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Thursday, 3 December 2020
Important policy changes for Google Account storage
Tuesday, 22 September 2020
Spotlight: Alex Gleason From Vegan On A Desert Island
For this month's interview we sat down with Alex Gleason, creator and developer of Vegan on a Desert Island, an upcoming libre action/puzzle RPG. The game follows the story of Rachel, a vegan girl who shipwrecks on an island, and becomes embroiled in a quest to uphold her own conflicted values against the interests of the island's many talking animals.
A newcomer on the scene, we spoke with Alex on what inspired him to create this project, along with his views on activism, software freedom, game development, and of course, life.
FG: Tell us a bit about yourself and your project to begin with.
Alex: My name is Alex Gleason and I'm making a game called Vegan on a Desert Island (VOADI). It's a puzzle-adventure game with emphasis on art, music, and storytelling. The game is about Rachel's journey, which I modeled after some events in my life involving animal rights activism I organized in real life, including all its conflict and turmoil. It's a linear story meant to be experienced once and leave a lasting impression.
FG: At a first glance, a vegan stranded on a desert island seems like an unusual concept to make a game about. Could you elaborate on how your experience in activism motivated you to create this project?
Alex: In conversations about veganism people often ask if we'd eat animals under dire circumstances, such as being stranded on a desert island. It's a ridiculous question that deserves a ridiculous answer, which is why I decided to develop VOADI.
The true answer is coconuts. In The Real Castaway, a woman in real life was stranded on an island for 9 months and survived entirely off of coconuts. To answer to the deeper question, it's the same question as if you'd be fine eating another human on a desert island. I believe that animals are people and there is fundamentally no difference. It's impossible to know what you'd really do, but it's not a black-and-white situation. It's okay to not have all the answers.
While developing the game I started to feel like a "vegan on a desert island" in a different way. The animal rights organization I founded collapsed on me. They took my home and crushed my dreams. I was the villain in their story and they were the villains in mine. This inspired me to create a more meaningful story in VOADI, reflecting what happened to me.
I redefined the character of Greybeard from being a classic evil-doer to an ambiguous villain. You're never sure whether he's really good or bad. Good vs evil is a false dichotomy that doesn't exist in real life and I wanted to reflect that in VOADI.
FG: Why did you decide to translate this particular experience of yours into a video game?
Alex: Unlike books or movies, video games force you to experience something yourself. I want players to take a step in my shoes for a minute. The downside is that I cannot guarantee they will actually enjoy it. Successful games make people feel happy, but a lot of VOADI is about misery. Some gameplay elements are even intentionally antagonizing to the player. I think this is balanced a bit by CosmicGem's cheery music and Siltocyn's meticulous pixel art. At the very least, I hope players will always be wondering what's coming next.
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| The game conflates serious ethical topics with ironic humor |
FG: What you just mentioned highlights a certain tendency in the video games industry to reward and empower players in a way they will feel good about themselves, which is a bit contradictory to the idea of art as a form of self-expression. Based on that, do you think there's enough interest or room for dissemination for this type of project?
Alex: VOADI is not a game for everyone, but a few people will deeply resonate with it. If that happens I'll consider the project a success.
FG: For such a personal background, so far the game has been presented as having a cheeky and humorous façade, with an ironic twist to it. Could you elaborate on the role of humor and how it has shaped the game so far?
Alex: I think humor itself is antagonistic. It's about subverting expectations, meaning there is a conflict between what your mind expects and what's really there. "Vegan on a desert island" is a ridiculous premise met with a sarcastic answer. The game is funny precisely because it's antagonistic. Part of that antagonism is in the way the game is presented: a cutesy colorful game about talking animals where very serious things happen.
FG: The project itself has been openly publicized as being a Free Software and Creative Commons endeavor. How did you first became familiar with both of these movements and how have they affected the development of VOADI?
Alex: Software freedom is a boycott, much like veganism. There's a lot of overlap between the communities because it's people who understand the concept of sacrificing something for the greater good. I still use copyleft licenses for all my works. It's a deep conviction I'll never change, and you can be sure everything we put out there will free culture approved.
Linux was a groundbreaking discovery because it defied everything I knew about people's incentives to create things. I thought software freedom didn't go far enough. Later I discovered Nina Paley, a copyright abolitionist, and her view that "copying is not theft" really resonated me. She is a personal hero of mine and an inspiration. In some ways I am quite literally following in her footsteps.
In terms of project impact, being Free software helped VOADI garner more widespread support. Daniel Molina is an amazing volunteer who joined the project to advance software freedom for gaming. I've received support from the sidelines as well, with people donating money and others doing small but important tasks like updating wiki pages and mirroring assets. It's pretty incredible how much people will help you without being asked if you put yourself out there and are willing to give back.
FG: Eventually this has taken you to present your project at LibrePlanet last March. How did that come to be?
Alex: I've been a member of the LibrePlanet community for years but never gave a talk. Last March the stars aligned. I didn't intend to give the talk originally, but I felt empowered by the people there. Lightning talks seem like a low-pressure way to showcase something you've been working on, and VOADI was received very well! Lightning talks at LibrePlanet are open to anyone on a first-come-first-serve basis after the conference starts. All you have to do is add your name to a list.
FG: Switching to more technical matters: You have been using the Solarus engine as a main development platform. How did you first hear about it and how has it helped making VOADI a reality?
Alex: Solarus has a map editor GUI making it a great tool for beginners. The Solarus community is vibrant and generous, always eager to help. It was developed by Christopho as a reimplementation of the game engine from Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game I was already very familiar with. I highly suggest Solarus to anyone new to the free gaming scene, looking to create their own games!
I used to love Zelda, especially the Game Boy Color titles. Nintendo is notorious for cease-and-desisting fan created works, which I think is unjust and counterproductive to a healthy society. I struggle to enjoy the games from my childhood because I'm too distracted by the fact that society would punish someone for deriving or extending works that they care deeply about. I see Solarus as a stepping stone towards creating a new ecosystem of free games that can hopefully touch people's hearts in a way that they'll want to extend and remix the game, and they'll be allowed to do so.
FG: VOADI notoriously bases most of its graphics style on a Creative Commons tileset (Zoria), but it also features original additions of its own, as well as original music. How did you go about sourcing an adequate free tileset, along with finding artists to fill in for the remaining necessities of the artwork pipeline?
Alex: Zoria tileset was found on OpenGameArt. I had been trying to make my own tileset, but knew I couldn't match that level of quality on my own.
Later I commissioned our tileset artist, Siltocyn, through an ad I posted on the /r/gameDevClassifieds subreddit. CosmicGem, our chiptune musician, was found through Fiverr. This has worked out really well for VOADI. It's amazing how much you can do with a small amount of money.
In both cases we switched to free platforms (email and Matrix) for communication. Reddit was the most effective at garnering attention for our gigs.
Originally I planned to make all contributors sign a waiver similar to the Apache contributor agreement, transferring their copyright to me. But the freelancers wanted to maintain their privacy (they didn't want to sign their name and address). So instead now there's a policy where all contributors must put the license on the deliverable file itself, or distribute it in a ZIP with the license.
For graphics we created these stamps that say stuff like "Siltocyn CC BY-SA 4.0" in a tiny font in the corner of the files
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| A glimpse into the development process |
FG: When are you planning to release the game, and in which formats will it be released?
Alex: I'm planning for a 2020 release for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. We'll consider more platforms depending on the reception (although anyone will be free to port it if they have the skills).
I'm planning to distribute the game on some proprietary platforms like Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. Those versions will have a price associated with it. I think of it as a "proprietary tax." Users in the free world will play the game gratis.
I'm also planning for a limited physical release on CD, which I'll cobble together at home using LightScribe disks, booklets I print myself, and used jewel cases from eBay. I mostly just want something to hold in my hands.
FG: Any tips for other Free Software or independent developers out there?
Alex:
- Put yourself out there.
- Good art and music goes a long way.
- Start it and don't stop.
FG: Alright, thank you very much for your time Alex.
Alex: Thanks so much for the opportunity!
Vegan on a Desert Island is set to be released in 2020. The project's code is licensed under the GPLv3, and al of the art assets are being released under CC-BY-Sa 4.0. If you would like to contribute to the project you can join development talks at VOADI's Riot channel or check their repository at Gitlab. You can also donate via the project's Patreon or Liberapay.
All of the images on this article are courtesy of Vegan on a Desert Island, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Got any comments? Post them on our forum thread.
Monday, 21 September 2020
Troops On Parade - Kingdom Of Jerusalem
The joy of finishing a Project, even a small mini Project within a larger Project never lessens. Regular readers will have seen this group of Kingdom of Jerusalem figures grow from 0 to 98 over the last few months.There is a video run through above if you have time, all new Subscribers to Yarkshire TV are welcomed with a good brew and a Eeh Up 😁
This will end up being probably a quarter of my Christian Crusades Force 1 x 12 Mounted Knights, 1 x 12 Mounted Sergeants, 1 x 24 Foot Knights, 1 x 24 Melee Weapon Foot Sgts, 1 x 24 Crossbow Sgts and a 2 x fig command base.
All the figures are from Fireforge Games, Decals from Battle Flag and Flags from Flags of War. I just put them together, painted and based them.
The nit pickers and rivet counters were out of their cage a bit on my last Crusades post so just to make it perfectly clear this is my interpretation of a Kingdom of Jerusalem force, it's a bit too uniform, it's a bit "hollywood" as someone called it. I like it, quite a lot actually.
Individual unit shots next, 1st the 24 man Crossbow unit, all bases are 60mm x 50mm (except command) with the 60mm as frontage on the foot and 50mm the frontage on the horse (I.e. 50mm x 60mm) the extra depth on the mounted stuff.
Next up the 24 Foot Sergeants with Melee weapons.
The 24 Foot Knights.
The 12 Mounted Sergeants lurking in the background, these are on the 50mm frontage two to a base. Mostly to protect the figures but the extra depth allows for a more "dynamic" placing of the figures to get a better feel of motion.
The final unit is the strike force of 12 mounted Knights in all their finery.
The final piece is this command stand, both individual figures from Fireforge, their wonderful King Baldwin IV model with his silver mask and gloves. The standard bearer is a French knight model, I simply binned the shield and used a spare one from my Knights box to give him the same livery as the others.
So there you have it, my Kingdom of Jerusalem force complete and shoved in a box waiting for the call to arms.
Saturday, 12 September 2020
Convergence Of Cyriss - A Side Project
This post is going to start a hobby documentary on how to rehabilitate poorly treated used models and salvage an army using hobby skills. It'll also document my dabbling with Convergence of Cyriss from a gameplay perspective. I'm still mainlining Trolls, but I figure I'll play with my new CoC every once and a while.
Why start Convergence?
I've had bits and pieces of CoC sitting in my closet for years. Maybe a year after release I picked up an original Prime Axiom and Transfinite Emergence Projector basically new in box for like $60 for the two of them, figuring it was a deal too good to pass up. I also picked up a friends Aurora and Clockwork Angels when he was selling out of the faction (my wife said they were pretty).
In terms of design, they've certainly appealed to me from a gameplay perspective. With the latest release of Orion for the faction they really seem like they have the tools to be able to deal with pretty much anything, which is something PP has been setting as their goal for their limited release factions. I also kind of like the idea that once I've bought into it, I'm basically done with major purchases. It's all about experimenting with the limited toolset as the meta changes.
Also the focus induction mechanics seem really cool. I appreciate the puzzle in each game of trying to mastermind how to make the clockwork like system of getting the focus around to maximize efficiency. I'm an engineer by trade and the way PP made that clockwork system into a game mechanic really intrigues me.
What made me actually jump into the faction was that I found two separate retail for retail trade opportunities. Someone was looking to trade CoC for 40k Orks, and was interested in the entire lot I've been looking to offload for years. I also found someone who wanted nearly all of the Circle I was trying to offload and we worked out equitable trades. It's always a great value when you can do retail-for-retail trades on models you own to get models you want. The downside is that the very large lot I got in exchange for my old Orks was largely piles of crap that I had to salvage. Luckily the trade I got for Circle was excellent.
What to do when you get badly treated used models
One mistake I made on my first trade with the Orks for CoC was not asking for pictures of the models I was trading for. Note to readers: Always Ask For Pictures When Trading On The Internet.
This ended up being pretty bad overall, since the models I got were nearly all broken, some of which looked like they were given to a young child to try and paint, and some were clearly nicely done conversions that were then traded to this person who then mistreated them. My trade was to include an Axis and Lucant, but since the models weren't complete the person included a second version of the models, all of which still required bits orders from PP or just wholesale replacement of the model to get something functional.
Nearly every walking Vector chassis had all their legs broken off at weird angles, and two of the Inverters I got are missing the chain+flail bit altogether. What's worse is that I found the unit of Reciprocators I received weren't actually glued to their bases. The person used blue sticky tac and then spray painted metallic spray over all of it.
I didn't take pictures before I started fixing everything, but you can see exactly how awkward the pinning/leg reattachment went on some of the jacks, as well as how bad the paint job was:
Nothing like sticky tac for getting models on bases!
It was actually piled all the way up in huge amounts. Lots of scraping to clean it up.
Talk about a mess.
You can see what lengths I went through to get the legs back on. This was the only way it'd fit.
It looks like a 5 year old was told to pain this guy. The leg in the air was the only leg actually still glued to the model when I received it.
The solution in nearly all cases was simply pinning, lots and lots of pinning legs back after dry fitting to see which pieces went with which broken jacks. Fortunately I was able to get all my vectors up and stable on their bases.
My unit of Reciprocators were missing the tips of their halberds. These are near impossible to find bits for online, but I ended up going with the Steelsoul Protector spear from PP and luckily I was able to use the tip of the spear as a replacement for the halberds and have it work out nicely. All in all it was $30 in bits from PP to replace parts either too broken to salvage or bits that were straight up missing. Not terrible, but not great either.
What was worse is that the Clockwork Angels and Auora model I had effectively fell apart over the years they sat in my closet. My friend had used some really thin pins and apparently a not very good superglue. I basically re-pinned everything with the Angels, though making sure to use a much thicker paperclip as my pinning.
Thicker pinning = Better Pinning
Between pinning up Aurora, 3 units of Clockwork Angels, and building a fresh Father Lucant, lets just say I never want to build anything like that again. My fingers still hurt from all the pinning I had to do to get those things securely built!
Next Steps
Once everything has been built up (I still have a few servitors to do), I'm going to apply basing material and then test out using a metallic spray paint as a base coat. I'll have to paint the base and the basing material black again, but it theoretically allows me a lot of speed up in terms of getting the army painted up quickly. I definitely like the metal look, and I'm really keen on the idea of an easy to paint faction.
Gaming Results
I've been wanting to play a Synergy caster since forever and now I have my first opportunity with Syntherion. He's also got a really nice toolkit and is pretty well rounded. Apparently he's fallen out of favor with the larger meta as very few people seem to be talking about him, but I wanted to give him a shot.
Since I was playing a friend of mine who is just hopping back into the game with a brand new faction (Circle), I decided to avoid some of the more blatant power pieces like the TEP or Axiom, just giving things a go with heavies in Destruction Initiative:
Syntherion
-Corrolary
-Cipher
-Corrolary
-Cipher
-Cipher
-Assimilator
-Assimilator
-Inverter
-Inverter
-Diffuser
Optifex Directive
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex
Elimination Servitors
Elimination Servitors
Attunement Servitors
Attunement Servitors
I squared off against Tanith running
Feral
Stalker
Loki
Reeves of Orboros + UA
Skinwalkers + UA
Wolves of Orboros + UA
Gallows Grove x2
Unfortunately for me the first time I put CoC on the table I had…performance issues.
I initially thought that being a WM veteran of over 15 years I'd be able to master the Focus Induction mechanic in my first game. I was wrong. We weren't playing on clock since my friend isn't really used to the game yet, but if I was on clock I'd have surely clocked out given the amount of time it took me to figure out how to allocate and induct in the right order to accomplish everything I wanted to in each turn.
I was actually holding my own fairly well in the game, but a missed Magnetic Hold screwed up my plans and then after charging in on the Feral+Loki on my feat turn, I didn't realize a mistake: I charged in where I'd trigger admonition, but this charge was the last activation for me in the turn – meaning the Stalker with Admonition could move to threaten Syntherion and not worry about anything else coming in.
I also was bad at contesting when I easily could have multiple times, so rather than having to take the assassination victory, my opponent just had to kill an objective and survive a free strike to move Loki into another zone to win on scenario.
After the game I realized that taking a single TEP in the list would dramatically improve my ability to handle the 20+ infantry on the table, allowing me to better focus on getting up in the trading game.
So basically Destruction Initiative = 1 TEP minimum, at least to start. Given how excited I am to play with that piece, let alone the possibility of a few lists running two of them, this seems like a good general principle to start with.
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