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[kidsgames] BOUNCE kidsgames@smluc.org: Non-member submission from [TerryHancock <hancock@earthlink.net>] (fwd)
Terry has been subscribed, welcome Terry.
--
Jeff Waddell
jeff@smluc.org
Kids Games Project Coordinator
main website at http://smluc.org/SIA/kidsgames/
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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 01:09:35 GMT
From: owner-kidsgames@smluc.org
To: owner-kidsgames@smluc.org
Subject: BOUNCE kidsgames@smluc.org: Non-member submission from [Terry
Hancock <hancock@earthlink.net>]
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Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 17:10:45 -0800
From: Terry Hancock <hancock@earthlink.net>
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Hi Everyone,
I gather that this list is pretty new, there still
seems to be some setup admin traffic going on. :)
However, I'd like to introduce myself, and see if
maybe I can help in some way.
I (like Jeff) am a former professional who is now
at home with my preschool age kids, so I have a
good motivation to approach this. I'm not nearly
as fed up with the available commercial Windows
games, I'm pretty happy with some of them, noteably
Humongous Entertainments' stuff (though I suspect
some of Jeff's criticisms are true).
My big problem with them is that they don't run
on Linux! My son wants to switch over to Linux with
his Mom and Dad, and is currently stuck with Win 3.1.
(We completely refused to go to Win 95, choosing to
switch to Linux/X-Win instead). For myself, I'm
gradually replacing all of my old Windows functionality
with Linux replacements (I won't say equivalents, because
the Linux stuff is usually pretty different, though
on balance, it's a lot better). I use a combination
of GPL and proprietary software at present.
Still, I think GPL is the future of software, and I'm
really beginning to appreciate the liberties it allows.
My own interests run more towards Space Technology and
Astronomy (I was employed as a research astronomy
assistant before this, and am just now embarking on a
space technology education project
http://home.earthlink.net/~hancock/rs101/index.html),
but my experience includes a fair amount of programming.
Usually this was scientific programming and data
visualization, so I'm pretty familiar with image
processing and 3D graphics coordinates and so on.
I also get a real kick out of messing with graphics on
my computer. To give you an idea, after I downloaded
and installed xteddy (this puts a teddy bear picture
on your X root window that you can move around with
your mouse, very entertaining for my two year old),
I spent about three solid days converting web graphics
(mostly anime characters) into xteddies. Of course,
those are copyrighted, so I can't release them (I
think), but I can easily do the same with free
graphics). Furthermore, although I am not a professional,
I do a lot of art myself. I'm a little disappointed
with the graphical creation tools available on Linux
(I used to be a wiz with Corel Draw 3.0), but I'm
certainly okay with pen and ink (if only I had a
scanner that would work with Linux :) ).
I have found it really hard to concentrate on a serious
programming project since I've been responsible for
the kids (unfortunately my diapering and cooking interrupt
service routines aren't too stable -- the registers
get all screwed when I return to the application :) ).
But graphics and stuff can be done in much smaller
blocks of time, and I'm starting to get better so that
maybe I could handle something small.
What I fear, though, is promising something too ambitious
and not delivering, so I have to watch my mouth!
Anyway, I'm fishing for some way I can contribute to your
project. I could maybe design game sprites, or draw
backgrounds, or write (smallish) pieces of code, etc.
There is one project I'm thinking of starting with the
"Flight Gear" project (GPL flight simulator project),
which is to write a spacecraft physics module so we
can have a "Moon Lander" simulation. My interest in
this is to actually hook the thing up to a mock-up
lander to take for the kids' track at space conferences
and stuff. Of course, it has the side benefit of
providing it for everybody else too. This is an example
of something I think I can do in my present
circumstances.
http://www.flightgear.org
I've been browsing the Linux for Kids website (It wasn't
clear to me whether this is you, or just someone
referencing you), looking for "easy stuff that hasn't
been done". Happily, there appears to be a "concentration"
memory game already, though I was figuring out how to
write one in GTK+.
Something that I would REALLY like to see though, is
a kidproof Local HTML browser. One of my son's favorite
games on his Win/DOS machine is a hypermedia tour of
the solar system. I have all the graphics for this
(happily, NASA images are public domain) and also sound
files with my voice pronouncing all the names of the
planets and moons. The original program, though, was
a shareware product called Neobook, which is pre-web.
So it's not surprising that it's written in a proprietary
binary format, which is not portable to Linux. Nowadays,
it's clear that HTML is the way to go for this sort
of app, EXCEPT...
I can't find a safe enough HTML browser for little kids to
use. They all have all those buttons and menus across
the top. What I need is a browser that can be invoked
with a command line arguments that turn all the menus off
and launch it for an index file on the command line, like
this:
mysterybrowser --nomenus solar_system.html
so that the internal links will work, but there aren't any
distracting menus for stray mouse clicks.
This would also be useful as a demonstration/presentation
tool, I would imagine.
Anyway, I'd gladly reimplement my Solar System tour as
HTML, and GPL it, if there were a good target browser (I
suspect that care will have to be taken because of
unsupported features, etc, so I hesistate to start on
it as yet). Useful features of HTML for my task would
include image maps, tables, transparent and animated
GIFs (or PNGs, which are patent-free), etc. I also have
other multimedia ideas, including one for my Rocket
Science 101 project. One could imagine a gradually
accumulating GPL HTML encyclopedia, though it would
probably take about 100 years :).
I would imagine that one of the existing GPL browsers could
be hacked to do this, but this is an example of something
that is probably beyond me [I don't think I have that
much time]. Anybody really know how hard this is? Does
it already exist somewhere?
Oh, one more thing, I haven't yet, but I plan to learn
Debian package maintainence (.deb), so I might be able
to do packaging in the future (at least for Debian). I
think I read that somebody really didn't like doing it.
Personally, I just really like the Debian Package
Manager, so I want to use it for everything, which means
I've got to learn how to make them. It doesn't seem
like it can be _too_ complicated.
Well, I know this is long, but I hope it's constructive.
Cheers,
--
Terry Hancock
hancock@earthlink.net
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