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

We don't need no stinkin' snowboard...

[TopShelf]

Hobbit-feet should easily handle the job!

Hmm

[stratjakt]

Open Source game engines are all fine and good with me, but have a good hard look at the game before you go praising it.

I'm pretty big on snowboarding games, and this isn't a very good one. A terrible one, to be more precise. One of those cheesy OpenGL "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"

I'm sorry, but those screenshots look like ass. Even by first-gen voodoo graphics standards. The game engine might be a good learning tool, but I doubt it will spawn the killer-gaming-app-for-linux.

Re:Hmm

[stratjakt]

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.

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.

Re:Hmm

[LucVdB]

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.

You are so clueless it is painful. You've actually given me a headache with your unsubstantiated drivel.
Here is proof, straigh from CVS, that what you are saying is pure nonsense: the terrain rendering source of the soulride engine.

Hint: you might want to take a look at the Render function. The comments are in plain English.

Screenshots

[hiero]

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.

My favorite snowboarding simulator

[wormbin]

Check out these screenshots. Lots of polygons and the FPS is good even on old hardware.

Seriously, sometimes reality is better.

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.

memo

[grub]

From: Bill Gates
to: DirectX_Devel

ALERT! - VERY IMPORTANT - ALERT!

There has been a GPL game engine released! Consider it your top priority to make our next release of DirectX incompatible with this new viral-licensed package.

Long live Me,

-Bill

Screenshots listing

[Anonymous Coward]

Point your WGET (to mirror) at

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

Re:Screenshots listing

[jbn-o]

http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/soulr ide_screenshots.zip might be convenient too. The parent directory http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/ is interesting as well.

No it's not

[shlong]

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?

Slashdotted...

[cerebralsugar]

Lets hope the engine gets more FPS than the webserver can take hits...

OT: Screen shot comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but those screenshots look like ass.

This saying baffles me. "Looking like ass" could be good (J Lo) or bad (Goatse guy).

Sorry, but "look like ass" conveys no information.

Tenebrae

[labratuk]

Can you imagine a GPL game with the Fellowship of the Ring crossing the Caradhras with these graphics?

What would be even nicer would be a totally GPL game based on the upcoming Tenebrae 2.0 engine.

Woohoo

[athakur999]

I hope this release spawns a Linux-friendly snowboarding simulator

Me too. This is exactly the killer app Linux needs to fully make it onto the desktop. Just last week I was telling my grandmother she should install Linux, and I told her about OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, etc. But when she asked "is there a snowboarding simulator?" I knew I wouldn't be winning her over to the Linux side.

Other Screenshots Here

[ReadParse]

OK, call me a Karma Whore, but here's a link to another page with screenshots from the game:

the source?

[depsypher]

This announcement seems a little premature seeing as there haven't been any actual source files submitted to sourceforge yet. Screenshots are fine and good, but where's the source?

Re:the source?

[kyrre]

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

Hmm..

[k98sven]

Guess I know what the next version of Tux Racer is going to look like..

What would be really nice

[stratjakt]

"Note that only the engine is GPL'd, not the artwork and data."

3D engines really aren't the time-consuming part of creating a game. It would be nice to see some 'open sourced' player models, motion captures, sound effects, musics, etc, etc..

I know there are a ton of people versed in 3D modelling out there. Perhaps they can offer up some of their 3D 'doodles' to the OSS community for use in games. Maybe a sort of BSD/GPL liscense for artwork/data?

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.

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.

Re:What would be really nice

[Minna Kirai]

You could never share between a portals-based game (like Descent) with a BSP-tree based game like Quake, because they organize data in a fundamentally different manner.

You can. Both of those formats can be automatically compiled from a shared representation as simple polygons. The resultant map won't have the same manual optimization as if an artist had tweaked it by hand, though. For at least one of the engines, it will be slower than necessary. Quake and Descent are both 3 generations old, though, so a modern computer will chuckle at the extra work. (And the created Descent map may be quite ugly, as stretched-inverse-cubes are unlikely to gracefully represent the details of a Quake level)

The more substantive problem to sharing maps is the gameplay itself. Imagine what would happen if Mr. Quake was spawned in a Descent map: he'd run 10 meters, then fall into an inescapable depression- because the map was built for a flying hero. Likewise, a Descent spaceship might find a Quake map terminally boring ("I just fly up, over the castle, back down, and win!")

If the maps are intended for more compatible genres, then it might work a little better. At least assumptions like "player needs to walk across floor to the doorway" will hold true. But still, building a fun, professional-quality game map means tweaking to exactly challenge the player's ability to move, jump, and shoot.

Restricting the desired category of games to highly realistic ones makes the idea of sharing terrain much more worthwhile. In that case, as long as the terrain correctly duplicates the original location, then any inability of the game system to work well in it can be filed as a bug against the software.

In particular, I've noticed a trend in several FPS programs to include the Fort McKenna MOUT training grounds as a playable map, which becomes a common point of comparison.

Re:fizzy

[stratjakt]

It uses a 'real physics model', huh?

Yeah every time I go boarding I launch myself 20 feet in the air and do a 720 backflip. And then I launch over a 300 foot vertical drop and hit the ground running without being phased.

Real physics? On one of Mars' moons maybe.

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.

One small request

[Anonymous Coward]

To whomever takes over development of the engine: Please, please, please, do not fill it with frickin' penguins everywhere.

Re:One small request

[Spoing]

To whomever takes over development of the engine: Please, please, please, do not fill it with frickin' penguins everywhere.

What about ones with frickin 'la-zer' beams on thier heads? Is that too much to ask? Over the top?

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:Hmm?

[ikoleverhate]

Which bit? The long preprocessing phase or the difficulty of collision queries?

The preprocessing can be done by the programmer and the processed data packaged with the game. Download the Chunked LOD demo and you'll see what I mean.

The collision thing is more of an issue, but would only mean storing a seperate hierachy of collision volumes. A lot of games engines do this anyway.

The problem with any LOD scheme is that you have to update your collision volumes whenever the shape of the mesh changes.

these graphics

[frovingslosh]

Apparently the these graphics link is bad or has been taken down. I've played the game (on Windows) and I'm not all that impressed with the graphics. One thing you quickly notice is that all the trees are cheap 2-d cheats and keep the same "front" towards you as you move past or around them. It's fine that the engine is being GPL'ed rather than lost, but it still remains for someone to do something good with it. And if , as someone else here said, it gives the hardware the whole world and relies on the hardware to sort it out, then I don't expect it's going to be very useful in a lot of cases (the software I used did seem to limit how far I could go without good reason, I expect this is why).

Another cool thing they've done....

[AugstWest]

...is they've modeled real mountains into the game. That's something I've *always* wanted to see in a snowboarding game.

They've done Stratton, Breckenridge and Jay Peak.

Ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a description of the engine.

Graphics not that amazing.

[delus10n0]

Can you imagine a GPL game with the Fellowship of the Ring crossing the Caradhras with these graphics?

Yes, I can, and it's awful.

These graphics remind me of an old landscape generator I had back on my 486. It generated a plasma-looking sky and a 3d landscape you used your mouse to fly over.

Big whoop, but I guess it's cool that the engine was released.

Re:Graphics not that amazing.

[Xeger]

The difference is that your old 486 landscape generator used voxel terrain. Voxels are a great way to fool the eye into thinking its looking at a detailed, textured solid surface -- but they stink if you want to interact with the terrain, or rotate the camera, or do pretty much anything other than pan around.

Compare this to Soul Ride, which uses an implementation of ROAM (rigorously optimized adaptive mesh). While it isn't quite cutting-edge anymore--the original ROAM paper was written a few years back--no other published game that I know of has used it yet.

ROAM allows arbitrarily detailed terrain. It represents the terrain as a quadtree -- a space which is subdivided into four parts, each of which is subdivided into four parts, etc ad infinitum -- and by intelligently collapsing and expanding quadtree nodes based on the distance from the viewer to the terrain.

For you, this means that the hillock in front of your nose will look perfectly smooth, and the jagged peak in the background will also look perfectly smooth, and each of them will only use as many polygons as it needs to maintain the appearance of smoothness. That translates to a vastly improved framerate for you, and better memory usage to boot.

Re:Graphics not that amazing.

[BCGlorfindel]

ROAM allows arbitrarily detailed terrain. It represents the terrain as a quadtree -- a space which is subdivided into four parts, each of which is subdivided into four parts, etc ad infinitum -- and by intelligently collapsing and expanding quadtree nodes based on the distance from the viewer to the terrain.
Actually your describing how quad trees work, which I Soul Rider is based on. But ROAM works by splitting triangles in halves recursively, and is quite different.

Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP)

[MisterFancypants]

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.

Re:fizzy

[Mr. Bad Example]

Clearly you're not drinking enough Mountain Dew.

Re:What about Quake?

[grub]

I'm curious: Does the Bill Gates in your world of fiction send one of these memos

In my wee world Bill Gates cheats at cards, steals candy from children and pees on the toilet seat.

Thanks for asking.

Re:fizzy

[StarKruzr]

Really? Every time I go boarding I barely manage to link two turns before hitting a mogul, launching myself into the air upside-down until I finally find myself planted head-first in the mountain with my Phantom pointing at the sun.

That could just be me, though.

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.

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.

Alternate URL

[stevenp]

A still working URL for the screenshots can be found here