Hi Are we still planning on doing a CD spin or just a DVD spin? IMO, a CD spin doesn't make much sense considering the size of the games but if anyone feels strongly that it would be useful, I could create a kickstart file for that.

In a previous discussion in #fedora-games, someone suggested that a games spin might disappoint folks since we don't provide proprietary drivers. One of the ideas that I came up to tackle this is a driver buddy. It won't install any drivers nor will it contain pointers but act more like a nudge for users to get cards that has open 3D drivers. So if you have a Nvidia card for example, you will get a message explaining the non-availability of open drives and link to cards that has one.

Fedora bookmarks has been separated from the browser in the last release. Do we want to have games specific bookmarks by default? Someone would have to create a package if this is desirable.

Do we want a special theme for the games spin? We could request the art team to be creative and come up with a distinctive background, look and feel.

Finally, is there any major good games that are possible to package or waiting on review that we need to have before we release this spin?

Hans de Goede wrote: > I've been thinking about this, and I'm planning in writing a small > bash script which uses zenity which can be used as wrapper around 3d > games, this script will then first check for dri, and if that isn't > available pop up a note (using zenity) saying that 3D hardware accel > is needed (with explanation about no open source drivers, etc.) and > then exit. Sounds good for the short-term alteast. I don't know if we need a "proper" app that uses libnotify instead. Notifications on the system tray are much better than dialog boxes IMO.

> I would say that we would want to have the second live client, that > would need someone to push the submitter of it, he is working on it > but mostely doing upstream work. Alternatively we could suggest > comaintaining to him and then one of us could get the packages through > review, while he concentrates on improving it upstream. Ok. Do you want to followup within the package review at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=233946. I got interested enough to build this package locally and run it. It sort of connected once and has been continuously crashing everytime after that. The upstream binary is more recent and more stable but I haven't managed to connect in that either which might be a network firewall block which I don't administrate. Upstream stills call the Linux client "alpha" so I am not too sure about pushing that in.

Hans de Goede wrote: > > Not in this case, thje idea is that the (error) dialog gets shown when > the user tries to launch a 3d game from the menu. > > The idea is to create a generic wrapper script and then modify all > opengl games to use this (atleast all in the kickstart file) I think this would way too annoying. I just want to provide a gentle nag. Not to frustrate users every time they try to launch 3D games which I suspect will happen if we modify all the related menu entries to launch a dialog box.

Hans de Goede wrote: > Rahul Sundaram wrote: >> Hans de Goede wrote: >> >>> >>> Not in this case, thje idea is that the (error) dialog gets shown >>> when the user tries to launch a 3d game from the menu. >>> >>> The idea is to create a generic wrapper script and then modify all >>> opengl games to use this (atleast all in the kickstart file) >> >> I think this would way too annoying. I just want to provide a gentle >> nag. Not to frustrate users every time they try to launch 3D games >> which I suspect will happen if we modify all the related menu entries >> to launch a dialog box. >> > > Note that the dialog will _only_ be shown when dri (direct rendering) > is not available, so if we wouldn't show the dialog (and not start the > game) the user would get a slide show (software rendering) and > navigating a menu with the mouse when you get 3 frames per second can > be quite annoying. Here is a alternative solution: Login time, check whether DRI is enabled and popup a message "Your system does not have open accelerated 3D drivers available or installed on your system. This means that you will not able to play 3D games efficiently. Click here for more information" and point them to a wiki link in Fedora with more information. Have a check box below saying "Don't remind me, next time" or just bring this dialog box up only on first login for a new user.

On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 09:13 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote: > Note that the dialog will _only_ be shown when dri (direct rendering) is not > available, so if we wouldn't show the dialog (and not start the game) the user > would get a slide show (software rendering) and navigating a menu with the > mouse when you get 3 frames per second can be quite annoying. > > Alternatives are welcome. Notice that my plan means that users of the other > spins who install an opengl game through yum will get the same dialog if they > don't have direct rendering available. I believe this is a feature, but if > others disagree then please say so, then I won't spend time on this. IMHO this is a very good idea and should be a distro-wide feature. If DRI is not available the user should be informed in an understandable manner and possibly linked to a wiki page for more information, rather than mysteriously failing or running real slow. The latter case usually results in "Fedora sux cuz its slow" threads in the forums. Also consider the case of a user with supported hardware, but the driver just hasn't initialized DRI properly for whatever reason. Fast user switching, for one, seems to result in only the first session logged in getting DRI, later sessions are SOL.

Hans de Goede wrote: > Okay, I've written a small handy utility script for this and put it in > a separate package, so that we don't get a zillion copies of the > script that need updating when changes are needed. > > It is a very small simple package, but before we can start adding the > script to the 3D games which we want to put on the DVD, it does first > need a review, so if one of you could give it a quick review please: > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=301571 > > The included README explains how to use it in your packages. I just build this package and checked it out. Looks like you need to fix some typos.

You might want to announce this more widely when this package is in the repository.

Hans de Goede wrote: > > Thanks for checking it out, feedback with regard to the typos much > appreciated, English isn't my first language. Neither it is mine for that matter. "Your system currently is not capabable of hardware accellerated 3D. Therefor $GAME cannot run." capable and accelerated is misspelled. "Usually the cause of this error is that there are no Free Software drivers for your graphicscard, please contact your graphicscard manufacturer and kindly ask them to provide Free Software support for your card." You need space in between graphics and card. Also it might be better to point to a wiki page.

Hans de Goede wrote: > > Thanks I'll make a -2 release with these spelling issues corrected and > import that (the review just got approved). > > About the wiki link, I thought about that, but where should it link to? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Games/Drivers? That's similar to what we planning to do with codec buddy FYI.

Hans de Goede wrote: > It is a very small simple package, but before we can start adding the > script to the 3D games which we want to put on the DVD, it does first > need a review, so if one of you could give it a quick review please: > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=301571 > > The included README explains how to use it in your packages. Another thing, is this dialog box going to popup before the game gets launched and would the end user have the choice of whether or not to launch and the game?

is implemented via a binary blob and uses a patent encumbered codec, so even if the Linux version of the binary blob turns up, Fedora users are still SOL until that changes. Trust me, I've chewed out upstream about this.)

Do we want a special theme for the games spin? We could request the art team to be creative and come up with a distinctive background, look and feel.

Nicu Buculei wrote: > I would be against this: a Fedora spin is Fedora, so I think it should > have the same look and feel. IMO, it cold have at maximum a customized > version of the default background but still based on the default > background. Well the KDE and GNOME spins of Fedora have already different themes. I don't see why a games spin can't have a separate look and feel too. I am just of the opinion that spins shouldn't be just a collection of packages and shouldn't acquire their own "personality" on some small but highly visible changes.

Rahul Sundaram wrote: > Nicu Buculei wrote: >> I would be against this: a Fedora spin is Fedora, so I think it >> should have the same look and feel. IMO, it cold have at maximum a >> customized version of the default background but still based on the >> default background. > > Well the KDE and GNOME spins of Fedora have already different themes. > I don't see why a games spin can't have a separate look and feel too. > I am just of the opinion that spins shouldn't be just a collection of > packages and shouldn't acquire their own "personality" on some small > but highly visible changes. A derivative looking so different compared with the main distro as http://ubuntustudio.org/screenshots is something personally I am not interested working on.

Rahul Sundaram wrote: > Nicu Buculei wrote: >> A derivative looking so different compared with the main distro as >> http://ubuntustudio.org/screenshots is something personally I am not >> interested working on. > > Maybe not to such extend but would you be interested in working on a > games flavor of infinity theme instead? I don't have much of an idea > how that would look like though. I have seen games related websites > looks dark and have contrasting colors and you have a taste for that. > A basic desktop background and maybe a slightly different GDM theme > can make quite a difference. My current vision (it may change easily) is something like this: I believe everyone know the "Tux with Quake rocket launcher" image, is very common on the web - http://img.hexus.net/v2/features/linuxgaming/penguincomputing.jpg I would like to have a general mascot for Fedora (we have quite a few proposals, but no one emerged) and a derivative of this for Fedora Games, just in the style of "Tux with Quake rocket launcher" so the graphics for the games spin could be like the default graphics with that personalized mascot added in a meaningful way.