Getting open source software out there.
 

I have been making a console based RPG game, which is almost done, and I was wondering of how to get people to know it. I have seen programs like GIMP, Gedit, Ubuntu, Firefox, getting used a lot, and was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to get it out there.

I think this is the correct forum as it is about programming due to me programming it in C.

How about souceforge or github?

By the way...is that game about something special?

I will look into sourceforge and github, but I have a website it is already hosted on.

The game is loosly based around a philosophy I came up with. You may have many enemies, but the only real one is your mind.

The game is about a poor man who has to find his way around his life, and it is a physical version of my philosophy. While you have many enemies, you need to keep your mind focused on the task, so fighting your passion to drift, to beat the game.

Interesting concept...a game with a philosophy and not just a mindless "whatever"...

Since you've already got a site...perhaps contacting the repo maintainer of your current distro is a good point to sniff out the scene.

If it's to the liking, you may even get a place in the repo. Then, there's not limit...

Just some loose ideas...

How about sending a press release to our user-submitted News forum?

You should also find an online community with an interest in that particular category of game, otherwise most of your effort to spread the word will be spent on people with other interests. Hosting in general doesn't provide visibility for your project; however, it does enable the casual searcher of the hosting site to list your project along with a few hundred others in response to certain keywords or categories. In some cases your project's page will appear in web searches, also. The audience is more important than the access, unless you just want numbers.
Kevin Barry

The game does have some 'mindless "whatever"' in parts of the story line, but it is based around the philosophy.

I am going to have a look at different repositories to try and get it out there. One issue is that because the game is one of my hobbies, I get through about a release every day, and repositories update quite slowly.

I am going to see if I can find communities like that. My website does respond to quite a few searches, like a search for its name, my name, my other projects, and a Wiki I made specially for it.

I will look into that.

Some things you can do:

Host code on google code and/or github.

Add your game to:
http://freshmeat.net/
http://www.lgdb.org/
http://www.moddb.com/ (linux section)
other gaming sites you know of

It may help if you have a nice site to go with it.

Cool, if you may ever think of a "port" to the graphical realm, I think RenPy would be a good vehile for this project. Granted, RenPy has drawbacks, and there's a lot better stuff out there...

I for one am looking forward to giving it a whirl! :)

Thor

It is currently at a usable stage, but it still has a few bugs. I will probably finish the command line version and possibly build a GUI atop it. I came up with some art for the project for each character which I may use in the GUI version.

Not sure if for the GUI version I should have like a 2d game where you move about, or simply where you type text into the prompt and it displays stuff accordingly. Also, I had a look at RenPy and may consider it. Thanks!