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Open Source C++ ClanLib SDK Refreshed For 2015
New submitter rombust writes: Will ClanLib turn around the tides and finally challenge SDL? The latest 4.0 release already offers what Unity and the Unreal Engine charges 30% for, but now after 16 years of development, using only hobbyist developers, it will take on the giant of open source game SDKs! Dedication that's rarely found in the Open Source community without commercial backing.
Unity does not charge 30%, only a per-seat license. And I'm pretty sure Unreal does not anymore either – more like 5%? I'll admit I DON'T KNOW, unlike the OP.
Also, a cursory glance shows this "Lib" is far from being a full-fledge game development engine like Unity or Unreal.
All-in-all, you don't need to lie to make your story interesting, in fact that made it so much worse.
Where is this 30 percent figure coming from?
Unreal charges a 5% royalty. Unity charges a flat fee with no royalty.
I remember years and years ago when this first came out it was party to some of the worst looking games of all time. But bad games can be made on any platform, I'm sure someone could have made something good by now. Their website doesn't list any projects that use the library, which is very troubling. They haven't been just developing the library for their own sake for 16 years have they? Someone must be using it.
I read the internet for the articles.
The latest 4.0 release already offers what Unity and the Unreal Engine charges 30% for
In what alternate universe? Your little library isn't even remotely comparable to the tools and features of either the UDK or Unity.
You'll need robust iOS/Android support before you can dream of challenging SDL.
Obviously, the rombust and the developers of ClanLib have never worked with a real game engine. It's already been noted that the claims in the summary are ridiculously ignorant (or outright shameful lies).
Let's examine the issue in details:
1. The Examples page for ClanLib seems like a joke. At the very least, this seems incredibly immature and unprofessional.
2. Not a single example of a real game written with ClanLib can be easily found. 16 years, and all they have to show for it is a feature in an old book on C++ game development.
3. No IDE... for game engines, the IDE is far more than a tool to write code - it's a way for a team of professionals to tie in their elements visually, in an organized way. It provides immediate feedback, which increases productivity.
4. ClanLib requires in-depth development before you see anything remotely operational in a game. Real game engines allow you almost immediate results, and even better, support scripting at a minimal level to create actual games (while allowing in-depth programming at the same time), because they already have a framework in place.
ClanLib has to deliver a LOT more than it currently does to be taken seriously. Unity, UDK, Corona, Adobe Air... all have options that allow developers to create games with no investment up front, and often no royalties at lower sales levels (and if you reach $100k sales, the fractional cost of the game engine is not really an issue). To be perfectly honest, I find it a bit insulting that this was presented on Slashdot the way it was. Slashdot-worthy? Questionable, but to tout it as a real competitor to Unity and UDK is downright wrong at every level.
"The latest 4.0 release already offers what Unity and the Unreal Engine charges 30% for..."
Now I remember why I stopped reading slashdot. Seriously, that is just a plain outright lie.
Will ClanLib turn around the tides and finally challenge SDL?
No.
It's because the summary was written by the ClanLib developer who is trying to shill his product.
https://www.unrealengine.com/showcase
vs
http://www.clanlib.org/examples.html
Yeah...
ClanLib also only supports Linux and Windows whereas SDL, Unity and Unreal support OS X, mobile OSes and, at least Unreal, HTML5 targeting.
I had no idea it could do all this:
https://www.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine-4
SDL and SFML are both pretty cool and have large development communities. I haven't used Allegro or Clanlib, but Clanlib's features seem especially close to SFML's (based on examining the API). Allegro has been around for over 20 years. SDL for 17, Clanlib for 16, SFML for just about half of that.
It raises a question in my mind: If Clanlib had been out for that long in 2007, providing a C++ game programming library and being well-known enough to be included in at least one book, then why was there a perceived need for SFML? Was it just a marketing/popularizing failure on the part of clanlib's developers, or was there some technical shortcoming in Clanlib at that time? If the latter, has the shortcoming been corrected? In short, why exactly should we be excited about a new release of Clanlib?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Unity has a web player, as well. It also supports C# scripts in all of those environments (Javascript being the other scripting language it can use).
The other thing I didn't mention is that ClanLib simply cannot be as robust as the major players - who absolutely have to respond to bug reports and have literally millions (billions?) of hours of real usage in complex games.
Oh... and let's not forget third party support. Tools and plug-ins provide smoother workflow management, whether it's a single developer or a 100-member team. Last time I checked, my tools didn't have "Export for ClanLib" options, but they usually have "Export for Unity" or "Export for UDK" options.
Really, I can't recommend enough that Rombust should go out, download Unity 5 and give it a whirl. It might be disheartening, but Rombust should not go through life ignorant of the competition, developing ClanLib. I hope that doesn't become a show-stopper, because developers should have choices; perhaps it will put the developers of ClanLib down the right path to make a "5.0" that DOES include the elements needed to actually compete.
They spent 16 years on that? Wow. Sounds like outdated tech.
I think you're confusing your targets here. The summary is nonsense of course. Clanlib is obviously not a competitor to Unity or UE4. However, it's not really trying to compete with them. It's an alternative to SDL, which also is no sort of competitor to Unity or UE4. The fact that Clanlib is nothing like Unity or UE4 is not really something to criticise. This does not say anything about the developers, who are clearly aiming for something else. You should feel free to criticise the submitter, who clearly hasn't understood what Unity and UE4 are.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I developed a complete game using ClanLib, 14 years ago. ClanLib was a nice library (just a library, nothing remotely similar to Unity), but then I had to switch to SDL because they kept changing the API and data structures. It also had serious performance problems, until they decided to switch to SDL and OpenGL as graphical backends.
So I was like... "Should I write an abstraction over ClanLib to save my game from their changes... using a library that is *itself* an abstraction over SDL... or should I just switch to SDL?"
A lone indie developer can either develop his game OR rewrite it every time Clanlib developers think they must break other people's code.
However, it's not really trying to compete with them.
So then why does rombust, a developer of Clanlib, even mention them if that was't an implication?
This does not say anything about the developers, who are clearly aiming for something else. You should feel free to criticise the submitter, who clearly hasn't understood what Unity and UE4 are.
The submitter is one of the main developers.
I didn't know that. Criticism is perfectly justified in that case..
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
http://slashdot.org/~rombust
I shouldn't have posted this article, looking at it, it was very childish. I really didn't expect it to be accepted, I was just personally interested to see how long it would be until it was rejected. What a surprise it was when it was accepted...
1. The Examples page for ClanLib seems like a joke. At the very least, this seems incredibly immature and unprofessional.
It was a joke. In the old days ClanLib had a large website that showed off what ClanLib could do. Yes, it can actually do some amazing things. But useful? That's another question...
ClanLib has potential. But without 100's of developers, it will not make it big time.
Note, I did not create ClanLib. But I worked with it for ten years.
We found that a large website took too much time to maintain. Nobody was interested. I don't blame them. Maintaining web pages is not much fun for hobbyist programmers.
However, it's not really trying to compete with them.
So then why does rombust, a developer of Clanlib, even mention them if that was't an implication?
This does not say anything about the developers, who are clearly aiming for something else. You should feel free to criticise the submitter, who clearly hasn't understood what Unity and UE4 are.
The submitter is one of the main developers.
Again, I apologise for wasting your time. You are correct for criticising
Unity and UE4 are excellent.
ClanLib doesn't have main developers. It only has developers that want to code certain aspects because it interests them.
Why use a C++ library when there is a plain C alternative?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm sure you are a bit crispy after being exposed to the Slashdot crowd in full force ;)
ClanLib would have been awesome 20 years ago, when I was playing around with some game ideas, and I kind of wish I had known about it when I was writing Xbox homebrew (MXM, X-Marbles). These days, the library is kind of secondary to the tools and frameworks for building games, and more often than not, decent games require a team to build.
That said, ClanLib might not be a bad base if a group of motivated individuals wanted to expand it into such a tool. Open source projects are always welcome (My Media X Menu was the first "open source" dashboard for XBox in the scene and helped lots of other projects with code, including XBMP/XBMC/Kodi in the early days).
The only real beef most of the slashdotters here had was with the bold comparison to Unity and Unreal Engine and the faulty claim. Just dial it back next time, emphasize the open source aspect, and maybe put out a call for more developers to get involved?
Target a high-level goal - a framework that can create a game with minimal lines of actual code, and a visual tool (perhaps leveraging an existing open source IDE) to tie in elements and generate some code behind the scenes. More importantly, get somebody to put a few games together and offer them up on Desura or a similar Indie outfit, to show what can be done.
Wow that examples page is quite....something.
Actually, you can add Godot to that list, while it's still a bit undercooked it's actually fairly viable to make a working game, includes editing tools and has better examples than this. And the source can be modified for free.
Not the optimal choice, but for someone who can't afford (or doesn't want to pirate) Unity or Unreal, it's a fairly valid option.
It was a joke
No, it wasn't. You could more correctly state, "It was meant as a joke". That would be a valid statement.