Improving custom portrait support?

Linux support forums for Eschalon: Book II
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Sslaxx
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Improving custom portrait support?

Post by Sslaxx »

Would it possible to have Book II support mypic.png in ~/.basilisk_games/book2_saved_games/ as well?
Stuart "Sslaxx" Moore.
bitsweep
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by bitsweep »

@ BW: I second this motion, for the following reason:

If the admin (root) on a Linux box installs the game in a globally accessible place for all users on the box, (say, /usr/games/bin) it simply isn't possible for all individual users on that box to play the game with individualized portraits--users generally don't and shouldn't have write access to /usr/xyz.

Making the game look in ~/.basilisk_games/book2_saved_games/ or at least in ~/.basilisk_games for a 'mypic.png' file would allow each user on the system to have a custom portrait easily.

Just my 2-pence worth.
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by xolotl »

bitsweep wrote:If the admin (root) on a Linux box installs the game in a globally accessible place for all users on the box, (say, /usr/games/bin) it simply isn't possible for all individual users on that box to play the game with individualized portraits
Heh, of course I assume that unless each person on the system bought Book 2 themselves, you're looking at something of a license violation there. :)

A more persuasive argument would be that because each version of Book 2 unpacks to its own versioned folder (which is a great thing - don't get me wrong), it's easy to forget to copy your mypic.png over to the new location.

Anyway, I too think that moving it to inside ~/.basilisk_games is a good idea, though a pretty minor point.
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by bitsweep »

Heh, of course I assume that unless each person on the system bought Book 2 themselves, you're looking at something of a license violation there. :)
:?
Um, just to be pedantic, no I'm not looking at anything of the sort. I paid for one copy to install on a single machine--which is exactly what I've done.

You're presuming that every person in my family who happens to have an individual account on that machine could play at the same time. While multiple remote logins are certainly possible on a multi-user system like Linux, the game isn't going to play well (i.e. like total stuttering crap) with non-accelerated graphics tunneling across a networked X-session.

In typical usage (i.e. 1 user at the keyboard/screen), my wife or whomever might be visiting & using the guest login account ought to be able to play without looking at my scraggly-bearded mug.

Please don't take this as too much of a flame, but I wanted to be clear here that it's not a "nice to have" feature. It's actually the proper POSIX method for developing software--BW implements part of it with the ~/.basilisk_games/book2_saved_games folder usage, and he needs to "finish the job" as it were.

I'm pretty sensitive to this kind of thing as a long-time software developer (now starting his own dev company). I have pirated plenty of software in my time, but only to try it when there was no demo--anything I liked and used, I bought it.
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by xolotl »

[begin far too many words]

Well, if we're being pedantic, then we've wandered into some licensing territory I admit I'm not exactly an expert in. It seems to me, however, that a valid interpretation of the license could be that it grants rights to only one individual, and although it does say "use on one personal computer," it does qualify that with "personal use." I'm sure that many thousands of hours have been spent on issues like this by people who are actually familiar with copyright law, and that there could very likely be a mountain of legal precedent which contradicts my opinion, so I'm not exactly wedded to my opinon 'Till Death Do Us Part or anything. :)

Regardless, my remark was intended with very little seriousness. I was more intending to suggest that BW seems, IMO, unlikely to put much priority in a feature whose rationale extends only to accomodating multiple people using the same copy of the program. As you yourself mentioned, there's other good reasons to make the change regardless, though I don't share your opinion that BW "needs" to fix this. I'd even add that it would make sense to do the same thing on the Windows versions as well, but I don't see the sky falling if that doesn't happen.
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by bitsweep »

Please don't take this as too much of a flame, but I wanted to be clear here that it's not a "nice to have" feature. It's actually the proper POSIX method for developing..
--self-snip---
@xolotl -
It was never my intention to start a flame war, particularly over what I agree is an incredibly minor feature. But frankly, despite your tongue-in-cheek tone (and your last reference to the always funny XKCD), I wasn't merely responding out of a delusional preference for tilting at windmills.

Your post genuinely ticked me off for 2 reasons:

(1) Software piracy is not something I can easily jest about, having personally lost sales to it in the past, and worrying about what I shall lose to piracy in my current endeavor. This is one of my few hot-buttons. :evil:

(2) Given #1, I truly felt that your post unjustifiably impugned my character, despite the obvious light tone of your phrasing. (Though Lord knows there are enough justifiable things I deserve some solid impugning for... :roll: )

However it also plainly strikes me upon a re-read that the tone of my post came off snarky... and for that I apologize. The weird thing is that I think it happened simply by omitting one single word... Let me try that again.
Please don't take this as too much of a flame, but I wanted to be clear here that it's not just a "nice to have" feature. It's actually the proper POSIX method for blah-blah-blahdy-blah...
Amazing how word choices, omissions, and the like can affect the perceived implication and intent... anyway...

@BW:
(1) My apologies for possibly abusing your forums; I had no intention of doing so.
(2) 1.04c is working GREAT so far, THANK YOU.

Peace and potions of "Extraordinary Mellowness" to all...
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xolotl
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by xolotl »

Heh, no worries - no offense was taken on my end, and likewise I can't imagine that BW would be upset about anything that's happened in this thread. :) We'll just all agree that the initial suggestion is a good one and then go out for a virtual drink or something.

PARTY ON THE INTERNET!
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by SpottedShroom »

All this license discussion prompted me to actually *read* the license (shock! horror!) and I found a few surprises:

1. You didn't buy the game, you licensed it. As such, you can't sell it or give it away. So much for the first-sale doctrine.

2. You're only allowed to install it on one computer. Not one computer at a time, one computer period.

3. This is less clear, but it seems like the license applies to only one person, and as such you couldn't let a friend play the game *on your computer* without violating the license.

These seem a bit unnecessarily strong. I don't know if the license that comes with the DVD is different, but in that case at least it seems like you should be able to sell it. As for the latter two points above, it seems like limiting the game to one running copy at any given time per license would be sufficient.

I wonder if BW specifically intended these limitations, or if this is just generic indie game boilerplate.
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by Sslaxx »

The mainstream games industry hates and wants to completely destroy the used games market, so I'd be surprised if at least some proponents of the indie game market didn't feel similarly.

Interestingly, this license sounds like something you'd expect from a larger software company - the only difference being the lack of DRM they would use to enforce said license.
Stuart "Sslaxx" Moore.
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CrazyBernie
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Re: Improving custom portrait support?

Post by CrazyBernie »

SpottedShroom wrote:All this license discussion prompted me to actually *read* the license (shock! horror!) and I found a few surprises:

1. You didn't buy the game, you licensed it. As such, you can't sell it or give it away. So much for the first-sale doctrine.

2. You're only allowed to install it on one computer. Not one computer at a time, one computer period.

3. This is less clear, but it seems like the license applies to only one person, and as such you couldn't let a friend play the game *on your computer* without violating the license.

These seem a bit unnecessarily strong. I don't know if the license that comes with the DVD is different, but in that case at least it seems like you should be able to sell it. As for the latter two points above, it seems like limiting the game to one running copy at any given time per license would be sufficient.

I wonder if BW specifically intended these limitations, or if this is just generic indie game boilerplate.
Well, BW made it so that the game settings (like brightness and volume) were linked to the savegames instead of a generic profile, so that couples could play the game with seperate preferences... so I'd say that he was just covering his assets by using a somewhat "industry generic" license.
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