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Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

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Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#111

Post by badsectoracula »

ufo wrote: post #57
openbasic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license can be a problem for some studios, specially ones with uncomfortable contracts with publishers. If you are in that situation, I highly recommend writing a LuaJIT integration layer. The game code is very well separated from the engine, and qengine already removes a lot of non-generic game code from Q2. So all you have to do is delete a little bit more, write some glue code to tie in Lua, and you can write…

I think using Lua scripting like that still counts as "dynamic linking" from the point of view of the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins

The Lua interpreter itself would still be under GPL but the code that the Lua interprets would not since as far as the interpreter is concerned the script is data. The GPL even has a section on this:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#IfInterpreterIs...

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#112

Post by badsectoracula »

vanderZwan wrote: post #106
badsectoracula wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the code needs to be GPL, but that does not apply to the assets of course since the assets (including any scripts, although Q2 does not use scripts) are just "data". For PC games this isn't really a limitations, there are several games on Steam using GPL engines (mainly based on id's releases) - a known one is Quadrilateral Cowboy which uses the Doom 3 engine.

Interesting thing about the scripts being considered data. Sounds like it would be a very grey area, are there legal precedents here?

I'm not aware of any legal precedent (GPL isn't contested that often in courts), but this is mentioned in the GPL FAQ: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#113

Post by Ralfp »

paradoxparalax wrote: post #110
wjnc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take Two is the owner of 2K Games. Take Two has a USD 12.4 billion market cap. Take Two refers to 2K as a principal office. Quite the endavour for your friendly agent. Best bet would be to found a startup that greatly enhances revenue on old games by, say, automatically remastering them and them pitching to Take Two. You can't clever your way around 12 billion. Another thought: firms this size usually have their own…

I see. Thanks. So they kill it, cut out it's head and bury on a salt desert so people will forget it exists and buy their new game instead. Still feels that something isn't quite right in this being the only reason, it's strange. But yeah, you are right, would need to call more than one friend to get 6B USD just for fun money, to risk on the game industry because of a personal caprice :D Your ideas were better, thank…

Also in stupid „triple AAA” economy publishers consider tactic games too niche to be viable product.

They would try to turn it into mobile game or such.

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#114

Post by fit2rule »

And for those who'd prefer it were 1983 and we had the tooling then, that we have now, there is 8-bit Dude's engine, 8-bit unity:

http://8bit-unity.com/?page_id=121

.. which is also quite intriguing, for those of us with a bent towards the 8-bit aesthetic...

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#115

Post by wtetzner »

badsectoracula wrote: post #111
ufo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using Lua scripting like that still counts as "dynamic linking" from the point of view of the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins

The Lua interpreter itself would still be under GPL but the code that the Lua interprets would not since as far as the interpreter is concerned the script is data. The GPL even has a section on this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#IfInterpreterIs...

But the Lua scripts would be bound to the underlying game engine. I would all come down to whether or not a judge would see it as a derivative work.

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#116

Post by Twirrim »

asark wrote: post #89
saberworks wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, you could say that. I love JK and I played the thing with the software renderer for years because my s3 virge card wouldn't render the game correctly. My son teases me these days "Jedi Knight sucks, dad!" when he catches me working on the site (this is Brian from Massassi; it's sort of still around).

> this is Brian from Massassi Oh man, thanks so much. That site's awesome. Jedi Knight's one of only three online shooters I ever played much of (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and one of the Elite Force games, I forget which, being the others) and the only one I ever got good enough at to be accused of "hacking" at least a couple times a session (never, ever did). It has a special place in my heart. Thank you for your…

> Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

I sunk so much time in W:ET, got to a pretty good level with it, until everyone figured out the wallhacks, and every game became about trying to nail that perfect jump. For whatever reason, no matter how much time I sunk in to those wallhack training maps I could never get the knack of it, which meant I could no longer be where I needed to be to defend the base.

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#117

Post by mitchtbaum »

Anyone else remember Silent Death Online? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BvgxDCbZxE

Hopefully one day it'll live on in another game that would do for others what it did for me. I even have some notes scoping it out..

Just roughly speaking, maybe something something like https://github.com/waterson/purescript-asteroids and https://github.com/hdgarrood/multipac together

..But who knows what game programming might look like soon.

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#118

Post by ufo »

badsectoracula wrote: post #111
ufo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using Lua scripting like that still counts as "dynamic linking" from the point of view of the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins

The Lua interpreter itself would still be under GPL but the code that the Lua interprets would not since as far as the interpreter is concerned the script is data. The GPL even has a section on this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#IfInterpreterIs...

Lua is MIT licensed. The point is that if you have a GPL game engine and use lua scripts to turn it into a full game then you also need to license the scripts as gpl if you want to distribute the game.

(As others pointed out , oif you are looking for a loophole, game assets might be a better way to go)

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#119

Post by crushcrashcrush »

openbasic wrote: post #83
crushcrashcrush wrote: post #70

I know this will probably get buried here, but like - I want to try this. I was a huge fan of Quake 1 and 2. How the hell do I get started? (Note: I'm not a programmer, I'm a marketer. I know just enough PHP/JS to be stupidly dangerous.)

I think the easiest way to get started is mapping. This is a very cool map editor for Q1 and Q2: https://github.com/kduske/TrenchBroom There's plenty of good content here: http://forum.tastyspleen.net/quake/index.php?topic=21859.0 http://maps.rcmd.org/tutorials/ Map compiling and texture tools are included in the engine code: https://github.com/klaussilveira/qengine/tree/master/src/too... The Quake community is aweso…

Thank you for this!!!

Re: Retro game engine for developers that enjoy creating games like it's 1997

#120

Post by guppiegreen »

marvin wrote: post #47

Was anyone here at HN into Dark Forces II / Jedi Knight back in the day? The retro graphics of this post made me a bit nostalgic. The in-game scripting in Jedi Knight was my first exposure to software, and the modding community at Massassi was an incredibly creative and lively place. The poor checksums on game assets in Jedi Knight, along with early multiplayer on MSN Gaming Zone made the whole gaming community an ad…

For those who haven't seen it Jonathan Clark has been working on a open source version of the Jedi Knight: Dark Forces engine over at https://github.com/jdmclark/gorc and has even been active recently.
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