Community Gaming

What is Community Gaming?

Open game sessions intended primarily for members of the Fedora community. This includes regular users as well as official contributors.

What is the point?

The point is to give Fedora community members a way to have fun and socialize with each other. A secondary goal is to have this strengthen the community.

Status

Pre-pilot. There should be some pilot sessions soon. After that we'll see.

How to

Participate in a session

Pretty much just show up at the announced time. Though if you know you are likely to participate, it can help with planning to add yourself to the list of people interested as how the games are set up may need to be tweaked based on the number of participants.

This is social gaming, so behave well. Some good natured ribbing is OK, but be extra polite when playing with people you haven't played with before.

Please be on time, as for some games, accommodating late arrivals may not be practical.

Volunteer to organize a session

Choose game

Pick a game in Fedora (not add-on repositories, and preferably not using third party data downloads) that you think will be fun to play socially. Preferably people with any supported version of Fedora should be able to play together. If the game isn't compatible between releases, be sure to note which release will be used for the session. We want significantly different games played over time so that more people (with different tastes and available hardware) will participate.

Pick date and time

Currently we are thinking Friday nights through Sunday afternoons are good times for games. Getting a mix of start times for the various sessions so that more people will get a chance to participate is a good thing.

Pick communication channels

This is social gaming, so the participants need to be able to communicate. This could be using in game communication if it is supported, IRC (for now we'll use #fedora-games) or Fedora Talk. The communication channel should be part of the announcement. Having people not playing be able to observe or listen is a good thing. Be sure let people know where to initially meet.

Let people know

You should fill out a game session entry below on this page. For now send a message to the users mailing lists with details and a link back to this page for people that want to announce their intention to participate.

Be sure to tell them where to meet up (IRC, lobby, Fedora Talk, etc...). Also letting them know what packages to install and/or any other special set up ahead of time will allow people to be ready to go at the start time.

Servers

For now we don't have Fedora servers to use. Some games provide public lobbies and using those will normally be fine. In other cases it might be necessary to get a co-sponsor for a session that has a static IP address so that it can be pre-announced for participants.

Upcoming game sessions

• Session 1
  • Sponsor: Bruno
  • Game: bzflag (It's 3d, but a low end card seems to work OK.)
  • Time and Date UTC: 0100 Saturday May 1, 2010
  • Time and Date EDT: 9pm Friday April 30, 2010
  • Estimated session length: I'll hang around at least two hours, but will play significantly longer if people are interested.
  • Communication channel: Probably Fedora Talk, but I need to experiment. The game seems pretty fast paced for in typing while playing. I'll run a local server for the game. More details as a learn more.
  • Other notes:
    • yum install bzflag to get the game.
    • I had to use modprobe analog to get my game pad driver loaded (though you can use a mouse effectively to play)
  • Likely participants (sign up below):
    • Bruno
    • Kevin
• Session 2
  • Sponsor: Bruno
  • Game: Battle for Wesnoth 1.8 (teams vs AI or teams vs teams depending on number of particpants, ending when first human team member is defeated. A test or scratch build may be needed for F12 or F11 users.)
  • Time and Date UTC: 0100 Saturday May 8, 2010
  • Time and Date EDT: 9pm Friday May 7, 2010
  • Estimated session length: 5 hours
  • Communication channel: In game chat, probably we'll meet in the official Wesnoth lobby.
  • Other notes:
    • Wesnoth is turned based and there can be a significant wait between turns. This allows for kibitzing or social chatting, but will not be to everyone's taste.
  • Likely participants (sign up below):
    • Bruno

Historical Session notes

Moving session info here after they have run and add in notes of interest. Good things that happened, bad things that happened, what you'd do differently, participation level are all things worth noting.