Hi all, I’ve been watching the live feed of the LHC Experiment, and, well, contrary to the beliefs of some people, the world certainly did not end.

I’d like congratulate humanity on this great achievement, and, I’m looking forward to seeing what we discover.

And, lets just put it this way, damn, are some people going to feel really stupid, right about now.

EDIT: Well, after a couple of posts saying that I missed the fact that I did not recognise that there had been no collisions.. I thought I’d clarify.

I know there have been no collisions, as yet, it was an issue of large amount of people claimed that September 10th, would be the day that mattered. Obviously, this was not the case, hence the “damn, are some people going to feel really stupid, right about now.”

Thanks, and byee.

I left the last part of The Life of An Adventurer a bit unfinished, only just touching on the possibilities of the [ Iris2 ] engine, so, here I intend to fill that out a little.

Iris2 is a 3d client for the classic MMO, “Ultima Online”, it uses content from the original UO 3d client, along with Free Content assets.

I’ve mentioned another project in the past by the devs, or at least by two prominent members of the project(Ghoulsblade and Hagish): [ StressFreeZone ].

The rendering of the engine is fairly similar to that of Neverwinter Nights, and could probably be adapted to be perfect. The ruleset, of course, would need to be changed, but, that is to be expected.

Iris is coded using OGRE3d, and the middleware layer lugre (again, lugre was created by the dev team and, so I believe, is used by a number of other projects. ( EDIT: lugre appears to be only used by a few smaller projects - Thanks to Ghoulsblade for the correction! )

Really short one, today, just giving a bit of knowledge on Iris2. Ghoulsblade and Hagish - If you’re reading this, and want me to update or add anything, etc, drop me a line, thanks!

Well, time to revisit an old article: [ Games and Clones ]. Not content to leave this blog untouched, I’ve decided I should probably post more than I have been, lately.

I’m going to play with the premise of the article a little, though, in this one, maybe it’ll work a bit better this time.

——

In the first (and up-until-now-latest) installment of Games and Clones, we covered the possibilities of  an open source clone of Electonic Arts and Games Workshop’s 1996 PSX First Person Shooter, Space Hulk : Vengeance of the Blood Angels.

Time to shake things up a little.

The year is 2002, and [ Bioware Corp ] and Infogrames has released their latest Role Playing Game Masterpiece Neverwinter Nights. Until the next year, when the Linux and Mac versions are released, the game is Windows only. The game, to the joy or dismay of its players, is basically D&D 3rd Edition in a 3d game engine. The campaign, was generally considered poor compared to the Role Playing Game that Bioware had previously released: Baldur’s Gate 2 : Shadows of Amn.

The years go past, and the community grows, producing its own campaigns, and content. Bioware has offered some of the community a chance to sell their modules under a “Premium Module” program. This program would allow the game to be updated indefinitely, or at least in theory.

Obsidian Studios develops Neverwinter Nights 2. Atari, the current publisher, forces Bioware to cease production of Premium Modules, which in itself, ends the chance of indefinite life through continual patches and updates.

The game is not perfect. The game has flaws. All games do. To be honest, Neverwinter Nights can be very complicated, sometimes a little too complicated. But, it was designed to allow an emulation of the d20 game system.

I’d love to see an open source game similar to this… The way it emulates a ruleset, and allows for all sorts of roleplaying styles. Allowing for different types of maps, extremely scriptable, and extensible. allowing for so many different creatures, classes, everything.

Moddability to the extreme. An open ended engine, that the user (or content creator/mapper/level designer/etc) can customise, and create their own game, or adventure. Multiplayer is *very* important, as is single player.

It is not an Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game, but rather an Intimate Multiplayer Online (IMO) game, this term was coined by Bioware, to refer to the way multiplayer works in NWN. The players (in most cases) are a part of a single group, and need to work together.

Anyways, as a game engine that could possibly be used to create a new (open source) version of NWN.. would be, in my opinion, [ Iris ].

That’s enough for this one, I think, I’ll probably continue on on this note sometime soon.

Well, “MYST Online: Uru Live” closed down, on April 10th, 2008. It was a sad day for many of us that used to venture into the Cavern… But, life goes on. The Cavern is still ours for the exploring, in various ways, to be honest. But, first on to more important things.

I have fallen in love with this amazing woman… Rachel Gardiner(aka Ri’ana), I first met her in Uru, but it was not until later that we realised that we have strong feelings for each other. Strong feelings of love.

As far as I’m concerned, she is the love of my life, and the woman of my dreams. We started, well “Dating” on April 22nd, 2008. Its been a month already, the time has just flown by, to be honest. Been a wonderful time, in general, actually. I love her so much! <3

Back to Uru, I’ve found a really interesting blog called [ Beneath ], that is the story of an explorer who attempts to explore the ages during the times when the Cavern has been closed down. Also of his community, who appear to try to restore some of the Cavern… The “Restorer’s Guild”, or something like that.

An interesting read, I thought. I’m also working on my Guild of Artisans logo, as well as pondering a site for it, as well. That, and pondering D’nibuntu, again… Random thoughts, as ever…

Ok, so, I’m a little lazy… Well, more like busy, to be honest. Work is taking up most of my time, as are other projects, so I’m looking for a pre-made theme for the moment.

In other news, I’m working on various miniature/model hobby things, such as model buildings, using [ Hirst Arts ] Castlemolds…

Sorry for the short one, this time.

Shorah, all!

So, like it was when I started this blog.. my “Journals of Kaelis Ebonrai”, I am again interested in the D’niverse (The Game-Universe of the MYST Franchise).

Like those days, I have begun a journey into an online version of Uru, this time.. [ Myst Online: Uru Live ].

To be honest, I think its high time for a redesign of this Blog. I’m not the same guy I was, then.
Some things are similar, and some things are reverting to what I was like in those days. But.. I’m 20, now. I’ve changed in many ways. The love that was just beginning when I started this journal, has ended.

It.. had almost reached 17 months.

But, time changes things, all things. Almost 2 years ago, I started this blog. As I said, its time to change things a little. I know far more about art, about design, about life, than I did then. So, it is time to put that into practice.

Remember, it is not the destination that matters, but the journey…

Well, I guess I did see the need to add to the previous post.

Again, this entry is inspired by events in [ #freegamer ]. Ghoulsblade, ( One of the two main developers of [ StressFreeZone ], which was mentioned in the last entry ) Sindwiller (of [ Rgames ] ) and myself talked about possibilities for improving the current production “pipeline” for FLOSS Artists. Currently, there are many, many tools, all separated, and not much tie-in between them, no decent solution for the design (and production) of game art.

The individual parts are, indeed, there. But.. there’s no connection between them. Each part is isolated, and not part of a greater whole.

A Free Libre Open Source Software solution could possibly be created by a combination of:

SVN (for versioning)
Blender (or others, for 3d Modeling)
GIMP (for 2d Art/texture-making/photo-editing)
Tomboy (?) (or other note-taking systems (?) perhaps with a possibility for adding notes/comments to images in the repo)
mtPaint (pixel art (?) )
Inkscape (Vector Art)
KolourPaint (?) (perhaps not a kde-only one, but, listing kolourpaint, due to not being 100% sure on what others could be used for simple quick-and-dirty scribble-sketches on the images (as an overlay) in the repo, perhaps as an addition to the note/comment adding stuff. (or as part of it.) )
Bugzilla (or non-web-based equivalent, for issue/bug tracking)
Jabber (for messaging/chat within the project, and within the “pipeline”)

These or similar could be used to create a “production pipeline” for FLOSS projects, especially games.

I guess you could take [ Gobby ] as a smaller-scale example, really.

This wasn’t all I had planned, but, its already pretty long as it is. I’ll leave the rest for next time.

So, I was hanging around [ #freegamer ] last night, and, Kiba ( Founder of [ LibreGameWiki ] ) seemed to mention a general dislike of artists, and expressing what I’ve seen mentioned before, sadly, that artists are often more “selfish” than coders in general. I tend to disagree with Kiba with most things, and, of course I disagree on this.

I must admit, being an artist, I am somewhat biased on this matter.

I know that a lot of artists have issues with commerical distribution, and some even rabidly defend their work from “Art Thieves” (Real or Imagined), to the point of putting great big copyright labels in bright colours all over their works.

This is not universal, however. And, I believe, it is possible for artists to be encouraged, and, have their fears of open source overcome. I sincerely hope that the people mentioned above do not taint the view of the Free Software community against those of us who do contribute in our own way to the cause.

What do the greater body of Free Software Coders think of Artists? I honestly don’t know. I know some are, indeed, supportive of our efforts, and are willing to help us to help them. I don’t know how wide-spread this is, I’ve been involved with mostly supportive projects, but, I’ve not worked with that many different projects.

I think the best project I’ve been involved in.. is [ StressFreeZone ] the guys there are great, and really make doing art for them a lot of fun, you get to be creative, when things don’t match their needs, they do their absolute best to explain (constructively and nicely) what they’d like changed. They’re a pleasure to work with, too. I still have a bunch of things I’d like to do for them, and, I look forward to finishing those things up, and, hopefully, continue to contribute to their project.

I think I’ll wrap this one up here for now, I may see some more things to add, later.

So, another entry for me.

I’ve been playing around on Windows (and I’ve been feeling the pain, trust me on that) lately, giving Steam a shot, and personally, I think its a rather interesting tool, and, I’d love to see an open-source program inspired by it.

The most brilliant part of it, to me, is not so much the content distribution system, really. Its the “community” aspect. It allows users to open an overlay when in a full-screen game, that can let them talk to people on an (sadly steam-only) instant messaging system. So, you can talk to people about things in-game, without them playing with you. It’d be nice to have a browser in this overlay, too, I might add, so, you can quickly open the overlay, and search for things relating to whatever you’re doing. On that note.. It doesn’t require special code in the game itself. (Which is a VERY good thing.) May I note, In an open source version, it could be good to use the XMPP/Jabber system, perhaps.

The content distribution is a good thing, sure, and may perhaps, be possible to do with something like APT, in a Free Software version.

I hear the OpenFrag project is working on something like the content distribution system, but, as I said above, that’s not the beauty of Steam. Here’s hoping that this might spark some interest to someone.

Ahoy all,

I’m thinking about a semi-regular set of articles on games that’d be interesting to clone, or would be good inspiration for Free (Libre) Software Games.

I’m calling it “Games and Clones”, for now..

So, for the first (test) installment…

Space Hulk : Vengeance of the Blood Angels
PSX - 1996 - Electronic Arts (Licensed by Games Workshop)

Inspired by the classic boardgame, this is a rather… tactical First Person Shooter. A bit clunky, but, fairly decent.
You play as a Blood Angels Space Marine in Tactical Dreadnaught Armour (aka “Terminator Armour”) You have control over the entire squad, but you’ll only be directly controlling one Marine at a time.

The setting is a dark-future/gothic-future setting. The game is played within a “Space Hulk” (A derelict star ship, drifting in space). The atmosphere is dark, and claustrophobic, the corridors are somewhat narrow (and there are few open spaces, there are some however.), and the Terminator armour is slow and ponderous. You’re not fast, lets put it that way.

You’re up against vicious, monsterous aliens, fast, and deadly. You do have an “auspex” (a sort of radar-scanner that picks up nearby aliens), but the auspex is only enough to show a vague idea of where they are. Surprises do happen.

Its tactical, but, I don’t personally think its tactical side is really worth keeping in a game inspired by it, I’d think the game could have much more impact if the player was the only member of the squad.

A mission-based system could be nice, but, randomly generated areas might be better, possibly. (it could be generated from room-tiles/corridor tiles, etc, maybe?)

But, the best way to keep it interesting, is to have the right atmosphere, it should be dark, creepy, and claustrophobic.

It’d be nice to somehow be able to choose equipment before the levels, as well as maybe pick some extra stuff up, along the way.

Anyways.. that’s my ramble, for now.

What do people think of this test article, and, the ideas therein?

(I’d be interested in working on a game like I just mentioned, if anyone else is interested on working on it, too?)