A summary of 2019

The year is coming to an end, and because the Open Source Games List (OSGL) has seen quite a development this year, let's summarize the achievements a bit.

In the first months of the year the project didn't see any activity, but from June on I got hooked. Synchronizing (mostly importing) game entries from opensourcegameclones and libregamewiki and further processing of the backlog resulted in an increase of game entries from 400 in January to ~1300 now. This is a huge increase and it should make the OSGL one of the most comprehensive lists (if not the one) of open source games information.

And while doing this I also improved the quality of the information contained. Unclear license information have been clarified. CVS, Mercurial, Bazaar repositories or source releases have been converted to Git. Developers have been contacted. Keywords have been added.

Modest advertisement on Reddit or Freegamedev.net have increased the popularity of the list.

One thing remained unchanged though, that is the web output, which most people should use to search the list. And this will also be the focus early on next year. The plan is to make most of the information contained in the database nicely visible.

After that comes the fun part, i.e. improving the games. Can't wait for it.

Started a Github repository - the Open Source Kids Apps List

I created a Github repository - the Open Source Kids Apps List or OSKAL for short.

The purpose is to built a similar database to the OSGL. However, I will start with the kids apps list only later. I already opened it, so I can collect potential additions in the issues. Feel free to open an issue about a suitable app.

Here is the logo (simple but does the trick, I hope).

Cannot wait to finish the next steps with OSGL

I can hardly wait for the next phase of the OSGL (open source games list) to finish. The next phase is the synchronization with the LGW (Libregamewiki) and the OSGC (open source game clones list), a cleanup (consolidate keywords and dependencies and conversions to Git) and a better static/dynamic HTML output of the results and finally a promotion tour. Currently I have almost finished the synchronization part and I hope that the rest can be done until the end of the year (that's six weeks from now).

The reason I can hardly wait is because so much other stuff wants to be done. In particular, I can't wait to

• Finish programming the coloring-app and publish in for Android
• Start a similar list for open source apps for kids
• Start building and improving the open source games in the OSGL and set up a website for downloads of binaries
• Gathering more statistics about the open source games, especially about the artwork and set up a web site for displaying artwork information

That's an ambitious plan, but I'll do my best.

Need a few weeks break from the list of open source games

Going from 500 entries to 1000 entries in the OS games list in the last couple of weeks left me a bit drained and mentally exhausted. I realize that I need to take a couple of weeks holiday from adding entries everyday, before continuing with a couple of 100s more (LibreGameWiki and backlog) that is to be followed by validating the content and programming a better web output.

Doing the same stuff day by day drained all my free energy. Maybe the Coloring App or some other projects get a bit of love in the mean time.

1k entries in the os games list

Today with additions from osgameclones, libregamewiki and my own backlog of places to visit, the os games list has grown to more than 1,000 entries. Not all of them are games though, there are game engines, tools, libraries as well. However, emphasis is still on growing the library and doing the reorganization later. I'm quite confident that I can reach 1.3k entries within a few weeks.

Then I will stop seeking for missing games actively, consolidate the information, work on a richer web presentation and start contributing to the projects with emphasis on the build process.

What to do once the list of open source games is kind of settled?

It seems like at some point I will have included a good portion of the existing open source game projects in the database. I never really wanted to stop there and that will mean that I can start with the next phase soon. The question is how to do that exactly?

I imagine I could work over the games and carefully check the assets licenses, try to build them, make small fixes and sometimes even larger ones and prepare binaries as a first thing. In order to be efficient, I would group the projects by programming language, i.e. Java first, then Python, then JavaScript, then C/C++, then the rest. Also, inactive but mature projects would be preferred and I could spend proportionally more time on genres I like a lot like strategy or role playing. I would also prefer projects with free assets and the GPL license. While MIT, BSD and Apache are nice licenses they basically do not guarantee that future contributions stay that way. For some games without an active community anymore, maybe I can induce a transition to GPL, but of course only if my contributions are substantial.

We will see how it all plays out, but that's the plan so far.

600 entries in the OS games collection

The OS Game List with technical infos that I maintain has now >600 entries. The reason is mostly that I started synchronizing with the osgameclones and the LibreGameWiki entries. There was surprisingly low overlap between both these data bases and my list and I'm confident to be able to get at least 200-300 more games just because of this synchronization. I also can and already did contribute back to these projects. The scopes are slightly different and it's still some work of course, validating and structuring the information.

500 entries in the OS games collections

The size of the database of OS games now exceeds 500 game entries. There were already many strategy and RPG games, but puzzles and action games were underrepresented. This has improved.

I also mentioned the project on reddit, which generated quite some interest and, for the first time, additions from outside. I will continue adding entries (there are quite a lot of resources still to search and check) and improve the organization and well as speaking about it.

FreeRails: Status update

There hasn't been much progress in the last months. My free time was very limited and while there is a certain amount of steady external traffic, showing that there is interest in the game, there were no contributions from other developers.

Also the development is a bit stuck. The original code has been simplified quite a significant amount without giving up functionality. The properties of Java helped a lot in this regard. But there are still some knots and complex parts left in the code structure. It would require quite a substantial continued effort to rework the code before you could even think about adding new features.

With the changes in how Java is deployed (modular JARs, JavaFX not included anymore) also some changes to the infrastructure of the project are necessary.

But I recently checked and the game still starts smoothly. I think it's therefore possible to continue right at the point where development stopped. I just hope that I or someone else will find the time.

Civil: Status update

There has not been much progress in the last months. Interest from outside also seems to be small. It's also not my top priority at the moment. And Python as a programming language doesn't make understanding old code from others particularly easy; the inner dependencies of the code are only weakly to be inferred compared to e.g. Java. All this hinders development.

However, I still like the idea and even if I cannot get the old Civil to work (the computer player just doesn't seem to do anything), one can recreate the game or a similar game just by re-coding the game. I thinks that it's worth it and whenever there is a bit of free time, I intend to follow this idea. Let's see where this leads to. It's the journey that is a considerable part of the fun.

Coloring-App: Update of schedule

Some months later we aren't much closer to our goal. But I started again working on the Android coloring app project as well as on the open source games list. Both will be the only things I will be working on when I have free time and I hope to bring them to release worthy status within the next weeks.