Sidenote: The image is Tux in style of Sonic world.
Found here: https://openclipart.org/detail/17265/tux-the-penguin-in-sonic-style
Make of that what you will, just brought this as peace offering to the Open Source/Linux community to hear me out and because I thought it was interesting /s :p
Edit: This can double as a suggestions post for other people new to contributing to Open Source/GNU Linux/Game Deving
My Goals:
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Want to socialize and get to know other Open Source/Game Dev/Software Engineer/DevOps/Linux people. Even if I know people just online. I’m a newbie to it all. Are there online groups for any of that in say Discord servers, forums, or elsewhere?
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Want to help work on existing Open Source Games. These are some I have in mind to help where I can:
- Unciv: To make Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, and Fallout mods for this game.
- SuperTux (Some mods of new worlds, enemies, storylines, and adding mascots from Open Source community that have not been added yet)
- OpenMW (To build it out with the team. Same for new land mods to add lands outside of Tamriel: Akavir, Thras, Yokuda, etc)
- OpenFNV/OpenOblivion/OpenFO3 (A person is working on them since OpenMW is able to pull data from those games so very possible just lots of work to be done)
- GTA Project Eagle (To help Dev it, and then help to bring it to phones in a team once it is in a completed state)
- Beyond All Reason (Love RTS games and well I don’t know how yet but would love to make something for it)
- Xonotic (Maps and shooting sounds: pew pew pew)
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To make some original IP smaller mobile games that are actually fun to play on side to hopefully fund my ability to spend more time game deving overtime. To learn more with practice building smaller games from start to finish solo, and maybe with others potentially. Android/Linux Mobile/Linux PC as the focuses for those smaller games, and the bigger games in future
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To build out some open source teams, that can continue even when I leave the teams, to build new open source small-sized games, and later medium/large-sized game projects. Have lots in mind:
Tux Party Revamp game, TuxWorld (3D-Platformer with Multiplayer), Old School Final Fantasy-esque, Tux Call of Duty Zombies-like, etc
- To build out Open Source/Linux communities however I can:
Growing the UI/UX, Art, Animation, GIF, Social Media portions of the community for building up outreach of Open Source/Linux around the world. Those are some avenues to expand reach to get more funding, users, and new devs.
Helping to build up new/existing platforms to help encourage collaboration on projects, and highlight needed funding so they can be improved upon. To help projects that need more of either funding, volunteers, or both to get them.
So with that in mind what do you all recommend I do to start off? Please and thanks for any suggestions! Want to start small and properly get myself going on here.
Look at some very polished codebases in various genres:
Cube2:Sauerbraten - FPS
Shattered Pixel Dungeon - rogue-like
Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection - micro puzzles
Find other games that appeal to you, from here:
https://libregamewiki.org/Main_Page
Also, become familiar with the Python language(look at pygame), Godot, and Java for Android gaming.
DLC comments!! Awesome! We have peaked at this moment /s haha
Is it for decent amount of newer mods for various games are written in Lua, or just for Luanti mods?
Luanti is fun but had no idea it was using a different language altogether.
Will do Ace!
Lua is a pretty popular language in game development, because it’s easy to embed in a program, performs well and is easy to learn. One fun way to learn Lua could be to make some simple 2D games using LÖVE. That’s what was used to create Balatro.
Fascinating, I will deep dive those!
For future self reference how can I discern overtime what are polished codebases and what are not? That way I can learn to not pick up bad habits from inefficient setups to not accrue tech debt, and not have to backtrack
Will use that list to find more as well, and oh never heard of Pygame what is it capable of if you do not mind?
Gracie (Thanks) Ace! Kept this advice for re-reference
I’ve only played a few pygame games, not coded in it.
Polished codebases I spot through gameplay and length of time the game has been around. Those 3 are all pushing 20 years. They may be spaghetti code and awful inside, but I doubt it.
On second though Sauerbraten is about 80MB. Probably something to look at later on.
It depends on your skillset. Are you already familiar with development in general? Or linux?
For Linux yiu should know the basics of how to use it, basic commands, like mount, ls, cd, package managers for your distro, build programs from source etc.
Then you probably need to be familiar with git, if you aren’t already
For contributing to open source games, well they could be written with different languages or engines, so you should familiar with them. And a good first step is bulding them from source!
And for your gamedev journey , if you want to stay truly open source you can try godot, with a python like syntax, and not hard to learn the basics and no royalties to pay.
Love this, appreciate you!!
Still learning Linux commands but had been on Linux casually for couple years now: Debian, Kubuntu, SteamOS, Bazzite, KDE Linux, Pop OS_Cosmic. Currently on Bazzite and
My career is Web Developer/Software Engineer in 2nd year so have some small project experiences from school, and for fun. Documentation and Reverse Engineering is big thing I have been trying to get into more and know an older gentleman that has been programming for Linux for many decades. So lots to learn indeed but love the whole journey
What is the process like building from source? Guessing it gives a much more foundational systems-level design/learning approach.
Is Gitlab/ Forgejo & Codeberg good to use alongside Git or do you find it gets in the way of actually using Got itself?
Going to be keeping almost all games open source. I do not want to rely on AI at all too. The only thing I would use AI for is a proof of concept and that’s it
The only ones that won’t be open source are the smaller personal IP mobile games I have in mind to be proprietary first then have a re-release separate version of them as open source. So I can see what the differences are between developing proprietary, and open source (Even though the goal is just open source). Also, because I don’t know how well/bad it will be to deal with Original IP with Open Source licensing. If its easy to handle original IP with open source then they won’t be proprietary. Plus I would prefer to be transparent than not
Godot looks interesting. I’ll get it setup! Reminds me of Blender, Markdown/Manuskript/Scribus, and Krita but for Game Deving.
Does Godot have support for VSCodium, and Vim? Recommend any tools for Godot or Programming in general?
Duly noted for all this. Made physical and digital accessible notes to remember all this advice. Thanks again DreamOS!
After a quick Google search, it seems godot supports external editors by 1. Including a language server (vim should work with this) 2. Having a vscode extension 3. Reloading scenes on external modification of source files. More info here
