Linux.conf.au slides

For those of you who attended, the slides to my presentation are available here.

For the rest of you, I hope you can figure out what I'm trying to say.

Freeband

I attended the gaming mini-conference at Linux.conf.au this year and, as mentioned, presented a 25 minute seminar on a loosely associated stream of ideas around amateur game development and how this relates to roguelikes. I also sat on the game development panel and hopefully contributed some interesting comments: arguing especially for developing games in 2d to avoid the complexities of 3d.

Unfortunately, the gaming mini-conf (and Linux Chix in the same room the previous day) were deemed last on the list for video coverage, and when one camera failed to turn up, we missed out on getting any of the seminars on video. So you've missed out on me publicly betting $10 against Nick of FAAngband fame (who wasn't there, but I deemed a worthy challenger given his comments earlier herein) that there won't be any Angband variants released this year, in front of a slide explaining exactly why this won't be the case. There may be a digital photograph available later, although I've not seen anything on the official site.

Thanks to those people who took the time to talk to me on the day - my apologies for being a little distracted, but I also had a couple of customer visits to do in the afternoon so slipped out for a while.

The most interesting thing to come out of the gaming mini-conf was a presentation by Nic Suzor on the interaction of free software and copyleft with the legal system. Nic is in particular looking for examples of free software that works on home brew systems - ideally in an Australian context - due to the local legal pressure being put on home brew hardware suppliers by the likes of Nintendo. In order to push for legislative change, he needs to be able to show case studies where home brew has enabled software to be developed and released on a platform that would not otherwise have done so.

I spoke with him afterwards briefly, and suggested the recent GPL release of Angband, along with the local development involvement in the Nintendo DS port may be appropriate for him (Nick - drop me a line and I'll pass on his details).

Therein lies a bit of a problem. Angband is, for want of a better word, inspired by the copyrighted works of an English author whose estate, while not particularly litigenous, may not be especially eager to hear that the software derives a small portion of its content from these works. We have achieved a great deal by GPLing Angband, but I suspect that we may be tripping at the last hurdle, or at least ignoring the oncoming bus (to mix metaphors), by including work that could potentially infringe.

While the emphasis is on the word potentially, Nic did stress that a large part of this somewhat grey area of the law is sensible minimisation of risk. I would like to suggest that in this case a sensible minimisation of risk would be to develop an Angband variant that does not infringe on these works, and put that forward as the example Nic needs to help change the law locally. Such a variant, Freeband, would feature original fantasy content that justified the existance of a deep dungeon under a ramshackle township, with a progressive increase in risk towards an ultimate evil in the lowest depths.

The resulting gains would unfortunately be offset by a level of loyalty and fandom that the original material engenders. I think a sufficiently motivated cabal of individuals could overcome these problems, and create an equally mythically inspired world which people can invest their belief.

Volunteers?

Last chance to see

From the linux.conf.au mini conference on gaming:

The Linux Gooey - An exploration of why Linux needs a Game Maker and the evolving language of games.

Games development for open source gives a skilled programmer a vast palette of possible tools with which to design games. But non-programmers are left out in the cold by the meritocracy of the open source development model, while the closed source commercial model has evolved to empower them through user content generation tools. How can we empower our users to contribute to the open source games: where do we need to set the skill bar, what languages should we choose, and how do we get them to make art?

The autobiographical perspective from a developer with over 10 years experience maintaining a complex open source games project.

9:30 - 9:55 (25 minutes) on Tuesday in Hobart if you're around...

Speaking at linux.conf.au on 'The Linux Gooey'

If you're in Hobart on January 20th, 2009, you'll be able to drop by and hear me speak at the 2009 linux.conf.au Gaming Miniconf. I'll be talking about the Linux Gooey - why Linux needs a Game Maker and the evolving language of games.

You can see the full days schedule here; you will need to get tickets to attend the miniconf.