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Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers?
chas7926 writes "OSNews.com is running an article that claims that the open source development model is not a very effective way to develop high quality games. Even the exceptions are not much of a threat to major label products. Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?"
I mean its a pretty slick polished game, but its a direct knock off of a game thats been around for ages.
No creativity in game design, just in artwork.
I've seen a lot of slick opensource games (Super Tux is really coming along, too), but they're all derivatives or direct clones of existing games.
Where is the real creativity?
Anybody ever consider that? FOSS is about scratching an itch, the drive to solve a problem. Gaming is about recreation. After an hour of Vice City you're ready to work again. I think it's for the same reason we don't see that many open-source films or CD's.
Generating Eye Candy
Good game play
Considering all the enthusiastic LAN Party / Overclocker / Case Modding folks out there I would think Linux Distro's would appeal to them. The challenge is having the return on investment for the very labor intensive bits.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
The article makes a good point that good art must be original and can not be generated by modifying older art.
To make open-doom you'd also need open-source zombie models, open-source hell-growth textures and open-source moaning sounds.
I think Freeciv is a very good counter example.
However, I do agree that open source model does not encourage games that are graphic intensive that involves a lot of artwork.
Sunset over the lake, cool mist over the bridge; A leave upon the ripples, the snow reflects its glow.
Frozen Bubble? nah...
My Exceptions would be BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, and FreeCiv.
When companies like ID release the 'game source' (not the actual engine code, but the code to the game) it helps mod makers, and ultimately gets more people to play the game, especially in it's modified form.
Eventually they released the source to games like Wolf3D, Doom, and Quake but that doesn't really hurt them. Heck, the Quake source code was stolen from Crack.Com where Dave Taylor was doing a port, and that didn't seem to affect them much at all.
Open Source coding versus proffesional coding is kinda like distributed computing versus a supercomputer. What people fail to recognize when promoting Linux is that it's chief competetor is a corporate giant that has stagnated. In game develpoment, where there is strong competition, the proffesionals are actually making the most of their budgets. It's no surprise that the Open Source alternative have trouble competing; they're up against the best rather than up against a corporate monoculture.
Note that this isn't an attack on Open Source; there are many things it does well. But like distributed computing it takes advantage of a squandered resource that's already there (spare cycles = free developers). Against an effecient supercomputer (dedicated developers) it can't compete. Whereas agaisnt a _broken_ supercomputer (Microsoft), it can.
Just my 0.02$
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
There are no "DirectX royalties". It's just like any other Windows API.
The only downside to using DirectX (which comes with a very mature SDK, samples, docs, and helper libraries these days) would be if you cared about porting to non-Microsoft platforms. This is, of course, a real consideration for some, but certainly not for all.
Sharing the code is all well and good, and it probably does help in many respects, but to compete with the big games these days, you really need to get a lot of talented artists, modelers and the like Then you need to get a good designer, and a musician or two, mappers, writers etc etc.
good games dont start and finish with the code.
very true... the main reason i think is coz a game is not very usable until it reaches the final stage hence there are less hackers interested in working on it.. but if its a product like an instant messenger.. we have a basic product with basic features on top of which hackers would implement features like archiving,adding a new protocol,new buddy icons etc. thereby making a better product... its only the hacker-attractive products that become very successful open-source projects.Check out the top 10 in sourceforge and you will know what i mean.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
The main reason is because developing a game seldom means rolling your own everything. Dozens of proprietary tools are used in the development process and simply can't be open sourced. Havok for example had parts of their source leaked when portions of the HL2 source was stolen. This was a bad thing for valve, and a bad thing for Havok. But that's just one example.
Today, rather than in hardcoded programming source code, heart of games gets more and more outsourced to script, texture, polygon model, FMV, and so on done by artists - which can't be Open Source in its nature. You may ask Creative Commons License for such artworks, but I don't think it can be generarized and viable for games, let alone GPL among Open Source licenses.
DirectX ... ROYALTIES?
What exactly did I miss here?
kb
game developer
who never had to pay anything to MS so far for using Direct3D
Sea3D is an open source version of Settlers of Catan that is 100% free, has ELO ladder rated matches, 3D graphics, 1000+ active users, and really nice artwork. I think certain genres are more suited to open source games. FPS and RTS are not in that list. Board games clones can probably cut it, though.
People are going to mention a heap of games now.
Frozen Bubble, Freeciv, neverball, Torcs, Battle for Wesnorth, cube etc.
Ok, those are nice and fun games. But,save perhaps a few simulators,
they are rather simple games. Simple but fun.
Where are OSS games like Knights of The Old Republic, Ratchet and Clank,
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I like such games, never seen anything
open source remotely like it.
That's the kind og games we're talking about.
Story-based games, especially, deserve to be presented in a final, polished form. For that reason, I would not expect it to be released early and often. There is also a question of artistic integrity. Game designers, amateur and professional alike, have strong ideas. Can they share authorship with some dude on the Internet?
This is an endless discussion, only time will tell. It is just useless to make such theoretical discussions about what will ever happen or about the potential of this or that system.
Unfortunately OSNews has a bad reputation in always bringing up such kind of discussions, which always ends in flamewars and trolling. Please let us be smarter than them!
True, but the open source model is perfectly suited to the actual game engines. You could have a system similar to Mozilla Firefox (the runtime environment) and then people would come along and make their own games our of it by creating content (like the extensions).
Rogue and (it's descendent) Nethack.
Neither have the fancy graphics, but for amount of hours spent (wasted) and general challenge / gameplay I think they are hard to beat.
And remember, in 'scoring mode', Nethack does not have any "saved game" so if you die the game is over. It's quite an accomplishment to actually finish the game. How far would you get in Doom 3 if you had to restart from the beginning everytime you died? Note that in Doom 3 (and all modern games) the map is constant; in Nethack levels are generated every time to start a new game.
(And if you want graphics there are mods on Nethack (and others) that add GUI interface. IMHO a good game is still good even if it's done in ASCII. Graphics should only be necessary to add to it.)
Games have specific requirements in development that other types of software do not. Applications and O.S. are typically being improved well beyond their initial release with new features, etc. Games are usually a closed-ended design with specific goals in the mind of the creators. There is a point where the general game play and plot is laid out and the designers must decide that they have hit the cut-off point for adding new features and abilities. Massive forking and diverse feature development wouldn't help a game at this point, it would just delay the release date into infinity.
Game development requires the designers to decide exactly what the game is going to be and do before the software development process begins. This very idea doesn't seem to click with the open source development model very well.
I could be wrong and I'm not an expert; but until I see something with the fit, finish and cohesion of commercial games like Doom 3 and Half-Life (1 or 2) to come out of the open source community I'm not going to bank on it.
The game industry isn't struggling. At all. Recently Interplay has gone under, and Acclaim is bankrupt, and Atari looks shaky, but these are by no means general indicators of weakness in the market. Think of it as the "crap games tax."
while open source programmers are certainly capable of the technical aspects of a game, it is in the overall presentation that is lacking. For example, there aren't going to be too many people willing to write an entire musical score to accompany a OSS game, nevermind having an orchestra perform it.
since open source generally means "in the programmer's free time" and "with basically no monetary resources to aid development" don't expect a game with the presentation values of Doom or Half-Life.
You can't have a real hit game without a decent graphics/sound. Creating artwork for a game requires more time, effort, and skill than coding game engine. It's easy to spend some hours a week on Open Source coding but you need much more than that to make quality art.
Consider also fact that contrary to code artwork is not reusable in most cases. Every time you have to reinvent the wheel.
I think some of the point they missed are that games are an extremely restrictive environment. Nothing happens in the game unless it is planned to perfection with testers moving animation points on enemies just to scare the player in the right position.
The challenge since 1995 with the mainstream rise of 3d environmental games was to create "a game where you can do what you want and go where you want" this is all well and good, but utterly useless when trying to create a concise game. Believe it or not this issue is one of the hardest to educate people that are new to video games development.
Level editors rarely appear in games, most of the time because the feature never gets used by players and because of the unknown additional development time.
However what sense does it make giving away the levels where users can create their own games when the developers (or more importantly the marketing dept of a publisher) can push to use the same technology themselves and market a new game.
Developers themselves sometimes use an 'open source' system to develop their games, tying several projects together into one engine, except the code won't leave the software house. EA is THE prime example of the open-closed source development that is taking control of the video games market (what % of games are made by EA?). Time for an open source render engine?
Did everyone forget Flightgear (http://www.flightgear.org/)?
From the Homepage:FlightGear is an open-source project. This means as long as you abide by the terms of the GPL license you may freely download and copy FlightGear. Anyway can have easy and open access to the latest development source code. Being an open-source project, we have made our file formats open and easily accessible. We support standard 3d model formats and much of the simulator configuration is controlled through xml based ascii files. Writing 3rd party extensions for FlightGear (or even directly modifying the FlightGear source code) is straightforward and doesn't require a large amount of reverse engineering. This makes FlightGear an attractive option for use in private, commercial, research, or hobby projects.
FlightGear is known to run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and IRIX platforms allowing the user run on their platform of preference.
Of course, open source is an advantage for game developers as it is for other developers. Freely available components speed the development, and allow you to focus on the things that make your game different, rather than struggling to match your competitors.
It is a good observation that there are very few good large open source games. I think the reason is simple: OSS depends on developer interest, and developers get demotivated after a while. This is why we have many good but simple games (e.g. the KDE games), but few large games.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The same old shit everytime linux & game are in one sentence: Graphics is bad, modern games are for noobs and idiot, ect....
Yeah, i played angband and adom a lot, but in the end its nothing else then the simple most stupid "kill, get xp, kill, get xp, get item, kill..." repeated since 1978. No innovation (oh, wow, you can play a TOURIST class. he has a camera. WOW) and no gameplay appeal for anyone who doesnt have his free time to burn (like a typical geek).
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
When business and people contribute to web servers and operating systems, its mainly because they expect something in return. They use these free tools for generating business. They reduce the cost of development of the tools they use to generate $$.
But with a open game, there is no business to be done. No $$ is returned. This is why we probably will never see IBM and the likes contributing to an open game. The only exception I could forsee is that an online game could be free, but subscription to servers would be charged.
Sure there are some developers which on their free time develop open games. Thats why there are a few. But because there are practically no developers payed by companies to develop open games, there are simply less effort going into open games than in web servers and operating systems.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
How can this be rated funny?
Everyone should know by now that Al Gore didn't say he invented the Internet. (Just as we all should know by now that a Beowulf cluster of anything is cool.... we've imagined it. BSD is dead and goatse.cx is the worst thing we've seen)
Vinton Cerf even gave a good portion of credit to Gore:
"During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people
have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet.
Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as
Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect
on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore
was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people
were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high
speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and
the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected
official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have
a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and
scholarship.
Get your Unix fortune now!
In answer to the main question, "Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?" the answer is, "No, not only, but definitely mostly." In other words, open source makes the most sense for infrastructure like projects -- servers, operating systems, programming languages and frameworks. It makes the least sense for end user projects like games, educational software, and office suites.
You hinted at the heart of the issue: Who write open source software? Well, developers of course! And for whom is having the source open and free most advantageous? Developers, of course! My non-programmer friends and family don't really care about source code, but I do. And despite all the open source software I use, the only times I've ever really used to source was when I was programming. That is, I was using the infrastructure code such as a Java library from Apache Jakarta or tweaking some PHP or Python code for a wiki I wanted.
The most successful open source and free software projects are those that are directly used by developers -- where developers are the end user. This means things like web servers, languages, operating systems, libraries, etc.
Bruce Perens once even said it here on Slashdot (can't find the link at the moment) but open source development tends to favor software which can be developed incrementally. This isn't especially true of games. Games moreso than any other software product are a media production like a movie or book. It just doesn't fit with the open source development model as well. That doesn't mean that it can't work, but that the best and most successful open source tools will be those that are closest to the source of free software -- developers.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Perhaps the reason that the "...vast, vast majority of Open Source users and developers *ARE NOT* gamers..." is because the general quality of Open Source games relative to commercial products blows.
It's been said before and I'll say it again and again until OSS developers understand it:
ENTERTAINMENT SELLS PLATFORMS.
If you want wide adoption of Linux or any other truly open source platform. You MUST MUST MUST get joe six-pack to buy into it and most people don't care about computers for anything other than entertainment. Once this happens, then businesses will begin to adopt OSS on the desktop because their users will already be familiar and their training costs will be lower.
All this BS about who can and can't have certain software because of this or that restriction, the GP (general public) not only doesn't care they don't even want to care. If a Linux platform is created that allows end users to:
1. Listen to CDs
2. Get on the Internet.
3. Watch video clips.
4. Do their personal finances.
5. Capture and email pictures to Grandma
6. Capture and work with video.
7. Sync their iPods, IPaqs, Palm, or *insert other device here*
8. Play Games they are familiar with (FPS, RPG, MMORPGs, RTS, "the Sims" *shudder*)
8. Play games with 3D acceleration
out of the box with no hassles, THEN the GP will buy it and not until. Once the GP buys into it then your pool of available talent increases dramatically and companies will invest in improvement. And not only that, if it is compelling, the public will PAY for it (Profit!). If given the choice of a yearly/monthly subscription rate or being able to tar/rpm/apt/etc to install software, the average public will pay every time if its quick and painless.
Now some distros have been doing a good job. I just installed Mandrake 10 for the first time and they almost have it right. I love OSS and am reasonably familiar with how the major environments work, but even I have my limit. It should not take me 30-60 minutes post installation to get most of the features I've listed above.
Ah well, I'll continue to use Fedora on my servers and Mandrake as my desktop until someone gets it right.
Look at that Karma burn!!
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
okay, it's a bit tricky to have all your pre-edit artwork lying around for someone to edit into their own film but independent film-making is *very* alive and well.
Here's just one festival
You can easily find plenty more, even in your local area there's probably a film making scene.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Especially with shooters and strategy games, the game engine is the most important, and most expensive, piece of development. Relicsencing that engine to other companies is an important source of revenue. Obviously it would be incredible if they open sourced it as well...
Still, game companies end up in the toilet so often, I can't think they could easily toss the unique part of their work into the public domain and not suffer for it financially.
I think this would be a good place for 5 year software patents or something, because I think these things SHOULD end up in the public domain, eventually, but the originating company should be free to make a profit on it in the meantime.
Just my opinion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If an OSS game could be made that is truly competitive with a commercial version, it's lifespan could be remarkably longer than one for a commercial game because it could be part of a distro and I'm sure would have a much more rabid fan base since the Linux game landscape is so relatively barren at those levels.
free online diet tracking.
To all the game developers reading this thread, here's a link to the open-source game engine
/ enginemain.html
...and the source:
we are developing here at the MOVES Institute in Monterey, CA (of America's Army fame):
http://www.nps.navy.mil/cs/research/vissim/Engine
http://sourceforge.net/projects/delta3d
We are shooting for a 1.0 release in December, but the majority of features are already complete.
A number of in-house game-like simluations have already used it with great success. Happy coding!
-chris osborn
Once the GP buys into it then your pool of available talent increases dramatically and companies will invest in improvement.
Can you support this assertion, because I don't see why it's true.
Having millions of non-programmers using the software won't add appreciably to the programming talent pool. It will probably provide more bug reports, which is good, but will also dramatically lower the average quality of bug reports, which is very bad.
And how will having millions of desktop users convince companies to invest in improvement of F/LOSS? Companies aren't going to invest unless they have a reason to. I can see how it would make sense for hardware manufacturers to invest in writing Linux drivers, like they currently do for Windows, and I can see how it would make sense for software makers to invest in supporting their software on F/LOSS platforms, but it's not at all clear what would motivate them to invest in improving the platforms.
Changing the topic a little, I often see posts that seem to presume that Linux needs to grow market share, that the lives of current Linux users will somehow be better if more people are using it. Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how market share growth would really help current users of F/LOSS, other than slightly-improved hardware support (Linux hardware support isn't bad now) and maybe availability of commercial software titles (which mostly don't matter to me now, since there are Free equivalents for most everything I need).
Not that millions of desktop users is a Bad Thing, but I don't really see why so many people automatically assume it's a Good Thing, much less a goal to be worked toward.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
OK, let's compare installing Windows XP with Fedora Core 2 here (I choose FC2, because I installed it over my XP partition last night).
Installing Windows XP:
0. Insert disk. Wait for it to churn. Let it reboot (automatically). Enter language and network settings.
So now it's installed. This is what has to be done next.
1. Install service packs/security fixes (3 hours, but unattended).
2. Log in when it's done. Download and install latest NVidia drivers (10 minutes).
3. Download and install drivers for my HP printer (10 minutes).
4. Install sound drivers.
5. Install commercial DVD playing software (10 minutes, including fiddling to make it see the DVD drive which for some reason it didn't by default).
So Windows has already taken 3 hrs 20 minutes after installation. It WON'T sync with iPods/iPaqs by default until I:
6. Install some software to do so (depending on the device) - probably 10-15 minutes.
With Fedora Core 2.
0. Install FC2. One reboot.
1. Double click on the little red exclamation mark to fetch updates (45 minutes but unattended).
2. Install NVidia drivers. (10 minutes - no reboot required).
3. Discover I don't have to worry about the printer because the FC2 installer picked it up.
4. Install two RPMs (one for Xine and one for libdvdcss) to play DVDs (10 minutes).
5. Copy (no, not re-install) - just copy because there's no registry madness - the game I was playing on RedHat 8 (Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory).
The thing is OSS gets held to a higher standard. Most people never install Windows or the drivers because it all comes pre-installed. If you actually install Windows XP from scratch, it really is no easier than a recent desktop Linux distro, and takes considerably longer due to the size of the security updates - which only cover the base OS.
On Windows, I would now have had to install all the other things (an office suite for example) that just come by default with a good desktop oriented Linux distro.
If you're installing both OSes from scratch - and therefore comparing like with like - you'll find it's considerably more effort to get a useful Windows install - I wager to get all those features you're after, even ignoring the time to patch the OS so it won't get owned in minutes, you'll spend at least half an hour installing drivers and rebooting. The last Windows XP install I did (for work - build an image for a fairly standard PC, with no unusual hardware) was well over half an hour installing drivers just to make the basic hardware - the ethernet card (not detected by Windows XP), the video card (a common as muck Intel chipset that comes with most business desktops - not detected by XP), the sound hardware (again, very common sound hardware - but not detected by XP) and mainboard chipset (a standard Intel chipset - not detected by XP!). The Knoppix disk I use to run our "factory" disk ghost imaging of the 70-odd machines we're deoploying on the other hand recognises all of this hardware. Linux has supported the hardware in these boxes (with the exception of the Broadcom ethernet hardware) for years. Of course, the normal user doesn't see this because they buy the machine with Windows XP pre-installed from Hewlett-Packard.
The irony is the fact that Linux supports so much hardware out of the box and Windows doesn't is partly because manufacturers don't support Linux, therfore the community has to write OSS tools for syncing with Palms and phones and printer drivers - and as these are OSS too, they get put on the Linux distro install disks so they are there ready for you on a default install, whereas with a fresh Windows install you're having to go through a pile of driver CDs to make your devices work because Microsoft doesn't have the freedom to put this on their XP installation disk.
There are many criticisms that can be
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
There is one obvious game genre that lends well to Open Source models: MMORPGs. These are games with LONG interest times and thousands of geeky people playing it, many with too much spare time. It is also a game genre that, even in closed source, is undergoing constant incremental updates. I think well organized communities could easily make a solid, innovative and awesome MMORPG.
The problem of course, is the costs of bandwidth and server space needed.
Moo.
> The article makes a good point that good
> art must be original and can not be generated
> by modifying older art.
What?!?!?!
That's SO wrong. There is definetly creativity in reuse. I could list good examples of meta-art all day long.
- rap/hiphop sampling beats/lines from r&b songs
- classic rock reusing old blues riffs/lines
- blues reusing old gospel lines
- andy warhol's campbell's soup can painting
(easy example, but i wonder why ppl like it..)
- any picture made of lots of little pictures
- any fan-art, from a child's snoopy drawing
to entire star trek/wars fan-novels
- sprite-based webcomics
- the most meta comic in the world
http://www.colintheriot.com/patheticinc/
(made entirely with google'd pix, HILARIOUS)
simply put, art draws from culture, and culture draws from art. technology now approaches making it as easy to incite the original art as it is to speak its' name. we're only going to keep getting more referential.
-g
I mean its a pretty slick polished game, but its a direct knock off of a game thats been around for ages. No creativity in game design, just in artwork.
I apologize if this sounds like a dig but please bear with me. Aren't knock-off's what most open source projects are all about. Sometimes it's a literal knock-off, Linux/BSD being knock-off's of proprietary Unix environments. Literal knock-off as in a Unix user knows how to use the system, Unix apps generally compile and run, not literal as in source code. Sometimes it's more of a philosophical knock-off, OpenOffice for example. Here we do not have a compatibility with respect to commands, as we do with Linux/BSD to a degree, but we have a compatibility with respect to accomplishing a certain task in a similar manner. Differences tending to be minor implementation details, user perspective, not developer. Often, knock-off's are what the community asks for. "It would be great if we could get an open source version of XYZ." Given this orientation of open source I don't think that it is unreasonable to see lots of knock-offs in the gaming arena.
Also keep in mind how many open source projects start as educational efforts, someone fulfilling their own curiosity or trying to expand their programming skills. This may be more frequent in the gaming arena than say the personal finance arena. Given such a start it is quite natural to recreate something that is well known and enjoyed, and possibly well understood.
With cost currently running away in the game industry, small companies will either supply niche markets (which are already very small) or they have to reduce theire costs by working together. Open Source is perfect for that.
Open source engines are not yet on the same level like the Doom Engine, but i can see no reason why they shouldn't mature like other os-libs did. What is left is content (which was mentioned several times already). My guess is that within the next years open source will come up with new solutions. For example AI which can extract animation and geometry data from webcammovies, basic texture libraries which are parameterized (make this skin darker, add some pimples). Also i guess that open source games will concentrate more on ideas which will capture players for a long time (simulations don't get outdated that fast).
However I think one of the key points to move Open Source gaming further ahead lies in the tools, the engine and the data freely available, once we have reached a point where there is 'enough' of it available, we might see free games poping up. It won't be the hollywood blockbaster games, but it will be little short-stories and stuff which can be done by two or three persons. Some years ago you needed to basically start with a blank sheet of paper and no tools when you wanted to start a game, today we have at least a bunch of tools (Gimp, Blender, Wings3d, ...) available for creating content, in the sound area there is still much missing, but we are moving slowly forwards. We also have a bunch of libraries and engines, which while not being up to Doom3 standards, still might be enough for a homebrewn game, that said, with every game that uses them, they will of course also mature a bit more. On the content side however we are still at a very low level, however in large part that might be due to the lack of proper license and to the lack of tools in the past, thing might hopefully change a bit in the future.
Why I think it might work in the long run? Imagine in another five years we might have a repository full of 3d models, textures and sound. Now somebody comes along and wants to create a game, all he has todo is to select a collection of models and textures that will fit his story, point&click them together in some 3d editor and just add his dialogs lines to them. Some ready-to-use 3d engine will do the rest. Sure it won't look commercial quality, especially not like commercial-quality will look in five games. But a game created by such building blocks wouldn't look like it would look today, full of one-color box placeholders, but instead it would be full of well done 3d models. Sure there is still balancing and fixing needed, but those building blocks could reduce the entry level for game creation by quite a bit. It might not work for all games, but it might be still provide a good amount of entertainment. It won't replace commercial game development for sure, but it will be a good addition.
At it stands now however we have still a huge lack of manpower, not just artists, but also programmers who are able to work on a game, since even on the code side of a game, there is some kind of art involved that an average application programmer might not be able to provide. This lack of people is most likly caused by the lack of games on Linux, since those interested in game development are naturally also interested in games.
So if you are an artist or programmer who wants to move Linux gaming forward, stop complaining and do something, join projects which interested you be it games or the content-creation tools, which are at least equally important. If you don't know a project that would be worth joining, join us at the Game of the Month on Happy Penguin where we pick a game every once in a while and try to polish it, thus joining forces and focusing it on a single project for a short period of time. Don't expect to end up with a Doom3, but your contribution can make a difference and might provide the gamers with another good game.
Very good question. We're going to create an encyclopedia of cars that willing manufacturers can contribute to if they so choose. If not, there is no way we can prevent people from adding cars to the game. Racer is a quazi-open source project and has hundreds of cars available for download, just not from the author of the game.
The courts have recently ruled that "peer-to-peer software developers were not liable for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products, as long as they had no direct ability to stop the acts."
If Ferrari comes after us because some guy creates a bit torrent link which contains a bunch of unofficial cars they will be thrown out of court. I've heard there is a pretty fat fund setup to help out OSS developers being pressured by leagal tomfoolery. If car manufacturers have a beef with a car they're going to have to sue individual users which will bring plenty of bad press and simply push the "content trading" underground.
Maybe if our project gets big, they'll see it as a free marketing opportunity instead of something that cuts into their revenue. I'm not exactly hopeful about that prospect though as accountants are notoriously myopic.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Open source works (partially at least) because users want to scratch their itches.
If I'm playing a game that lends itself to being played over and over (bzflag) and I find a problem which shows up every time I play, then I'll be more inclined to fix it. Each time I play I will bump into the problem again and the annoyance will multiply and It will then seem worthwhile to me to fix the problem so I don't bump into it again.
OTOH If I'm playing a game that plays through only once then I'm likely to ignore the problem because the problem has only manifested itself once.
Most of the core code in a game isn't related to content anymore-- it is middleware. Physics, sound, AI, 3D rendering, data processing, and tools are rapidly becoming off-the shelf components one can plug together to make a game.
I think that open source middleware makes perfect sense. It is reused between products and between companies. The primary consumers are themselves programmers. It benefits from
I believe this so strongly I started a project four years ago to produce open source middleware for 3D rendering in games--
G3D (http://g3d-cpp.sf.net).
It is now used by commercial game developers as well as hobbyists, researchers, and students. There are various networking, physics, and sound packages. We need more open source middleware for games, particularly on the tools side, where Blender and GIMP aren't yet sufficient alternatives to 3DS MAX, Maya, Photoshop, and level editors.
-m
Next 10 years, bottom line is that the bottom drops out of the upward climb of home electronics. With a stable target to develop against, closed-source game engines have very few places go. At this point, we already have a dozen good OSS engines ready for use, but they're subsystem engines. Given a decade, however, it's likely that the community will have at least a few decent Facades over top to provide the world with good, solid cameras with which to shoot interactive entertainment.
Assets like art and story, on the other hand, are copyrighted works and are only susceptible to market pressures. Very few people out there shooting mass-distribution movies for free either. Doesn't seem to be boiling anyone's mind that this is the case, tho.