Gaming category

Add Yo Frankie! Game to Ubuntu repositories.

This is a mark in Open Source Gaming in my opinion, and a so well done, worked and polished game with such quality deserves go to Ubuntu repositories.

More info here:
http://www.yofrankie.org/

jorgerosa comment:
"Yo Frankie! is not only a game. You can learn to make games with it!

I downloaded the game (bigger file there) and opened in Blender, and i can learn how they do the game.

I even can run the game from Blender (no need to compile or whatever), since Blender has built in his own 3D game engine, and see what happens when i change stuff there :D"

When having installed several games trough synaptic I realised that a lot of them create multiple entries in the menu. Like one for the server one for the client and another one for config or editor.
In general this bloats the menu alot. I think games that have multiple entries should create their own subfolder OR we sort the games in subcategories ( i think it was like that in some inteprid alpha).

Strange for example also is the "ProMode" launcher for nexuiz.

Add PlaneShift opensource mmorpg Game to Ubuntu repositories.

This is a mark in Open Source Gaming in my opinion, and a so well done, worked and polished game with such quality deserves go to Ubuntu repositories.

More info here:
http://www.planeshift.it/

Currently, Ubuntu's preinstalled games are mostly board games, card games-- things that your grandmother likes, things you might play on your phone, but not things your kid brother would play. Not things that give the impression that you have any more gaming ability than Windows 95.

I propose we include a more fast-paced, twitch game, both so that when you do have, say, a nephew on grandma's computer, he has something he finds interesting; as well as to show that Ubuntu is capable in the gaming arena. This would also increase the appeal of Ubuntu's games, such as for users who may just be trying the LiveCD (not installing packages), or users who aren't able to get internet access good enough to search out and download games (even much of the US doesn't have quality internet service).

I would recommend such a game would need to be reasonably fast paced, have good graphics (while not being slow on older hardware), and have a high score system, so players have something to beat. It should also be small enough that people don't need to worry about preferences or configuration (and so that we don't need to remove many existing games from the LiveCD), while offering plenty of depth through gameplay. It should be easy to get into, while providing plenty of challenge for more experienced players.

If this were done, there should be some discussion on what game it should be, and what makes that game a good choice; decided by the community. There are many good games waiting in the repos, and many good arguments to be made for and against many of them.

i know it is a little difficult to partner with EA games, rockstar games, and so on, but a least try to partner with http://retro64.com http://gamehouse.com small companies games.
they have games for mac, so it will not be that difficult to have their games for linux.. and the list goes on, for example you have http://reflexive.com
i was thinking last night and i know that one of the reasons that people do not adopt ubuntu as their only OS is that we do not have all those well-know games for ubuntu, so i think it is a good beginning if those companies make linux games version for us, so they will sell them to people who want to buy them, give us free-trial and free games.

Multiplayer online Reversi game for ubuntu.

Flightgear 1.9.0 has just been released, any chance we can have it added in time for 9.04?

As all old-fashioned games fans should know source code of Hexen and Heretic were released as open source software somewhere in 2000 year.
There was an idea on Brainstorm about compiling it and putting it into repository (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/12913/), but many people commented the original game IWAD file, which is needed to play, wasn't released, so there is no point compiling this game.
I worked quite a lot on WAD's and IWAD's and I am familiar with this file format. Let me present what the IWAD contain:
-maps
-textures
-weapon data (images/animations)
-monsters data (images/some weird stuff like behavior)
-menu background
-in-game music
-sound effects

The rest of the game, I mean phisics and graphic alghoritms, and maybe some more features are contained in the game executable itsels, so this not require a WAD file.

== What about creating our own IWAD?
What about making IWAD, that would allow everyone to freely play the legendary games in new style, but with old climate?
The software needed to making IWAD is freely available, and there is no problem making fake IWAD. We could totally change the game, new monsters, maps, but keeping the original climate. Making a totally new game based on the old Heretic/Hexen needs just some time.
I think many people would volunteer in this project, as it requires work from many different categories: graphics (weapons, monsters, textures), sound (music, effects), mapping. There are actually no programmers needed, as we have ready game engine. Ubuntu community should have no problem finding right people.

I think it would be awesome to reborn the legend! I know there are so many old FPS fans, there are many people complaining about the nubmer of nice games in Ubuntu... Hexen/Heretic are small, effective, nice-looking 'old 3d' games, I'm sure many players would hook on them!

[....]

I can put a game in my PS3 and it instantly works, why should this be any different for my computer? Canonical should partner up with game manufacturers to put games on Ubuntu live dvd. I should be able to boot my computer up on a DVD and have my game. Start with linux friendly game developers such as ID Tech and move on to have other game manufacturers create linux games for this live dvd.

There's a lot of wonderful games available on http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php , not only "Beneath a steel sky" and "Flight of the amazon queen", perhaps you could package them ?

Live (CD-style) Game

The idea is that instead of buying a game for windows, mac, or linux; you would buy a game. The game itself would have a built in Linux OS as the service engine (both x86 and x86_64 compatible). Then there would be OpenGL and the game would run on top of this OpenGL layer. The game would have access to the full power of the hardware, and would be OS independent since it is the OS. Additionally if you popped it into a (debian) linux it would ask if you wanted to install it in there so you could play it from the hard drive (not possible on mac/windows since those are proprietary [and cost money]).

Obviously there would an SDK for this system to make it easy to develop games in this manner. An IDE with some form of virtualization built in to allow both debugging and running the game while developing (as opposed to rebooting) the game would make nice additions (and without having to waste CDs). The .iso would be autogenerated.

Also worth noting (and probably most important) is that this system could be based on a lightweight form of Ubuntu so that both the development machine and the game OS would be (able to be) Ubuntu.

(This is related to, but an expansion of: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16478/)

After reviewing how my previous idea was not beneficial, I have a modified proposal. Taking my previous idea of building a minimal game linux (based on an existing distro, perhaps ubuntu, or otherwise), you would have a boootable game. This would enable to (theoretically) run on any setup. Then, if you don't mind the performance hit taken from running the game in a multitasking environment, you could stick the cd into an existing OS (such as windows) and an installer would install the 'game' into the system. The 'game' would be run in a (feature-)stripped down virtualbox. This would let them integrate it into their windows/mac/linux system without knowing the difference (because the virtualization software would be hidden from the user). As stated before, there would be some form of development kit for this so that you could write the game, then click 'compile' and it would go all the way to the *.iso for the developer. This could then be run in a VM for testing, or burned to a cd for distribution and usage. This would make the game truly universal. This should be possible since the VirtualBox OSE does more than what would be required for this game kit to work. Any improvements of this idea? The virtualization really shouldn't impact performance that much. Also, if VirtualBox was modified correctly you might be able to have it take up (in memory) a dynamic amount based on how much the game needs at the time. Also, full-screen and window mode would essentially be implemented already for the developers to the standardization of the hotkeys. Obviously, the installers would have to be generated for each OS; but that should be a relatively simple to automate task.

So what do you say?