[Pkg-pascal-devel] Bug#708333: castle-game: changing back from ITP to RFP

[Michalis Kamburelis]

Abou Al Montacir wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-07-28 at 23:06 +0200, Abou Al Montacir wrote:
>> Hi All
>> 
>> The below ITP was forgot, maybe we can fix it and upload again,
>> no?
>> 
>> Cheers, Abou Al Montacir
> 
> FYI, there is currently a build issue on git gamewindow.pas(36,15)
> Error: There is no method in an ancestor class to be overridden:
> "TGameWindow.EventPress(const TInputPressRelease);"
> 

Looks like some incompatibility between the engine and castle-game.
Some parts of "the castle" game admittedly use obscure engine
features, as a consequence new versions of the engine sometimes break
compatibility with "the castle" sources. Current official "the castle"
version 1.0.1 should be compiled with older engine 4.1.1, it may break
if you try to compile with latest engine 5.0.0.

The SVN *always* contains the version of castle-game and the engine
that match. See
http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/all_programs_sources.php for all
links to tar.gz as well as SVN sources.

Anyway, this all probably doesn't matter, because:

1. The issue of packaging castle-game was put "on hold" because of the
uncertain license of some data files. This was in response to Paul
Gevers' mail "review of caste-game (for Debian)" back in 2013... I did
an investigation, with the results on
http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/castle-credits.php#section_data_used
and
http://svn.code.sf.net/p/castle-engine/code/trunk/castle/data/AUTHORS.txt
. The short answer is that, unfortunately, some of the important data
(mostly, 3D creature animations) is derived from files on unclear
licenses. The game was developer long time ago, and admittedly I
simply didn't pay enough attention to checking that licenses are Ok.
So some work was based just on "files downloaded from Internet for
free". My mistake, sorry --- I was young :)

So, as an upstream, I cannot honestly guarantee that this is really
100% open-source software conforming to DFSG. The truth is that at
least 2 creatures models should be redone from scratch to start
considering it DFSG.

2. The other reason is that "the castle" game is not extended anymore.
That is why I didn't replace the non-free data during almost a year
--- I simply didn't have time (was busy on other game projects :).
"The castle" code is only maintained in SVN to keep it compilable.

On a brighter note:

Instead of packaging "The Castle", may I suggest packaging some newer
games done by me, using Castle Game Engine? :)
1. There is "Darkest Before the Dawn",
http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/darkest_before_dawn.php .
2. And there is "Mountains Of Fire",
http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/mountains_of_fire.php . The 2nd
one will even have soon a new release, with some important bugfixes
for rendering.

Both games are relatively small, but still fun (I hope :). Both were
developed mostly during a weekend "gamejam" with friends, although are
maintained and slightly extended later. Both these games have 100% of
data under clear, open-source licenses, with AUTHORS.txt files
documenting all origins and licenses. I would be very glad if one/both
of them would be packaged for Debian :)

Regards,
Michalis