Sunday, July 29, 2007

First Post

This is going to be more like a journal than a blog, really. I know that people want to know how the project is coming along and that it is not vaporware like so many other games that don't exist.
So, if this project is so great, why don't I have the sourceforge website up yet. To put it in blunt terms, sourceforge documentation sucks. If you ever wonder why there are not more games for GNU/Linux, why the games that are for GNU/Linux seem to be trivial, boring or require evil 3d drivers, now you know. The sole reason for this problem is the absolute suckage of sourceforge documentation. Sourceforge is the big site everyone thinks of when they try to think of a place to get free hosting for there brand new look at me I can write some great code massive project.

I've already tried to get the other developers on the project to read the awful sourceforge documentation, one hasn't gotten to it yet as far as I know. This is partly because sourceforge documentation does not look like a fun read. The other developer tried to read it, logged into the ssh shell, but could not figure out how to put a website up on the server. I even asked my local LUG (Linux Users Group) The problem is, either people don't know how to do it, or if they know how, they are incapable of communicating it.

Ultimately, the real thing holding back the games, is the bad documentation. It isn't finding programmers of C or any other popular language, it isn't finding artists, no matter what programmers would have you believe, art is so easy anyone can do it except for some programmers. It isn't the sounds or music, because the game would play just fine without that and you could add it later.
In the end, it is the whole herding cats problem, getting the programmers and artists to use the version control system, for example, or setting up the website or just simply communication that holds projects back.