Comments on: Common content revisited

By: mark

mark — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:24:41 +0000

Agreed here. Such a common repository would help speed up development of games.

Just look at pygame – the python bindings to SDL helped create many new projects, which would not have happened if C was the only available choice for a project.

By: Sandbox games don’t consist of sand… « Rgames - tavern, whose owner’s crazy

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:33:34 +0000

[...] PS.M64 mentioned in his Blog that one of the issues that FOSS game development has to tackle are huge, bloated “game designs” (quotation marks by me), which try to imitate commercial games to some degree. FOSS games should rather focus on casual games with smaller designs, so he says. That is true for most cases, but in the end, everything gets down to the game design, and if there is none, a bigger game can’t be played consistently nor be really fun. I want to prove that [...]

By: Actually creating a ‘Shared World’ | Freshly Squeezed

Actually creating a ‘Shared World’ | Freshly Squeezed — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:31:30 +0000

[...] again my post will be influenced by m64’s blogpost, this time around it’s more about what was said on #freegamer at freenode (IRC) about the [...]

By: Freegamer Community | Freshly Squeezed

Freegamer Community | Freshly Squeezed — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:08:02 +0000

[...] very interesting blog, he talks at larg about most things that is interesting according to me. In this post he talks at large about one very interesting topic “shared worlds”, and in a way it [...]

By: m64

m64 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:28:45 +0000

Meh? Meh?! Nah…

It’s not like I would like to forbid Free Game devs from creating entirely new worlds. But I also think many people would more inspired than limited by having that world presented to them.

Another thing is that I would not like these shared universes to be some static, cathedral creations made up-front and frozen in carbonite. I see them as something evolving as new games are created and add their own chapters to the story.

By: ElCuGo

ElCuGo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:38:28 +0000

Meh!

I was working in a Star Wars based roguelike some time ago, but I got increasingly more and more annoyed by being limited by the SW universe. In the end I abandoned that project and started a new game based in an entirely new universe, invented by me.

Another similar problem we have with ToME. ToME is based on the works of J.R. Tolkien and we are having some troubles filling the monster list, Tolkien don’t have that many monsters.

I guess basing a game in an existing world is good for those who just want to make a game without engaging in any creative work. Though I had like to believe most coders are creative folks instead of just mindless codemonkeys.

By: Sindwiller

Sindwiller — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:56:09 +0000

Everything what you and everybody else has said!

However, what I’d like to point out is the sharing of GPL content between many of the Quake-projects around (namely OpenQuartz’s content used in OA and Sauerbraten/Cube, Evil’s textures used in Nexuiz, OA, Warsow, etc.), and the issues I believe I have encountered regarding that. As I said, there’s quite a big portion of content shared between those projects, not only since they have emerged from more or less the same community, but also because they’re open source (not entirely true for Warsow and Sauer/Cube). I think that, once an asset base is there, people are starting to slack off. Unlike mod projects in the current FPS (and so on) communities, where base assets are present, too, FOSS projects aren’t as actively developed and not as tightly organized as mod projects, which isn’t supposed to be critique to the model of FOSS game development, but more to the very confidence that once there is a pool of base assets, everything would be just fine.

In principle, the idea of having more shared asset polls is awesome. Just don’t wonder when they start to reuse content just like they reuse game concepts around here I’m all for the idea of “meta assets” or dummy content though. Hooray for dummmies!

By: m64

m64 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:35:05 +0000

Certainly such “meta assets” used to make other assets should be published and shared as well. I don’t know how well such things are supported by current media sharing platforms. Also thanks for the links.

BTW. Wordpress treats comments with large number of links as potential spam, so they are put into a moderation queue for me to check. I am trying to turn this off, but don’t be surprised if your comment takes a while to appear.

By: ghoulsblade

ghoulsblade — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:52:31 +0000

for iris we have wall-segments used to create buildings, currently the textures are old and not that good, and some of the normals might be broken, but we’re planning to clean up and improve there someday, then it might be usable for other 3d games as well. http://iris2.de/index.php/Models:Walls
maybe things like that are a good area to share/cooperate as well ? =) (i hope thats not too offtopic)

By: ghoulsblade

ghoulsblade — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:41:13 +0000

yep, a few shared worlds/story+modelpools/universes would be awesome for gamedev (space,strategy,multiplayer-fps,horror-fps,…).
most commercial ones like starwars, startrek, lord of the rings etc are problematic because of licensing/trademarks.

i think “angels falls first” http://www.affuniverse.com/home/ is a universe/shared world by hobbyists, there is a firstperson shooter using it, and a vegastrike spacegame mod as well afaik.
i haven’t had the time too look at licensing etc in detail, but it seems to have a nice bunch of media.

also vegastrike itself has a lot of very nice spaceships, and bits of scifi story, and they are afaik under gpl.

wesnoth & silvertree are possibly a nice basis for medieval/fantasy, but here mosts assets are 2d

there’s a bunch of nice icons shared between wesnoth and allacrost for potions/weapons/armor/attacks/spells/attacks/items … that might be useful for many other rpg projects, even if not related..

http://search.freegamedev.net/artitems/search/images%20attacks/?show=100

http://search.freegamedev.net/artitems/search/images%20items/?show=500