Engoo

[leileilol]

EDIT: I'll make this short: Development has halted because I am pissed off at the hypocrisy of the FOSS community for being spoiled brats who can't grasp the concept of a software renderer despite advocating adoption of a platform where there's little support for video acceleration for anything that isn't the latest AMD or Nvidia. No SDL for you!

[LordHavoc]

Engoo is awesome.

[qbism]

We need a new site for OS devs to post all their great stuff. Then trollmods crap on it. Oops, it's already been done.

[Baker]

I thought the pic looked strangely familiar, but I wasn't sure why. +1 on near exact duplication even to scrag attack.

I wouldn't put much stock in what some random people in a free open source games forum say. Especially if they aren't developers or modders (or maybe they are? I dunno).

"Gamers" or people that like "free stuff" are as common as nickels and only slightly less common than people who have a pulse.

/One opinion, probably wrong.

[scar3crow]

I'm sad to hear this, and see that thread as well, Engoo is one of my favorite projects and I've loved watching it grow.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

That screenshot is amazing, reminds me of unreal.

I really wouldn't put too much stock on what those guys say over there, they seem to strike me as being more "ooo-look-at-the-pretty-gfx-gamers" rather than developers.

I especially find it rather ironic that they totally failed to realize that engoo is actually good for much more than "just playing quake". (god, just thinking about it makes me facepalm)

[leileilol]

I really wouldn't put too much stock on what those guys say over there, they seem to strike me as being more "ooo-look-at-the-pretty-gfx-gamers" rather than developers.

except they're developers and one in particular is a constant Xonotic preacher (if something uses Darkplaces he'll plug Xonotic in every instance) and an admin of several Free Software gaming sites (including FreeGameArts, which some of you may know) so what he says holds a lot of weight to representing that scene. This also led me to retract everything I did for OGA (and no one noticed... of course, while other admins ignore the complaints of their own questionable works and not doing anything about obviously encumbered fan art).

Also I did once have a post with a release in this thread, and i've removed it because no one noticed and gave feedback about it and it had some nasty bugs I only found out by myself very late. The post was there for almost a whole week with no replies. Maybe it's because it didn't have a pretty picture. Either way, hypocritical Freevangelist elitism and inactivity has me completely burned, demoralized and unmotivated to continue, because it'll just be ignored for not being fucking Xonotic or a shitty clone game for the PSP. People only notice it now because i'm done, which likely translates to "ding dong the witch is dead" to some out there.

Hell, I reported a software pirate on this very forum months ago that still wasn't dealt with. Where is everyone?


The last uncommitted change I made was a huge colored lighting speedup through an alternative method with little visual loss.

[mankrip]

After five months, Makaqu 1.6 was only downloaded 66 times from Google Code. Makaqu 1.3.1 is a year and two months old and has been downloaded only one more time than that.

My first Quake-related works used to get over 1300 downloads on release day, when the Dreamcast community was still very active and full of people. I used to feel like I was really contributing to something useful, and people used to make requests and give bug reports all the time. I was happy to be useful.

It's easier to fulfill people's current demands than to ignite other demands on them.

Anyway, ...

Also I did once have a post with a release in this thread, and i've removed it because no one noticed and gave feedback about it and it had some nasty bugs I only found out by myself very late. The post was there for almost a whole week with no replies. Maybe it's because it didn't have a pretty picture.

I remember seeing it, and iirc I've downloaded and tested it in my computer at home. Loved the particles. But I avoid saying anything when I'm not in a mood to write, and I don't want to justify this by listing my real life's problems.

Engoo has surpassed Makaqu in relevance. Makaqu may still be better in some aspects, but that doesn't really matter. And I want to keep watching Engoo evolve, even if I don't say anything.

[qbism]

The last uncommitted change I made was a huge colored lighting speedup through an alternative method with little visual loss.

If it's anything like the 252 svn fog, it's fast but rough on geometry edges and highly banded. There's always an fps price to pay.

[Julius]

I really wouldn't put too much stock on what those guys say over there, they seem to strike me as being more "ooo-look-at-the-pretty-gfx-gamers" rather than developers.

except they're developers and one in particular is a constant Xonotic preacher (if something uses Darkplaces he'll plug Xonotic in every instance) and an admin of several Free Software gaming sites (including FreeGameArts, which some of you may know) so what he says holds a lot of weight to representing that scene.

Being that "particular" mod on freegamedev.net (who indeed likes Xonotic a lot, and sees nothing wrong with that), I have to defend our community here I guess. Looking at the thread I agree that what the user "Envropi" said was really not that well though out and certainly does not represent the opinion of our community. Overall we are very much supportive of any FOSS project people find fun in developing (evident also by the fact that we are hosting quite a few rather obscure FOSS game development projects). Edit: my point in that thread was actually not that it doesn't make sense to develop Engoo, but rather that one shouldn't expect to get a great amount of others to praise you for that and stop development if there is little outside interest.

Now granted, FOSS projects that strive to create games that can rival some good indipendant productions or even low budget fully commercial games will rise more interest, because (as you have rightly commented) it brings in more interest from "gamers", but also because we strongly believe FOSS game development can be much more than the niche it currently seems to sit in all too comfortably (e.g. for example reinventing the wheel with quake1 derived code for the fun of doing it... which is also fine in general, but should not be all what FOSS game development is about).

As for me, I wouldn't really call me a "developer". I am rather an 3D artist that is enthusiastic about FOSS game development and contributes art to various of them from time to time. Ah and btw FreeGameArts is by now more than dead and has been fully replaced by the great OpenGameArt.org... and regarding those files linked on that site: It's a user content driven site that hosts literarlly thousands of fully FOSS compliant files... it will be always possible to find a few maybe not quite 100% strickly adhering files on there and the ones mentioned all fall in an grey area of what is legal to do. It's good that leilei pointed that out in the comments, and I still strongly wish he or she will continue to do so, but sometimes one can also be too strict about something and thus even drive away potential contributors of fully FOSS content.

[mankrip]

we strongly believe FOSS game development can be much more than the niche it currently seems to sit in all too comfortably (e.g. for example reinventing the wheel with quake1 derived code for the fun of doing it... [...]).

And here's the point that people outside of the Quake scene seems to usually fail to get: It's not just for the fun of doing it!

The Quake engine does not run only Quake. It can be used to develop a hell of a lot of different games. This was done with a modified Quake software renderer. And I believe leileilol's rage is exactly because of people failing to realize that.

Some of the features from the software renderers of Engoo, Makaqu and Super8 only used to exist in plain tech demos or in the software renderers of closed-source commercial engines such as Unreal. We are developing open-source versions of those features (along with several other features) and releasing them in a robust game engine for anyone to develop anything using them for free. This is what makes reinventing such wheels worthwhile. And while most plataforms nowadays does have hardware acceleration, hardware-accelerated engines will never be as portable as engines using a software renderer, so the potential audience for software renderers will always be bigger. And many hardware-accelerated renderers nowadays still doesn't support everything that Quake's software renderer can do - e.g. texture and screen turbulence.

Making people realize that is hard, but I guess that if leileilol made a fully-featured TC to showcase everything Engoo can do, with different models, levels, artwork style and gameplay, people would realize that more easily.

That said, I don't think any of the current software-rendered Quake engines are easy enough to make content for yet. None of them supports skeletal models and true color rendering, for instance. Thus, making content that looks good in them is really hard.

[qbism]

reinventing the wheel with quake1 derived code for the fun of doing it...

Yep, we're merely having fun! But I fail to see the point of a FOSS movement that is OK with 2D 8-bit but not 3D. Most players who like pixelized games don't care about the inner workings, they just like the "look" of it. I used to think it was nostalgia but many younger people are getting into it. Now, whether 2D or 3D, sometimes it's not quite the same when faked in opengl.

Also, most people can make the distinction between commercial content, mod, and an independent game. Many indie projects FOSS or not have progressed from mod to TC to free-standing game.

Realize Xonotic is itself a modernized retro-ish shooter that began with Quake. The mapping style seems similar to UT3, a 10-year-old game.

[Baker]

we strongly believe FOSS game development can be much more than the niche it currently seems to sit in all too comfortably (e.g. for example reinventing the wheel with quake1 derived code for the fun of doing it... which is also fine in general, but should not be all what FOSS game development is about)

Baker's Top Ten List:

#10) Unique thought comes from diversity. Ever met the "dumb commercially successfully mapper/level designer"? They don't exist. Their way of thinking isn't mainstream, it is the expression of their ideas that becomes mainstream. (This is classic chicken or egg question).
#9) Of all the FOSS stuff, where are you going to find another 3D software renderer?
#8) Most free gamers don't even care about open source, mostly they want to play a game for free. Most of those people don't have the talent to contribute back to open source in any meaningful way.

#7 through #2) You'll just have to imagine these ... they would have been really funny and comedy gold.

#1) Anything beats playing Tux Racer all the freaking time.

[Julius]

Heh, I know people would pick on that half sentence when I wrote it... I almost removed it again but then left it in as a sort of bait

And the reaction actually proves my point...
I am not arguing that it doesn't make sense to to make a modernized software renderer (diversity is good as someone mentioned in this thread, even though in this case it is really focused on fringe uses like the Dreamcast homebrew scene etc.). And in any case, if the developer finds it interesting (or yes "fun") to work on such a software, who am I to question that?

What I am opposed to is the kind of circle jerk (yes another bait term ) many people around here and other places are indulged in. Self importance and demanding recognition (or otherwise stopping development) for projects that are (in the grander scheme of FOSS game development) at best "pet-projects" of those respective developers, will not get you much friends around the broader (e.g. more inclusive) internet communities like freegamedev.net.

The same goes for over the top copyleft/libre software advocates. No, we are not "hypocritical" FOSS evangelists, but rather those that look over the rim of our bathtub and realized that FOSS games/software can only have the intended impact if we reach a broader audience, and that those "extremists" are alienating that broader audience at an alarming rate.

[mankrip]

I'm not going to argue about the rest of your reply, but only about this:

I am not arguing that it doesn't make sense to to make a modernized software renderer (diversity is good as someone mentioned in this thread, even though in this case it is really focused on fringe uses like the Dreamcast homebrew scene etc.).

A multi-platform engine runs in... multiple platforms.

In my case, that project was aimed at Dreamcast, Windows and Linux. With exactly the same visual quality in all platforms, running the same data from the same disc. Leileilol is also aiming at multiple platforms, and even though Engoo's releases doesn't include a specific game for it to run, anyone could make one.

Even nowadays, games with seemingly simpler graphics, rendered via software, does still sell. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone told its developer the same kind of thing you're saying to us here - that his project is a fringe hobby that no one other than his close friends would care about.

[edit] Also, leileilol explicitly asked for some help with porting Engoo to SDL and got zero answers in that FreeGameDev thread:

How hard would an additional multiplatform SDL target be? I mean, it'd have to hook up through with its own sys_sdl.c and vid_sdl.c files instead of compromising the existing build targets

Anyone willing to submit a multiplatform SDL patch or a DUMB playback patch?

One of the things engoo needs in video support is the second buffer, "reflectbuffer" to get water reflections working, which currently only works in DirectDraw on Windows.

... among other hints of things that someone could have helped with. leileilol asked for help, not for praise.