ubuntu-gaming team mailing list archive

[Arc Riley <arcriley@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 6:32 AM, Ryan Swart <serjndestroy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> One question though, which team is covering the development of software
> that enables Ubuntu (or Linux as a whole) to be considered as a viable
> gaming platform? Not software that enables the development of games, but
> software that promotes games and the communities around them..
>

There are countless groups outside Ubuntu doing this.  For example (far from
an exhastive list):

There's an XMPP gaming group for working on XEPs for using XMPP in games,
from personal eventing (player sets a special IM status as playing a
specific game to advertise it to their friends) to inter-game "buddy lists"
and chat from within games to friends who are not currently playing, to
allowing players to play and host servers behind a NAT using ICE-UDP.

There's the Copyleft Games Group that's explicitally for game-related
projects (games, game engines, game design tools, etc), including helping
copyleft games develop sustainable business models and commercial
distribution.  Note that commercial does not equal proprietary, even Ubuntu
is available in a "shiny box" with manual for $19.95 at Best Buy even though
the enclosed software is free to use, modify, and redistribute.

A project I maintain, PySoy, is a cross-platform 3d game engine specifically
for promoting copyleft game development.  To my knowledge this is the only
project of it's kind - Ogre, Crystal Space, etc are primarily used for
proprietary game development and much of their development is driven for the
needs of their users (proprietary game developers).

PySoy is designed to integrate with Ubuntu and leveraging Ubuntu as a gaming
platform, including the engine being based on Gnome libraries (gdk, glib,
gobject, cairo, pango, etc) to reduce memory overhead and faster boot time
for games since these libraries are already loaded on a standard Ubuntu
desktop.  We have a subteam of developers (including myself) working on
stronger integration with the Ubuntu desktop, including integrating with the
new cloud computing platform being developed by the Ubuntu community, but
even this does not constitute PySoy itself being appropriate as an Ubuntu
team.

There's the freedesktop games groups which hosts various discussions on
these topics and compiles non-distro-specific information on a wiki.
There's various discussions here about standardizing on XMPP as "our"
version of XBox Live and Sony's social gaming aspects (buddy list
integration, displaying what game a friend is playing, etc).


We lack a *large quantity* of *quality games* (no linux game rivals any
> other "platform selling" game. )
>

We are in agreement on all points you stated, we only disagree in this being
an appropriate venue for solving those problems.

Though, I'd like to encourage you to move your focus from getting existing
"Large game companies" to starting new companies which leverage copyleft
development as part of the business model.  The industry will follow once
the model has proven viable, many high quality proprietary games have been
designed by a handful of guys working in a small office.  Discussion along
these lines belong around CGG and similar groups which can provide direct
advice and support on starting a business.


On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:01 AM, Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I believe that the way to draw people to developing for Ubuntu is to
> set up a website (like launchpad) which is designed for people to
>
create dev teams, share resources (models, sounds, textures etc.)


Building a "resource sharing" site is a common suggestion.  However,
regardless to the quality, clipart does not make for quality games.

Games have their own artistic styles.  Unless you're going to make a game
where game characters from different games battle it out (ala Super Smash
Brothers) a site which shares resources like this is unlikely to be useful
for commercial-quality games.  Even Super Smash Brothers remodels characters
from other games to fit it's own artistic style and technical requirements
for their engine.

Yes - copyleft games thus far lack the sort of polish that artistic talent
could provide.  This needs to be solved by attracting skilled modelers and
sound guys to a project, the easiest way to do so is build a business model
around the game which allows them to get financially compensated for their
work.

This is not an problem for an Ubuntu team to solve.  We're a marketing
subteam, not a hosting or development team, certainly not a business
incubator or startup advisory group.  There are other groups (as above) for
tackling those other issues.