On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 4:16 PM, Alexandre Courbot <
address@hidden> wrote:
Hey Alex! Long time no see!
> Oh, my. It's almost 10 years since my last commit to this project. And my last email as well probably. >_<
>
> Time has passed and things have changed so dramatically.
>
> Linuxgames.com does not reply anymore. The Linux Game Tome is dead. Freshmeat.net has disappeared (seriously, when did that happen?)
It's not that long ago that Linuxgames.com closed. They did have an announcement up for a while (where they also urged people to accept their decision and stop harassing them -- go figure). Freshmeat is rebranded Free(Code), but I believe it's read-only for quite some time. Shame about Happypenguin.org, though. Lack of those sites really makes it tough for open source games to get some exposure.
> It's all but gone. Still, those years developing this project with you all remain my best memories of the times when we were using CRTs. :) Just remembered that we even ported Adonthell on the Sharp Zaurus! That was some cool stuff. And the IRC meetings! How lucky we were to be there during these times.
>
> Nowadays, I guess an amateur project needs to be some shit-ass closed-source free-to-play scam running on iOS to gather a bit of interest. As Kai mentioned there are now plenty of quality RPGs on Linux, but as far as I can tell none on this list is open-source or developed by the community.
> Anyway, to my dismay I could not even compile the latest 0.4 code on my Arch system - it was not too happy that Python 3 was the default (that was easily fixed using ccmake), and then some of the STL code was apparently too obsolete for GCC 5.3. But I was delighted to see that the 0.3 Waste's Edge package for Arch compiled and installed gracefully, minor some warnings. I could even play a bit, even though the keyboard input was kind of broken with each keypress being sent twice (!).
Yeah, issues like that should be collected and addressed for 0.3.6. It's really a blessing that Waste's Edge is part of quite a few distros, as that at least provided the absolute minimum of required maintenance. Although often that mostly means ensuring that stuff compiles :-).
If you want to do some of that, please go ahead. Once I am in possession of a mostly up-to-date system (gcc 5.3??? I still have 4.8!) I will definitely do a pass. I really need to stay on some kind of LTS distro, though, otherwise the daily system update would eat the rest of my spare time ;-).
> Urrk. I feel like I got old. Maybe in another 10 years there will be a new golden age of free software, and someone will dig out Adonthell? Hopefully we will still be sane and relevant enough to provide some guidance to these kids and transmit them the spirit, before it is gone for good.
Who knows? I am kind of positive about the future of Linux, but with the transition to mobile everything, I see the trend to consume more and create less. Besides, those walled-garden models aren't really compatible with the open source idea. Too bad a lot of that stuff is actually built on open source :-/.
> "Listen to the water
> that surrounds our shore -
> To the wind
> that blows into our face -
> To the stories they tell
> before all disappears in darkness"
>
> - Tomas Hterin
> Fare thee well, Adonthell
Heh, quite fitting, actually! And reminds me to add the v1.0 design stuff (like the race-specific prologues) to the Wiki, too. Even though it may never come to fruition, it'll be preserved at least.
Kai
P.S:Really enjoying talking to you guys. Reminds me on the more active days of this list :-)