Game Engine Marketing Models Compared

death00 writes: "GameDev has an interesting story about the success of Garage Games Torque engine (the engine behind Tribes 2). I especially find it interesting to see the number of developers working on high-quality games based on the Torque engine. The basic premise is that Garage Games gives a full license of the Torque engine to a team for a project for $100 USD per developer. The only caveat is that you must publish any finished works through Garage Games. Perhaps id software might consider doing this with the Quake III engine once the Doom III engine comes out. From my understanding, the Quake III engine currently licenses for significantly ($250,000 USD) more than that. Instead of waiting 2 more years and GPL'ing the full source, why not license it for cheap after Doom III comes out, then GPL later?"

Comments

Not that much

[PissingInTheWind]

For top-notch 3D technology like the Q3 engine, it seems to me that 250 000$ isn't that much. Just try to imagine how much would cost a few programmers to develop a similar engine... if you can find comptent enough programmers.

Of course, the price tag puts it out of hobyist's reach, but we all know that, eventually, we'll be allowed to look at the source for free.

Go Id!

Re:Not that much

[Zathrus]

But, just to implement all the Q3 tech, including BSP+PVS, Q3 Shaders and a loader for the Model files and Map files would take two good 3D engine programmers about a week

Including the extensible modules? And the network code? And the sound code? And everything else?

And have it be virtually bug free?

Yes, as you said, it's old now. But you also said that it's mature, and that's one thing that can't be replicated in a week. Or a month. Probably not even a year.

Hell, you want to talk about an old codebase? Look at Half-Life. It's still based on Q2, and it's still one of the most popular online games.

Dropping $250k for a stable core is nothing if you're serious about things. Sure, you'll have to extend it to bring it up to current standards, but RtCW did just that and did quite well in the market. So has SoF and SoF2, amongst others.

Yes, the Q3 core is old, and shows it. But I think you drastically underestimate how long it would take to redevelop it from scratch. There's quite a number of open source (under various licenses) game cores out there, and they've taken considerably longer than a month to make and aren't approaching Q3's capabilities yet. Yes, I suppose you could argue that they're not made by "good 3D engine programmers", but that doesn't help the situation for a fledgling company now does it?

The really disappointing reality of GPL Quake

[jvmatthe]

Often the free software development model is criticized for simply rebuilding what has been done already. And I feel that the release of the Quake engines and DooM engines have exemplified this very inadequacy.

I had hoped that we would see some really brilliant things come out of the GPL releases of these codebases, and, in reality some very good, cleaned-up clients have been developed. I certainly enjoy the mouselook, higher resolutions, and enhanced levels that have been developed from the DooM engine (see DooMWorld to see the kind of stuff that's out there). The improved QuakeWorld client I'm aware of is pretty nice. And Q^2 has a good Quake 2 client.

But these are just the obvious extensions of what was already done. The community now has (for the most part) all the source and tools that went into making Half-Life, the most successful game to come out of all of these codebases. Yet, to my knowledge, no project has arisen from the community to mold the next such game. How about another story-driven game that people would compare to Deus Ex? Or an all-out action game in the same vein as Soldier of Fortune? Or how about a freaking free software teamplay game that we compare to Counterstrike so that Linux users can play a team-oriented online FPS using free software only and not rely on WINE or WINEX? Or meld two free software projects and connect a Z-machine interpreter with the Quake engine and make a text-command driven story with a 3D view of the action?

These are things that would demonstrate just how momentous and visionary the release of the Quake source under the GPL was. Yet, all the community has managed to come up with is Quake++.

People slam my posts for being negative lately. That I'm ripping on people that have done good work. That's fine, I've got the skin for it. (Try USENET...) I admit that some really find refactoring and coding has gone into redoing the Linux Quake clients. But really, I hear plenty of bitching about how Linux (and other free OS) don't have good games and don't get the attention of the big game companies. Yet, when empowered to do new and exciting things and to make your own games, the group is content to simply recompile Quake for the Zaurus and call it a day. That's good work, for sure, but it's not the kind of work that's going to move free software forward and make it the kind of interesting world that non-free software people take a real interest in.

Again, I'm not making a judgment about the quality of the work that has been done. It's great. But now that you have the best raw materials from John Carmack, can we see real creativity out of the free software gaming world? (FWIW, I think CrystalSpace has done a good job of attracting some interesting new development.)

Re:GPL Quake3 ?? Ummm why?

[Zathrus]

If they can make money off of Quake3, why on earth would they GPL it?

They won't. id is not stupid.

But, based off past procedures, you can expect the Q3 source to be GPL'd within 1-2 years of the Doom3 release. They did it with Wolfenstein, they did it with Doom (sans sound code), and they did it with both Q1 and Q2.

But, like I said, they're not stupid. It's released well after its licensing value is near zero and under GPL. Want to make a commercial game using the old Q2 engine? Sure -- pay id Software $10k (a heavily reduced price) and you can have the exact same code as what's under GPL -- except that you're not bound by the GPL.

It's one of the few ways to make the GPL work for companies to make money. Of course, even then, you'll get rabid idiots decrying the fact that it's not GPL from the start, and that you can actually get a non-GPL license in exchange for cash.

Fortunately most people are sane and simply thank id Software for contributing to the public knowledge base in such a manner.