Are Open-Source Games & Community Game Engines Fading Away?

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

At least 14 out of 15 wifi adapters have horrible linux driver. Almost nobody gets the experience you describe.

Then either all machines I install it to are extremely lucky ... or, you're vastly exaggerating. In recent times I've installed Linux on 3 different machines, each connected wirelessly and all 3 of which working out-of-the-box and with better performance than they demonstrated while still running Windows. And all 3 with vastly different components to one another (a consequence of them being varying ages; one laptop from around 2005/2006, one laptop bought in 2014 and one desktop PC constructed in 2013 and using a WLAN USB adapter at least 10 years old). When connecting any of these wired, all 3 work just as fine as wirelessly; just with better bandwidth but latency is about the same.

So, either I am indeed stupidly lucky or, you're exaggerating your point. And I'm not trying to suggest you're lying or anything, just mildly driving your point home a bit excessively. Because, honestly, I've never been that lucky in my life. In pact, my life has made it a point to deny me any and all forms of luck in any and all endeavour. No joke, I am in fact one of the least lucky people that I know of.

[ruthan]

Maybe all saw how many lines of codes have Unreal 3 a 4, or and just gave up, i think that it is rational.

[blackiwid]

Open source also does not have to mean that other assets (graphics, sound) are likewise open.

My point is that "open source" does not have to mean the opposite of "commercial". I would like to see the lines blurred more.

I tried to make that point before but got ignored, its funny how much people mix into this discussion, how much money a game cost is it a linux game (was any of that the question?) but people have their anger about stuff and connect topics that have nothing to do with their issues with it.

at the end we even have talk about the (network) driver situation under linux, wth has that to do with open source games. One point of opensource would be for a company to not "waste" time to support linux, like apple just did with swift, they dont care about windows in this case but are happy if some 3rd party waste their time to support this "nice" os.

because the infrastruktur between apple and linux is very similar both are unix-kind oses, like more or less everything than windows.

But I start going OT myself. For me to support windows was a pain in the ass with canta 3d karaoke software. Its just funnily happend that one os got so bigger than everything else.

but I bet its easier to port android stuff to gnu/linux and the other way, so because android has much more installations than windows, we should stopp caring for this one alien os.

to call it opensource and forbit moneytisation of 3rd parties will be difficult, its then more a shared source thing and more or less useless, a few of the big engines do that already, so thats nothing that has to happen.

I see it like that engines are not easy to get OS but look at it as java where the current full compiler and interpreter is proprietary, then you have the games everything that uses that engine, that should be easy seperatable, so just release that part as opensource, if you cut out the engie 99% of the value you want to protect as author is the artwork (thats maybe not true for all games but for most), so just gpl or if you hate it normal bsd or apache lisense it and good to go. Nobody can sell the game without your agreement, because you still have the copyright on the artwork.

I think it will happen, some starts it, and it will sell copies, in this hard market every bulletpoint on a featurelist matters everything that differenciates your game from the other 1 trillion games, and when people see that nothing negatve happens more will follow and soon people will become big problems if they dont release the source, it gets a expectation. like drm free is a thing for audio a bit also for games, and every mmo that dont has a f2p mode has also most likely soon big problems.

In my oppinion its inevadable only the publiher could forbit it somehow, bann opensource games from their shops, but why should they do so?

[duby229]

Then either all machines I install it to are extremely lucky ... or, you're vastly exaggerating. In recent times I've installed Linux on 3 different machines, each connected wirelessly and all 3 of which working out-of-the-box and with better performance than they demonstrated while still running Windows. And all 3 with vastly different components to one another (a consequence of them being varying ages; one laptop from around 2005/2006, one laptop bought in 2014 and one desktop PC constructed in 2013 and using a WLAN USB adapter at least 10 years old). When connecting any of these wired, all 3 work just as fine as wirelessly; just with better bandwidth but latency is about the same.

So, either I am indeed stupidly lucky or, you're exaggerating your point. And I'm not trying to suggest you're lying or anything, just mildly driving your point home a bit excessively. Because, honestly, I've never been that lucky in my life. In pact, my life has made it a point to deny me any and all forms of luck in any and all endeavour. No joke, I am in fact one of the least lucky people that I know of.

I understand completely. No need to explain further. I'm just saying that for a lot of situations people find themselves in, yours is at minimum uncommon.

[exitcode0]

"Like seriously, as a hardcore engine developer, which would you choose? 100k salary at a gaming company, or free work, "kind donations", crybaby users/trolls on the forums and endless arguments with other devs in a "superior" democracy model at an open source project?"

Honestly it doesn't take too much expertise to code a game engine - it does to do it well of course but there are so many examples out there with good code to learn with. As the programmer of Doom 3 mod and as someone attempting to roll my own engine from scratch I don't do it for money or for a job (who seriously wants to get thrown in a game studio sausage factory) I do it for the fun. And who has to worry about trolls when you are the code dictator

https://github.com/AdaDoom3/NeotokyoMod

https://github.com/AdaDoom3/AdaDoom3/tree/master/Engine

[illwieckz]

There's also been barely anything to come to fruition using the id Tech 4 / ioDoom3 open-source engine.

About the id Tech 4 engine, there is at least one community game that uses the open sourced id Tech 4 engine: The Dark Mod, and this time it's not “Another Quake 3 clone”.

But yes, where are all these games today ? When id Tech 3 was released, there was plenty of mod released as standalone : Tremulous, Smokin'Guns, Urban Terror, World of Padman etc. Some of them are dead now (Tremulous, hopefully there is Unvanquished to keep its soul alive) or not use a free engine anymore (Urban Terror), and there is no update for the others.

Since the RCTW and Wolf:ET engine releases, the only game maintained is Wolf:ET itself through the ET:Legacy project. Where are the mods? Since the id Tech 4 engine release, only The Dark Mod did something with it. Why no more ?

[DMJC]

The entire idea that a game has to be commercial to be high quality is a joke. Anyone with half a brain can look at projects like Skywind and The Crysis Mechwarrior project and see that high quality game experiences can be created by teams working for free driven by their passion for a game/series. The problem stopping a lot of this enthusiasm being directed towards Open Source games remains a distinct lack of tools and resources for modifying open source game engines. Most of the Open Source games do not have editing tools, and unfortunately the FPS games which do have editors (quake/doom) have fallen out of favor with the community for making mods. exitcode0 is doing a fantastic job with Doom3, and there are other projects doing the same. Again it's because the engine has tools available. Where the engines don't have good tools we see project stagnation/death. How many years were the Tux Kart games dead for before there was a concerted effort to upgrade the graphics?

The notion that something has to be made for pay or made for profit to be high quality is completely false... It's kind of funny that Linux users would think that about games when their own platform is the proof of the idea's falsehood... Games aren't some magical unicorn thing to be put on a pedestal. They require certain types of programs to work. It's like Linux itself, in the start there was no GUI and people probably claimed that with no GUI Linux was dying. Linux got a GUI and now it's becoming a legitimate Desktop OS alternative compared to Windows/OSX. Build the tools, the artists will come and the games will be great. There are a ton of people out there wanting to make great open source games. They just don't know howto because they can't program and will never have the aptitude for it. Help them and you'll help your projects.

[laykun]

The entire idea that a game has to be commercial to be high quality is a joke. Anyone with half a brain can look at projects like Skywind and The Crysis Mechwarrior project and see that high quality game experiences can be created by teams working for free driven by their passion for a game/series. The problem stopping a lot of this enthusiasm being directed towards Open Source games remains a distinct lack of tools and resources for modifying open source game engines. Most of the Open Source games do not have editing tools, and unfortunately the FPS games which do have editors (quake/doom) have fallen out of favor with the community for making mods. exitcode0 is doing a fantastic job with Doom3, and there are other projects doing the same. Again it's because the engine has tools available. Where the engines don't have good tools we see project stagnation/death. How many years were the Tux Kart games dead for before there was a concerted effort to upgrade the graphics?

The notion that something has to be made for pay or made for profit to be high quality is completely false... It's kind of funny that Linux users would think that about games when their own platform is the proof of the idea's falsehood... Games aren't some magical unicorn thing to be put on a pedestal. They require certain types of programs to work. It's like Linux itself, in the start there was no GUI and people probably claimed that with no GUI Linux was dying. Linux got a GUI and now it's becoming a legitimate Desktop OS alternative compared to Windows/OSX. Build the tools, the artists will come and the games will be great. There are a ton of people out there wanting to make great open source games. They just don't know howto because they can't program and will never have the aptitude for it. Help them and you'll help your projects.

It's not so much about games being made for "profit", it's about developers being able to eat and pay rent. Where that money comes from depends highly on he business model. I would wager that most software made for linux, particularly at its core is funded by large businesses because it's absolutely essential to their products. Games aren't essential to anything, unless of course Valve wanted SteamOS to actually be successful then I don't see any large businesses just giving you money because you want to make games. Most games that you consider "for profit" barely ever break even (this doesn't include AAA titles for obvious reasons), yet people want high quality games with 100s of committed man years to the content and programming. If you can find a way to get 100s of man years of work done in a way that's managed so that the content comes out consistent and can also keep these people fed and with a roof over their head then I'd love to hear it. It also comes down to ambition, if you're truly a good game designer then you probably have a passion for it and want to make it your lifestyle, but to make it your life style you need to get paid, so the money needs to come from somewhere.

[alokhan]

It is funny but while reading all the comments I thought the same thing : Why would someone make a free OS instead of sell it for thousand of dollars but that's what Linux is.
I think this can apply to games as well butut I would say that there is some differences. For example what should do a OS is pretty clear but what should do a game is really not. For games you need to create rules and principles which need to be ok with every developers, this I think can lead to conflict in the team and people leaving.

[Julius]

9 pages of petty fighting over non-issues or true but outdated insights that FOSS games have no tools (some old projects still suffer from that though)...

I see two issues behind this decline in project contributions or new (somewhat successful) projects started:

1. (more minor) Other games on the main platform of FOSS games (Linux) distract the audience away from FOSS games, but not so much the main creators. But creators are motivated by an audience and outside contributions are more likely (as few and far in between as they usually are) for games that have a larger audience.

2. The main reasons is the Indie boom and apocalypse we are currently experiencing. Before many people were modding games or making FOSS games to get some credibility for a job in the games industry, but a few years ago this changed and everyone started to believe they can make a profitable indie game in their basement. Obviously this isn't true and maybe 1 in 10 released Indie games barely break-even and much more probably failed before their release. More and more people are realizing this right now, but during the boom this drained away a lot of potential FOSS game contributers and now the "indie apocalypse" is leaving a lot of very disillusioned and bitter Indie developers behind (with no financial resources left and very little motivation to do any more work for "nothing").

So it comes down to basic human psychology... lure someone with a dream of becoming rich fast and you get some pretty bad outcomes for most of them and their surroundings...