Re: Loki...

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Josef Spillner wrote:

> > The Source code for Quake-1 - including the server and the necessary
> > support tools - is 250,000 lines of code.  That's pretty comparable to a
> > typical large OpenSource project - Python (for example) contains about
> > 120,000 lines, Apache is 120,000 - GIMP contains 250,000 lines.
> 
> Sloccount reports 136k for Quake2.

Quake 1 has 100k for the *game* - but you have to include the tools required
to build the models and the server - that brings it up to 250,000!

> This is even comparable to some large open
> source games (I measured many projects a while back just to get a clue about
> the coding efforts).

Yes - FGFS (excluding PLIB) is 100k, TuxAQFH (including PLIB which was
originally a part of it) is 90k.

> > But Quake also has 57 megabytes of 3D models, textures, etc - just for the
> > basic demo levels.
> 
> Data which can still not be used freely if I'm right :(

I think that's right.

It has been suggested that it would be a better gift to the Linux
world to OpenSource the data and lock up the code!   I could think
of a dozen *great* game ideas for alternative games you could play
in the Quake 'world' if the data were freely available.

> >   5) Only one in 35 commercial games makes a profit.  OpenSource games
> > don't have to be profitable - but to be worth writing at all, you DO want
> > them to have a reasonable "happy-audience-to-effort" ratio...which is kinda
> > the same thing.  It's tough to go into an OpenSource development that's
> > going to suck up all your free time for a year or more knowing that there
> > is only a 3% chance that it will be loved.
> 
> 3% seems to be an exaggeration but I get your point.

It's not an exaggeration for commercial games.  Only 1 in 35 is ever profitable,
thats ~3%.
 
> >   * I'd hoped that by making a game where it was relatively easy to add
> >     levels of your own (TuxKart), I'd get lots of people contributing game
> >     levels - which would make the game bigger with little effort on my part
> >     - and also make the game more interesting for me to play.  I never got
> >     a single level contributed.
> 
> Never? This surprises me. There are games which profit from such a concept,
> there are quite some OpenRacer levels, Freeciv tilesets, KDE games carddecks
> etc.

It's a lot harder with 3D games.  OpenRacer (aka TuxRacer) levels are 3D but
only rather simplistically - you paint a height field in one 2D image and a
'material type' in another and scatter 3D trees by painting red dots into a
third.  That makes for easy level design - within the very narrow limits of
that game - it rapidly breaks down if you want a little more variety in your
levels.

> But I can also imagine that a not too small part of Linux users doesn't even
> know it's possible to contribute, and how much we wait for more
> contributions...

Yes.
 
> Libraries and large game systems will play an even larger role in the next
> few years. I'm currently not informed whether new games are largely based on
> that, but I see many which use SDL (-Net, -...), which certainly saves
> development time.

Yes - I'm certainly convinced of that.  I have been working with my son on
a 'quick hack' game to present to his math class at school - it's multiplayer
(you may recollect the grief I had with the keyboard problem!) and allows
each player to control a Wizard who can conjure up spells to splat the other
guy or defend himself using sequences of button pushes...kind of like a
beat-em-up - but non-contact.

It's currently almost playable and sitting at 7,000 lines of code after a
couple of weeks of work. There is no way you could do that without a pretty
serious library to back you up.
 
> > It's very depressing - but we *NEED* commercial games for Linux.
> 
> Well, if we could somehow attract all the freelancers which publish "freeware
> games" (sometimes featuring new game concepts or cute graphics) to use free
> licenses we'd already be a step ahead, without requiring commercial games.

It would help - but I don't think it'll solve the problem.
 
----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
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