Snowboarding Soul Ride Engine Goes GPL

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.

Comments

Re:Hmm

[amigaluvr]

Personally I'd much rather me see other developments happening in OSS, than game engine work

There is a lot to be contributed to the world through coders doing work that all can use. There is already quite a few games out, and certainly I feel the current producers do games best. There's an expensive and time consuming culture related around game design and production

Not that they're useless, far from it, but OSS efforts I feel would be best applied to 'more noble pursuits'

Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Not if you ARE old hardware. I'd like to continue walking into my golden years, and real snowboarding would stress my already damaged knee enough to put me on the "uses a cane" list by my early 40's.

I happen to enjoy Snowboarding/skateboarding games because I liked that stuff when I was able to do it (well skateboarding anyhow, snowboarding didn't exist then, or hadn't been heard of).

Besides, in this economy, fewer people can shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars, and take time off from work, to go to some mountain resort than can shell out $20 (or $100, w/controller) for a simulation.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that they're useless, far from it, but OSS efforts I feel would be best applied to 'more noble pursuits'

Then perhaps this is one of those cases where the great credo of Linux applies--scratch your own itch.

Open Source Club!

[NDPTAL85]

First Rule of Open Source Club is: You Do Not Tell Other Open Sourcers What to Code.

Second Rule of Open Source Club is: You Do Not Tell Other Open Sourcers What to Code.

Hmm?

[ikoleverhate]

"render the entire gameworld as polygons and let the video cards horsepower deliver the framerates because its way easier than only rendering on-screen action"

You think so? I doubt very much Thatcher Ulrich would code a new crappy engine, when he could use his famous (at least among those who keep up with such things) Chunked LOD algorithm. Thatcher released a sample implementation a while ago on sourceforge with source for linux and windows.

The chunked LOD algo is capable of using HUGE datasets (eg 285MB in the demo). Unlikely then that he's doing a "render the entire blah blah" thing...

You obviously know very little about graphics programming and more importantly have spent zero time investigating your claims.

Fair enough if you don't like the screen shots, but you really can't put down the engine, or it's programmer. Thatcher Ulrich is one of very few professional game programmers who publishes (both source and papers) his CURRENT algorithms (eg not 5 year old ones like Carmack). He invented the (also famous among people who know) "loose octree" method of spacial partitioning.

Re:What would be really nice

[AugstWest]

Another cool side effect of this could be the standardization of 3d models in some games. Then people could build one model of themselves and insert it into the games they play.

Sure, each game could render them differently, but it would be nice if there was a spec that could be followed. Each game could load the player's model, then enhance it however they see fit.

Ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a description of the engine.

Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP)

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a good reason to choose your release licence - the "take my ball and go home" rationale.

Choose the licence that makes sense for you and the people who'll be using your software. Yes, many people are whiners. Get over it, or you automatically become one yourself.

Works on Linux Already

[AlternateSyndicate]

The game engine has been ported to Linux, and was released with an addon pack called "Virtual Jay Peak" a while ago. The engine plays the normal game just fine. I compiled Soul Ride for Linux just yesterday with no problems at all.

Re:What would be really nice

[Moloch666]

Actually what's more crazy is Half-Life is based off the Quake 1 engine.
Read first paragraph

I'd have to agree with the parent though. I've noticed lots of open source 3d engines coming along. It seems no one is makeing any games from these. I guess all those people are busy moding commercial engines.

The point of "realistic" games

[yerricde]

The point of games that attempt to represent reality to some extent is that a novice player can leverage his instinctive knowledge of reality (e.g. what's gravity, what's momentum, etc) to create a base on which the player can devise initial tactics. Even Tetris does this to some extent, leveraging the player's experience with jigsaw puzzles. However, making a game's world model too accurate destroys the psychological escape factor of the game.