FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I have this dell PC which I am not using; it can use up to 7 gigabytes of ram (1x 4Gb, 3x 1Gb) and has a 2GHz processor. Over time, some components in it have failed and I have had to replace them. Most notably, half of the RAM capacitors fried a while ago; so I had to remove all of them and solder in new ones. Surprisingly, it still works. However, a little while after that, the CPU fan controller circuit stopped working. It still boots up, but I can only run it for a few seconds before I have to shut it down to cool, since it now does not have any working fans (it is a 1x fan model designed to intake air through the same fan which cools the CPU).

If I can make or get a working fan controller to be powered from an unused floppy disk drive power connector, I will finally be able to make it run stable, possibly to even host a minetest server. I will most likely have to make a fan controller out of electronics components, which I have harvested from various obsolete or non-repairable electronics. It will not be easy, but I believe that it is possible - I just need to find the right varistor(s), attach them to a custom-sized circuit board cut from epoxy breadboard, connect wires for the power-in and power-out, mount it into the front of the case where it can easily be accessed for control, and finally connect all of the power connectors. I also intend to install a fan to cool the hard-drive; but it is a type which runs on a significantly lesser voltage than the CPU fan and extra attached case fan, so I will need a different resistor configuration for it.

Having only 160Gb of hard-drive storage, I will need to send the backup files to a different computer every so often; but that is no problem because I can make it send the files to the other computer over the local network. Considering the rate of failure of the circuit components on the board, it is not guaranteed to be stable for a long time, and it may encounter problems which could take a while to fix, or possibly even cause the motherboard to become useless.

I will post updates for the progress here on this thread. If I do successfully get to make a running server, I will possibly modify this topic title and first post so that it can be the server's "official thread on the official forum". I may even make a simple html site at the server's address, for information and possibly instructions for a method of making donations for the running costs, and possibly some upgrades. After some time though, I will be having much more flow of income from some other stuff, and I will then be able to pay for the running costs and upgrades, without needing any donations.

It will be some time before I can go get the PC from storage, due to problems with funding. I don't know if I will ever be able to start the server, unless I can somehow get enough $30 or $40 to start the funds-producing campaign.

Make a small videogame and rip someone off by selling it to them for ~50 bucks.

I don't know of a good software for making games, which allows commercial use of stuff made with the engine. I don't know how to code all of a game, so I would need to base it on an already existing engine; preferably one which is free, has good GUI, and allows editing and making changes without having to compile the sourcecode each time.
However, it is worth looking into, so I may do that. Alternatively, I can scrape gold traces and integrated circuits off of PCBs and melt them down, get rid of all unwanted metals and slag via cupellation, and sell the resulting tiny nugget to some goldsmith.

Hmm, I've been thinking about writing an RPG engine recently in Python, should I give it a try?
I can license it as LGPL, so you can sell it commercially :)

kaadmy wrote:Hmm, I've been thinking about writing an RPG engine recently in Python, should I give it a try?
I can license it as LGPL, so you can sell it commercially :)

That would be very helpful, and cool. I like role-playing games, and with an engine I could probably make some and sell a few to different people, even put some copies up on the internet for sale. For most people there will be almost no way to tell if it's a game that was released much earlier for less advanced hardware (before 21st century), and not that it was really produced much later and just looks similar - it would not have text printed on the label to deceive about when it was released, because it will have the correct year on the copyright fine-print line which would only be readable when one has bought the disc and is able to inspect the tiny details of its label.

I will have to find a place that can print labels onto blank discs for cheap, but that won't be difficult - I could possibly even order them from a site on the internet, either through sending them the blank discs or buying discs from them as well. If I really wanted to, I could order the discs to be printed only when someone has bought one, but that would probably be evil.

All right, I'll try that, writing an RPG engine. It'll be written in Python, and use pygame, and I want features such as an in-game world editor, tile-based 2.5d lighting, fog, animation sequencing, networking(Maybe I won't add networking, but it's a maybe), etc.

SegFault22 wrote:I don't know of a good software for making games, which allows commercial use of stuff made with the engine.

http://www.godotengine.org/projects/godot-engine

Make sure you read the tutorial, though. Once you've read the basics of how it works, then the layout of the editor makes sense. It supports both 2D and 3D, and supports Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, HTML, Blackberry. I've also read about xbox and ps support somewhere, but I don't think you can do that with the automatic exporter, you have to do it manually. It's open source so you should be able to port it to any other platform, if you know enough C++.

And its MIT licensed, so your game can have any license you want.