Wanted to come back to this to tell you I’m willing to assist in creating it. I was actually planning to have that be my next project after Fallout and Elder Scrolls open source RTS projects but would be up for brainstorming and collaboration to get your project made too

For storyline if you want one it could be a couple original proprietary villains use some kind of magic to buy the FOSS Mascots to make them do their bidding turning them evil. Very meta story if that was done but did you have a story in mind already?

Also, for art/animation/fighting/story direction what games are you gravitating to for those inspirations?

For fighting moves it can be things related to what their software/hardware does. Krita will have drawing attack moves, Konqi can fistfight and summon their siblings to assist in battle, Tux uses ice in some way since they are a penguin and because of the Linux origin story. GNU pulls out an old computer then starts going ham with it. As examples and spitballing.

I am not good at balancing yet either but we can definitely look for a dev good at balancing fighting games or learn to do it. Do you have a codeberg repository already setup?

What someone else recommended also was to make it enough to give people a rough idea of what they would get and if anyone is interested then they will join in. Then build it out more and more people will come your way eventually

Would you be up for collaborating?

Clippy as a hidden character.

If anyone was still interested, I do have the repository here on codeberg. Put what I can together this Saturday and Sunday. I think I have a satisfactory vision now. School and its projects as well as other things had me taken for a bit, but I hope you enjoy the direction.

Tux should have several skins that represent different distros like a red fedora for RHEL lol.

My other dumb suggestion is having nmap be a floating blue eyball

I like the idea of your game! What other characters would there be?

Penguins like to slide into water so maybe Tux has a belly slide move.

Krita’s kiki

So broadly you will find categories in games like Smash Bros and so on. Some characters will be heavy, some light, some fast, some slow, some strong, some weak, but each trait creates an axis. The ideal distribution of characters is to have all areas of the multidimensional space filled or if not filled at least alternated.

For example, you should have one heavy, fast, weak character, one heavy, slow, strong, but maybe not a heavy, fast strong or a heavy slow weak. You can chart them on a two dimension axis at a time, then use the characters from Tuxcart etc to fill the space based on what makes sense, eg the Gnu should be heavy but also fast, but it is definitely a prey animal, while penguins are smaller and fast with a more moderate attack level, maybe even weak.

Once you have some of the extremes filled you can consider subversions of the paradigm. For example, a compiled language is slow at creation but fast at use, so maybe a mascot for one of those could have two modes, switching state and therefore characteristics.

Another thing to consider would be the dynamics of your interactions. Are you going for the jumping around of Smash Bros? If so, lots of the details about their camera work can guide your decisions. What about the overall pacing? Do you want frenetic play like Smash Bros? Combos? Strategy? Lots of things to look at there with a narrative approach to the characters as representing their projects, for example Wilbur is smaller and supposed to be super modular, so maybe having quite a few modes with different characteristics would work, while something like puffy is great for water levels alongside tux and any other aquatics.

Character ideas: The KDE Konqi, Katie and the whole host of dragons (Yoshi style). Xenia the Fox alternate Linux mascot. Lemmy and Mastodon mascots.

Provisional name idea: Smashtest (like Minetest until they figured out to call themselves Luanti).

Other name ideas: Open Source Battle Royale

Stage ideas:

• Smart Home (Home Assistant themed),
• GRUB (a few traversable lines or options)
• GRUB rescue (one line, Final Destination style)
• Rapid Coding (a DK falls-style scrolling map)
• vim (a close quarters map similar to the Game & Watch map, optionally with walls as the characters are “stuck in vim”)
• i3 (a pre-made map styled in a tiling window way, or perhaps dynamically splits the stage during battle)
• compiz (do whatever you want as long as it looks cool, wobbly, wavy, cubey or 3d-like)
• Hannah Montana Linux or Biebian (without a picture of the person in question but the colour scheme and the shape of stage elements would highly imply it’s those distributions)
• Blender 3D interface
• FreeCAD animated assembly

Special Move ideas (that can work with most characters):

• Update (a small rest/vulnerable period followed by a buff)
• Mailing List (a beam of emails)
• Harden/Vulnerability Patch (could paint/plaster offensive move, or it could be a curl up defensive move or roll around like yoshi/sonic/jigglypuff etc.
• Release Candidate (powerful offensive move with some drawback or self damage)
• Bug catch (a forceful two handed clap in front, or using a net)

Other attacks:

• cronjob (Tux tosses a clock that explodes)
• Tail whips
• Fire breath

Obstacles, enemies, hazards:

• a bug
• a kernel panic/freeze
• the meditation guru
• firejail
• a green-coloured GPU driver
• git issues
• dependencies/dependency hell
• Blender default cube

Your game doesn’t have to have every single element FOSS-themed, as it might make it feel too nerdy, but if you were short on this kind of idea and wanted some, here you go.

The gimp maskot should be able to paint things that last a short time or until he paints the next thing.
Examples: wall against projectiles, spikes on the ground, platform to jump on.

Also I want to see ferris from rust.

The characters could start out as just the ones in supertuxkart and then go from there. I’d be happy to help with the movesets, balancing, and playtesting. I don’t have any experience with Godot yet but I have been meaning to learn!

Will the Rust crab be in it?