Blog for David Janssens at GarageGames.com

Slick Linux support

David Janssens — 2008-11-02T23:09:31+00:00

The first episode of Penny Arcade passed my attention without being noticed, which is a shame. I guess I had a period of less exposure to internet, and was preoccupied with work-related stuff.
This time however, I noticed the availability of a Linux version for the second episode of Penny Arcade : the Rain-slick precipise of Darkness, and decided to check it out.

Oh boy. I wasn't disappointed.

Apart from the fact that it is a game that does everything very well, what stood out for me was the quality of the Linux support. I've been ignoring Linux development for a while because it was, at that time, too time-intensive. I might have to look again. No special configurations, no glitches, just nice playtime.

I must say : chapeau! (that's french ;-) ) I for one will be buying the game (for linux) immediately after I've finished some lingering work I really need to finish. I really hope many others do too, as it is money well spent.

A repository/mirror for 3D models

David Janssens — 2008-09-10T21:55:38+00:00

this is cross-posted from my blog at d-log.nebulagame.com.

The Garagegames community is great. Many people on the forums are glad to help you out when you are having problems, and it's not like on some other forums where most of the time they tell you to use the f*!#ing search functionality. No, in most circumstances, when they can help you, they will. But it's not only programmers and game designers on the GG forums. Luckily, more and more artists have found the way to the forums to deliver us game players from the dreaded programmer art.

Sadly, many models have been lost in the meantime because of them being posted on free and limited hosting programs. Other hosting plans provide just a few megabytes of bandwidth every 24 hours (like geocities), which is rather limiting when hosting 3D models. That's sad, as many of these models are really great additions to the portfolio.

Talking to infinitum3d on the Torque forums, I proposed to offer my largely unused bandwidth and storage space. The first models and packs can be found at difdts.nebulagame.com. Please note that there isn't much there other than a dump of some compressed files. I'm slowly building a web application at the moment which offers all kinds of functionalities, both for the publishing 3D artist, and for the site visitor needing a specific model.

In the meantime, I will host freely available models (no use restrictions) that aren't larger than 50MB when zipped, just let me know you have something to share with the world. When the site is in beta, anyone interested will be invited to test-drive it. Posting a comment on my blog will get my attention, so don't hesitate.

The linux market just got a bit easier

David Janssens — 2007-12-04T22:39:56+00:00

One of the strongest points about Linux is also its weakness: the distro. As a consumer, it's great to be able to search hundreds of linux distributions, knowing that if you don't find a distribution that perfectly matches your needs, you can always start your own.

As a software developer/distributor, that part is the biggest nightmare of them all. Linux is very complex software, constantly changing, and for most software, different distributions differ just enough to impose a totally different way of handling software for them.

For the distribution of your software, instead of having 3 major OS blocks to write software for, al of a sudden you have Mac OS, Windows and a multitude of Linux dialects that differ enough to be considered small OSes themselves. Instead of 3 platforms, you suddenly have 10 of them. The Linux market on it's own isn't that much of a behemoth, so this further splintering is for many interested parties the proverbial last straw, and Linux gets tossed aside.

Today, the first step in ending that seems to have been taken by Linspire. In their latest newsletter Linspire unveiled the start of their CNR.com software service. And that new offering is written in such a way that today they already have support for Linspire and Ubuntu systems. Combined with the fact that they encourage commercial suppliers to use their platform, it might be the first step in making development for Linux a no-brainer.

Okay, there have been efforts like Autopackage, but that never did got much momentum. The fact that it imposed a totally new way of working for the people building the packages might account for that. I truly believe CNR.com might be the way to go, considering not all games/programs will be suitable for distribution through services like InstantAction.com. It isn't known yet if InstantAction will provide Linux support, so best to keep your options open.

I remember Edward Gardner from Maxgaming, responsible for Lore and Kachinko (both available on Linux) to be very glad about how Linspire was doing things (in the comments of that post), so that's another good sign.

To be continued. Support for Red Had and OpenSuSE is in the works, so let's hope other distro's (Mandriva, Gentoo and Xandros come to mind) get their plugin soon and see this platform get the support it deserves.

Looking back

David Janssens — 2007-10-01T10:23:31+00:00

***WARNING : Image-less post!***

Looking back on my last post, I must say that not much has changed on the front of Torque-related development. I've changed jobs recently, which is in combination with a new house, very time-consuming. My ordeals are described on the Karekiet39 blog. Those who have been waiting for more content and info on Nebulagame itself, I have good news for you: I've started over in a more bloggish form.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that the site I wanted to maintain was unrealistically overkill for the use and purpose for the time being. Xoops is a cool platform in my opinion (I even started to write some Xoops plugins for myself), but when you only need a small blog with one or two extra static pages attached, Wordpress is a much better match for the job. Much less maintenance, less overhead, and less space consuming which should keep my webhost happier.

So, finally, I'll be continuing the ideas mentioned in my former post, but this time without all the web-presence overhead. I'll see where it takes me towards Christmas.

A Fresh start

David Janssens — 2007-05-04T13:41:11+00:00

The title of this blog couldn't be more appropriate. Since a month now, we moved. We bought a nice house in one of the suburbs of Leuven (Belgium), and have been in a seemingly endless fight with boxes full of stuff ever since. When I started again last week at work, I hadn't seen a running computer in two weeks. Believe me, there isn't much else you think about when you have two weeks to get your new house how you want it to. With some time-consuming tasks that need to be done before you can put all the furniture in, thinking about games and working on them is the last thing on your mind.

Such a forced break isn't all that bad, however. It lets your subconscious work things out for you. For example, I was considering getting some people together to work on a MMO for the famous (and by now also infamous) Dream Games Contest. I say 'infamous' because it seems that all the active Torque users seem to be getting fabulous ideas for some MMO, and nothing else is done any more. It isn't the case, but the contest has been very visible at the moment. I guess that will become less, as more and more of the teams that don't have a good working strategy, or simply lack the time, drop out.

Considering the MMO in my case, I have decided to work some more on my 'Nebula Universe', and to start working at the 'fleshing out' of the parts. I'll be doing that by using the TGE + MMO Kit by Dream Games to create some snack-sized adventure games, each set into a different part of the universe and/or the current timeline. At the same time, I'll have the needed information to get the website up and running in the form I would want to have it.

I'm still thinking of working on a casual game (NO Connect 3 derivative, spare me), but that will be as a side-project only, and will be done in TGB. If not for being able to get my thoughts elsewhere, it will be a nice thing to have another project with TorqueScript, to learn it in different circumstances.

Great Game Experiment

David Janssens — 2006-11-29T13:57:53+00:00

The Great Game Experiment is ... , for lack of a better word, Great. I see it in a way as a big group testing people. Not only the needed beta-tests, but also the group to turn to when you have multiple game ideas bouncing around in your head.

Community sites are hot nowadays, due to buzzword-compliant sites (web 2.0 and AJAX anyone?), but I think the games you play tell a great deal about what games you will like, and how to take criticism. I'll play around on it a bit more, just to make sure I have a good idea of its features.

On another note, I was wondering why so few companies make Linux games. My platform of choice happens to be OpenSUSE, and I know lots of people that really feel bound to Windows due to the lack of games they would like to play. I feel it's the world upside-down when you write a game, and then port it to another platform.

Luckily, GarageGames takes care of the dilemma of what platforms to support, and gives a (community-supported) Linux version. I can live with that. At least, there is a Linux version. What I don't get is that many people make games using the nice tools here, and target them ONLY at Windows. That seems to be a bit short-sighted. I know it's support and extra investment one has to take into account. However, I would pay 25% extra to get game X for another platform, after getting it for Windows for instance. When using Torque and taking care of not using too much OS-specific libraries in the process, you get those 25% free, as your linux build is exactly the same source, you just push it through another compiler.

We seem to be sitting on a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Due to no really big inventory of Linux games, there isn't much testing and optimising going on for the Linux build. But that testing and optimizing won't happen unless there are more Linux games.

I plan to add a Linux game to the list of availabilities, but it's still in the planning stages.