After flirting with tech from 1989 onwards, Sam Varghese began to experiment with Linux in 1998. A couple of years later, he began using the Debian distribution as a single-boot system for his personal use. From that point onwards his interest grew and he has since written widely about free and open source software, with a great deal of his writings based on his own experiences, rather than anecdotal evidence. Open Sauce will focus on a genre of software that is present everywhere but rarely acknowledged; a genre that has little eye-candy but does most of the heavy lifting; a genre that is designed and written by people whose accomplishments are only occasionally recognised. Above all this blog will follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

linux.conf.au: Games Linux users play

by Sam Varghese

Tuesday, 18 December 2007

Page 2 of 3 He eventually joined a FOSS project which is now known as WorldForge. It was called Altima at the time - as a play on the popular Ultima Online, says Ansell. "It was a project to build a MMORPG with strong role-playing themes. When I first joined I was not a strong coder, so I played mainly support roles such as running various servers and producing the monthly newsletter 'The Chopping Block'." Featured Whitepaper 5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support During his time with WorldForge he began to experiment with various projects which he then released as FOSS. "I developed my coding skills (starting a long love affair with the Python language) and eventually started my own project to build a turn-based clone of a game called "Stars!" (famous for being called 'Excel in Space'). That project was Thousand Parsec ; now almost seven years later I am still working on it." Thousand Parsec is a framework for turn based space empire building games. In between these activities, Ansell migrated to Linux on the desktop and switched to using Debian GNU/Linux. He now uses Ubuntu. He was just out of his teens when he got involved in linux.conf.au. In 2004 the conference was held at his university in Adelaide where he was attending a summer course. "It was really cool to meet all these people in person who were also strong believers in FOSS, plus almost everyone had some type of cool story or project," he says. "I enjoyed the conference so much that I have run a miniconf at every one I have attended since then - the first Embedded Miniconf at LCA 2005, the first Gaming Miniconf at LCA 2007 and now the second Gaming Miniconf at LCA2008. I was also a speaker at LCA 2005, where I talked about WorldForge." Ansell says he is a strong believer in the idea of Free and Open Source software, mainly because of the opportunity for advancement. "I like to think I am fairly pragmatic however. I'm happy for proprietary software to exist and don't believe it is 'evil'. I just don't think it can compete (in the long run) with open source software." A double-degree holder from the University of Adelaide, Ansell now works as a proprietary software engineer at Australian Semiconductor Technology Company (ASTC). He dreams of the day when he will be able to work on FOSS projects fulltime. His Thousand Parsec project involves working with a number of universities and high schools around the globe to get students working on FOSS projects. To date, Google accepted the project into its Summer of Code programme and three successful student projects were completed; Lee Begg, one of the co-founders, was able to develop a C++ protocol library as part of his studies; one American student is doing a year-long internship; and next year, two students from the University of SA will be working on a Thousand Parsec client for mobile phones. Ansell says the Gaming Miniconf will try to bring together FOSS game developers, commercial games developers, artists, lawyers and even players. "There are a number of reasons why getting these people together is important, one is that many people don't know  that commercial game developers are huge users of FOSS code and platforms." << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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