Freshly Squeezed

I've been absent or inactive for an age it seems, no excuses needed and none supplied. Well I'm back and I will continue the content management research I started; Content Management and all things relative to that.
In fact I have already head started with a new project that I hope will generate something useful, at least we will get a series of articles about it.

For those who want a preview you can head over to the SVN and look at some odds and oddities pasted there. In short I'm going for a "full" media pack, doing all content that would be needed for a game

More to come soon.

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Once again my post will be influenced by m64's blogpost, this time around it's more about what was said on #freegamer at freenode (IRC) about the named post.

'Shared Worlds' might be a different thing to different people, but here it's all about sharing assets, history (I won't say story) and contributors.

There are some obvious problem with making/creating this 'shared world' without thinking; here I list the things that pops out of my mind:

• A lot of effort before anyone use it, if any will - wasted time for all
• Hard for people to contribute to a world that is "non-existent"  no boundaries will lead to a unattractive bloated world
• Willing contributors without a common goal, leads to endless discussion

How can we remedy these problems before they occur?

There are some as easy solutions as there are problems; One is to use a pre-existent world, from let's say a game that is FOSS and don't have any connection to a closed/owned world, the bigger the game is the better. A problem here could be current lead manager not agreeing with this idea, to me that hangs on communication. So go out and find one for us!

Another way would be to set out from the real world, and adding some spice to it. Imagine technology advances stooped in the early 1920, Titanic (still a boat) got to it's destination, the Eiffel tower got blown away by gnomes who suddenly appeared from below.. (this could go on). But this 'solution' only solves the number two problem listed. On the other hand it will solve any legal harassment, depending in what we spice it up with. Any thoughts on this is greatly appreciated!

A way to simply solve the last of my listed problems is to get hold of a strong willed lead, someone or someones who can hold fast to a vision, pure blood into that, and make other people interested/fascinated. Is there a better way to make all who want to contribute, work toward a similar of not same goal?

Similar project that already are out in the wild got meantioned

They don't really cut the cake but they are worth research: Biggest and best of the mentions comes first Angels Fall First (AFF) - To me it is Star Wars and Star Trek sans aliens and Hollywood cliche, to bad this is not truly open for us. Second is the Tux world - to me this hardly even makes it to this list as it is somewhat lacking in ingredients, even white the aid of freedroid.

I almost forgot, go post your thoughts on the fgd forum too!

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TheAnicentGoat, have been tinkering with a distribution system that would make it easier to:

• Get games
• Contribute
• Develop games

A Kitchen and Sink system to most of us, but that depends on how it is made.

Personally I want to make it easier for non-devs to contribute stuff like: sounds, 3D models and other non code stuff. Something else then SVN, git, bazaar and other similar system, which is both hard to use for most people not doing code, and a bit too official. And let's face it, they were not meant to manage the assets of games.

I would like to see a system that could handle feedback and gallery like features, and do this in a simple way. This is not what theAnicentGoat aims for at the moment, but I think it could be integrated in his Steam like idea.

The idea outlined by TheAincentGoat is more about making use of the community.

Building a community that is not aimed at one specific game, that could make contribution more common. If we find the way to make it easy. There are a couple of things beside registering to a forum, learning how to use a Revision Control system and becoming best friends with the project lead/developer, that hinders contribution as it is now. Minimising the fear of rejection and making it easy to test ones contribution is also of importance.

All these things is already possible, but it is far from working in a good way. How to solve this is what the current discussion is about, join in at IRC freenode #freegamer or in the forums.

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