The Journals of Kaelis Ebonrai

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?)

Just yesterday, I found a project on [ GNA! ], for an rpg based on [ Wesnoth ]. If I remember correctly, the name was “Dungeons of Wesnoth”.

I’ve not tried it, yet, so, no ideas on gameplay, hell, I don’t even know if it compiles.

But, it gave me a little spark of interest. I think the wesnoth graphics could, indeed, work for an rpg. They certainly seem suitable, to me. Add in the fact that [ Silver Tree ] uses Wesnoth sprites too… (yes, I know the core team from Wesnoth are working on Silver Tree)

It seems that its quite possible to use those graphics for things like this. I’d really like to experiment a bit, with this, soon, actually, I miss messing about with sprites, to be honest. (My early forays into computer-art were sprite-edits, and making new sprites. )

Looking through the index of Free (libre) art at the [ FreeArtSearch Project ] (still in heavy development) it seems like wesnoth has quite the collection of art. I’d imagine [ Hero of Allacrost ] would also have a nice collection of content for such projects, and, the combination of both, could, indeed, be quite impressive.

Just a bit of a ramble from me, but, hey, maybe something interesting could come of it. Hell, what about something non-rpg? Like perhaps a god-game? A sim?

The limit, my friends, is your imagination.

Go out there, and create!

So, I’ve been a bit quiet lately, sorry about that.

But, lets get back into things again.

I’m still planning things for the survivor game, and I’m getting help from Ghoulsblade of [ StressFreeZone ] so, don’t worry too much about that one..

Here’s a new idea.

Some of you may’ve heard of “X-Com: UFO Defence”, or, for that matter, “UFO: Alien Invasion”. These are tactical games, combat is turn-based, and you control basically a single squad. Research, and base-building is present, as well.

Well, I’ve been working on some ideas for a similar game, with a rather different setting to those two.

A Dark-future/Gothic-future setting.

For an example of a building in the setting, see [ Gothic Skyscraper ]. ( Note: The setting is still in heavy design, so, it may not remain like this. )

Anyways, just a short little post, letting you all know what I’m up to. (Hah! As if anyone actually reads this blog. )

So, I’ve spoken about the world system before, and, referred to [ Silver Tree ] before, about this…

But, what about bodies of water?

This [ Screenshot ] shows how SilverTree does it, but.. I think there is a better way to do it, really. The rest of the screenshot is great, and shows basically what I’m thinking of, really, a few differences, here and there, though.

I’d prefer something… similar to this [ Example ] for the water. (Taken from the [ BattleTech Total Control ] Project ) Mind you, I’d say it should be a bit prettier, as it were, less pixelated, and clearer/more water-like. In addition, I’d suggest that a beach transition should be done, for the tiles around it.. (again, similar things could be done for other liquid-ish terrain/objects, sludge, slime, lava, swamp, blood rivers, for darker areas. Even Mana-Pools could be derived from this! ) With this method for the water, more can be done with the underwater portions of the terrain, say, a giant rock spire sticking out of the water, or a sunken city, that the player could eventually access through some sort of means.