Releasing the Engine Code
_Thresh_
Join Date: 2008-01-11 Member: 63385Members
Join Date: 2008-01-11 Member: 63385Members
My background is marketing not tech, so feel free to flame this idea. With no advertising budget and limited development milestones coming up (alpha, beta etc), getting some big coverage pre-steam is going to be tricky.
Releasing the engine code might be big enough and different enough to get some press. It would also allow some of the more technically talented members of the community to help with some debugging.
Any big disadvantages, apart from the obvious UW loose control of IP etc. ?
Releasing the engine code might be big enough and different enough to get some press. It would also allow some of the more technically talented members of the community to help with some debugging.
Any big disadvantages, apart from the obvious UW loose control of IP etc. ?
Comments
As far as I know they are planning to license the engine as well when its a bit more stable (maybe that's already happening!).
That's not a very sound marketing decision.
That's not a very sound marketing decision.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
Also, UWE has already made tons of stuff modifiable via the lua scripts.
I doubt we'll see Unknown Worlds release the full source anytime in the near future but we might get an API, SDK or more LUA documentation when NS2 goes gold.
(There's a few months off... probably.)
That's my understanding of the situation anyway.
*I think the source was released for DOOM but there were no texture files.
** I think the Wolfenstein Enemy Territory code was released in full, but this game/mod was free from the start and quite a rare occurrence.
No personal offense to OP, but this is an absolutely <b>horrible</b> idea and would ultimately serve very little good to UWE in terms of successful marketing.
Cash is king in startups, if you can use future theoretical licence fees to make a bigger splash, that's not a trade-off to dismiss out of hand.
Though i'll admit, I wouldn't do it as a company unless I was out of options!
Cash is king in startups, if you can use future theoretical licence fees to make a bigger splash, that's not a trade-off to dismiss out of hand.
Though i'll admit, I wouldn't do it as a company unless I was out of options!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't get it.
This would basically be like valve putting up half life 2 to download for free, before they even released it.
That isn't going to make money...
Companies? Usually? ID is the only company that i know for doing this so far. The Quake3 Engine is now open source but it's only the engine. Everything else (every form of artwork, maps etc) is still under copyright of ID.
Releasing the source code would be totally bs, i don't know how the TO came to this idea. I do support open source and FLOSS but this here is a entirely different case.
UWE can choose a licence that prohibits the usage for certain projects, like commercial ones. Also, not releasing the model/textures for free would make the game still non free.
So this is a non issue.
An advantage would be that it would allow fans to port the game to different platforms, like osx or linux. That would be great.
I only see ONE problem, and its actually a big one. Cheaters. If you can recompile the game, you can do whatever you want with it. Sure, some things can not be done if the server is coded correctly (wallkhacks etc), but aimbots would be possible. The only solution would be a second, closed source application, that would verify that the original executable is used, like punkbuster.
So, i would love to see the engine become open source, like the quake1-3 engine. But the cheater problem needs to be adressed. As i said, UWE could still make money from commercial licences, so no problem there. But with the cheater problem to be solved (which actually has to be solved anyway, one could modify the already compiled executable "by hand"), i doubt they would make such a move before the final ns2 release.
The game is supposed to be moddable enough anyway , UWE has no reason to release Spark before NS2 is finished.
I suppose they will want to produce at least a few more games before considering to make Spark open source. Also selling it to other companies as well.
Another option is a license similar to the UDK , which would secure some profits if commercial games are developped on Spark.
This would basically be like valve putting up half life 2 to download for free, before they even released it.
That isn't going to make money...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Carmack originally wanted to release Q1 code right after releasing the game.
Not releasing the full source code is a good idea, marketing wise, they really should have someone on the business side who is ready to market the engine license as soon as someone makes it fully functional at all things basic.
Not releasing the full source code is a good idea, marketing wise, they really should have someone on the business side who is ready to market the engine license as soon as someone makes it fully functional at all things basic.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I might be wrong, but I think UE3 and CryEngine 3 does it too in realtime... At least I'm sure for CryEngine.
It might even be better in those engine, because Spark engine does only direct lighting, while CryEngine and UE3 also have some indirect lighting features (radiosity?)
Spark is a good engine, but it's not the best engine out there ! I'd say it's best features are full gameplay lua-scripting and a very easy mapping editor.
Though, as said before, it would be useless to release the full engine, as all gameplay relative task is done in Lua, however if they wanted to, I guess it'd be better to release it on the same way Epic games did. After all UDK is just the closed source engine, with the ability to make the game by using scripts.
police beats the ###### out some ppl demonstrating against a nazi ball held in our greatest official hall,
the viennese hofburg ... well, capitalism and police violence - perfect mix :P
Giving the code away for non-commercial use doesn't matter because the companies who would be profiting off of it would have to pay for licenses anyway. The only people using the code for free would be mods which is what allowed UWE to even create the original Natural Selection.
it really all depends on the licence used. It would very much make sense releasing the code with UWE beeing a fan financed company. Not saying they should do it now, but somewhere down the road..
Correct me if i'm wrong, but HL1 source code wasn't released, it's like source, a SDK no? And so like current Spark status.
ALso this might seem illegal, but even if companies aren't supposed to use the engine, do you realy think they don't? If an engine is closed source, meaning noone can see it's code, who's going to check that they didn't steal some part of code from some other open source projects?
ALso this might seem illegal, but even if companies aren't supposed to use the engine, do you realy think they don't? If an engine is closed source, meaning noone can see it's code, who's going to check that they didn't steal some part of code from some other open source projects?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
For starters the Free Software Foundation and other people check for GPL violations in code and file lawsuits against the companies who violate the license agreements. It's really not that difficult to figure out if someone is illegally using your code. There are many ways you can use to tell if a compiled binary comes from certain codebases or has code from them and all that has to happen is the company be accused and at that point they have to prove that the code wasn't illegally used. But releasing the engine as open source is going to be good for UWE. It's going to allow other developers to contribute code back for features that UWE may not have the time or resources to add in while building NS2 (Linux/OS X support) as well as more people submitting bug fixes. It's going to be a huge contribution to the open source games out there currently and going to provide a huge resource for other nonprofit modding teams who couldn't otherwise afford a license until they have a product they can sell.