Using opensource 3d engines for your games
Author
As many others here, i have a (actually more than one but...) game in my mind which i plan to make it reality. However knowing myself and knowing the fact that if it will take me lots of months to write a good 3d engine, i thought to use a 3rd party engine.
Unfortunatelly my budget is *very* low, so i can''t license those $1000, $10000 and any other abs(x)*10+$1000 costing engines around. The other option is to use an opensource 3d engine.
Publishing my sourcecode isn''t a big deal for me (i appreciate the existance of opensource programs anyway) so i can live with it. However i have some questions/triggers_for_discussion:
a) Are there any good opensource engines around? I remember an engine list site (M.E.L.) mentioned some days ago in here, but the search system returns "no matches" found (always). Where is that list?
b) If i use GPL or LGPL (most famous), can i release my datafiles under a different license? Releasing sourcecode won''t harm me, but releasing datafiles will :-)
I''ve played a bit (=some hours) with the Quake1 source code (GPL) but i think that it''s a bit outdated (i think the source code dates back to 1997 or 98 - it has some little improvements over the original GLQuake). I believe that i can add some "missing" features such as better particles and better materials (f.e. shaders), but is worth?
What do you think about this?
quote:If i use GPL or LGPL (most famous), can i release my datafiles under a different license? Releasing sourcecode won''t harm me, but releasing datafiles will :-)
Well with the GPL licence (which I believe you find most open source 3d engines licenced under) you will have to release any modifcations you make to the engine (which will include your game code). It doesn''t apply to stuff you create though so you can sell a copy of your game with the data files and you won''t have to put them up for download. You''d only have to release the source.
The LGPL is a bit different. I''m not entirely sure but I think that with LGPL if you dynamically link with whatever is under the LGPL (i.e. it''s in a DLL and your program uses that DLL) then you do not have to release the source. This isn''t the case with the GPL.
Author
I was a bit uninformative in my first post. The question should be "Are there any good opensource game engines around? ...".
OGRE is nice, but not a game engine :-). I''ll look more at it if i won''t find any game engine (i still have Quake1 in my mind...).
OGRE is nice, but not a game engine :-). I''ll look more at it if i won''t find any game engine (i still have Quake1 in my mind...).
The Yake Engine (http://yake.sourceforge.net/) is a game engine. It uses Ogre for the rendering.
I have never used it myself, and from what i can see it is still in the early stages of development, but might be worth a look
Spree
I have never used it myself, and from what i can see it is still in the early stages of development, but might be worth a look
Spree
NeoEngine is a game engine as well.
Audio and some other things are not functional yet.
But it will be a complete game engine.
And the license is even more liberal than the lgpl.
NeoEngine.org
Audio and some other things are not functional yet.
But it will be a complete game engine.
And the license is even more liberal than the lgpl.
NeoEngine.org
The Torque engine is available for $100 per programmer, so it''s kind of somewhere between free and expensive. It''s been used for real successful games, so that might be a bit of a plus over the open source engines that have yet to be used in a major commercial game.
Author
I played more with Q1 sources and i found the code easy to modify. In one night i added simple shadows (it had shadow support but it was ruined by bugs and was disabled by default - i just fixed most of them) and rewrote the part that renders the particles in order to be more natural (point particles doesn't look good anymore :->).
I'll work with that one until i find a better engine. There are very good engines (and a lot better than Q1's) but most of them lacks something essential (f.e. sound, a map format, tools or something...).
@simhau:
Wow, i was thinking that the 3d engines list was died! Thanks for the link :-)
@Anonymous Poster:
Quake1/2 engines have been used :-)
Okay, the fact that there are no known games that uses opensource engines means nothing. Fame is a matter of marketing and *many* good games remain unknown because of poor marketing.
@Clueless:
Yea, Neoengine seems very good. However, as you said, audio is not there and i wasn't actually able to find a list with the features the engine has (looked at the docs at the site and made a search for 'features' but found nothing).
[edited by - badsector on May 28, 2004 12:37:24 PM]
I'll work with that one until i find a better engine. There are very good engines (and a lot better than Q1's) but most of them lacks something essential (f.e. sound, a map format, tools or something...).
@simhau:
Wow, i was thinking that the 3d engines list was died! Thanks for the link :-)
@Anonymous Poster:
Quake1/2 engines have been used :-)
Okay, the fact that there are no known games that uses opensource engines means nothing. Fame is a matter of marketing and *many* good games remain unknown because of poor marketing.
@Clueless:
Yea, Neoengine seems very good. However, as you said, audio is not there and i wasn't actually able to find a list with the features the engine has (looked at the docs at the site and made a search for 'features' but found nothing).
[edited by - badsector on May 28, 2004 12:37:24 PM]
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