Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game

crush writes "The Linux Game Tome notes that the final team to produce a fully Open Source 3D game using the CrystalSpace engine and Blender has been chosen. The project (known as Apricot) aims to produce a cross-platform, 3D game with completely Free (CCA) graphics, music and code. An important side-effect of the project is to improve open source tools for the professional game development industry."
I look forward to more 3D games on my desktop, even if this one won't be the first. (And where is the open-source bus-driving counterpart to the under-rated FlightGear?)

Good games I have been playing on Linux

[Realistic_Dragon (655151)]

A couple of interesting games with Linux support I have only found recently:

- Warzone 2100. Not as shiny as Supreme Commander, but much more involved. Great fun.
- NWN 1. Thanks to the fact that NWN2 bombed there is still a large online community.

The problem

[nawcom (941663)]

I think the problem with decent open source game development (assuming the developers aren't getting bi-weekly checks) is the amount of programmers and artists needed and the amount of time needed to spend on it. FPSs can be the exception if they use an existing 3d engine and layout similar to a game already out. but something like an open source spore or perhaps a 3d rendered RTS like warcraft 3.. slashcraft: penguins versus macboys. or maybe 4 races, penguins, daemons, macboys, and a microsoft borg-like r

Re:

[Eravnrekaree (467752)]

One interesting concept, if the game is 3D multi-user, allow users to perhaps contribute graphics or expand the terrain of game, by uploading new graphics and terrain to the server. The sort of project I find interesting would be something involving a persistant, dynamic always running 3D world running on a server, which can also change, for instance, trees might blow in simulated winds for instance. People could move their "avatar" or whatever you want to call it and perhaps even manipulate objects in the

Also needed - better video card driver support

[transporter_ii (986545)]

Read through Ubuntuforums.org and see all the people having trouble with cards that are supposed to do 3D but aren't for some reason. There are a large amount of posts.

My 1-month old new system has a VIA Chrome 9 HC IGP card. I've spent the last 2 days trying to get it to work on Ubuntu with something other than a generic VESA driver. I finally noticed VIA actually released a new driver on Dec 2007. I downloaded it and installed it. Still no 3D. After the second day of this, I said screw it and ordered an o

If you buy cheap hardware

[Rix (54095)]

You don't get to bitch when it doesn't work very well. You get what you pay for. Those $200 ultra cheap systems aren't intended for gaming, regardless of OS.

Re:

[88NoSoup4U88 (721233)]

if you want a good open source game, you need full time developers who can work full time on it.

Or good management, and a team consisting of members that are aware that he/she has to take full responsibility for their expertise.

This would mean that everyone has a perfect grasp of the goals for the game, and each member's individual input is used to slowly clean up and refine the initial idea(s).
This also means that each member does its own research (based on some rough layouts in the gamedesign docume

Great fan of FlightGear myself

[smchris (464899)]

I say we build up the airports ala Second Life and party in the lounges! And, yes, you would have to actually fly to each airport and deplane in my vision.

The airports could become hubs into the cities. FlightGear has great potential to become a parallel earth so why not start populating it?

There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Zombie Ryushu (803103)]

Too much stuff from the past gets neglected.

The Pros:

There have been alot of innovative, beautiful games to come out of F/OSS:
Vega Strike
Pingus
FreeDroid RPG
TrackBalls
Nexuiz
Open Arena
Tremulous
Torcs
Scorched Earth 3D
AssaultCube
Lincity NG

Also, many DOS games have found new life as Linux games:

Quake 1, 2, and 3
Doom I, II, and Final
Descent I and II (D2X-XL)
Warcraft II *
Duke Nukem 3D

Problems:

Some games get neglected that really should not have been:
Heretic and Hexen - These are Doom Engine games, technically, there is one Engine that plays them, Vavoom, supposedly DoomsDay plays them, but in many cases their performance is really buggy.
Strife - Only Vavoom plays this.
I'd like to note that you can play Strife, Heretic, and Hexen under Wine with Randy Heit's ZDoom Engine for Windows. But thats not the same as a Native Linux Port. There used to be a Linux port of the massive multiplayer engine ZDaemon for Doom based games, but that guy announced that he hated Linux and closed off his source. He even put code in his program to prevent people using Wine to play the game, anmd said that Linux Users were responsible for DoS attacks against his servers.

Blood - This is a big one. Blood was one of the greatest games of all time. Yet there is no Engine replacement for it and it runs awful under DosEmu and DosBox. There exists a Total Remake of the Bloodbath levels called "Transfusion" but it is Quake based and is nothing like the original Blood.
Star Command: Revolution - A game So obscure I found it for 3.95 in a Wal-Mart Bargain bin
Mechwarrior 2: This game predates Direct 3D, You can't run this under Wine.

* Recently, Warcraft II support under Stratagus has suffered. Stratagus 2.1 was superior to Stratagus 2.2. Stratagus 2.1 had support for 16 players instead of the usual 8, and could do dual race computer forces. It had a level editor, and could read the native Warcraft II PUD Format.

There exists Linux Engines for:

Quake 4
Doom 3

I really think a great deal more effort should be pushed into making Windows and older Dos games accessible and updated under Linux, such as One Must Fall, and producing more original games, as it seems some Linux games that used to be full steam ahead are dying out. I'm shifting my focus in University towards programming just so I will have the technical programming knowledge to contribute to Open Source projects more than I am now. So many of the problems are things like bugs in network code, deprecated syntax, added support for additional games.

Games are where the Computer Industry goes. It was Doom that gave us the Windows Ecosystem, so it will have to be a killer Linux game that gives us the Linux ecosystem.

Re:

[andy314159pi (787550)]

Too much stuff from the past gets neglected. The Pros: There have been alot of innovative, beautiful games to come out of F/OSS: Vega Strike Pingus FreeDroid RPG TrackBalls Nexuiz Open Arena Tremulous Torcs Scorched Earth 3D AssaultCube Lincity NG

Don't forget BZFlag [bzflag.org].

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

I'd like to add Battle for Wesnoth to the good FOSS games list. It and Vega Strike are the only two games that I've been playing recently. The only non-Free game I've seen recently that I've wanted to play is Portal, but the fact that it's not available without DRM, nor on any platform I own has meant that I haven't bought it.

Re:

[AlXtreme (223728)]

It was Doom that gave us the Windows Ecosystem, so it will have to be a killer Linux game that gives us the Linux ecosystem.

You had me nodding all the way, and you have to end your post with such a misinformed line. Doom came out way before Win '95 and didn't do zit in creating any ecosystem; Microsoft's marketing was immensely more important than any DOS/Windows game. And why should people switch to Linux merely for a game that will probably be ported to Windows if it's successful by any rate?

Don't get me

Open Source Bus Driving Simulator

[sopwith (5659)]

I know that last part of the story was meant as a joke, but... http://virtualbus.info/ [virtualbus.info]

(some English info at http://vbus.wikia.com/ [wikia.com] , and the Subversion repository is at svn://prv.ilan.pl/virtualbus )

Re:

[timothy (36799)]

No, not a joke -- thanks for that link! I have never played the actual game, but from screenshots and descriptions, I know that I *want* to play TBG :) Awesome!

timothy

Apricot, eh?

[VValdo (10446)]

Wait a second! Isn't the next Elephant's Dream [elephantsdream.org]-like open animated short (originally called "orange") going to be called "Peach"?

Orange? Peach? Apricot?

I call nepotism! ;)

W

Seriously tho-- is the game related to the short?

Re:Apricot, eh?

[Shade of Pyrrhus (992978)]

Afterwards, they're going to take all of the projects and throw them in the Blender - Open Source Smoothies for everyone! So that's what OSS really stands for...

This should be server based multi user

[Eravnrekaree (467752)]

I am glad to see that there is work underway to show what Linux, X/ OpenGL can do in the area of gaming. There are too few games avialable for Linux.

I do think it would be a good idea for the developers to make this is a server based multiple user game ( a virtual world), the sort where you can login and logoff but the world remains persistant. Perhaps that does not fit with the plot they have for the game, I dont know. But I do think that having more open source multi-user games is a fantastic idea can be

Also post your wishes for Blender at Peach site

[LetterRip (30937)]

If you go to http://peach.blender.org/ [blender.org] one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

LetterRip

Re:

[LetterRip (30937)]

Doh! So used to typing peach that I typed the wrong project. I meant that if you go to http://apricot.blender.org/ [blender.org] [blender.org] one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

LetterRip

Oboy.

[stonecypher (118140)]

This is a game designed by committee. If there isn't a game designer at the lead of the team with a passion for their design, then this might as well be another cookie cutter grist mill EA waste of shelf space. (Except, of course, this also isn't likely to hit the shelves.) It's nice that open source is putting together the effort to show that they can do something like this, and that it can all be free, but games aren't like other engineering projects. They require passion, and I don't see that here.

No

Re:Oboy.

[bperkins (12056)]

It seems to me that you (and just about all of slashdot) are missing the point.

I agree with you, the game is probably going to be crap. But even if they had a better than average chance of making a good game, it'd probably be crap, since most games are crap.

From what I see, the point of this game is to demonstrate that an OSS toolchain is a viable solution for game design. If they can create a game that works mostly and has reasonable gameplay, they will have accomplished the goal. If the game is lacking in the concept department, most people who make the decision to create a game will be able to see that although the game isn't vey good, the platform seems to work well enough to use as a foundation. If it ends up being a good game, it's a total home run, since they get free publicity.

I'm surprised that as a gaming professional, you don't see the possibilities here. I'm in the silicon design industry and if someone wanted to demonstrate chip design using OSS tools, I'd be mostly unconcerned about the final product.

    The reality is that vendor tools are a serious pain an the ass. They are usually broken and support is mostly useless. Our internal tools are not much better as far as bugs, but since we have the source, there's at least some chance of getting it working in a reasonable amount of time. If someone demonstrated the 90% of what we needed was OSS and it had some miles under it, we'd be all over it.

That said, I'm sure they still have an uphill battle to achieve even a modest success, but I don't think it's hopeless.

Design by Committee Equals Bad Game

[GaryPatterson (852699)]

The project site makes it pretty clear there's no design document for the game, no central vision of what it will be. They're going to design it once they've got the people together, so it's going to be one of those designed-by-committee games.

That way lies adequacy and weak gameplay.

Still, I wish them well and since they're off to a bad start it can only improve from here.

Technology Demo

[Jekler (626699)]

I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo. The same way Elephants Dream was just masturbation material for artists. There wasn't anything in the way of real story being told, unless you really reach for some meaning in it. It's 11 minutes of "That's neat", but I'm never going to watch it again like Lord of the Rings or X-Men. I foresee roughly the same thing here, a bunch of people get together to show how deeply functional each of their subsystems is. Most of the "game" won't even have a purpose other than to show you how great Programmer X did collision detection, particle physics, etc. You'll be able to spend 5 minutes shooting cannon balls at a stack of barrels and watching them smash but otherwise there won't be much to do. Maybe it's pessimistic of me, but that's been my opinion of most games over the last decade. Everyone seems to be more proud of the intricacy of their work and doesn't understand why you think the game sucks, they think you just don't "get it". It's like they spend 3 years hand-crafting a #2 pencil and when I write a sentence then throw it away they're like "Hey, that thing was a work of art! I spent 13 months renting equipment at NASA to insert the lead using a bleeding-edge particle injector!" and I'm like "Yeah, but it still had one of those hard erasers that just smears what you're trying to erase so it's no good." I really subscribe to the idea that you need a single visionary to design a game. Otherwise it just becomes a pile of interesting components but it has no gestalt form.

Re:

[Jorrit (19549)]

Six months is a short time to make a full game. However since everything is Open Source we are counting on the community to continue on this game after the project has finished. Once the six months are over and the team is back home there is no reason why we have to stop there.

Also one of the other important goals of this project is to improve the game pipeline for Blender and Crystal Space and to serve as a tutorial for game developers who want to use that pipeline.

Greetings,

Re:

[grumbel (592662)]

### I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo.

That might very well be, but that really isn't a problem. The goal here isn't to make the best game ever, but to make a game, to demonstrate that the toolchain is usable and to improve it where needed, so that you or somebody else can use it to maybe one day make the best game ever with it.

Blender got a lot of improvements over the course of Elephants Dream and I bet it will be the same with this game.

Re:

[jd (1658)]

Well, attempts by Open Source developers to borrow from BBC Elite to produce a comprehensive open-ended gaming environment have so far not achieved a whole lot. Partly through legal complications, but also through lack of developers. I can't remember the last time the TORC group actually produced a release. Development on Empire seems limited to non-existant. The Netrek genre seems to have died. XTank was interesting, but died through licensing complications. Very few MUD or MUSH servers are under any kind

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Well, attempts by Open Source developers to borrow from BBC Elite to produce a comprehensive open-ended gaming environment have so far not achieved a whole lot

Really? [aegidian.org] I think they've done very well indeed [sourceforge.net] and has been about the only game I've played recently.

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

> So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS.

Where did you get the idea of FPS?

"But the real start will be the first week of February. Only then real decisions will be made on game concept, game design and other targets, although we do know it'll be derived from Project Peach, furry & crazy characters in a forest."
http://apricot.blender.org/ [blender.org]

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.

To use your example, Spore has been in development for like seven years and has undoubtedly cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly in man-hours of work. Do you think a free-source project could get a solid core of designers, coders, and artists to donate their time and money regularly for over half a decade with NO product to show for it, on the hope that one day it might be released and... look good on their resumes?

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on?

Now, an FPS, that's a known criteria. You can set clear goals for how every little thing should work, and any "controversial" parts, like level design, are conveniently lumped into chunks that can be handled individually. (If I want to make an oddball level or character model, I can handle it on my own.) Compare that to a more experimental game like Spore, where there aren't discrete levels and the creature models are intrinsic to the gameplay.

Basically, you can have innovative, high-production-value, or free: pick two. "Innovative and free" can be managed by small teams, and "high-budget and free" might theoretically be managed by initiatives like this one with clear and easily-established milestones along the way, but to get innovation AND high production values, you probably need a level of team discipline and management that can only be established with regular paychecks to incentivize everyone involved.

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

you probably need a level of team discipline and management that can only be established with regular paychecks to incentivize everyone involved.

Yeah well, and a few stock options wouldn't hurt either.

Re:

[Bandman (86149)]

Not to mention that if Spore was open source, we'd all be playing beta versions of it right now.

Re:

[Minwee (522556)]

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on?

I'm curious. Where exactly did you get the idea that putting your entire team on a death march [wikipedia.org] is somehow beneficial to the project?

Re:

[grumbel (592662)]

### I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.

When you are Will Wright himself maybe, if you are anybody else you will likely never get a penny from a publisher. Getting anything remotely or visionary done these days is extremely hard, no matter how you approach it.

That said, doing it Open Source wouldn't be any easier, since especially with Open Source games it is near impossible to assemble when doing

Re:

[orasio (188021)]

To use your example, Spore has been in development for like seven years and has undoubtedly cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly in man-hours of work. Do you think a free-source project could get a solid core of designers, coders, and artists to donate their time and money regularly for over half a decade with NO product to show for it, on the hope that one day it might be released and... look good on their resumes?

Apricot is a effort to improve free 3d tools. Some people invested money, and some developers will work and get paid, among other things because it _will_ look good in their resumes to have worked here, and probably because they want to, and like the idea.

Just because you might not have other goals that direct retribution it doesn't mean other people don't either.

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on?

From that, I see you are not a software developer or anything like that. EA does that, because they are incompetent at managing people. Non self

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[mrchaotica (681592)]

it's 3:20AM here, I'm working on an open source game.

No you're not; you're posting on Slashdot!

Re:

[Jorrit (19549)]

The type of game hasn't been decided yet. So where did you get the idea that it will be an FPS?

Greetings,

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[rm999 (775449)]

"Why is it that only non-Free developers are giving us new kinds of games like Spore?"

Because a game like spore takes decades of man-hours to do right, and most open source developers have full-time jobs. When you pay for software - especially games - you're usually paying for a lot of thought and time from the developers/artists.

Re:

[orasio (188021)]

I'm having trouble thinking of a significant and good piece of open-source software that I use that wasn't either commercial-then-freed, or free-then-commercially-sponsored.

I think this happens because you create a false free-commercial dichotomy. Free software does not cease to be free, because it is commercially sponsored.

Probably your issue is the metrics you use. Maybe the same software you consider "significant and good" is considered "significant and good" by the people who have money to invest in it. But it doesn't say anything about free software not being able to be significant and good. It just says that you probably think "significant and good" free software is the

Re:

[LetterRip (30937)]

So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS. Well, maybe that will make Free Software look like it's got it together, able to coordinate the efforts of many volunteers for a quality product.

Actually it is not planned to be a FPS according to Ton (leader of Blender and the projects) , "[W]e will re-use the peach project assets [] so it's not likely to be a FPS".

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12399 [blender.org]

The official game style is yet to be announced; but I believe the team is leaning towards minigames.

LetterRip

Re:

[WilliamSChips (793741)]

What's emacs?

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

"Start february 2008, until july 2008"
http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/apricot-open-game/ [blender.org]

Re:

[ricebowl (999467)]

If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time?

I don't know; it'd be easy to say that open source != free, but that'd be both glib, redundant and not answering the question I guess. Perhaps there's the wages/salary/remuneration for the developers or maybe there's some resources need paying for? Whether a CVS repository server or some licensing fees to access...something or other?

Re:

[Sensible Clod (771142)]

I don't know; it'd be easy to say that open source != free, but that'd be both glib, redundant and not answering the question I guess.ething or other?

I count myself fortunate to have a rather large vocabulary, but I still had to read that 3 times before I realized you weren't talking about GNU libs.

Re:

[Shade of Pyrrhus (992978)]

From the website:
"At the end of July 2008 the game will be launched. The team members will get a great studio facility and housing in Amsterdam, all travel costs reimbursed, and a fee sufficient to cover all expenses during the period."

Obviously, this requires funding. The funding's coming from sponsors (see web site) and profits from the DVD sales. The DVD, as noted in the forums/site, will include all sorts of great documentation and information about what went on and stuff.

And from the forum:
"T

Re:This project needs funding?

[LetterRip (30937)]

If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time?

Full time artists and full time developers are going to be funded for both Blender and for CrystalSpace. These projects (Orange, Peach, Apricot) serve a few purposes - to prove the quality of these particular open source tools for professional usage (ie pulling together very high quality art work, game assets, game design and logic, and game environment in a very short period of time) and as a major side benefit provides excellent functionality for the current and future users of both projects (ie Blender has had huge leaps in functionality improvement during both Elephants Dream (Orange) and during Rabbits Revenge (Peach) as the artists wishlists were met by both the developers paid to work for the project and the rest of the Blender volunteer team).

LetterRip

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

"To save time and to benefit from cooperation with the artists working in the Blender Institute on the Peach project, we will re-use as much material from Peach as possible.
That means that the game will have funny & furry animals, and play in an outdoors environment.

This probably means an adventure/platform style of game, or maybe it's going to be like mini games or party games. The Apricot team will have - within above constraints - the full creative freedom in designing the game concept and game play.

Re:

[Thalagyrt (851883)]

Honestly the Crystal Space engine screenshots make it look like the devs are still stuck in 1999. Using decals for shadows? In their news, they just recently implemented decals in the engine?

They really should have used Ogre.

Re:Why crystal space?

[Jorrit (19549)]

One of the goals of the Apricot project is to modernize the Crystal Space engine. This includes probably the following features that we will implement or improve:

• New render system with better support for render to texture (allowing things like HDR, Bloom) and shadowing techniques.
  
• New skeletal animation system with support for vertex weights.
  
• Support for tree generation and imposters to allow for big outdoor levels.
  
• Continue working on the Bullet physics plugin.
  

I'm of course biased as I'm the project manager but I believe that the strongest point of Crystal Space is it's modularity and extensibility. It is because of that that we will be able to move into the future and we will do so with the Apricot project.

Greetings,

Re:

[Malkin (133793)]

I really hate to say this, but I would feel negligent if I did not question the wisdom of using this project to drag Crystal Space into the 21st century, when there are more up-to-date, perfectly viable, modular, extensible open source 3D graphics engines available. Ogre3D, for example, is available under the exact same license as Crystal Space, and it supports all of the features you mention, and has already been used to make commercial games. Trust me, developing a pro-quality game is a steep enough hil

Re:

[LetterRip (30937)]

The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting.

The game content and logic are planned to be released under Creative Commons Attribution I believe (as were the Elephants Dream assets) - improvements to Blender will be under GPL, and improvements to CrystalSpace will be under LGPL.

LetterRip

Re:

[Eravnrekaree (467752)]

I was recently thinking about what it would take to create some sort of a system which contains a multi-user 3D world, which could become quite large, a continuous, persistant 3D world. I was looking for some possible ways to perhaps render objects more distant to the user with less detail, so the detail would decrease the farther an object is. With a very large world, one that might continue for millions of pixels, that would be rather necessary to keep resource usage down. Perhaps when the terrain is desi