Invitation to a cross-distro games packaging/patching/maintaining mailing list

Sat Nov 29 05:50:26 PST 2008

Hi All,

Dmitry Marakasov wrote:
> open astro menace (http://www.viewizard.com/astromenace/index_linux.php,
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/openastromenace) - high quality 3d space
> shooter, previously commercial, then released under GPL.
> Changes are datadir support, some CMakeLists fixes (merged into SVN on
> sourceforge, but not in the tarballs afaik.
> (googls says it's available in Ubuntu, but seems like not in Debian).
> 

Fedora has one bugfix patch to this which I think is interesting for others too:
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/astromenace/astromenace-stuckmouse.patch?revision=1.1&view=markup

> world of padman (http://www.worldofpadman.com/) - 3D action game based
> on Quake III with it's own content. Changes seem to be numerous.
> 

Fedora unlike Debian (and others) do not have a non-free section. We do have 
pacakges for users who want to play worldofpadman, or urbanterror (which has 
similar licensing issues), these packages basicly contain a menu entry, icon 
and a launcher script use a tool called autodownloader, which is a GUI tool 
esp. made to allow users to easily download (game) content needed for some 
things where for various reasons we cannot package the content.

We use a regular quake3io build to run these games, AFAIk there is no need to 
use a special quake3 build for this. Talking about quake3, we have a patch 
which makes it use the system libjpeg instead of its own copy which might 
interest others:
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/quake3/quake3-1.34-syslibs.patch?revision=1.1&view=markup

This GUI tools pops up a dialog explaining a download is needed and asking 
permission to connect to the internet, then it displays a license if applicable 
and if the user the consents, it downloads the needed files, the launcher 
script then unpacks these and then launches the game. The next time the user 
launches the game the already downloaded and unpacked files get used. Because 
of security reasons the downloading happens into the homedir of the user, so if 
multiple users on the same computer want to play the game, the data will get 
downloaded twice.

autodownloader is written in python using glade for the dialogs given a good 
gui experience, including progress bars during the download etc. I think this 
is interesting even for distro's who do have a non-free section as the data for 
totalconversions like these can be quite big and could be a problem space wise 
for mirrors.

autodownloader gets controlled by config files looking like this file for example:
[MESSAGELIST]
[MESSAGE]
	[TITLE]Please click 'Accept' to allow internet access.[/TITLE]
	[TEXT]In order to play the World of Padman, the datafiles are needed. World of 
Padman is a mod/total conversion based on the Quake 3 engine.

Click Accept, to download the The World of Padman datafiles, which can be 
freely downloaded from the internet.
[/TEXT]
[/MESSAGE]
[MESSAGE]
	[TITLE]License Information[/TITLE]
	[TEXT]The World of Padman is protected by copyright.
  The copyrights belong to the respective authors of the WoP-Team. All 
commercial use of the World of Padman and consequently the single works is 
prohibited unless you have explicit permission from the WoP-Team.
  This includes, but is not limited to, mass archival as on a cd-rom and 
inclusion in commercially published compilations (books and/or magazines).
  This includes further the prohibition of copying, changing, mirroring and 
public reproduction in sense of a commercial use electronic or otherwise. 
Private non-commercial copying, mirroring and even public reproduction is 
desired. ;-)
  Changes to the game and consequently the single works whether commercial or 
not, is prohibited without explicit permission.
  Some parts of the game were created with material, (e.g. textures, Sounds) 
which we acquired from different sources; they are free of any of third party 
rights as far as we know. If anyone discovers we've used his / her work 
unlawfully, contact us immediately so that we can respond as soon as possible.
  The source code will be released under the GPL! For more information about 
the GPL see gpl.txt.
  If you have any questions contact the WoP-Team by E-Mail:
  ente at worldofpadman.com or team at worldofpadman.com[/TEXT]
[/MESSAGE]
[/MESSAGELIST]

[FILELIST]
[FILE]
	[FILENAME]worldofpadman.run[/FILENAME]
	[MD5]c7650414d7865ddac26ada6b3f7b8cc9[/MD5]
	[PATH]$HOME/.q3a[/PATH]
	[MIRRORS]

[URL]ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/games/worldofpadman/linux/worldofpadman.run[/URL]
		[URL]http://thilo.kickchat.com/download/worldofpadman.run[/URL]
		[URL]http://btc3x6.che.uni-bayreuth.de/~tl/wop_final/worldofpadman.run[/URL]
		[URL]http://www.extreme-players.de/download.php?id=12217[/URL]

[URL]http://download.cfs.game-host.org/get.php?get=/pub/games/wop/worldofpadman.run[/URL]
	[/MIRRORS]
[/FILE]
[FILE]
	[FILENAME]wop_patch_1_2.run[/FILENAME]
	[MD5]3468FC91889795471BC68E35EA334614[/MD5]
	[PATH]$HOME/.q3a[/PATH]
	[MIRRORS]
		[URL]ftp://ftp.kickchat.com/wop/wop_patch_1_2.run[/URL]

[URL]ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/games/worldofpadman/linux/wop_patch_1_2.run[/URL]
		[URL]http://www.hessenfragger.de/uploads/wop_patch_1_2.run[/URL]
	[/MIRRORS]
[/FILE]
[/FILELIST]

Regards,

Hans