Links List for The Light Princess Game

Links List for The Light Princess

This is a collection of links frozen from the Wiki Site. Please go there to add links and/or see the newest ones. Periodically, I will update the links to this site so as to have them on the Sourceforge server.

Dependencies

You need some other programs in order to run The Light Princess, so here are some links to their parent sites. Although the fancier tricks in AutoManga and Emerald will (I hope) make game play much more interesting, it is important to note that we can implement a working game using little beyond the existing PUB implementation and "state machine" characters. So we do have a bit of hedge on betting on these riskier technologies (besides, what do we have to lose?).

Affiliated Projects

AutoManga: Originally this was going to be the entire game engine, but I've streamlined the project down to its one really interesting feature, which is the generation of active manga-animation-style avatars based on character emotion. This will allow our character agents to "express their emotions" which will be an important part of the game play in The Light Princess. Other aspects of the game engine are mostly provided by existing components now, so that the new game engine "Universe" is just a thin framework tying them all together.
Python Universe Builder: PUB is an interactive fiction (text adventure) game package that maintains a "topological world" model for the game, parses commands, and manages character and item objects in the game world. The same technology can be used to drive the game-logic for a graphic (even 3D) game, and this is what we are doing for The Light Princess. "Universe" will be just a graphical shell around the Python Universe Builder, from whence comes its name (actually, there's a bit more to it than this, but that's the idea.
Emerald: Emerald will be a "shallow broad emotional agent" add-on for Python Universe Builder and Universe, based on ideas from Carnegie Mellon University's Oz Project, a 4-D phase-space "emotion" implementation based on literature on modeling real emotions, and ideas derived from Rosalind Picard's book, Affective Computing, and references therein.

Other Dependencies

Python: You will need version 2.3 or later to run the Universe game engine which TLP is to be based on.
PyGame: PyGame is an SDL library binding for Python with lots of support for writing games. TLP runs on top of PyGame, and thus on SDL. You may also need a patch (but I haven't written it yet) to provide SVG rendering via Cairo.
SDL: Not surprisingly, you also need the Simple Directmedia Layer (SDL) library to run TLP. This provides cross-platform multimedia support for C or C++ (and via PyGame, Python).
libsvg-cairo: AutoManga uses SVG data for storing animation cels, and the libsvg-cairo library is used to render SVG data to SDL surfaces.
Soya 3D: Universe uses Soya 3D for the 3D-rendered part of the game (basically, the "walk mode", so obviously, you need to have Soya installed.
Skencil: Skencil is a python scriptable vector graphics application (other than its scripting features, Skencil is comparable to Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape. I am creating a number of Skencil scripts (and possibly Plugins) to facilitate development of the game (mainly through AutoManga. You will also want to visit the Skencil Add-Ons page for additional scripts.
Gimp: I don't plan to use Gimp so much on this project, because we are relying more on vector graphics. However, when you want a "painted" look to a static view or background, bitmap graphics will be the way to go, and Gimp is the tool to do it with. Gimp will also be invaluable for creating texture maps to be used in 3D models.
Blender: When we started The Light Princess, Blender was a free download, but not "free software", so we were waffling a lot about relying on it. However, in the intervening time, while The Light Princess was closed down, a miracle happened, and Blender was sold off to the community to be open-sourced under a GPL license. Halleluiah! Anyway, Blender is the 3D modeller of choice on this project, and will be used for creating "sets", "props", and armature-based 3D characters. Low-poly / fast-rendering models will be used in 3D mode, and high-quality ray-traced output will be used for some of the still images used in the game.

Other Free-licensed Graphic Adventure Games

The Light Princess is not the only free-software adventure game, nor the only one written primarily for Linux (in fact, TLP will be cross-platform, because of SDL -- it should play fine on Windows or Macs).

(Please see the wiki links list for games).

About George MacDonald and his work

We'd be nowhere without our muse. George MacDonald was a brilliant and subtle 19th century fantasy writer who influenced many later writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Here's some more information about him, including some of his other works (The Light Princess is by no means his most popular work, though obviously we like it!).

George MacDonald on Wikipedia: The Wikipedia entry is a good starting place.
George MacDonald at Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg has a number of stories by MacDonald in its database, including The Light Princess, The Princess and the Goblin and many others.