7DRL Success: Fuel

[Ido Yehieli]

without further ado, here is our 7drl Fuel:

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Fuel

In Fuel you play a space miner and your singleship has burnt out the monopoles that power its engine (also the resource you mine for). You land on a large asteroid to look for more monopoles, finding a likely looking crater you start your decent. You need to find 5 monopoles to refuel your ship.

The roguebasin page includes screenshot and executables for windows, mac and linux (32 bit).

Spent a ton of work on this one, hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it :)

-Ido.

[Ido Yehieli]

On Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:08:19 PM UTC+1, Ido Yehieli wrote:
> without further ado, here is our 7drl Fuel:
>
> http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Fuel
>

It appears some flavors of linux has some issues with it, if strange stuff (very obvious graphical glitches) happens make sure the window size is at least 720x480!

-Ido.

[edenicholas]

On 3/18/2012 2:27 PM, Ido Yehieli wrote:
> On Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:08:19 PM UTC+1, Ido Yehieli wrote:
>> without further ado, here is our 7drl Fuel:

This is really awesome so far. Simple, yet definitely some depth to it.
Looks pretty polished too! 'Grats on your success!

I had one issue (Windows 7) where the game appeared to hang when the
first level started. I reran the game and it's been good so far.

[Ido Yehieli]

On Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:44:11 PM UTC+1, Edwin DeNicholas wrote:
>
> This is really awesome so far. Simple, yet definitely some depth to it.
> Looks pretty polished too! 'Grats on your success!
>
> I had one issue (Windows 7) where the game appeared to hang when the
> first level started. I reran the game and it's been good so far.

Thanks- I'm glad you liked it! I think there might a couple other bugs, will have to do a bug-fix version some time post-7drl.

BTW there is now also a web version on http://cardinalquest.com/fuel/

-Ido.

[Adam Piskel]

I posted a reply in your success post on G+, but I wanted to say here, for those who just browse the newsgroup, that this is a really great, charming little title. Great job!

[Ido Yehieli]

On Monday, March 19, 2012 5:47:57 AM UTC+1, Adam Piskel wrote:
>
> I posted a reply in your success post on G+, but I wanted to say here, for those who just browse the newsgroup, that this is a really great, charming little title. Great job!

Thanks! I really appreciate it :)

[Andrew Doull]

I love the vibe, but I'm not having a huge amount of luck on OS/X, where it seems to be swallowing Ctrl keypresses some of the time...

Also, I've found a show stopper bug, where I spawned dead, and the game won't let me continue / respawn. I'm not sure whether it is intentional to allow the player to be killed before having a move, but the game doesn't appear to want to go back to the start screen.

[Ido Yehieli]

On Monday, March 19, 2012 10:16:04 AM UTC+1, Andrew Doull wrote:
> Also, I've found a show stopper bug, where I spawned dead, and the game won't let me continue / respawn. I'm not sure whether it is intentional to allow the player to be killed before having a move, but the game doesn't appear to want to go back to the start screen.

It's a bug that managed to sneak in, sorry about that :/

I'll do a bug fix release after I catch up with all the stuff that happened with the rest of of my life during my week-long crunch (so probably in a week or so).

-Ido.

[Swishtail]

Fantastic title. I love how the music seems to give the game a dark, Forbidden Planet-style 1950's Sci-Fi vibe.

Tricky controls, at least for me. I find I have a difficult time determining whether I'm going to fire a shot standing in place or move one spot in the direction I'm firing as I shoot, but that's probably just my own dexterity issue.

Two monopoles is my high score at the moment, but I'm not giving up yet. I'm going to forward this to some friends to share the fun.

Many thanks for the hard work!

[Ido Yehieli]

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:01:26 AM UTC+1, Swishtail wrote:
>
> Two monopoles is my high score at the moment, but I'm not giving up yet. I'm going to forward this to some friends to share the fun.
>
> Many thanks for the hard work!

Thank you for your kind words :) I'm glad you enjoyed it! Reworking the controls is definitely on my list for the post-7drl fix-up version.

-Ido.

[edenicholas]

The more I play this, the more I like it. Could we call this a new
genre? I want to make a Fuel-like now.

[Ido Yehieli]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 3:33:17 AM UTC+1, Edwin DeNicholas wrote:
>
> The more I play this, the more I like it. Could we call this a new
> genre? I want to make a Fuel-like now.

You have my blessing :)

BTW I've added my to-do list to the roguebasin page, if you're interested in what I want to do next:

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Fuel#To-do_List

-Ido.

[Hamish]

That's high praise indeed. v2 will hopefully be a marked improvement,
so save some enthusiasm for it :¬)

Tom

[Ido Yehieli]

I'm actually considering taking the current transparent-development process (the to-do list is publicly view-able and linked on the roguebasin page) a step further and providing the source-code and assets under a Creative Commons license (probably http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), mostly for 2 reasons:

1. to make accepting patches easier.
2. so that people who want to learn from it could read the code and experiment with it.

Not sure about it yet tho.

-Ido.

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On 2012-03-23, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, March 23, 2012 12:54:33 PM UTC+1, Hamish wrote:
>> On Mar 22, 10:33 pm, edenicholas <disruption...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> > The more I play this, the more I like it. Could we call this a new
>> > genre? I want to make a Fuel-like now.
>>
>> That's high praise indeed. v2 will hopefully be a marked improvement,
>> so save some enthusiasm for it :¬)
>
> I'm actually considering taking the current transparent-development
> process (the to-do list is publicly view-able and linked on the
> roguebasin page) a step further and providing the source-code and
> assets under a Creative Commons license (probably
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), mostly for 2 reasons:
>
> 1. to make accepting patches easier.

I don't see how that makes accepting patches easier.

> 2. so that people who want to learn from it could read the code and
> experiment with it.

You don't need a license to learn from something. Learning is not forbidden by
the copyright law or any other kind of monopoly. License usually only allows
redistribution of the original or modified work, which is not required for
learning.

> Not sure about it yet tho.

Having said so, I'm all for releasing games under permissive licenses. The
game development community seems to be very crippled in that regard compared
to the rest of the open source.


(PS. Would you mind wrapping long lines?)
--
Radomir Dopieralski, sheep.art.pl

[Ido Yehieli]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 2:42:55 PM UTC+1, Radomir Dopieralski wrote:
>
> License usually only allows
> redistribution of the original or modified work, which is not required for
> learning.
>

I said both of these points in comparison to not providing the
source code at all.

Compared to providing the source code with all-rights-reserved
they do not apply, I agree there.

The reason why I was thinking of CC instead of no license at all
is that I am hoping it mitigates the danger of people assuming
it's open source.

> > Not sure about it yet tho.
>
> Having said so, I'm all for releasing games under permissive licenses. The
> game development community seems to be very crippled in that regard compared
> to the rest of the open source.
>

By permissive do you mean something like BSD/MIT or public domain?

>
> (PS. Would you mind wrapping long lines?)
> --

Sorry, didn't notice it. I'll try to remember in the future
(alternatively you can configure your mail reader to word-wrap,
even vim and emacs can do that ;)

-Ido.

[edenicholas]

On 3/23/2012 4:54 AM, Hamish wrote:
> v2 will hopefully be a marked improvement,
> so save some enthusiasm for it :¬)
>
> Tom

Certainly will! Any thoughts to maybe release it on Kongregate?

[Ido Yehieli]

I did think of it, but I feel this is the first game of mine that really has
the potential of being a great game if we continue refining it for a few
more months and would rather fix most of these issues before exposing it to
such a wide audience (e.g. Cardinal Quest had more than 600-700k plays
on all flash sites it was hosted on combined).

[Martin Read]

Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
> step further and providing the source-code and assets under a Creative
> Commons license (probably http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/),
> mostly for 2 reasons:
>
>1. to make accepting patches easier.

The only modifications permitted by the by-nc-nd licence are those which
are "technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and
formats". Also, the Creative Commons organization itself strongly
recommends that you *not* apply CC licences to computer software.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

It's perfectly reasonable to use by-nc-nd for your audiovisual assets,
though.
--
\_\/_/ turbulence is certainty turbulence is friction between you and me
\ / every time we try to impose order we create chaos
\/ -- Killing Joke, "Mathematics of Chaos"
--

[Ido Yehieli]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 5:29:57 PM UTC+1, Martin Read wrote:

> Ido Yehieli wrote:
> >1. to make accepting patches easier.
>
> The only modifications permitted by the by-nc-nd licence are those which
> are "technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and
> formats".

Right, but those only apply to people other than the copyright holder - as long as the submitter give me the copyright for their patches I can use it in the game. And if they don't they can't distribute their own modified version, which is exactly what I am trying to prevent.

>
> It's perfectly reasonable to use by-nc-nd for your audiovisual assets,
> though.

The problem there is that someone can replace all the images and sounds/music and release the game with any change they want.

Basically I want to maintain complete control over the game, which is why I don't want to release it as open source (GPL/MIT/BSD etc).

The only other options is not to release the code at all or to release it with all rights reserved.

-Ido.

[Martin Read]

Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Right, but those only apply to people other than the copyright holder - as =
>long as the submitter give me the copyright for their patches I can use it =
>in the game.

Please bear in mind that transfer of copyright generally requires a
written instrument (as in, on paper) in those jurisdictions where it's
possible at all. (All a German can give you, for instance, is an exclusive
license.)

>And if they don't they can't distribute their own modified ver=

>sion, which is exactly what I am trying to prevent.

They can't lawfully collaborate with a friend on the development of a
patch, either; nor can they ask lawfully ask their buddy who plays the
game much better than they do to test it before wasting _your_ time with
it.

>Basically I want to maintain complete control over the game,

Then you should not release the source code to the general public at all
and I can't understand why you ever considered doing so.

[Jeff Lait]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 12:29:57 PM UTC-4, Martin Read wrote:

> Ido Yehieli wrote:
> > step further and providing the source-code and assets under a Creative
> > Commons license (probably http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/),
> > mostly for 2 reasons:
> >
> >1. to make accepting patches easier.
>
> The only modifications permitted by the by-nc-nd licence are those which
> are "technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and
> formats". Also, the Creative Commons organization itself strongly
> recommends that you *not* apply CC licences to computer software.

IANAL, but this exception always seems to be rather bizarre.

Source code is text. Text is prose.

So you should be able to copyright your text-as-text in the same
manner as one copyrights a book. That my book could also be
re-interpreted as machine instructions shouldn't suddenly cause
it to need a special type of copy protection.

I could see the argument that the CC licenses aren't permissive
*enough* to do what you need to do with source code. But that
really is a small problem - to me the number one goal of a license
is to communicate your intentions to the honest people out there.

The dishonest people are just going to re-name your variables
and embed it in a cloud service, regardless of your license.

What I like about the "exercise their rights" portion is that
it seems to talk directly to porting, an activity which is
probably the biggest demand for source-code-available. It
makes it clear that porting can be done without needing special
permission.

> It's perfectly reasonable to use by-nc-nd for your audiovisual assets,
> though.

I also think there is nothing wrong with just doing "All
rights reserved, patches welcome" and let people ask you
if they have some specific use case. As was pointed out,
I don't have to copy your code to learn how you solved
some problems!

My experience is that even when I make something explicitly
modified-BSD, so probably as open as it can be, I still get
questions about licensing from careful people. (In the defence
of those writing to me, usually I've managed to have some
misidentified headers, or out of date LICENSE.TXT, or something
lying around...)
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER:: http://www.zincland.com/powder)

[Ido Yehieli]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 8:55:00 PM UTC+1, Jeff Lait wrote:
>
> > It's perfectly reasonable to use by-nc-nd for your audiovisual assets,
> > though.
>
> I also think there is nothing wrong with just doing "All
> rights reserved, patches welcome" and let people ask you
> if they have some specific use case. As was pointed out,
> I don't have to copy your code to learn how you solved
> some problems!

So you suggest "Copyright, All rights reserved" for the whole game then?

-Ido.

[Ido Yehieli]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 8:41:16 PM UTC+1, Martin Read wrote:
> Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Right, but those only apply to people other than the copyright holder - as =
> >long as the submitter give me the copyright for their patches I can use it =
> >in the game.
>
> Please bear in mind that transfer of copyright generally requires a
> written instrument (as in, on paper) in those jurisdictions where it's
> possible at all. (All a German can give you, for instance, is an exclusive
> license.)

They don't need to transfer anything, they simply not attach any copyright at all to the changes they push to my repository (and if they do I revert the change).

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On 2012-03-23, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:

That doesn't work. All creative work is by default copyrighted and a transfer
of the copy rights (the ones that can be tranferred) usually requires a written
form, as Martin mentioned. In many countries it is not even possible to put
something in public domain explicitly, because you can't give up personal
copy rights.

So, technically, if they push anything into your repository and you don't
revert it, they become co-authors of your game and you need their permission
to distribute your game or do anything else with it.

Yes, I agree, the law is broken.

--
Radomir Dopieralski, sheep.art.pl

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On 2012-03-23, Martin Read <mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> step further and providing the source-code and assets under a Creative
>> Commons license (probably http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/),
>> mostly for 2 reasons:
>>
>>1. to make accepting patches easier.
>
> The only modifications permitted by the by-nc-nd licence are those which
> are "technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and
> formats". Also, the Creative Commons organization itself strongly
> recommends that you *not* apply CC licences to computer software.
>
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ
> #Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F
>
> It's perfectly reasonable to use by-nc-nd for your audiovisual assets,
> though.

I find it extremely awkward having to split my game in two in order to ship
the assets under a different license. It doesn't make much sense from the
common sense point of view either.

I wish there was some kind of a game license that would be permissive enough
for people to learn from the code, incorporate bits of it in their libraries
and even use fragments of the artwork, that would at the same time protect the
general image of the work as a whole, so that people can't just take the whole
thing and release under their own name, or use the original main character
graphics from my game in theirs without any modification. Something that would
protect the brand, so to speak.

I think that lack of such a license is contributing to such a disastrous state
of open source in gaming.

--
Radomir Dopieralski, sheep.art.pl

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On 2012-03-23, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, March 23, 2012 2:42:55 PM UTC+1, Radomir Dopieralski wrote:
>>
>> License usually only allows
>> redistribution of the original or modified work, which is not required for
>> learning.
>
> I said both of these points in comparison to not providing the
> source code at all.
>
> Compared to providing the source code with all-rights-reserved
> they do not apply, I agree there.
>
> The reason why I was thinking of CC instead of no license at all
> is that I am hoping it mitigates the danger of people assuming
> it's open source.

There is no such assumption. No license means all rights reserved.

>> > Not sure about it yet tho.
>>
>> Having said so, I'm all for releasing games under permissive licenses. The
>> game development community seems to be very crippled in that regard compared
>> to the rest of the open source.
>
> By permissive do you mean something like BSD/MIT or public domain?

No, I meant the whole family of "you can copy it for free" licenses, including
CC in it. I guess "permissive" is a wrong term here, perhaps "free" would be
better?

--
Radomir Dopieralski, sheep.art.pl

[Ido Yehieli]

On Saturday, March 24, 2012 9:31:55 AM UTC+1, Radomir Dopieralski wrote:
> > is that I am hoping it mitigates the danger of people assuming
> > it's open source.
>
> There is no such assumption. No license means all rights reserved.

Not by you, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people
would see "source available" and think "open source".

Anyway I think I will go with Jeff's
all-rights-reserved suggestion.

-Ido.

[Martin Read]

Radomir Dopieralski <ne...@sheep.art.pl> wrote:
>I wish there was some kind of a game license that would be permissive enough
>for people to learn from the code,

"All rights reserved" is sufficiently permissive for _that_. (More or less.)

>incorporate bits of it in their libraries and even use fragments of the
>artwork, that would at the same time protect the general image of the work as
>a whole, so that people can't just take the whole thing and release under
>their own name, or use the original main character graphics from my game in
>theirs without any modification.

Creative Commons offered a licence that approximately did that (subject
to the usual proviso that they entirely disrecommend use of CC licences
on software) called "Sampling Plus". They stopped recommending it late
last year.

>Something that would protect the brand, so to speak.

If you want enforceable _brand_ protection, you need a trademark.

[Martin Read]

Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
>They don't need to transfer anything, they simply not attach any copyright at
>all to the changes they push to my repository (and if they do I revert the
>change).

As Radomir points out, _all_ Berne Convention signatories recognize the
existence of automatic and instantaneous copyright. There are very few
non-signatories, and you aren't likely to be receiving patches from most
of them any time soon.

In Germany, copyright cannot be disclaimed and can only be transferred
by inheritance. (Exclusive licence can be granted.)

In France, copyright can be transferred but the legally enshrined (and
perpetual!) moral rights of the author cannot be transferred (other
than by inheritance) or disclaimed.

Of course, many jurisdictions apply some degree of "de minimis non curat
lex" with regard to trivial derivation, so a one-line bugfix probably
wouldn't be seen as giving the submitter any copyright in the result.

Finally: I can't speak for anyone else, but I know for sure that _I_
wouldn't submit patches to an "all rights reserved" project outside of
the normal course of my paid employment.

[Patric Mueller]

Radomir Dopieralski <ne...@sheep.art.pl> wrote:
> On 2012-03-23, Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Friday, March 23, 2012 8:41:16 PM UTC+1, Martin Read wrote:
>>> Ido Yehieli <Ido.Y...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >Right, but those only apply to people other than the copyright holder - as =
>>> >long as the submitter give me the copyright for their patches I can use it =
>>> >in the game.
>>>
>>> Please bear in mind that transfer of copyright generally requires a
>>> written instrument (as in, on paper) in those jurisdictions where it's
>>> possible at all. (All a German can give you, for instance, is an exclusive
>>> license.)
>>
>> They don't need to transfer anything, they simply not attach any copyright
>> at all to the changes they push to my repository (and if they do I revert
>> the change).
>
> That doesn't work. All creative work is by default copyrighted and a transfer
> of the copy rights (the ones that can be tranferred) usually requires a written
> form, as Martin mentioned. In many countries it is not even possible to put
> something in public domain explicitly, because you can't give up personal
> copy rights.

Yes, because some rights are considered by some jurisdictions to be
unalienable. Like for example being the creator of a copyrighted work.

With a work that is in public domain I can do anything I'd like. I can
go and slap my name on it and claim to be the author. Completely legal
under copyright law even though I might look silly if I claim to be
the author of "Hamlet" (although depending on what I do, I might break
other laws).

You can waive as much rights as possible, getting as close to public
domain as possible. Creative Commons has a license for that, too:
http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

> So, technically, if they push anything into your repository and you don't
> revert it, they become co-authors of your game and you need their permission
> to distribute your game or do anything else with it.

Correct. But of course they wouldn't be able to push anything into his
repository if he didn't allow them to use his source code under
certain conditions.

That just means *both* sides must agree upon certain terms because -
as already has been said - the default copyright terms that are
automatically applied aren't suited for this situation.

I also don't think that any of the standard open/closed/mixed source
licenses would work here well either. If I were Ido and would want to
pursue this approach, I'd contact a lawyer for a custom license.

> Yes, I agree, the law is broken.

Most of the law is not as good as it good be :) although I think
copyright law (at least in Europe) is not that bad.

Bye
Patric

--
NetHack-De: NetHack auf Deutsch - http://nethack-de.sf.net/

UnNetHack: http://apps.sf.net/trac/unnethack/

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On 2012-03-24, Martin Read <mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Radomir Dopieralski <ne...@sheep.art.pl> wrote:
>>I wish there was some kind of a game license that would be permissive enough
>>for people to learn from the code,
>
> "All rights reserved" is sufficiently permissive for _that_. (More or less.)
>
>>incorporate bits of it in their libraries and even use fragments of the
>>artwork, that would at the same time protect the general image of the work as
>>a whole, so that people can't just take the whole thing and release under
>>their own name, or use the original main character graphics from my game in
>>theirs without any modification.
>
> Creative Commons offered a licence that approximately did that (subject
> to the usual proviso that they entirely disrecommend use of CC licences
> on software) called "Sampling Plus". They stopped recommending it late
> last year.

This is interesting, I need to research that a little bit more.

>>Something that would protect the brand, so to speak.
> If you want enforceable _brand_ protection, you need a trademark.

The quotes I used here are not for emphasis, but rather to signify that the
word I used is not meant exactly as it is used in law. I just don't know the
right word for the kind of control I want to have over the distribution of
my works or any derivative works. But I am fairly sure that it's the
copyright law, and not trade law that should regulate those.

For example, one of the untransferable rights every author has by default in
Poland is the right to immediately stop publishing any of their works, at a
whim, if they decide that it is in any way misrepresented or warped. The right
is there, but I have never heard about it being actually ever used in practice.

What I would like is to be able to say: "Here is a game I made. You can copy
and distribute it unmodified however you like. You can also port it to different
platforms, etc. You can also use bits of pieces of it in your own games -- you
can make your own game from it, modifying it as you please, but under one
condition -- the modified game has to have a different title, has to use
significantly different name and graphics for its main character and monsters,
and has to have different plot."

Now, I am aware that this creates a lot of trouble with the term "significantly
different." It is not clear where exactly lies the border. I am aware that
different judges would decide differently and that nobody would actually want
to go to the court with that. That's why I was thinking about explicitly
stating that it is up to me to decide every time -- but then that's basically
the "All rights reserved" model.

--
Radomir Dopieralski, sheep.art.pl

[Patric Mueller]

Radomir Dopieralski <ne...@sheep.art.pl> wrote:
>
> What I would like is to be able to say: "Here is a game I made. You can copy
> and distribute it unmodified however you like. You can also port it to different
> platforms, etc. You can also use bits of pieces of it in your own games -- you
> can make your own game from it, modifying it as you please, but under one
> condition -- the modified game has to have a different title, has to use
> significantly different name and graphics for its main character and monsters,
> and has to have different plot."

Theoretically, it is that easy. Put that paragraph into a LICENSE file
and you're done.

> Now, I am aware that this creates a lot of trouble with the term "significantly
> different." It is not clear where exactly lies the border. I am aware that
> different judges would decide differently and that nobody would actually want
> to go to the court with that.

Yes, without being a lawyer you might formulate something ambiguously
or even worse overlook a loophole. But then I wouldn't even trust a
lawyer to get it right unless it's his area of expertise.

> That's why I was thinking about explicitly
> stating that it is up to me to decide every time -- but then that's basically
> the "All rights reserved" model.

A technical solution would be to separate game content and game engine
and put them under different licenses.

So your code could be under some permissive license while the game
content could be under a NC Creative Commons license.