[Savannah-hackers] submission of FreeDink - savannah.gnu.org

[beuc]

A package was submitted to savannah.gnu.org
This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden


Sylvain BEUCLER <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: 
Package: FreeDink
System name: dink
Type: GNU

Description:
The project is about Dink Smallwood, a free Zelda-like game engine.

Dink was first a proprietary game. 3 months ago, its source code was released 
under a BSD-like licence (available at 
http://www.rtsoft.com/codedojo/files/dink/license.txt). The engine uses a set 
of base graphics, scripts and sound data (for which the engine was originaly 
written) which is freely redistribuable, though non-free yet, and allow players 
to make their own add-on with as much power as the creators of the game. The 
engine can be used without the base data.



The first effort was to define the original licence to make it free and set up 
a decent work environment. Christoph Reichenback (jameson) took care of that 
part and chose SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dink/), since at 
that time, Dink relied on the non-free library DirectX.



The next effort was to get a usable Unix port. Shawn Betts (sabetts) worked on 
a usable SDL conversion from DirectX, which is functional at least under 
GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, but still needs works to make it as good as the original 
non-free version (sound rate, some small bugs...).



I took care of lots of administrative tasks such as copylefting the code with 
the GNU GPL, fixing some CVS repository issues, and gave some end-user support. 
I am currently adding a way for the Unix port to play unmodified games 
developed for Windows, and I plan to add gettext support to its scripting 
language, which is part of my translation effort I began mid-2000 
(http://dink-translation.beuc.net - an effort that will be used by SuSE 
Germany).



These two people mentioned above cannot take care of the project anymore, are 
not administrators anymore, and left the project in the hands of Andrew 
Reading, who was the only active registered developer.

Unfortunately, he lacks administrators and programming skills. We also have 
incompatible views on the project: he wants to improve the buggy builtin 
scripting language, which may break backward compatibility with existing 
add-ons, instead of using an already existing robust scripting language such as 
Guile; he also has less interest in making the package compliant with the GNU 
standards (such as maintaining a decent ChangeLog, and using standard directory 
hierarchy). Last, I also need to fix his errors on the CVS repository more than 
I can admit.

But the worst problem is that it is very difficult to communicate, even if we 
have a mailing-list and a chat available for our project. After a little 
quiproquo, he even suggested I could be denied access to the source repository.



That lead me to consider a difficult decision: the need to fork. I dislike 
splitting programming efforts, but I have the feeling of wasting my time on a 
project that may end going in the wrong direction. Hence this project 
registration request. Now that Dink is usable under GNU systems, it has the 
opportunity of being hosted at Savannah, I am happy to try it.



Source code:

cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/cvsroot/dink login

(no password)

cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/cvsroot/dink co dink

Other Software Required:
Dink now relies on SDL, SDL_ttf, SDL_mixer and SDL_image (all under the LGPL).

It may require wxWindows base library soon for portability issues like 
directory recursive parsing.



Other Comments:



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