KtB Monster Creation Tool

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Z9484

A little while ago I put together a small graphical python tool to help in the creation of monsters for The Betrayer. (It was also for a University project). It isn’t much but it displays all the information for a monster in an easier to read(and to edit) format then the game’s data files. Eventually I will need to go back through KtB from the beginning and create monsters for the whole game. Which is not something I am looking forward to. This tool will make that process a lot easier. It currently hides in the trunk/data/editor folder on svn. It is released under the GPLv2 and with some small modification will work for KQLives’ monsters as well.
Items are currently hard coded in the source of the game so adding or removing items will cause a lot of havoc. Hopefully all items will eventually be moved to Lua scripts. Of course then I would have to write an item editor as well. A Free/Open Source developer’s work is never done.

Would a more open Ubuntu make desktop Linux a success?

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Z9484

I think Ubuntu would be improved if Canonical took a more democratic approach. Let’s start with an excerpt from Canonical’s mission statement: “To realize the potential of free software in the lives of individuals and organizations by: Delivering the world’s best free software platform.” Ubuntu wants to succeed on the desktop. All in all its actually real people(meaning non-developers) who use and want to use Ubuntu will be what makes it a success.

Every new version of Ubuntu has a few obvious changes. Some recent changes have been the removing of ctrl alt backspace as default, making the update manager automatically start, waiting 60 seconds on shutdown, computer janitor and others. I think that there should be an easy way to vote on these new changes. Having some kind of monthly or bi-monthly poll on Ubuntu’s website, would be a good way to prevent frustration as well as cruft build up. Just because developers think a certain feature is the greatest thing since sliced silicon, doesn’t mean it will be embraced by the community. (Keep in mind I am a FLOSS programmer.) Some of these changes annoy me and some of them are okay. The recent changes that make Ubuntu more like windows or mac should be removed right away. Like the pop up update your system message. Which was even more annoying than on windows because you have to manually close it every time. Luckily they have removed that, but replaced it with something just as bad. They just make the whole update manager pop up. Which is a bad idea for computer-illiterate users. Personally I think its even easier to ignore than the old way. Not many people are going to use buggy clones of proprietary software when they can just get pirated copies just as easy. To really succeed on the desktop Ubuntu must stand out as it’s own by being original, easy to use and stable. Which IMO makes gnome a very good choice. Launchpad is also a very Ubuntu has been pretty good at being original but some things are lacking. Completely hard crashing during a user switch is not a very good advertisement. (Which had to do with the buggy ATI graphics drivers. Which albeit is AMD’s fault. But the OS should catch it before freezing the whole computer.) I think Ubuntu would improve if they were more open and took users input more into account.

Trouble Brewing on the FLOSS Front

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Z9484

Some recent developments in Free Libre Open Source Software lead me to believe there is trouble brewing. With growth comes problems. And it seems many projects aren’t living true to their principles. Instead they are once again just trying to copy proprietary or other software. Some examples. The new version of the Gimp plans to enforce a single window a la PhotoShop design. I sincerely hope they keep an option to have multiwindow mode. It’s a complete abandonment of Gimp legacy as well as Linux heritage.
OpenOffice recently showed off a prototype copying Office’s Ribbon. There was fortunately a loud and angry outcry. But unfortunately that doesn’t mean it wont necessarily happen. The ribbon should be a plugin for those who think that way but forcing that on unwilling users is the exact same thing Microsoft did. Next in line is Firefox new GUI. They appear to be copying chrome this time as well the Ribbon again.

Finally one more troubling example that happened recently. That of Ubuntu disabling ctrl-alt-backspace as default. According to this poll (albeit nonscientific) 88% thought it was a bad idea, yet they did it anyways. Fortunately its still Linux so you can go and change a config file and fix it. Ctrl alt backspace to me is one of the great things about Linux. If X crashes that doesn’t mean the kernel has so there is no need to reboot. For instance I was working on KQ recently and it completely locked up. (You need plain lua to run KQ you know ) I switched to a virtual console ctrl alt F6 and did a killall kq. But unfortunately KQ was stuck in fullscreen mode which left X on a wonderful 320-240 resolution. Trust me it looks great on my 24 inch Monitor. And the screen was locked to a small section so I couldn’t access any menus. With a quick ctrl alt backspace X was restarted and I could go on with my work. The reason behind the change was so people didn’t accidentally lose data. Personally I don’t know how anyone can accidentally hit a keyboard combination as awkward as ctrl alt backspace.

Some of these examples are probably only problems to me but it does make me wonder about the future of some of my favorite FLOSS. It goes back to why Wesnoth is such a good game, its not just a Yet Another (insert name here) Clone. (YAC’s I dub them.) I think that if FLOSS projects really wants to succeed they have to be original as well as functional. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be the case. Just look at all the horrible Office YACs out there(Office included). There has to be a way to make a word processor that doesn’t make you want to throw your computer off a cliff.

Hopefully this storm will pass but we shall see.

Fedora and back again

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Z9484

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Fedora 11 after getting fed up with some of Ubuntu’s annoyances. I have been disappointed with the direction that Ubuntu seems to be heading. They seen to be trying harder to copy Microsoft. One of those annoyances are that Jaunty automatically opens the update manager every morning. Yes I like to keep it up to date, but its my decision when to update. At least they don’t reboot automatically like Vista.

So on to Fedora. Fedora 11 is more up to date which is pretty cool. Having the latest version (Firefox 3.5), dosbox and other packages is impressive. But being up to date had its disadvantages. Such as The ATI proprietary driver for Linux does not work on the later versions of the kernel, so their is no 3D acceleration supported at all. Which made me miss compiz a lot. Its just frustrating to have an expensive card that doesnt work at all. Which makes me think that I will probably go with Nvidia next time, they seem to have better support for most programs as well as drivers. And Fedora conveniently doesnt have a failsafe mode which made reverting back to the old driver entertaining. And the sound seems to pop and click sometimes, which I find extremely irritating. But Fedora’s not all bad for sure. The color scheme is better. Down with brown! I also like that it comes with a good handful of desktop wallpapers. A little thing but I think it makes it feel more customizable. The package manager is kind of interesting. The search and layout in my opinion is quite bad. Its kind of hard to find the packages that you want. But the fact that they seem to spread out programs into more packages if necessary is more ideal then the Debian setup. Like the fact that on Debian you can not remove cheese or evolution because their tied to gnome desktop is a horrible idea. Albeit its gnome’s idea not Debian. But still in Fedora it is not a problem. There is just a package that has the nautilus plugin for evolution which is safe to remove. And presto you can remove Evolution. But once again there are some issues. It would take a lot more work then Ubuntu or Debian to get all my programing utilities and libraries set up. For instance ruby shoes doesnt seem to work on Fedora 11. Which is a big problem for me because I’m doing some development with it. There’s probably a way to fix it, I just didnt want to mess with the symbolic link problems.

So I returned to Ubuntu and… sometimes it seems to be running slow, maybe that was because I was transferring 30 gigabytes between hd partitions but still with my computer I treat slowness, and unresponsiveness as a bug. And it still has that full screen compiz lag bug. Darn Ati. But there will be a new release soon. So hopefully it will be better.

So all in all I’m a little disappointed at the state of Linux on the desktop. It seems worse then it was 6 months ago. The reliance on Mono, etc…

Leges Motus

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Z9484

I recently learned about a new free/open source action/arcade game. Its called Leges Motus. It was a class project at Brown University, which after the semester was then liberated. Their site has a good one sentence description: “Leges Motus, the open-source 2D team-based tactical shooter set in zero-gravity.” Gameplay is very reminiscent of a certain game played in a well known science fiction novel. The only problem is that there is no AI. So being a team based game with no one else to play with on the servers has a distinct disadvantage. But this is a great warm up game that you could play at LAN parties. It’s quite entertaining to learn how to navigate your character in zero g, trying to get to the enemy’s gate. I would suggest rounding up a few friends and trying it out. I enjoyed the map “big” which is a huge empty room where one can practice flying using the recoil of your blaster(a little like the American Astronaut Edward White with the zip gun).

Reforking of KQ complete

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Z9484

The betrayer’s engine was quite outdated compared to recent development on KQ. I think it was based off a 2006 or 2007 release. Something had to be done, so I decided to refork KQ and try to keep the engine up to date this time. I have finished the reforking. The Betrayer Subversion “trunk” is up to date with the KQ cvs. As well as having the changes that I have made: Portrait dialogues, 4 player parties, varying store prices, new graphics, and a few other minor changes. Some of the new changes that the KQlives team added are a lua console in debug mode, translation support, and bug fixes. Now I need to work on the story, some side quests and balancing. Then it will be time for another release. (I’m shooting for sometime this summer)

workaround for sound in kqthebetrayer

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Z9484

I found a workaround to get sound to work for kqthebetrayer (or kq) in Ubuntu 9.04 or higher. The problem has to with pulseaudio so killing pulse will do the trick. I tried the pulse suspender but that didn’t work for me.

killall pulseaudio
And then just start kq.

Pulse is placed over the top of alsa so your sound should continue to work. You can easily restart pulse by doing a . Maybe I will just remove pulse all together, it doesn’t seem to help anything. But that will have to wait until after I get Jaunty Jackalope. All the great new pulseaudio features and utilities aren’t even installed as default. So it just works worse then before. Great design choice. I tried arch the other day but I don’t really want to go through the trouble of trying to get xorg and kde or gnome to work. I followed their instructions and it didn’t work. So for now it looks like I will stick with Ubuntu where I can spend my time working on my game instead of on trying to get the operating system to work. I used virtualbox to test it out which was a lot better then having to repartition just to test arch. Virtualbox is at the point where it has better functionality than vmware, and its free. Can’t argue with that.

Why Open Source?

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Z9484

I have recently been working on my open source project a role playing game (RPG) called, “KQ the Betrayer”. I have also started a tentative new open source project with my sister. It is a merfolk campaign for the game, Battle for Wesnoth.
So what is up with this Open Source or Free Software Movement anyways? It is simply a way of releasing intellectual property (such as ideas, stories, programs, pictures, etc) with “some rights reserved” instead of all. Commercial or propriety software has its disadvantages. Such as the recent move by Microsoft to create a new docx format that is incompatible with the old version of Word. In their way forcing people to upgrade to the latest version. One of the most irritating problems of copyright can be avoided. If a company goes under and does not sell the rights to their program, book or movie or whatever the work dies with company. You then have to wait the 70 or something years till the copyright expires. You might get lucky and find it at a yard sale but other then that it is impossible to obtain it legally. This can be avoided if the works are released under a free license when a company goes under. (That is how Blender became open source) The most common licenses for free culture are the Creative Commons licenses and the GPL license for software. The GPL requires that the source code for a open project must be made available and subsequent changes to that source code must keep that same license.

Many Open Source programs have become quite popular due to their high quality and availability. Here is a list of some common open source programs that you may have already used. All of which are free to download:
Firefox – web browser
Open Office – Document Editing Suite
Gnucash – personal and small business accounting program
Tellico – Book/Collection Manager
Linux – Operating system
The Gimp – Image manipulation tool
Inkscape – Vector graphics program
Blender – 3D Modeling software
Dosbox – run all those old dos programs you have in the basement
WordPress – Blogging software
Battle for Wesnoth – Turn Based Strategy Game

Some people wonder why developers spend hours volunteering to create hardware or software or even Operating Systems in their spare time and then just give it all away. One of the reasons is called egoboo. Here is the definition from Wikipedia (another free culture project) “egoboo is a colloquial expression for the pleasure received from public recognition of voluntary work.” For some people that recognition and the feeling of being needed and wanted is motivation enough. The free software movement also fights piracy by providing free and legal alternatives to expensive Microsoft and Apple programs. Recently a volunteer group held a Blender training session in Nigera. Commercial 3D Modeling and animation tools cost hundreds to thousands of dollars that only run on high end machines. Instead they can use Blender which is free and runs fine on desktop computers. Open Source programs provide them and others around the world with access to these new and developing job fields that otherwise would be too expensive to try. I like to do a lot of different things with the computer. Open source programs allow people like me to try a little bit of everything without blowing my life savings on hundreds of different programs. (Try to make a movie and you will realize how many different programs you need.)

Personally, I couldn’t care less about egoboo. Here are some of my reasons why I work on open source programs. I use all of the above listed open source programs. With that, it makes me want to do something to contribute back to the free software movement. I like to play computer games and come up with weird fantasy stories. So I decided to develop a 2D “old school” RPG. There are almost no complete open source RPG’s in this category. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills or time to make a new game from scratch. Instead my project “The Betrayer” is based off an existing open source game called KQLives. Because it is an open source program released under the GPL I am allowed to “fork” or create a new project from the old project. My game has a different story and new features that are not in the original. I have also made pixel art for my game some of which has been accepted back into the original KQLives Project. Editing an existing project has really helped me to learn how to program for real world projects. In most of the programming classes I’ve taken, you have to “reinvent the wheel” every time you write a program. In the real world you have to work a lot with other people’s code(decipher what its doing) which I have found to be an interesting challenge. And sometimes I find it nice to have something productive to do that is not school or work related.

So if you haven’t tried out an open source program, now is the time to try one out. (No purchase necessary)

Spring RTS

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Z9484

Classes have been tougher this semester so I have had less time and desire to work on kq. It just makes me want play a game instead of make one. So I’ve been playing Complete Annihilation(IMO the best mod out there now) for Spring lately. Spring has recently come out with a new release 0.77b5 CA is in very active development so get it from the spring downloader which now comes packaged with spring. I am quite impressed with CA’s progress. CA is released under the GPL and they have been working hard to remove all non free elements; ie Textures, models from the original TA. And I have to say some of the new models are quite awesome. This is how TA was meant to be played Full 3D with glorious eye candy! Only problem is my computer has nowhere near enough power to play it good enough. The latest spring releases have helped that matter but one opponent with only 241 of the 5000 unit limit works for me. The recent releases have all new build pics that look a little like cell art. They are all the same style which really gives it a better feel. Before the build pics all had different styles which made the build menu look cluttered and confusing. The resources are done a little bit different then OTA. There are no moho metal extractors instead metal extractors use excess energy to obtain more metal. Which can get a little crazy. You need like 6 – 8 super fusion plants to give you enough resources. And each plant blows up with the size of a nuke. So guarding them is critical.

I prefer playing single player matches. (which is easiest just to set up as a multiplayer lan game through the lobby) The AI’s that come with spring don’t work with CA. So I have been using the AI called RAI for bots. RAI isnt the best AI for the first half of the game but If you let it build up it can get quite powerful. Which is what I needed because all the matches I played a couple months ago I got wasted by the AI.

Will Wesnoth become non-free?

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Z9484

Is the Wesnoth project moving towards becoming non-free? (Free as in Freedom) There is a thread over at the Wesnoth forums that is really scaring me. They are discussing changing the music license to one that is non-free. Specifically changing music to a non derivative license. I think this is a very bad sign for the community. Whats next? Art? One of the reasons why the wesnoth art forums are so good is because they help new artists learn to become better. Thats how people learn to be better by editing and reworking old quality art. Whats so different about music. Why should musicians get special treatment? Someone in the thread brought up then they couldnt listen to Wesnoth music on their mp3 player because they would have to convert them from ogg. (which would be illegal under the CC no deriv license) It would be a terrible shame on the community. Some of the contributors dont have to share but everyone else does. How does that work out? How long would that last? Just think of it. Making a trailer for wesnoth using a remixed wesnoth music clip would then be considered illegal.

It’s sad to see the world falling apart and with that open ideals as well. Just seeing eric raymond on the thread call debian policy “extreme notions of doctrinal purity” made me sick.

Edit: Well it looks like maybe the storm will pass after all. The latest quote from the project lead David White:
“Likewise, we are a Free software project, and we want contributors who are willing to make their work Free. Having a myriad of different contributors who want to license their work in a myriad of different ways probably isn’t going to work well for us.

Quality is irrelevant if the content isn’t Free, because then we can’t use the content and remain a completely Free project.”

So I’m hoping it will turn out on freedoms side. It has been Wesnoth’s main goal from the beginning. But this is definitely a real issue in open source development. Look at freeorion, supertux and many other FLOSS games out there who have free but not gpl compliant licenses.

Virtual Kingdoms

Category Archives: Open Source / Free Software