[Akien]

Hi,

If you don't want players to have to read manual, then don't write a manual, just make gameplay. Other players will write something, give tips, create wiki, and so on. Let them (let us) discover that a 5×5 workshops room is less efficient than a 4×20, and a 9×9 library is not enough for maximum research but 15×15 is too much… It works good with many good games, like Dwarf Fortress or Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead. You make the game as deep as you wish, and the players discover the rules.

Well Dwarf Fortress is *really* hard to understand if you don't read wikis or manuals or tutorials. I think that's not what miki151 is aiming for. I played DF a bit, and though I could enjoy it and get a nice preview of the gameplay depths, I found the entry barrier was really high, even if I'm a relatively experienced gamer.

[Akien]

Awesome, congrats! I'm looking forward to playing alpha8 (which is out already!).

[Akien]

You are right about publicity, unfortunately most big gaming websites are ignoring me. I probably really suck at PR. What has worked best so far is fans posting on various forums. Thanks for helping too 🙂

I think there is still some potential to spread the word about KeeperRL among free software aficionados. A blog post on FreeGamer could be a first step: http://freegamer.blogspot.fr/
Then LinuxGames and TIGSource would definitely give a boost to the campaign. Have you already tried to contact those three websites?

For the FreeGamer blog you could try to discuss it on #freegamer on Freenode, they might be interested 🙂

[Akien]

Here's the topic on KeeperRL I started yesterday on FreeGameDev: http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5425
(already linked in another topic of this forum, but the purpose of this thread is to list places where KeeperRL is being discussed IIUC).

BTW, you might want to edit the thread name to “Spreading the word” (unless it was an intended pun ;)).

[Akien]

Hi, just use 0.0.5 for alpha5 and so on.

For now I've added a stable branch to git for the latest alpha. Is this enough?

Thanks I will use 0.0.5 and the stable branch then. In most projects that I follow (and particularly on github), developers create a tag corresponding to a snapshot of the code for a given version. It enables users to download the whole code of a given version if they want to give it a try and compile it themselves. So in my opinion, if you could create a tag for your next version when you build it and upload it to the world, it would be great! Then it's up to you to do what fits you best. A stable branch is already quite good 🙂

The problem with packaging is that the game reads everything from the current directory and there is no way around it yet. I'm not sure if the package system can handle it.

In such cases the simple workaround would be to put everything in the same folder and to create a wrapper script to launch the game from its installation folder. It's not recommended though, we tend to install (game) binaries in /usr/games, data in /usr/share/games/$name/ and e.g. libraries in /usr/lib(64)/ or /usr/lib(64)/$name/

I'll see if I manage to patch your Makefile and source code to make it possible to install the binary and the data in different folders. If so I'll make sure I send it to you 🙂

[Author]

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