So it seems there’s a huge amount of requests for a Gnome pinball game. Which is great, because I’d love to have a cool pinball game as part of Gnome, too.
I hereby announce that I’m gonna do hacking sessions for a pinball game next GUADEC, should I not forget it until then. So if you are also interested in making a pinball for Gnome happen, go to Guadec and remind me, so I don’t forget it. And remember: A game doesn’t just need coders, it also need artists, level designers, and lots of testers.
4 comments ↓
Why doing a pinball game for GNOME? I cannot see how GNOME libraries would help creating one, it’s more like SDL and OpenGL come to mind…
Most of all because it’s supposed to be a Gnome game. But also because Gnome is way superior to SDL/OpenGL in everything but graphics speed (well, and 3D, but pinball is 2D). Stuff like fonts (Pango), loading object hierarchies (GtkBuilder), level editing (Gnome Canvas), settings (GConf), sound (GStreamer), themes (Gtk) and so on just work.
I’m also interested in pushing Gnome to its limits and improving the problems that show up. People not using Gnome for games might just be because noone ever bothered fixing some small problems.
Pinball construction kit, please, please, please!
Was going to construct a long response for the Gnome Games list about how games can encourage types of learning and development and also how much OLPC would love that kind of thing.
Might even work out nicely for you if you plan from the start to write an engine and make the rest of the project seperate work that others can be encourage to do.
This kind of works for Aisleriot.
Not enough time for a more considered reply but I wish you the best of luck with your project and I guess I’ll volunteer as a tester etc.
@Michael
compare and contrast Frozen Bubble and Monkey Bubble. Gnome might not be ideal for game writing but it is certainly a possibility (and thanks to Cairo the canvas might still end up getting the benefits of an OpenGL backend depending on how things are done).
Please have a look at “Pinball Dreams” and “Pinball Fantasies” from the Amiga Computer, they really rocked when it comes to playability and looks. Really fun to play and worked flawlessly even on a unexpanded Amiga 500!