http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com guidelines and check if your idea has been posted already! ]]> en-us Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12637/ Sorry for the English.
Thanks

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12637/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12606/
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux

You will see that there's already quite a bit of knowledge in the Valve community about running Steam under WINE.

Also coupled with some other past job postings it would seem there's a possibility this idea will happen anyway.

My proposal is a Canonical controlled bounty for this. I have $50 that I will put in THIS MINUTE to PRE-BUY Orange Box through Steam when it's natively available for Ubuntu. I considered setting this bounty up myself, but trust issues would be easier if it's managed by Canonical. I want to send a REAL message to game developers that people that run Linux are willing to pay for great software. Perhaps it could be a time limited bounty, say 1 year from creation.


Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12606/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12051/ ---
This idea has gotten way too long, so in short:

Given:
- Modern PC games show a lack of innovation and are just copying each other: innovation should be stimulated more
- The PC gaming industry is losing the fight against consoles: PC games should take advantage of the things that a console can't do
- There are dozens of cool 'mods' for closed source games: there is an incentive to create good games for free as long as people don't have to do the boring stuff
- Studios need to invest a fortune into either the development or the acquisition of a proprietary engine.

Solutions:
- Have a portable, versatile game engine that is ready for different types of games and platforms
- Allow closed artwork and maybe closed source 'extensions' on the engine, but the engine itself should fall under copyleft
- Have a ultra-light Linux liveCD come with every game (but still be able to install a game, too)

Consequences:
- now *small* game studios have a free game engine that they can build games upon without having to invest a fortune, as long as they show what they've changed to it
- the engine improves every time a studio uses it
- companies can still charge money for the artwork and other code so they can still make money off their game.
- apart from the closed source layer, it's a lot easier to make mods for a game and thus games will have more mods -> more innovation
- With a good fast-booting light LiveCD, PC games now run optimal, people don't have to install games and a game will run on the same software platform on every PC (like consoles)
---

http://www.osnews.com/story/8146
This article got me thinking. Basically it says that open source and games don't work well because open source tends to only work well with software that has a long lifespan. Games usually have a short lifespan.

Yes, artwork has a short lifespan. But gameplay, for the few mainstream genres in gaming (FPS, TPS, (MMO)RPG, platformer, RTS, TBS) tends to be almost identical. Even the innovative ones like Portal are really not that different.

What we need is a very decent open source engine that can handle a lot and is easy to develop for.

Then, maybe the community will pick it up and create more games. I know this is possible, look at the endless stream of 'mods' the community made for some closed source games that have tools that are a lot harder to use and have less possibilities.

The graphics are going to be worse than mainstream games but thanks to Nintendo we've seen that that's not really important to make popular games.

There is a shift happening from (proprietary) PC games to consoles. We can't push developers to develop proprietary GNU/Linux games, it's their choice. It is time we take advantage of the room that becomes available on the PC platform for some serious (semi-)open source gaming.

I think if we continue to expect games to be proprietary they are only going to shift more towards consoles.

Disclaimer: I don't have any experience with game development, so I can have said some very stupid things. Feel free to point them out ;) Please do suggest other ideas if you have any.

[edit]
Or does it happen? Well, let's see what we have in the open source games department:
1) Wesnoth. Beautiful 2D-graphics. Not that innovative, but certainly enjoyable.
2) Glest, Widelands. Warcraft-clone, Settlers-clone. Not innovative.
3) Nexuiz, Alien Arena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous. Very beautiful FPSes, like there are many. Not very innovative (except for Tremulous).
4) Extreme Tux Racer, Slune. Well, sometimes a bit innovative, for a racer.
5) FreeCol, FreeCiv, SuperTux, Pingus, ... All clones.

I must say am amazed at games like Nexuiz, Alien Arena and Sauerbraten, I didn't think it was possible to make really beautiful 3D open source games. But the question is: should open source game development go in this direction? Because no matter how beautiful Nexuiz is, it's an FPS like any other. Nobody is going to be excited over a game they already played years ago, but in a slightly different form and in freedom. To be honest, I don't understand why developers like to make clones.

I think we shouldn't even try to make games beautiful, proprietary games will always be more beautiful. And movies are even more beautiful. It's gameplay that counts. We have to do what the gaming industry can't do at the moment: we need to make it innovative.

So why are all these games clones of clones of proprietary games?

Simple 2D-games can be as addicting as any other game with stunning graphics, and they don't need as much resources. There's games that kind of follow this strategy, like Globulation 2 and Cultivation.
I don't know why there's so few of them compared with the clone games. It's not like a whole budget went into a game like Cultivation, AFAIK, it was only a single developer.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12051/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12718/
Sadly, sdlBasic is not yet in the official Ubuntu repository...

Since some months ago, Miriam Ruiz (a known Debian game packager) on the Debian game packaging mailing list, told me (us) sdlBasic is almost ready in the package process, which would be interesting if Ubuntu enthusiasts (like me) likes to code SDL games and educational applications, and enjoys the way of coding on ansi-basic-like languages, would help this sdlbasic package becoming more popular.

Personally, sdlBasic became my daily tool, since i used to code on Basic language since childhood, and it's very pleasureful keep doing this kind of coding using SDL libraries, and on Linux (and all other operative systems it were ported, of course). I were using sdlBasic even for picture processing, making videos with ffmpeg, animated gif with gifsicle, pdftk, mysql, etc.

Some of my examples can be found at http://nitrofurano.linuxkafe.com/sdlbasic - and the official webpage of sdlbasic is http://sdlbasic.sf.net - some videos can be seen at http://youtube.com/nitturo



Attachments:
Bug #146265 : [Information on this bug will be retrieved soon]
]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12718/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12074/
It would also be nice to have Pidgin integration (like a plugin), so you could easily find your buddies online to play with.

Free Counterstrike setup with a buddy list of anyone on AOL, Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Jabber, Gtalk, or ICQ?

On a free operating system with free open office?

I think people would go for that.

There's also code in the engine now to have real time speex VOIP with other gamers, like those ones on your buddy list. I'd love that.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12074/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12310/
Zsnes
Mupen64plus
Dolphin
PCSX2

all in the repos. The all run well, and the games for Zsnes alone easily trump hundreds of Windows based games. It's frustrating to have to compile the source myself, or scrounge around for a .deb, particularly when all these emulators are fully open source.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12310/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12417/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12417/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12311/
It would be fantastic if there was a way to right click on a buddy, and then auto-join them in a game on a mutual server if both parties have the appropriate emulator/game.

It would also be nice if the plugin automatically downloaded the game or emulator in question, provided the game or emulator is open source.

Instant Mario Kart 64 with any of your pidgin friends would be a major improvement over any other currently available OS.

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12311/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12132/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12132/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12387/
Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12387/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12605/
Similar to: http://www.hexadoku.de



Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12605/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12522/
I think it would differentiate Ubuntu if a small selection of such games were included in a default installation, since they're generally small. Gaming systems like the Wii have shown that there is a desire for short, experimental games which can be played for a few minutes of enjoyment and closed, as opposed to long, drawn-out games which the player must stick with to ascend levels and such. These are perfect candidates.

Admittedly, the support level for such games might not be fantastic, but they wouldn't have to be included in an LTS release, and particularly buggy ones can be replaced without disrupting the user experience, in fact people may look forward to seeing what interesting games Ubuntu will ship in the next release.

Not everyone enjoys Gnome Robots :P

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12522/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12617/ Before anything I like to say that Linux is awesome, UBUNTU rocks! :p.
So, this is my first idea for the community, however is for people who likes the T.V. Show from Nickelodeon: "Avatar: The last airbender".
It is about the game that we've seen at the show: "Pai Sho", the one who uncle Iroh plays all the time. Would not it be great to play this game on the computer? Of curse!

Here a web site where you can find the rules of the game (Right now is just a project to put the rules)

http://paisho.pbwiki.com/

I think is a simple, easy and amazing game, even for people who aren't familiar with the T.V. Show.

I'm sure it will be easy to program or design, I mean for those ones who knows about software.

So please take it in count.

Thanks!

Attachments:
No attachments. ]]> Sun, 07-Sep-2008 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12617/