Hackers, Slackers, and Shackles 347
blacklily8 writes "What is the future of free software development for games? Is it possible? Will the games ever equal or surpass their proprietary competitors? Why should we care? After thoroughly researching the free and open source software model, and interviewing both indie and free software game developers, author Matt Barton decided that the future is indeed very bright. Stallman is quoted here saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e., "Non-Free.")"
Planeshift (Score:5, Informative)
The system recently reached another milestone, though it will probably remain in development for quite some time... Maybe some Slashdot hackers will help?
I think free games are great. (Score:1, Informative)
Free games looking good (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.selectparks.net/modules.php?name=Co
And it seems that there is a great base available that oculd lead to wonderfull things. Crystal space (crystal.sf.net) is a free engine that appears to be competitive in quality to modern commercial engines. Go to the games made using crystal, it can be used. I should also mention cube engine (cubeengine.com) and stepmania (stepmania.com) as well as the abundance of free MMO's and VR projects.
Re:hypocritical of stallman? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Practical use: software, manuals. They are needed to run your computer, to allow you to write your documentation, to generate your data. You can qualify them objectively: it's OK, it's better, it's wrong. Software is indeed special: is matematical model, but executable. See FSF and OSI for licenses.
2. Non-practical use, or art: they don't have practical use, they are not needed to run you computer, they just can be enjoined "as is" and perhaps modified to create derivative art. Is American folk better than Celtic music? You cannot tell it objectively. See CreativeCommons for licenses.
Read RMS or FSF articles, there is no cinism, no contradiction, just your ignorance.
Re:hypocritical of stallman? (Score:3, Informative)
So how exactly is that different of when I take Firefox, name its "Grumbels Personal Browser" add some stuff to it and release? Why should I be allowed to do that with Firefox, or any kind of free software, but not with movies, videogames or whatever?
Beside from that people are doing that all the time with movies, movies get remaked, songs covered and pictures reused in collages.
Game software is an art. (Score:4, Informative)
That having been said, the reason why you can't put game artists, texturers, and musicians in the same class as game programmers is because they generally refuse to work for free. While a programmer may find personal expression through a game, rare is the artist or musician who feels the same way. You can get ones who will work to make a name for themselves, or work because they like the game, but generally you don't find musicians who work on games like they compose their own songs. While working on games is personal for a programmer, it isn't so much for artists / musicians. Why do it then?
And there is no such thing as an optimal software algorithm. There are ones well suited for a task and ones that are not, but there are no software algorithims that are best in all ways.
TFA is DOA, BTW.
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Informative)
a) hardly anybody developed it while it was OpenSource, some bugfixes asside it what basically a one-man thing
b) after some years of no development on the OpenSource Tuxracer, there is now some life in it again, see PPRacer: http://projects.planetpenguin.de/racer/
c) sunspirestudios seem to have disapread, probally didn't sell to well in the end
### Same goes for tuxkart.
See http://supertuxkart.berlios.de/, however the original tuxkart has never gone closed source.
### We need some kind of "open art" license or something, and people working for it.
http://creativecommons.org/
For most part we really just need more people.
Re:Free games looking good (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OT - How do you play Nethack? (Score:3, Informative)
first you need to get the poison resistance, reflection and such before proceeding. getting excalibur if you're lawful is an easy, cheap helper too. good ac helps too, and don't be fooled, good ac is at least -15. learn to use healing bottles to maximize your healthpoints.
don't leave anything to chance! have stashes of food, don't try every armor you get on, don't eat old bodies, keep an unicorn horn handy...
but this is exactly what i'm talking about, what kind of chances would a game have that was so mean as nethack in the real, for profit, market?
if you want to speed it up, read some spoilers. they help a _lot_, a lot more than you would gain from playing in explorer mode for years on your own.
Re:hypocritical of stallman? (Score:3, Informative)
The difference between art and software is that Software is a process, a medium. Software does stuff on, and to your computer, so you want to know exactly what it does. Who knows, it might wipe your data, or other evil things. Art isn't going to do that, as it is in itself complete. Of course, art must still be presented on a medium. Films on reels, DVDs, or VHSes. Paintings on canvas or paper, or more obscure substances. Video Games on software. Yes, there is overlap. Choosing the right tools or media (lens, camera, film vs. hardware, software) is part of creating that art.
The problem with 'liberating' art like software is being liberated by the Free Software movement is that it would ultimately dilute the experience. Software, in general, serves a specific purpose, it solves a specific problem, but the purposes vary across the spectrum. Morphing software into other software to solve similar problems is considered a good thing, and is hard to argue against.
Art provokes thought and gives entertainment. It's hard or impossible to morph it into something else, as it will lose its vital distinction, and hence be diluted. This is why parody is so hard to do.
~phil
Re:No calls barred. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. [gnu.org]
Eternal Lands (Score:3, Informative)
-ReK
Re:How old is Matt Barton, exactly? (Score:3, Informative)
The gray between art and code (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hypocritical of stallman? (Score:3, Informative)
The game as a whole is art. The code which implements the game is just code. Its practical use is to hold together all of the artistic elements of the game.
Are you for real? (Score:3, Informative)
>You're not allowed to do that with Firefox, or any Free Software; doing so would be misappropriation.
Are you for real? Firefox was a stunning example of how someone did exactly what was decribed above. Someone (I don't think it was grumbel) decided that mozilla was too damn huge, and getting huger. So he decided to remove all the thunderbird extensions, the irc extensions, the huge preferences menus, etc and just bring the size down in any way possible. Eventually it was called phoenix, and given to people, without the explicit support of the Mozilla foundation. It was only after it was clear that phoenix was not only not going away, but was pulling developers away from the Mozilla effort that the foundation decided on the firefox directives. You can find similar examples, even within the GNU foundation; gcc 3.0 comes to mind as a fork that became official.
Re:RMS? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:OT - How do you play Nethack? (Score:3, Informative)
Stallman is being misquoted here (Score:2, Informative)
This does NOT mean he believes the scenario can be legally protected. RMS does NOT believe art or fiction are entitled to copyright protection except under limited circumstances.
I had the chance to discuss the issue of copyright protection for art with RMS over Labor Day weekend 2004 at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston. Also present during the discussion was Keith F. Lynch, a long-time friend of mine.
I asked RMS under what circumstances a person who creates a work of fiction is entitled to restrict its further redistribution, according to his personal beliefs. Initially, he said there were no such circumstances. I described a hypothetical situation in which a person has written down a private sexual fantasy, perhaps for therapeutic reasons, and the document has come into the possession of another person. I asked RMS if the author was entitled to limit the distribution of the document-- basically, if the person had a unique right to control copying it, the essence of copyright law.
Reluctantly, RMS agreed that such a document must be covered by a special exception to his beliefs. After considerable further discussion, he set out the terms of the exception: it applies only to creative works that are highly personal in nature and which have no value to the general public.
This position leaves no room for copyright protection for other kinds of creative works, especially including commercial fiction, video game storylines, or the images and sounds associated with video games.
In his article, Matt Barton clearly failed to comprehend Stallman's position on this issue, and has misled his readers.
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