Re: [kidsgames] Generic adventure game engine

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

Terry Hancock wrote:

> Just a philosophical opinion:
> I think games of this nature are very much like books or television
> shows, and that they fall very naturally into the closed-source
> economics model.  Of all the classes of software, this is the
> one I really don't mind being closed source and proprietary.
>

For me it's not so much a matter of minding proprietary software as making
similar open source software available.

>
> In fact, I would argue that if a generic graphic adventure game
> engine (especially one compatible with industry standard APIs)
> were to be developed, it would be good to release it under the
> LGPL or other license that allows the games written with it
> to be proprietary.  This might encourage adventure games to be
> written for Linux, since there would be an economic payback.
>

This all depends on the design of the engine.  If the engine were written to
act as a stand-alone interpreter of the game data, there's nothing (I don't
think) to preclude someone from selling the data files.  After all, a GPLed
word processor wouldn't require you to give away your writings.  Still, if
the LGPL would make this clearer, sure, why not?

>
> I notice that Linux free software games tend to have a very
> different sort of nature -- they seem to have weak story or
> character, with a more complete and open game play. They are
> designed to be _games_ proper, rather than puzzle/stories like
> the commercial adventure games.
>

I think that's a function of the interests of the game writers.  The people
writing games are generally writing the sort of games they want to play,
which means arcade style stuff.

>
> While I can admire this type of game for its own qualities,
> I always really liked the story-type adventure games, and I
> wish there were more available for Linux.  Indeed, if there
> are in fact ANY games like this for Linux I'd like to find
> them!  The problem would seem to be that the talented people
> needed to create the content for these games are not
> motivated to work on free software, and would much rather
> get a regular pay check (after all, they could always be
> working for Saturday morning TV).

That's why we want to develop a game engine that will allow the creation of
games by non-programmers.  We've already got a group of people interested in
developing the graphics, music, and game flow for "Where in Hell is Aida
Sanfernando?"  What we need to do is come up with an engine that gives them
enough capabilities for a rich game experience without requiring them to
become proficient game programmers to create their works.  If we can do that
it should be fairly easily expandable to other games (and even other styles
of games).  I've skimmed over Entity <http://entity.evilplan.org>, which Kirk
Ismay mentioned, and I think it has great potential as the core for an engine
such as this.  I'll try to look at it in more detail, but I'm not sure just
when I'll get the time to do so.

--
Doug Loss                 God is a comedian playing
Data Network Coordinator  to an audience too afraid
Bloomsburg University     to laugh.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Voltaire


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