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OS Independent Scotland Yard Released

Posted by Zonk on from the follow-the-crook-watson! dept.

DarkLaser writes "When's the last time you played Scotland Yard? A version called London Law, written by Paul Pelzl, is now in beta. Its updated status can be seen on the freshmeat information page. It is written in Python, and intended to be able to run on Linux, BSD, Mac, and Windows."

35 comments

  1. Cross platform gaming by Alcimedes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm glad to see that another online game is built around the idea that cross-platform gaming is important.

    What I think a lot of companies might not realize is that when you're making a game that plays on Mac or Linux boxes, you're not just adding that ~2% - 3% of marketshare to your total games sales.

    Instead, what you're doing is creating a game that everyone can play. That means next time someone decides to have a LAN party, YOUR game is at the top of the list for anyone who would rather bring their Linux or Mac machine along with them. Sure, there are half a dozen MMPORG's out there. However, the only ones I'm considering, along with half a dozen friends of mine are ones that are cross platform. The reason is that we want to make sure our friends who use something other than Windows can still play in our groups. So yeah, there might be one Mac user and one Linux user out of 10 people, but writing your game to support those two people happened to net you another 8 monthly subscriptions.

    1. Re:Cross platform gaming by bluGill · · Score: 1

      You missed one more point. I do not have a MS Windows machine. If you have a linux version, and none of your competitors do, you get 100% of the linux market (sure only 2% total) by default. If you have 100 potential in the target market, but and it works out to 2 linux users, or 1 MS Windows user, you are better off targeting linux. It is only when you achieve the big bucks that the MS Windows platform is better.

      I recall several games for tiny platforms that did very well in global sales, not because they were that much better, but because 100% of a tiny market can be greater than .5% of a large market.

    2. Re:Cross platform gaming by landimal_adurotune · · Score: 1

      For gaming I usually use Windows, it came with the PC and I don't have to fiddle with the settings to get anything to work.

      I work in Linux though, and its great having fun time wasters that don't require a reboot to run. I'm tempted by Transgamings WineX, but I can't justify the $60/year for it to the board (wife).

      Portable games are more than just Windows/Mac/Linux, by going with Python or Java you also can be on phones, PDA's etc. The biggest battery killer for my old phone was Gemmaster.

    3. Re:Cross platform gaming by geoffspear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So if I release a really horribly Linux game I wrote in 2 days, you can guarantee that 100% of Linux users will buy it from me for $50? Neat. I didn't realize that people automatically buy things "by default".

      --
      Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
    4. Re:Cross platform gaming by sinnfeiner1916 · · Score: -1

      Windows?

      --
      The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
    5. Re:Cross platform gaming by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      What I think a lot of companies might not realize is that when you're making a game that plays on Mac or Linux boxes, you're not just adding that ~2% - 3% of marketshare to your total games sales.

      Actually, you are. The important point is that if you create your game using cross platform tools you get 2-3% more market share (your figures, I'd expect it to be closer to 5-10%) at no extra cost. If you write it using DirectX, then try to port it then it will cost a huge amount to get this extra few percent.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:Cross platform gaming by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      if you create your game using cross platform tools you get 2-3% more market share (your figures, I'd expect it to be closer to 5-10%) at no extra cost.

      For something to be actually cross-platform (instead of theoretically cross-platform), it would have to be actually tested on all those various platforms. This testing, not to mention the additional hardware and software, is not even close to free.

      Which is not to say designing something so it'll even just theoretically work across platforms is a bad thing at all. It will likely be slightly more expensive, but probably pays off as good design alone even if you never actually port it anywhere. You just should not be under the illusion that better code will come for free.

      Also, just because MacOS and Linux combine for 10% of the market, for example, doesn't mean that your MacOS and Linux versions will account for 10% of your revenue. These are obviously users for whom games are not the all-important thing.

  2. Python programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    Please, don't play this game. It's not that Python is a bad language, it's just that its advocates are so... so...

    Look, do you really want to encourage them? Suppose this game becomes popular, then you're going to hear no end of "Oh yes, have you heard of London Law? It's written in Python. I don't see why everything can't be written in Python. Python's the best language in the world, I can't see what management has against it. It's much better than C and Java. I once wrote a web browser in Python, just a matter of importing mozilla, instantiating a browser object, and that's it, just two lines of code and you've got a whole web browser. I bet London Law is just three lines of code, that's how good Python is. I don't see why Linux isn't written in Python, I mean, it could just be three or four lines of code then, and it'd probably run faster. Of course, Microsoft could write XP in Python and it'd be much more reliable but they'll not because they're so anti-open source and..."

    I mean, these people make Gentoo fans and Terry Pratchett bores look like sane, rational, people you'd want to have at a party.

    1. Re:Python programmers by Frnknstn · · Score: 2, Funny

      Python is the waaay....
      Come to the dark side....
      Who needs to compile...?
      Your code will look sooo pretty....

      The voices in my head are back. I tried to tell them I was happy with VC.net, but they keep calling to me...

      Perhaps I should give in to them.

      --
      If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
  3. great game... by Nos. · · Score: 4, Informative

    Though I never played it much, it was a very interesting concept. One player as Mr. X trying to run from I believe 5 Scotland Yard agents. The basic game play was that you had various tokens to travel around London (taxis, bus, subway, etc). Mr. X was foced to reveal his location every so often. If the agents ever managed to land on the same spot as Mr. X, then the agents won. If the agents ran out of tokens first, then the agents won.
    I'll have to look at it more later (I'm at work now, and believe it or not, don't have time to look at it too much). I'm hoping in the endgame you'll be able to trace routes of Mr.X and the agents just to see how close they came.

    1. Re:great game... by spuzzzzzzz · · Score: 2, Funny

      If the agents ever managed to land on the same spot as Mr. X, then the agents won. If the agents ran out of tokens first, then the agents won.

      So Mr. X gets the short end of the deal, then? ;)

      --

      Don't you hate meta-sigs?
    2. Re:great game... by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 3, Informative
      One player as Mr. X trying to run from I believe 5 Scotland Yard agents.

      Against 5 detectives, Mr.X has no chance at all.

      The game is best played with Mr.X against 4 detectives. The detectives will almost always win the game, but occassionaly Mr.X will make a brilliant escape.

      Against 3 detectives, Mr.X easily wins the game.

      Actually, that is the bad thing about Scotland Yard: the game is fun but never fair; either Mr.X has a huge chance of winning, or the detectives have, depending on the number of players.

      One cannot help wondering whether with a different map design, the game could be made more fair. Perhaps with different maps for 4-player, 5-player, and 6-player games.

    3. Re:great game... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In clue: museum caper board game, this effect is moderated in that mr. x gets to move in between each agent, thus a really large number of agents is not that much of an advantage.

      I can't recall if the scotland yard board game allowed Mr.X to move after each agent, but from the above comment I assume not: Mr. X moves then all the agents.

      Naturally, clue: museum caper has many fewer nodes to move between then scotland yard and some other advantages on the player's side: that you can potentially see Mr. X then s/he moves around the board visibally, motion sensors to tell the region in which Mr. X is, etc.

  4. Is it all there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean, will it feature that alleyway just up Seven Sister's road where all the Turkish guys selling duty-free ciggies run when the coppers try to bust them? It's essential for any lawless activity that alleyway, I can tell you.

    1. Re:Is it all there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Does it matter? I mean, it's written in Python so it has to be good. The great thing about Python is you can write things like word processors in two or three lines of code. This is, in many ways, the perfect project to demonstrate Python's abilities. Python supports many things that lesser languages like C and Java don't, such as TCP/IP access, object orientated programming, file handling, and such. Because of that, you can do really complicated things in it that would take you ages with Java.

      I mean, can you see such a program being written in Perl or TCL? And because Python is interpreted, it's much faster than something written in a language like C where it has to be compiled before you can even run it. Python's also easy to learn which means it'll be easier to maintain the results afterwards, if you have to change the head of Scotland Yard, for example. It's also more secure, because you don't have C's crappy strings, instead you have properly secure strings: programsd written in Python are secure, inherently secure, you an't break into them, and that's what you want in a game because it makes it harder for people to cheat.

      My advice, download it, learn a bit of Python (use one of the many good books about Python, or Ruby if you can't find a book on Python) and add the realism yourself. Behold the power of Python!

    2. Re:Is it all there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      No, but you don't have to worry. The BIG news is that this is written in Python, one of Forbe's magazine's 2003 predictions for "Big Things for 2004". Python is an interpreted scripting language that proactively optimizes the development platform for portability, maintainability, and scalability. This is an excellent example of how Python can be leveraged to produce cross-platform enterprise level games.

    3. Re:Is it all there? by afabbro · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Enterprise-level games"...you're killing me here...

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
  5. detailed game info by honold · · Score: 4, Informative

    can be found here. fury of the dracula is a better-received (but woefully out of print) game in the same class.

  6. Scotland Yard Live in Toronto by Corngood · · Score: 1

    A friend of mine designed a version of the game using Toronto public transit. Kind of a neat idea, and I imagine it could work in a lot of places (like, umm, London).

    http://www.culturehole.com/index.asp?giorno=27&mon th=7&year=2004

    This was a first pass at the rules, and they've since been changed a bit, but you get the idea.

    1. Re:Scotland Yard Live in Toronto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The charm of Scotland Yard was in the interesting map with its twisting streets and interesting street names. Your Toronto map is a boring grid.

    2. Re:Scotland Yard Live in Toronto by Corngood · · Score: 1

      I should add for those who don't follow the link, that the game is played in real life, not on a board.

  7. from the author by Fourier · · Score: 4, Informative
    As the author of London Law, I'd just like to point out that
    1. I personally have only tested this code under Linux, Win98, and WinXP. And not so heavily in Windows.
    2. While the game is fully playable, this is an initial release and it needs a whole lot of work yet. My plans are laid out in the TODO file buried in the archive.

    Also, have mercy on my department's poor webserver. I understand some people actually rely on it to deliver important things like, say, homework.
    1. Re:from the author by angryLNX · · Score: 1

      Has anyone had any luck with this under OS X?

    2. Re:from the author by Fourier · · Score: 3, Informative

      If someone does have it working perfectly under OS X, they haven't told me about it. I have a couple reports of it "almost working."

    3. Re:from the author by AcornWeb · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, that is where I got to. The client gives me a bunch of errors (with the server running fine) and then dies. Too bad, I was hoping to be able to play it straight-away. :-)

      --
      Your Windows PC is my other computer.
    4. Re:from the author by Fourier · · Score: 1

      I'm working on OS X right now (which is a real pain without administrator privileges). Check the London Law site in a day or two; I'll put out a point release when I've got something workable.

  8. zerg by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 1

    Has anyone actually tried this, or should we wait until it's done w/ the beta?

    --
    [o]_O
  9. Anyone inspect the source yet? by tuxedobob · · Score: 2

    Call me crazy, but I'm not fond of needing to be root to install a shareware/freeware app.

    1. Re:Anyone inspect the source yet? by Fourier · · Score: 2, Informative
      You have two options for installing as an unprivileged user:
      1. Don't install. Just extract the archive somewhere, change to the londonlaw/ subdirectory, and you should be able to launch the client and server from there.
      2. Use the '--prefix' option to setup.py to set the installation directory somewhere that does not require root permissions. But if you do this, you'll need to set the PYTHONPATH environment variable appropriately so that python knows where to find the module.
      Now quit complaining about free stuff. Or at least find a better reason to complain.
    2. Re:Anyone inspect the source yet? by geoffspear · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do you mind if we complain that this showed up in the Apple section with claims that it's "OS Independent", when no one's actually gotten it to run on Apple hardware?

      --
      Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
    3. Re:Anyone inspect the source yet? by Fourier · · Score: 1

      Of course, that's a valid complaint, but don't blame me. I didn't post it here. :-)

      I'm working on OS X as we speak; hopefully the porting issues are minor. Check the site again in a day or two.

  10. An editorial review may be useful ... by media_Assassin · · Score: 1
    I don't know that you're projecting the correct "image" of the game by using this screenshot which says:
    what a great game!
    yeah, it's not too bad
    needs a more robust server, though
    I mean, we know it's Beta, but maybe take a new shot that's not putting down your hard work?
    1. Re:An editorial review may be useful ... by Fourier · · Score: 1

      Think of it this way: that screenshot is motivation for me to rewrite the crappy server sooner rather than later.

  11. Mornington Crescent by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

    Mornington Crescent

    --
    music lover since 1969
  12. OS X build available now by Fourier · · Score: 1

    Check the website, there's a new build available specifically for OS X.