Re: game-data-packager with experimental quake support

[Stephen Kitt <steve@sk2.org>]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2011 11:28:39 +0100, Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 at 22:54:14 +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > New packages/virtual packages:
> > 
> >   "quake-data" is provided by the binaries created for
> >   shareware data (package name quake-shareware) or full
> >   game data (quake-registered, not sure I'm happy with
> >   this name).  The latter Replaces: the former, and both
> >   Provides: quake-data.
> 
> I'd have expected quake-data to be the real package name rather than a
> virtual package, but perhaps I've been spoiled by how generic ioquake3
> is/can be made to be. Maybe go with id Software's retroactive renaming of
> their old engines and call the virtual package "idtech1-data"? :-)

But id Tech 1 is the engine, not the game ;-)

> AIUI Quake 1 was available as shareware like Doom, but I'm more familiar
> with it as a retail game, so I'd suggest quake-data or quake-data-full or
> quake-full or something, rather than the shareware-specific term
> "registered".

It still is available as shareware in fact; see
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake/ for example. But it was marketed
differently to Doom, at least outside the US, so quake-shareware and
quake-retail would seem appropriate (albeit unusual compared to other games)
to me!

> > Any eventual package of openquartz or similar should
> > Provides: quake-data too.
> 
> I'd personally tend to call OQ a distinct game and give it its own launcher
> script? The justification for our packaging style for Q3/OA is that users
> don't want to play "an ioquake3-based game", they want to play Q3 or OA; so
> the end-user-visible packages (with desktop files, menu entries and things
> in $PATH) are for the Q3 and OA game content, and they happen to share an
> engine behind the scenes.

There's also the question of the mission packs for Quake, for which launchers
would be nice and whose data packages should depend on quake-registered (or
whatever it ends up being). (Incidentally, Jon, do you mind if I add support
for the mission packs?)

> I'd be tempted to do the same for shareware/demo versions, in fact; they're
> clearly not the same thing as (or network-compatible with) the whole game.

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember it was possible to play using the
shareware game on retail servers, with other players using the shareware or
retail version, as long as the maps played were in episode 1...

Regards,

Stephen