btw), but you're going to disappoint the vast majority of Mac users by claiming things run on OS X when the users show up at Project Foo's site. They don't have XDarwin installed and many won't have any clue where to start.

Even if they did, installing X11 is an overly complicated process in Darwin. I'm a "Mac power user", if you'll forgive the oxymoron; I use fink; I use vim-nox to edit my php files; I use SAMBA to use vim to edit asp on IIS. I couldn't get XWindows to run within an hour of downloading. Add the rootless versus fullscreen X consideration and, well, I give up [for now].

FreeCraft doesn't run on [what Mac users consider] Mac OS X. Please stop claiming it does until you're using Quartz (or even QuickDraw) or the like. And please don't cop out by saying, "When the OS X users come to the site, they'll learn to use XDarwin". Instead, use your time to get OS X users excited about this "OS within an OS" on its own terms.

Re:Running under X11 != runs under Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they did, installing X11 is an overly complicated process in Darwin. I'm a "Mac power user", if you'll forgive the oxymoron; I use fink; I use vim-nox to edit my php files; I use SAMBA to use vim to edit asp on IIS. I couldn't get XWindows to run within an hour of downloading. Add the rootless versus fullscreen X consideration and, well, I give up

You must not have tried lately. My first installation was a 2 hour long mess of compilations and hunting down header files, but after I toasted my hard drive 3 months ago I reinstalled everything and X windows is installable with a normal OSX .pkg. Click install and specify the drive, and let it run. So easy my grandmother could do it. Try Your X-windows installation again, you will be pleasantly surprised

Re:Running under X11 != runs under Mac OS X

[Strog]

It took longer to download it on a dual T1 than it did to install for me. I tried it for the first time right after the package was released. I kept wondering what all the complaining was about. It is a very easy thing to install now if you can remember an administrator password.

Slashdot effect quantitized

[Birdie-PL]

This is a must see for any of you wondering how the famous Slashdot effect works - over 100 000 hits the day the story was posted.