OSGL static website new and improved

 The web output of the OSGL (open source game list) that I maintain is now improved and public since a couple of days. You can see it at trilarion.github.io/opensourcegames as well as mirrored at osgl.twelvepm.de. It's made with Jinja2, a template engine in Python and Bulma, a CSS framework and displays the content of the OSGL database nicely (with some glitches still). It looks quite nice:

The dynamic table is gone for now and there are still some glitches. I hope to be able to improved both and tell the public about it a bit more soon. All in all there is information ~1500 open source games contained, linked to ~600 inspiration games and ~10,000 developer names. Let's see where the journey will lead the project. So far, there are quite a large number of issues still open including many things that could still be done with and to these games.

OSGL updates

 I added a couple (~50) entries to the OSGL, mostly open source Android games and updated links. I'm also working on getting a first version of the static HTML page finished.

And I'm thinking about how to deploy games that I have improved. There are a couple (~4) games that I started to improve on, but I never got around to substantially change the core mechanic of them. I cleanup up the projects and code though and now I would rather deploy them in a nice fashion before moving on.

 This was just a short update.

Java game improvement status

 I'm working on improving four long time ago abandoned games written in Java and while the progress has been rather slow in last couple of weeks compared to the beginning, I'm still making progress. I also have a better picture now regarding what can be done and what cannot. I definitely got into Java and Gradle again. Here is an unordered list of what I learned so far:

• Refactoring Java code with IntelliJ is quite simple and safe. Reflection and use of raw types (especially mixed use) can be difficult, but otherwise everything behaves very nicely and IntelliJ is a real strength in that regard.
  
• Gradle got easier over time. The plugins do more of the work with less customization needed. That is good because I mainly want to use Gradle as build system.
• Modularization of Java code is not as cumbersome as I thought. The benefits may not be large but updating old code to use modules isn't that difficult either.
• The transition from Swing as GUI framework to JavaFX isn't that bad either. It's important to clean up and simplify the GUI parts of old software as much as possible, but otherwise one can transition from one to the other quite nicely.
• Packaging and distribution of Java desktop apps is easy enough with jlint now, but the sizes of the packaged app (a 200 kb jar becomes a 100 MB bundle) are crazy. Not sure if shipping a Java runtime with each and every simple, small app is really the best way to go.
• The most time consuming factor is still understanding and refactoring the game logic. That is a task that can take weeks and is surprisingly different for every new game.
• There is demand for serialization (storing and loading) of complex structured data (game states for example) and it's not sure currently what the most convenient format is for that (JSON, XML, some custom format, Javas own serialization format...) and equally how best to serialize/de-serialize that.
  

Added 10,000 developers to the OSGL

 I finished gathering data automatically from the Sourceforge and Github projects in the open source games list and that greatly expanded the number of developers listed.

 With more than 11,000 developers now I could even crosslink some names (if the names are similar and they work on the same game or have similar nicknames) but mostly it's guesswork to follow accounts over different code hosting platforms like Sourceforge, Bitbucket, Github and Gitlab. The Git commit emails might give me more insight, but since an accurate account of the developers of open source games was never really the main aim, I think I will leave it at that for the moment.

The main goal here was to fill the planned static web page with as much content as possible with reasonable effort before finishing it.

Polishing the static website takes time

 I think the largest problems with building the new static website are solved and most of the structure is in place. I can render links, icons, text, lists and combinations thereof; I have a working template system and a split of the entries in games and frameworks/tools. Games can be filtered by letter, by genre, by programming language and by supported OS platform. Additionally there is a developer index and an inspirations (other games) index, all with backlinks. The layout is kind of looking well. I use icons in an icon-font to kind of improve the visualization. So far, so good.

Now the details are still to be filled in. Adding a bit more information here and there. Choosing more icons (for the genres), improving the layout (adjusting the size of the programming languages shown according to how many entries there are for each language), creating the statistics page, filling the contributions page with content, creating a cover picture as a collage from many pictures of OS games, ... and that will still take a couple of weeks.

My new dead line, beginning of November. On the plus side: I'm really proud of how nice it looks.

 

Icons and more

Everything always takes a bit longer than estimated before because there are always details that are missing in the beginning. One detail here for the new website for the OSGL was icon fonts. I started with bulma as CSS framework, then got to know fontawesome icons, then found many other sources like ionicons, material design icons, iconarchive.com or game-icons.net and finally came to "Optimize Font Awesome". From there I arrived at IcoMoon, a free service that allows you to create your own optimized webfonts by selecting only the needed icons from other fonts. I tried it and so far I'm very happy with it.

Now I use icons. The only problem is that I find the layout more confusing with icons. Will have to tinker more before it can be published.

Quite advanced in building a new website for the OSGL

 In the last days I got much more experience with the CSS framework Bulma and with the template engine Jinja. Bulma does the job quite nicely (some things of it I don't need) while other things like colors I need to add myself and sometimes I would wish for even smaller sizes (of tags for example). Jinja by itself has a certain way of doing things, but I think I figured it out by now and are capable of writing fairly efficient templates.

Now the big issue here is the wiring. There are games and there are frameworks/tools. Games are sorted by alphabet, genre, programming language and OS support, frameworks/tools are only sorted by alphabet. Both have developers and can be inspired by original software. That means there are additional developer and inspiration categories, which are also alphabetically sorted. The linking is also backwards, i.e. from a developer to the developed games or frameworks/tools and from the inspiration to the inspired games or frameworks/tools. The data itself is residing in the markdown files in the Github repository, but for the HTML output, I need to get this links right. While some of it already works, some more wiring still needs to be done.

And then I can start polishing the look and layout of the entries and the static pages. The internal data representation is dictionary / keywords based (in Python) and then Jinja templates and macros do the rendering as HTML with HTML tags and CSS classes.

Finally, I would like to get a few more images (using icon fonts for symbolizing the OS and other stuff, info graphics for the statistics page and maybe game images (but at least a collage of images for the main page). Then some additional text here and there and a dynamic JavaScript table (for searching). And then I'm done and it can go live and I can talk about it.

Two more weeks at the very least, unfortunately.

In the middle of building a new website for the OSGL

For the OSGL, I'm currently building a new static website with Python using the Jinja template engine and the Bulma CSS framework. First I learned about these things and now I kind of became productive. The output does not yet look nice, it's more like most of the needed information is present but it doesn't look nice in any way. Links between the games indices and the games entries are still missing, the games entries need a better format, many urls are just printed and stuff like this, but it's just more of what is already there.

In the end I will try to incorporate a few more pictures and a nicer layout and lots of hints that the content can easily be edited by contributing. And then in say 1-2 weeks, I might be ready to green-light it.

Ready to start building a better OSGL website

For the open source games list (OSGL) that I maintain, I'm finally ready to build a more comprehensive website programmatically. So far, it's a single page with a JavaScript data table showing >1000 rows. That was not a good presentation.

I now want pages for every game, every original inspiration and every developer as well as statistics pages and category pages, each with smaller JavaScript data tables and links between them.

The source of the data are the Markdown files in the OSGL as well as the reading and synchronization scripts in Python using a parser for the Markdown files.

Now I will write templates (using Jinja2) to export the data to HTML and use a clean CSS framework and data tables. It will probably still be hosted on GitHub, unless I find a better place.

Maintaining the open source games list becomes more and more work

For one week now I'm updating the OSGL, replacing links, searching for repositories, updating information. With 1200 games in the database, that's just more work than it used to be.

I had hoped for others to take over some of that work, but so far that hasn't happened.

I will certainly finish improving the HTML output and making the project more well known.

But then I want to start with building and fixing some of these games. That was always the goal, not only to have a list, but to use that list.

My efforts to keep the list updated will therefore be limited in the future. I will concentrate on choosing some projects, making them build on modern systems as well as fixing the easy to fix things and offering builds.

If others step in and help keeping the database of open source games updated, that's fine by me.

Back to opensourcegames (OSGL)

After half a year long break, I started again looking at the opensource games list Github repository and static page that I built and maintained over the last two years. Interestingly, I forgot quite a couple of things (conventions like which keywords are used to denote multiplayer capability or how some code dependencies or licenses are specified). Even I, the maintainer, needs some time to get into the project again. I should make a list of all the things and add documentation about it.

Anyway, the first steps will be some cleanup, checking links and repositories, synchronizing with osgameclones.

What I really want to do is not adding more games, but rather starting to bring old games back to life and write an article about the whole journey. After a couple of weeks, cleaning the database, polishing the web output and promoting the project, I will move to the next stage, relying on others to keep the database updated.

Before I will finish the Lark parser testing tool that is quite advanced and tell the maintainer of the Lark parser about it. It should only take a couple of days.

I also want to get the open source kids apps list started.

There is really lots of work available. More than I could ever do. I will never run out of it.

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.

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.

Milestone 1.0 for the opensourcegames list created

47 issues still to solve and then everything is ready for going public (really advertising it as something of a usable, real thing).

Check the progress at: https://github.com/Trilarion/opensourcegames/milestone/1

Dynamic table is online

A dynamic table showing all entries of the open source game database, is online. One can sort the columns as well as limit the number of rows by using a search field.

I also converted a lot of svn/cvs repositories to git lately and put them on Github/Gitlab.com.

Dynamic table showing open source game entries

400 entries in the OS games collections

There are now 400 entries in the collection of open source games on Github.

Also I started creating a dynamic HTML table using Vanilla-Datatables as well as checking the source repositories and converting some sources (cvs, svn, sources only as snapshots in downloads) to git.

All git source repositories can also be cloned and updated automatically. Currently 180 git based repositories requiring 40 GB disc space can be archived with a single click.