Remix This Game — a Free Software Experiment

An anonymous reader writes "REMIX THIS GAME is an experimental game design contest where participants can re-mix and re-cycle my free-software self-published PC game, XONG. XONG is available under permissive licenses allowing remixes and derivative works of the code, graphics, sound effects, and music—even for commercial use. The source code license is the GNU GPL Version 3, and the media is covered by the Creative Commons BY-SA license. No special software or programming experience are needed—XONG has been packaged up so that you can just download the game and edit the graphics/code/music/sounds in place, and re-start the game to see your changes. Plus, it is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux, so you can remix it on whichever OS you use, using whatever programs you like."

Comments

Cool

[krzysz00]

This is great and will most likely show off the extensibility of Lisp to people who don't normally care. Also, why did the author use cells instead of standard CLOS, unlike I'm doing in my common lisp roguelke

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare anybody to watch the game in action" without visiting the website and come to any conclusion about how the game works, or what it is you're controlling, what you have to achieve, how you score or how you die

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

have you seen it running?
man, that game is operating in like 7-dimensions - yet without 'height', concurrently in multiple parallel-universes - with grandfather paradox feedback - before, after and even "word doesn't yet exist" the original causation event. my friend played a full game (no trainer) the other week, he finished 106 years ago with a top score of "japan"

Re:Cool

[Miseph]

Yeah, maybe he should make the code available to the whole world and invite people to change the graphics and sounds.

Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing a story not too long ago about something like that...

"Permissive" license

[Thinboy00]

Typically, the term "permissive" implies a BSD-like license, i.e. no copyleft. I'm just saying.

Re:"Permissive" license

[Neil_Brown]

maintain the updates and the original code for x amount of years

I'm not aware that either licence requires you to do either of these things - under GNU GPL v3, the licence for the code, you have a number of options if you wish to distribute the covered code in binary form (article 6, GNU GPL 3.0) on a commercial basis, including:

• distribute the binary on a physical medium, accompanied by the source code on a fixed medium; and
• distribute the binary online, and offering equivalent access to the source code (i.e. just hosting both the source and the binary)

In neither case are you required to host / distribute the source code at any point after you cease to distribute the binary.

Similarly, in terms of "maintenance", your code can be as buggy as you wish - there is no obligation maintain, release new versions, merge patch submissions etc., unless you wish to do so.

(IAAL, doing quite a lot of open source work, but this is not legal advice :))

Re:How is this different from the mod scene?

[RobVB]

Is it on slashdot because it is news, or is it news because it's on slashdot?

This discussion is now about philosophy.

Suggestions for XONG remixers

[Robotron23]

This game at first glance appears to be a take on an early roguetype; however in truth it's less adventureish, gear-based or as rich with chance taking. It's quirky though:

You control a vulnerable white square attempting to infiltrate a semi-randomly generated abstract color field environment infested with robots. You are armed with a paint-absorbent hockey puck that can pick up color and transfer it to other objects. If you lose your puck, you have to find another; these are scattered through the environment and look like the letter P. There are no hit points; any hit kills you, and completely ends your game. You cannot shoot enemies; instead you drop direction-changing arrows called "chevrons" to guide them to their doom in one of XONG's many black holes. But your puck will also follow the arrows, so be careful where you fire; otherwise you'll lose it down a black hole.

I can imagine any number of possibilities for this game so here are my suggestions...

You could attach a consistently looping 8-bit track, and perhaps add a purple 'M' character that changes said track between a selection of five inbetween your fight for survival. XONG: SONG Edition.

You could append a boss enemy with a brown capital 'K' - this will spawn periodically in the game to increase the challenge difficulty. However you can destroy him by luring him to the red 'M' which insta-deaths the K. XONG: KONG Edition.

You could attach an RPG element with a short text preamble which says you're a stoner who's attempting to work his way up the hockey league and must find a bong in under 200 move intervals to survive - upon 10,000 moves (progressive difficulty) and then you win hockey stardom...it could be called XONG: BONG Hockey Master Edition.

Re:How is this different from the mod scene?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler also had a philosophy.

Check and mate.

Re:How is this different from the mod scene?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler also had a philosophy.

Check and mate.

Well, this match is over. God wins!

Re:How is this different from the mod scene?

[hitmark]

usually on the mod scene you do not have access to the whole game engine. Heck, when tho id software open source their game engines, they still retain copyright on the models and graphics.

Some comments from XONG's author

[dto1138]

Hello folks, I have addressed the originality (or alleged lack thereof) of the remix contest in another message here. I chose XONG because it's a small and relatively simple game, so it would be easier to get started remixing. There is a review of Xong here: http://playthisthing.com/xong And, folks, the game includes a thorough HELP screen on the F1 key, and an interactive in-game tutorial. So if the videos seem inscrutable, try reading the instructions. I make no claim to the engine or game being the greatest ever, but I hope the contest will be fun and get people possibly involved with creative commons licensed art, or free software, or lisp game dev. Who knows?

Re:Some comments from XONG's author

[ColaMan]

So if the videos seem inscrutable, try reading the instructions. I make no claim to the engine or game being the greatest ever, but I hope the contest will be fun and get people possibly involved with creative commons licensed art, or free software, or lisp game dev

Oh, don't mind us, we just love to shit all over someone's hard work, you know? Call it a hobby, if you will. Never mind the fact that 90% of us here couldn't construct a game to save our miserable lives, let alone make one you can remix.

If this is supposed to show off Lisp

[Sycraft-fu]

I don't want to see something you consider needing work in Lisp. This game has to be the most confusing thing I've seen in a long time. Extremely poor design. Now I realize that doesn't mean the language behind it is bad, but it is not a good way to showcase things. "Oh look how extensible Lisp is! You can edit a poorly done extremely complex game!"

I mean I could counter with "Look how extensible C++ is! Go purchase Civ 4 and marvel at the amount of flexibility it has, without ever touching the source code (most of the game is in XML and Python)."

When you want to showcase something, you want a good looking, easy to use demo. You want a polished final product.

Author explains XONG gameplay

[dto1138]

Here is a youtube video i made a while back, showing gameplay with explanatory text. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9mi08KQDWw I'm used to people being put off by XONG initially because of the weird graphics, so I will try to explain it in a nutshell. You have to kill the enemies but have no weapons. The only way to kill an enemy is to direct it into a "black hole", each of which can only be used once. Basically, you lay down arrows (up, down, left , or right) on the game board, which the enemies follow, and hopefully you direct them into the holes. You have to dig tunnels to many of the holes, or to escape a bad situation, or whatever. There are 4 or 5 different types of enemies, though you have to progress in the game to see more than 2 or 3. One hit kills you and totally ends your game (start back at level 1). XONG requires quick reactions to avoid death, but requires pre-planning to kill the enemies, who behave in generally predictable ways. The predictability tells you where to place the arrows and which holes to un-dig.

Re:Because this game sucks, and is open source

[krzysz00]

Slashdot doesn't comment on the mod scene much because it is mostly limited to commercial software since it is mostly limited to good games. You take a game that has a solid engine, with lots of good looking assets, and then add to that the ability to customize it easily through XML or included editors or what not and you find that people often flock to modifying it. They start from a strong base, making it much easier to create a useful, fun, mod. You don't have to redo everything, the game is already good. You just, well, modify.

Such a game (which is open source) already exists. It's called Wesnoth

P.S. Was this flame/troll?