Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

Every so often I have a look at Inkscape, which is an open-source Vector Graphics editor that runs on both Windows and Linux. I don't generally use vector graphics editors, except my old copy of Fireworks MX 2004 (windows only), which I use to add text, speech balloons and SFX to my web comics (it's also a good exporter of low size graphics files). Anyway, Inkscape is currently up to version 0.46. It's improved since I last looked at it about a year ago (and the samples at Deviant Art are cool, and check out the interactive examples at ASCIIsvg) , but as the number indicates (numbers less than 1 tend to be pre-general release), still has a long way to go. For example, I tried creating a drop shadow. In Fireworks this is just a general filter which you add to an object. In Inkscape there's a mini tutorial telling you how to do it!

Of course there are different paradigms at work I guess. Fireworks adds stuff to PNG files and was designed to export the results as web images or pages (complete with drop-down menus et al). Inkscape is the graphics designer using the SVG standard that was developed by the W3C. Sounds impressive but implementation of that standard on web browsers is patchy at best. When I was doing my honours back in 2005-2006 I read a fairly thick tome on SVG and was impressed by its elegance and the fact that everything is saved in XML format, meaning that it could be generated and edited as text.

Lots of options in this - it does have filters but it will take a while to get the hang of them. It can certainly handle adding text and speech balloons. Special effects will take longer to understand and perfect. Perhaps if I'll have any suggestions in its development, it would be able to add, save and import presets for filters and effects, and like the GIMP (which has so far been a big disappointment) some form of scripting language with which to automate tasks.

Until I can get decent replacements for Paint Shop Pro (which has its own vector graphics and media art tools) and Fireworks, I'll still be running Windows (and no, WINE dies horribly trying to run PSP).

Instead of looking at web comics like I was going to, I spent a fair bit of time last night going through the Source Forge listings. And I found some great stuff!

I found a windows version of a solitaire game called Shisen-Sho, where you remove pairs Mahjong tiles until you clear the board. Sounds exactly like any of the hundred versions of solitaire Mahjong, doesn't it, but there's just one difference - all the tiles are flat in a rectangle, and you can only remove pairs that that can have an unblocked route of no more than three lines to each other (see pic at right). The only thing missing from the download was the rules - but I found these elsewhere!

This game is extremely absorbing for me, just like Links was - I love elegant puzzle games. Apparently it's a port of a version of the game that ran under KDE (a Linux GUI) and can use the tile sets for KMahjongg. I went out and found the download page and converted them (as simple as changing the extension from .tileset to .bmp). There are heaps of other versions out there too (and Ishido looks just as interesting). Cool!

The other big find at Source Forge was the number of train and railway games and simulations. I've always been interested in trains and railways since I was a child. My father was a guard on freight and passenger trains for over 30 years, and even took me with him on a couple of runs up to the Avon Valley marshalling yards.

In Simultrains you "build the transport networks, with platforms, quays, level crossings, signals and much more. Transport passengers between nearby cities with a commuter train or use a high speed train to earn big money by connecting cities further apart". I haven't tried it yet but it looks a lot like A-Train and Sim City (though there's also FreeTrain).

 Rails is a java implementation of the 18xx series of board games. What's 18xx? I have an original copy (with Northern expansion) of 1829 by Hartland Trefoil. This was an elegant board game based on the first railways in Britain in the 19th century. Each player bought shares in one or more companies and built track (by placing tiles), bought engines and ran trains for profit or loss. It was deceptively simple, requiring a mixture of strategy and shrewd management. Like Diplomacy, the game seems to have created an entire following and variants.

And then there's the Crayon Rails game (not open-source, I found it while looking for Cyber Rails, which doesn't seem to have anything to download yet) which is clearly inspired by Empire Builder. Years ago when I was in Fandom, they used to have Rail Baron tournaments at Swancon. I used to own a set of that but I really found it difficult to play the game because the board would freak out my vision and (like Monopoly) I'd always end a game with a migraine headache! An alternative to RB was Empire Builder. I own two sets - America (the original) and Britain. The thing about these games was that you built rail networks by drawing in crayon on a laminated map. Much more interesting than Monopoly styled RB.

Actually, there seems to be a whole site devoted to these old board games, called Rail Game Fans. I must investigate this more thoroughly, as I should at Rail Serve as well.

But, without a doubt, the big "gob smacker" of a discovery in my browsing would have to be Rail World and Yard Duty. Both are railway simulations that use satellite photos of real railway complexes to simulate railway management. There's no "winning" as such, but by golly, the most realism I've seen yet! I must see about adding the Kewdale Freight Terminal and other locations sometime.

Yes, I know this all sounds obsessive, but trains (and train games) have been a passion for a long while.

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Just discovered the Wikipedia's The Free Software Portal.

The list of Categories looks interesting -- I've already downloaded copies of Hugin (panorama maker) -- but I was really interesting in the List of open source games. Xconq looks interesting (I used to play EMPIRE and EMPIRE DELUXE a lot, so it's nice to see a version that's cross-platform and open-source, and really good!) as does XEvil (excessive violence guaranteed).

Ah, dopey computer gaming - how I feel guilty with this pleasure!

I was looking for a replacement for my old windows calendar program Windates, and I found Rainlendar (and also Rainmeter too - download at Softpedia).

The key points I was looking for in a Calendar program were that a) it should run on Windows and Linux, b) have pop-up / sound alarms (i.e. run in the task bar) and c) be customisable. I tried Sunbird, but at version 0.3 something it just just a little buggy and unrefined for me.

Rainlendar seemed to have the minimal requirements, and it's skinable as well. In fact, there seem to be a million and one skins out there for the thing. It's also free (for the "lite" version, but I don't use a Microsoft mail client or online calendars anyway) and open source, though I don't quite see the same level of activity on it as say, Firefox.

Rainmeter seems to have been the project that led to Rainlendar, though the two only seem to share the idea of skins between them (and Rainmeter seems to have a lot of skins too). Rainmeter is a customizable performance meter for Windows, which displays CPU load, memory utilization, disk space, network traffic, time and a variety of other things. I only downloaded and installed it as I was curious after seeing so many skins for it. My computer is slow enough without an extra monitor running in the background, but it "looks fun".