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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.

5 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  2. Open Source Club! by NDPTAL85 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
  3. Hmm? by ikoleverhate · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "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.

  4. Re:What would be really nice by AugstWest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. Ignorant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here is a description of the engine.