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Snowboarding Soul Ride Engine Goes GPL

Posted by timothy on from the hurts-less-than-the-real-thing dept.

TuringTest writes "LinuxGames reports this news update at the Soul Ride game site. Soul Ride is a snowboarding game with real character physics, and its engine is now released under GPL and available for download. You may see its beautiful screenshots until it gets /.ed. Note that only the engine is GPL'd, not the artwork and data. Can you imagine a GPL game with the Fellowship of the Ring crossing the Caradhras with these graphics?" I hope this release spawns a Linux-friendly snowboarding simulator -- Soul Ride is limited to Windows (9X, NT, 2000) for now.

6 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Screenshots by hiero · · Score: 5, Informative

    The perl script seems to overworked/nonfunctional, but you can view a slideshow of screenshots at: http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/scree nshot01.html.

  2. Screenshots listing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative



    Point your WGET (to mirror) at

    http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/image s/

  3. No it's not by shlong · · Score: 4, Informative

    Soul Ride is limited to Windows (9X, NT, 2000) for now.

    Gee, that's funny. I guess the Linux version that I've been playing for the last two months has just been a warped dream. Maybe not?

    --
    Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
  4. Re:Hmm by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Informative

    But adapting the terrain is childs play, basically a:

    if frameratethreshold
    render(smaller_mesh)
    else
    render(bigger_mesh)
    end if

    but there's no BSP-tree type ways to clip everything outside of the viewport. It processes every triangle in the 'world' for each frame, whether it's onscreen or not.

    That is to say, it says:

    draw(everything)

    instead of

    figure_out_whats_onscreen

    draw(whats_onscreen)

    My point is that this is just engine just draws a bunch of polygons. No cool special particle effects, no nifty vertex shaders or pixel shaders. No bumpmapping, environment mapping. No nothing. Just a bunch of triangles. As far as something to base a real game on, it's behind even the Quake engine.

    Anyways, it's still good to see people willing to give up their source, even if it's value is nil.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  5. Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP) by MisterFancypants · · Score: 3, Informative
    The first guy posting here has no idea what he's talking about. Soul Ride doesn't use a brute force terrain rendering system, it uses an adaptive quadtree system, a technique that Thatcher Ulrich (the person who wrote this engine) is responsible for perfecting... Not to even mention his work on loose octrees, etc.

    In any case, speaking as a developer of games, you can be sure I'll _never_ release anything into the GPL. Not so much because of politics but just because I can't stand the attitude of the GPL zealots who whine and moan about everything.

  6. Re:the source? by kyrre · · Score: 3, Informative

    Dude. You should dig some more. Sources are here Its in the projects cvs repository. Browsable in nice syntax highlighted code.