Andrew Fenn over at FGD-forums have just opened a survey about Open Source Games and financing, more info here and here OPs blog-post.So if you got some spare minutes please fill it in and contribute some statistic for the community.
Head over and fill in the survey now
(I helped in a small part by creating the coin in the artwork at freegamer.)
TheAnicentGoat, have been tinkering with a distribution system that would make it easier to:
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 for 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.
I’m contemplating how to make a big sparkling return to the ehh blog world(?) of Open Source Game Development. Why not a summary of things happening in the community?
Game developing with m64
m64 aka the inside man, is writing a very interesting blog, he talks at large about most things that is interesting in my opinion. In this post he talks at large about one very interesting topic “shared worlds”, and in a way it go along similar lines that I have previously explored. I have long been thinking about why the Open Source Gaming Scene have not come up with anything like Firefox and Open Office. And just like m64 writes it’s about projects aiming at big commercial style games that needs loads of assets from 3D models to music. And with that the painful realization that there are not enough good artists around the FOSS scene.
I also think he have hit the nail on this one too, creating a universe/world that many games can use. The trick here is to make project leaders and developers understand that you can tweak the shared objects individually to archive the glorious ‘unique’-stamp that they all seem to stick too. If you are interested in this please by all mean head over to m64’s blog and read up.
Sindwiller – the space captain or space simulator man, on how to make a (space-sim) game fun.
Another interesting blog that recently surfaced from the FGD-forum is Sindwillers rgame blog, if you want to make a space-sim game that will be fun and not like the other ones already around, I think you better have to read some of what he have to say about these kind of games. Or better up head over to the IRC channel #freegamer at freenode and hit him hard.
Timong – Dev turned composer, money raiser
Here is a real gem, Pal Zoltan Illes (sounds like a composer right?) have released his second jcrpg soundtrack. Which to my ears sounds truly fantastic in a game like jcrpg. If he manage to get the donations in he will even drop the nc part in the creative commons license which will turn this cool soundtrack very free.
Head over and donate or just listen to the fine tunes.