Free Games and 3D Graphics

enki · Post by **enki** » April 18th, 2004, 10:42 am

Have you looked at Ogre? It's a free 3D enginge that IMO looks quite promising. It's written in C++, it's portable to quite a few platorms and it seems to have a quite active development team.

Post by **Dave** » April 18th, 2004, 2:08 pm

enki wrote:Have you looked at Ogre? It's a free 3D enginge that IMO looks quite promising. It's written in C++, it's portable to quite a few platorms and it seems to have a quite active development team.

I have looked briefly at Ogre, and yes it looks pretty cool. If/when the time comes, it will warrant a deeper look.

David

Icekiss · Post by **Icekiss** » April 19th, 2004, 2:33 pm

Dave wrote: I think that an RPG's basic game system should be designed by one, or perhaps a few people.

You are of course completely right there, it wouldn't work any other way. If you don't start of with a grand idea, you won't get no faithfull followers, but only heated arguments all over the forum.

I thought more along the lines of having a basic world thought up (planet geography, history, society, races) and an idea for the gameplay (where does the hero start, storyline, how does fighting and using magic work, how to gain experience), and then use the community to check it for contradictions (and more often: find solutions for things that only look impossible to match) and to come up with the bootload of details: How does the typical dress for this region look like, whats the layout for this city?
And even if its still a year of till your code is mature enough to implement this additional region, you have already gathered interest. Get the people to dream.

Because once sb. has a dream inside your game, he/she will be very eager to help...

(As I said, thats just my take on it. Since I never set up a forum for a game I wrote, I might be totally wrong)

As for the 3D engine: Of course it is up to you whether you want to use one already out there or write your own. All I want to do is add sth. that has not been pointed out yet: The disadvantage of writing your own is NOT the time spend coding it. I would rather call that the advantage, because you learn alot about programming a 3D engine that way, and can optimize it for your game (is this obvious or what?) The DISADVANTAGE is, that you in effect dublicate sth. thats already out there (invent the wheel one more time).
And that means that the codebase to maintain is bigger. If you use an existing engine/3D framework, every new effect and every hardwareacceleration they add, every plugin they write, benefits your game. If you write it yourself, you have to add it yourself - or live without it.

catpys · Post by **catpys** » April 20th, 2004, 1:33 pm

If you already have a game people are interested in (addicted to!) it's not hard to find talented people to do the 3D modelling and skinning. Look at PlanetQuake at all the models and skins people have submitted to the community. Part of the reason Wesnoth is so popular is that you've made it easy to extend and edit. If you build a 3D game from the start with extendability in mind you're dramatically increasing the chances that people will flock to it and want to modify it. I remember playing Total Annihilation and grabbing endless 3rd party units online that people did and made available out of the goodness of their hearts. And the units they made nine times out of ten looked great. There is definately a niche out there and your philosophy for Wesnoth has proved sound (KISS... wouldn't it be great if the government followed that rule?) and could easily be applied to any 3D game you would develop. Just my 2 cents.

P.S. I think Cavedog imploded, wouldn't it be great if they open sourced their Total Annihilation engine?

hook · Post by **hook** » April 25th, 2004, 11:12 am

here's some more 3d engines i can think off:

http://www.nevrax.org - NeL, used in the game Ryzom
http://crystal.sf.net - Crystal Space, used, amongst others, in PlaneShift
http://irrlicht.sf.net/ - Irrlicht, a pretty simple to use 3d engine

Roel · Post by **Roel** » June 8th, 2004, 5:27 pm

as for the 3D-models part...

My sister studies animation in Brussels and she uses the same program used by Disney Studios but I have a copy of dyne:bolic with Blender in it and I showed her the Blender program ( because I had no idea how it worked ) and she started animating some prefabs right away. So I should say, go with blender, it has a lots of documentation and my sister said it looked very professional.

Blackbeard · Post by **Blackbeard** » June 9th, 2004, 2:42 am

Dave wrote:I want to push Free games a step forward toward the quality of commercial games. While a cleverly done parody of a commercial game can be fun, I don't think it achieves this.

I'm not sure what you mean by Free games. Free Software is a semi-political movement that advocates the removal of patents, non-disclosure agreements, and proprietary software. Open Source, on the other hand, is about making software available to as many people as possible. As you know, Free Software is about the (political/legal) freedom to change, copy, and use programs without restrictions. The General Public License uses the current Copyright Law to provide that freedom - until the Copyright Law can be abolished or suitaably changed.

A Free Software developer, therefore, first asks this question: 'How can I remove or reduce the Users dependency on Proprietary, NDA, and/or Patents with my software?' With Wesnoth, this is partly done by using .png and .ogg formats, but unfortunately the website uses and accepts .gif which sends mixed signals to the general public. For Free Software, .gif are never acceptable anywhere.

The issue, from a Free Software Developer's viewpoint, is how to make the current gaming technology patent free and disclosable. Since the computer game industry is worth billons, there is heavy interest in gaining and maintaining patents, to gain a monopoly. But the emerging software economy is focused on what people want, enjoy, and benefits them.

For Windows and other proprietary operating systems, writing a 2/3D 'free' game is no problem. For Free Operating systems, there are majour drawbacks. The biggest difficulty is video drivers. Video card developers hold patents and NDAs on their technology and don't provide free drivers, nor allow others to write free drivers either. Some card developers (ATI iirc) are working towards free drivers, but mostly for older cards. NVidia, does not provide free drivers - they are gratis, but the technology is still under NDA and patents. Because they use proprietary technology, they work best and game developers will tell Free Software users to, 'just download them' to get a game working.

I believe if you have the skill and motivation to write a graphics game, the available software is less an issue than the legal and social impact your game can cause. To paraphrase Stallman, 'If we don't have the free software to do it, we go without, or write it'.

This means any graphical game that places demands on free video drivers beyond their capabilty should not be written. First get the drivers up to standard and then write the game. Until then, we all go without.

The same comments apply to sound cards, though to a far lesser extent.
The same comments apply to fonts and other formats.

I have emphasised the issue of video drivers since most Window/Mac users are unaware that this is the sole and only reason free games are not overtaking commercial games. Card manufacturers are under pressure to maintain secrecy while Free Developers refuse to write games that must use proprietary drivers. Opern Source Developers don't care and most of their games allow proprietary drivers. Very few free drivers fully support direct rendering at all depths and using mesa indirect rendering kills the game's speed and feel.

Now for my typically radical idea, The Hurd is the GNU's kernel which is a more recent technical innovation to kernel design and therefore aurguably better than Linux can ever become. Writing a game that works on The Hurd will definitely move Free Software a big step forward and provide uses with a choice in (old technology) Linux or (new technology) The Hurd. Currently, SCO is litigating IBM regarding patent issues with Linux over possible infringement. This cannot happen with The Hurd, since, (afaik) it has been written (almost) from scratch.

Its rare to find a developer willing to claim they are a Free Software Developer because of the connotation that goes with it. Open Source is no problem because there is no politics attached to it. However, far too many developers claim they're 'Open Source', but use the Free Software GPL to license their software. This is what Linux and KDE have done.

It's even rarer finding a developer asking how they may improve Free Software. For me, breaking the video card manufacturers' hold over their hardware is a key factor. Once Free Operating systems fully support all graphic cards, the flood of high quality games will be awesome.

The decision regarding 2D or 3D largely depends on whether you care if users must use proprietary drivers or not. Under the GPL, this is impossible, but the LGPL License provides for this only if it will promote Free Software in a proprietary dominate environment and ultimately replacee it.. Producing 'commercial' quality software is a natural consequence of disclosing the technology used.

DeVice · Post by **DeVice** » October 11th, 2004, 11:53 pm

If you're still interested in that subject, have a look at Scorched3d, an opensource game which really use 3D for the gameplay.

Apologies if you already knew about it

Edit : sometimes a lil screenshot is worth a long talk :]

Post by **Viliam** » October 12th, 2004, 9:40 am

Blackbeard wrote:With Wesnoth, this is partly done by using .png and .ogg formats, but unfortunately the website uses and accepts .gif which sends mixed signals to the general public. For Free Software, .gif are never acceptable anywhere.

It is possible (and not very difficult) to replace all those gif's with png's. If this becomes important enough for someone, website can be "fixed". However, fixing the "phpBB" templates would be more useful.

Blackbeard wrote:The biggest difficulty is video drivers. Video card developers hold patents and NDAs on their technology and don't provide free drivers, nor allow others to write free drivers either.

[...] any graphical game that places demands on free video drivers beyond their capabilty should not be written. First get the drivers up to standard and then write the game. Until then, we all go without.

What is that capability of free video drivers? I have no knowledge in this field, so I am not sure what is means? Should we make no 3D software? Or just not use too many polygons? Where is the line?

Blackbeard wrote:I have emphasised the issue of video drivers since most Window/Mac users are unaware that this is the sole and only reason free games are not overtaking commercial games.

I am not sure about that "sole and only reason" part. I agree that many commercial games use 3D. But do video drivers really explain why for example a game like Wesnoth did not appear 10 years ago? Maybe it would not have zooming, smooth map scrolling, and partial transparency... but those are not the most important features.

My feeling is that half of free software community thinks "gamez are for lamerz, we do not need them", while the other half thinks that another clone of Tetris is the coolest game ever. There is probably no free games' site that would contain less Tetris clones than strategy and RPG games together.

Also, there are not enough new ideas. Most of free games are the remakes of commercial games. (Most of commercial games are remakes of other commercial games, too.) Sadly, disclosing any technology is not going to fix this.

Blackbeard wrote:Writing a game that works on The Hurd will definitely move Free Software a big step forward and provide uses with a choice in (old technology) Linux or (new technology) The Hurd.

Is there a problem with porting Wesnoth to The Hurd? (I am not a GNU/Linux programmer...)

Post by **ettin** » October 12th, 2004, 11:11 am

Blackbeard wrote:A Free Software developer, therefore, first asks this question: 'How can I remove or reduce the Users dependency on Proprietary, NDA, and/or Patents with my software?' With Wesnoth, this is partly done by using .png and .ogg formats, but unfortunately the website uses and accepts .gif which sends mixed signals to the general public. For Free Software, .gif are never acceptable anywhere.

The website (wesnoth.org) does not use .gif. It is the forum (phpBB) that uses .gif, and the truth is that I was not aware at all about that.
Btw, .gif patents have expired, right?

Blackbeard wrote:Its rare to find a developer willing to claim they are a Free Software Developer because of the connotation that goes with it. Open Source is no problem because there is no politics attached to it. However, far too many developers claim they're 'Open Source', but use the Free Software GPL to license their software. This is what Linux and KDE have done.

I prefer Free Software myself. And I think most Wesnoth devels prefer Free Software. I might be wrong.

Jaramir · Post by **Jaramir** » October 12th, 2004, 10:47 pm

VegaStrike is a FreeSoftware game, something similar to WingCommander but made in 3D.

i've tryed it on my bros computer (no DRI here, so no 3D for my poor S3SuperSavageIXC) for something like 3 minutes and i think it's a funny game.

I think you can ask the lead developers about that matter (developing 3D FreeSoftware games)

happypenguin.org is also filled with 3D games, but i did not play em cause of the graph-driver issue (and i'm quite sure there are other linux/bsd users with the same issue in the forum)

about 3D-RPG my favourite are "Myst 3: Exile" cause of the full-immersion in the game (due to graph and sounds: pathos) and the Monkey Island series, but i stopped playing with commercial and 3D games some years ago..

also, being an noncomputer-RPG "user" and RPG-mud "ex-user" i'm quite dubious something like an RPG can be made without an AI like the ones seen on "Neuromancer" by Gibson.

benheath85 · Post by **benheath85** » October 15th, 2004, 6:31 am

I can understand that. It's not really a requirement for a game to be 3D-- that's up to its makers. I, too, have felt that we could use a good, Free game that uses 3D in an interesting way. If you have the people and the resources to do it, and it's very trim and appealing, then go for it. A good example of presentation and unquestionable power is Zelda OoT. The game was strong in almost every way. How many people almost cried when they finished it?

Really, Dave, your sig says it all.

benheath85 · Post by **benheath85** » October 15th, 2004, 6:50 am

Hmm. The politics of Free Software.

I've thought as well about developing something on Hurd, but I still haven't tried it. That's true, though. You don't want to send a yes/no/maybe answer when it comes to your beliefs. I personally don't believe religiously in Free Software, but I like it enough to capitalize it. :)

---EDIT---
The obvious solution to the proprietary video driver problem is to just use software rendering. Dave said that we should learn from other game's successes and failures, and all of us here have noted what's wrong with most 3D games. For many purposes, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the old Playstation approach of using 3D objects (and what we *believe* to be 3D objects) set against a background of billboards. You can present the game very well and very nice systems and effects can be produced. Most of the art can be photographed or painted without any expensive 3D modeller, and the game can run on a variety of systems without specialized hardware or proprietary drivers.

Agape.

Blackbeard · Post by **Blackbeard** » October 17th, 2004, 7:52 pm

Viliam -
o A video driver's capabilities is a measure of how many card features it supports. Direct rendering (DRI) is a very important feature because it gives any game a huge (if not the most) speedup possible. Video cards DRI are covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) which prevent Free/Open developers from adding it to their video drivers. While the NDA covers hardware (the card), it prevents developers from disclosing any source containing NDA content.

o Yes, Wesnoth could've been written 10 years ago. But Wesnoth doesn't use 2D/3D rendering. Back then, there were few drivers that supported 2D/3D. Today there are far more drivers, but not all support DRI.

o gamez are for lamez is changing. The GNU project specifically cites developing games as important software, so this is poor attitude toward games is an issue.

o I think the new ideas are found in game play, rather than the game itself. This is why multiplay is so popular. Players who've figured out your strategy, force you to find a new one, or lose. Also, a newbie (but more likely a veteran) may take a fresh look and do some surprising things. They may lose, but perhaps they saw something you missed. This seldom happens with the AI in Single Player.

o The Hurd is a very different beast to, say, Linux. Basically, developers can write, register, and use system functions. It uses a messaging system to check who can access what. This is like remote procedure call (RPC), but at the deepest system level. For Wesnoth, it means (if I understand it correctly) you can register WMLas a system function and allow other apps to use it - without running Wesnoth. The same goes for fonts, internationalisation, and the like. However, it is POSIX compatible, so normal apps are written normally.

ettin -
o I notice gifs immediately, they appear as broken images. The gif patent is probably a non-issue today. Generally I don't worry about gifs, unless a website has pngs, too. Ideally the forum devs are the ones to talk to, but requests from webmasters might carry more clout.

Jaramir -
I concur with your comments. I don't play RPG, so I can't comment on AI ablilties, but Dave has handled unusual AI challenges (e.g. random attacks) rather well, so I expect an RPG AI will be a snap

benheath85 wrote:The obvious solution to the proprietary video driver problem is to just use software rendering.

Yes and no. A Free driver without DRI will work with indirect rendering. But it will run much slower and the game will probably be unplayable. If developers ensure their game is fast enough without DRI, then it will work. But this imposes a heavy burden on developers, forcing them to be far more modest in the graphics area.

The whole problem is caused by people witholding info from others. CDRom devices have been through this, they got together and defined a protocol interface (MMC), so hardware technology is not exposed in the drivers. Now only one driver is needed for all cdroms. The video card industry is way behind in this area, but as these forums show, getting people to agree to a single standard isn't easy - and video cards are uniquely complex devices.

Post by **Jetrel** » October 17th, 2004, 8:20 pm

Uhm, I could run a full-screen (at least 640x480) 3d game (Myth the Fallen Lords) on my 200 mhz 603ev (pentium 1 equivalent) at at least 20+ frames per second.

And this was *pure* software rendering. The game had support for glide, but I didn't have a 3dfx card (nor would I want one...).

A 700mhz chip could do that at 800x600 without blinking.

In fact, I am of the crazy opinion that that game looked better in software rendering mode. The only visual benefit that the hardware gave was blurring the pixels of a texture together.

Software rendering gives you so much more flexibility, because you are writing your own renderer. Video cards have only now moved to the level of gourad shading. Only now.

I wanna see a game that is raytraced in realtime. And I think it might be possible in few years - WITHOUT the input of a graphics card.