Many new things

A whole host of changes as the year draws to a close: a revamped website, a new trailer, and above all, version 1.6.0 of the game. In addition to gamepad rumble, as well as a few optimizations and bug fixes, it brings an important change: the game's engine, Sosage moves from the GNU GPL license to the MIT license.

New website and new trailer

I took a moment to revamp the game's website, which was necessary: as it's a showcase for the game, I felt it was important that it looked good and was representative of the game's artistic direction, which wasn't really the case up until now.

I also took the opportunity to make a new trailer: indeed, the last one, which was still displayed on the home page, was the one announcing the game's forthcoming release (in May 2023). Now that the game has been out for several months, it's preferable to have a trailer that simply “introduces” the game, and doesn't announce its release.

It is therefore less wordy and more rhythmic than the previous one, since its aim is rather to show what the game looks like, its atmosphere, its tone:

New license

This may seem like a minor detail to many of you. The game engine was already under a free license anyway: the main difference is that the MIT license is not copyleft, which means that the game engine can now be used for non-free projects.

Why this change? Well, quite simply to restore a balance between my rights and yours. Let me explain.

Currently, the game engine is licensed free, but the game itself is not: the assets are notably private, and the versions distributed on Steam, Itch.io and Google Play are not free. Where it gets complicated is that, for example, Steam does not accept games using GPL-licensed libraries...

How could I release the game under Steam, you may ask? Well, quite simply because, as the sole author of the source code, there's nothing stopping me from releasing a “closed source” version alongside the GPL version. In fact, Steam confirms this in the FAQ to which I refer above:

But I saw a GPL-licensed application on Steam!

This can happen if the author of the code that is GPL-licensed has given the permission to do so. The author can of course always (a) decide to grant Valve a different license than the author grants everyone else or (b) decide that what the Steamworks SDK does is just a communication with a service that does not invoke the copyleft requirement of the GPL.

Indeed, when I publish software under a certain license, that license is mostly about you, not me. And that's why I thought it was rather unfair (and hypocritical) to release the engine's source code under the GPL license –thus preventing you from using it to make a proprietary game– while using it myself to make a proprietary game.

Anyway, this imbalance is now corrected: the Sosage engine is now licensed under the MIT license, so you can do pretty much what you like with it (provided you include the license notice in all your copies, of course).

Content update

As usual, I took the opportunity to add a few corrections to the game data. These are mostly spelling corrections, and fortunately there are hardly any left after several months. Note that I've also finally corrected the logo at the very beginning of the game: until now, it was the straight logo that was used.

In hindsight, it was a rather odd choice: if I remember well, I'd intended to put the catchphrase “the unnecessary video game of the useless superhero” underneath, before changing my mind. But I kept this horizontal version of the logo, which then only occupied the top of the screen, leaving the bottom strangely empty.

This has now been corrected, and I think it looks much better:

Finally, an amusing little detail: the village of “Ramagny-les-Fouchades”, mentioned several times in the game, has become “Ramagny-lès-Fouchade”.

As it happens, I recently learned a little French vocabulary point that I'd like to share with you: the word “lès” (pronounced the same as “les”), which we now only see used for town names, means “next to”. So, the town of Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse is called that because it's... next to the town of Chevreuse, quite simply.

It occurred to me, as I was learning this little peculiarity of French vocabulary, that this was the form I had in mind when I came up with the name “Ramagny-les-Fouchades”: except, of course, I had the word “les” (plural of “le”) in mind, hence the “S” in Fouchades.

Well, that's been corrected: it's now “Ramagny-lès-Fouchade”, a village which, if you've followed correctly, is next to Fouchade (no S).

I know, I know: it was probably the most important update since the game's release.