Do you expect authors of Torque engine enhancements to share the

#1 My opinion is; if the team has coded something from scratch, which for one reason or another they don't wish to release to the community, then its their choice. But I think if theyre using some basis for their script, eg modifying an existing resource, then they really should be obligated to keep it "open source".

Although, in the spirit of the community it'd be quite nice to see everyone taking a "share and share alike" type outlook on it.

#2 Well my project will also be releasing most of the enhancements that we code in that we feel the community could use. Partly because the TGE is such a good deal and partly because we want this community to grow and become a great place for indie developers to get a start on entering the game dev field. I think the best way to do this is for teams to submit their modifications to the engine. That way the engine is always advancing and will not get outdated. Without this interaction, while TGE is a powerful engine now, if you remove the community's involvement, it will become outdated, and no longer remain such a powerful tool for the indie community. However, I would also have to agree that a team has no moral obligation to release, or any other reason. It really should be up to the team if they want to release, and when, if they choose to. Unless as mentioned they built the code off of someone else's work. In that case I think they should definitely release eh code. I would hope that most, if not all teams would release most additions and enhancements that they make if they feel it could benefit the community.

#3 I personally think that you should release the code. That way you can have multiple eyes looking at it and suggesting improvements to make it more robust. Also, some people will take your enhancements, enhance them further and put them back online for people to incorporate in their games. As the number of code fragments increase it will become easier and easier to make games as most of it will be pre-programmed for you. All you have to do is put the pieces together the way you want them to.

In the long run, it will be better for everyone.

#4 I think it's best for people to release the inner workings of their project as long as it has something related to what resources they have used from the community and it won't matter how less or more of source value. I believe it is important to share with in the community and deffently the SDK Private community which are those who have bought a license copy of TGE.

#5 The answer has to be "D" from a buisness point of veiw, D also incorporates the end paragraph anyway. it would be great to have it all open source but in all honesty, open source isnt a good buisness module, otherwise TGE would be open source.
Having said this i didnt buy the tge source as im primarily a modeler and texture artist and dont see the need to purchase a programing seat, (from my point), this probably biased my opinion one way or another, but im sure you would hate to see your code in another released game before you released, knowing that its definitly your code.

#6 I'd like to see overall contribution of code snipits and enhancements to the engine shared between users.. but I worry that if there is too much sharing, we'll wind up with games that are very very similar... just look at what wound up happening with mods for Tribes 1 and Tribes 2... one person does a weapon and releases the source onto a website a voila, suddenly EVERYONE has that weapon in their mod and the community is flooded with replicate newbie mods.

I think that situation would be pretty easy to avoid, granted that to use torque you have to create your own models, textures etc. etc. and many people want to create their own games, based off of their own ideas... so I think in the long run, though it might increase the similarity between games, sharing is a good thing.

I know that if I can get DOT3 bumping working in my build of torque, I definately plan on releasing the source to the community.

My two cents,
Jeff

#7 Neil, I completely agree with you in the respect that releasing the code does a lot of good. My team will be releasing the code to help the community, but the mere fact that an entire community will comb through it is a huge benefit for us as well. It will allow bugs that our internal team to creep up and be fixed, and other coders can take what we create, and optimize, enhance and add on to, which will in turn benefit our project as well as the entire community. But I would still maintain that a team should be feel like it is under some requirement to release code it develops. Like it was mentioned in the above post, it is not always a good business model. If a team develops some new code to do something graphically that hasn't been seen before, they would naturally want to pose it as an advantage for their game. Right now, because all TGE projects are in such an early stage, and there aren't as many in the public view, it would make sense to release most if not all code you created to improve the community. But you have to think that down the line, when more developers are using TGE and the GG community, that there will be a lot of competition between game teams as more projects competes for the limelight. If you developed a water code or lighting effect that has never been done before, and that sets you apart from other games, releasing it might actually hurt your game by making it less unique. Now, I believe that every team should release improvements that they make, if not for their own good, then to help the community, but I do not think that any team should feel like they are obligated to release their code, or that we should put pressure on them or criticize them for not doing so, as there are very reasonable reason for withholding your code that you developed. However, I think that if a team decides to hold back their code though in order to set their game apart, that after release, they should then release it. So I guess my basic stance is that I feel that releasing your code is the best thing to do for the community and your own team, but I feel that there should be no implied obligation, and that the choice not to release should not be looked down upon or criticized (Not saying that anyone here is, just stating my opinion).

#8 Jeff, my team has also been working on DOT3 Bumpmapping as well as some other methods to achieve the same result. We have basic bumpmapping along with some other effects going in our code, but we are still implementing more advanced features and working on integrating the feature with the actual code. Out of curiosity, what is the status of your bumpmapping? It may be beneficial to collaborate since we are both attempting the same effect. Just a thought.

#9 Sounds quite ambitious. Must have quite the army of programmers over there Ryan.

Good luck.

#10 Thanks man. I hope we canturn out some good code.

#11 Thanks for your responses. :-)

It's a tough call for me. I can see advantages on both sides. The realistic view, IMHO, is that we will need to pool our resources if we as Indies ever wish a real chance at the mainstream.

I don't believe there really is an issue about games becoming homogenized. How many games came from the Quake engine? And the Unreal Tournament engine? How many Marble Blasts will there be now? lol

On the other hand, if someone (or a team) has come up with something unique, why shouldn't they wish to give themselves that edge? Of course, if that game isn't going to be out for another 12 months, then it'd be silly not to share. Their 'edge' has probably become dulled by that point. :-)

So, my thought--at this moment--is that if you've gotten help here (and in all likelihood you have) and your game isn't going to be released for months... offer the code and trust that you have and will continue to benefit from the community as a large.
Of course, none of us here can make that decision for you.

#12 Yea I agree with that, I was thinking that if a team wished to keep an "edge" over some other games, then thats fine, but upon release they should donate the code. Just my thoughts though. :)

#13 I have gained so much insight and knowledge from these forums and other torquers that not to release them back would be pretty selfish.

I think i'd probably release all the script as a download, and any major addons after the game shipped and then release the art assets a few months afterwards.

In the end everyone benefits from new code, if every game released that used the code i'd developed was a little better then that means more people at GG, and more people that might buy my game. Win/Win. I wouldn't want all the torque games to end up looking the same though ;)

But I do think i'd rather finish my game than concentrate on making my code usable by someone else. And someone would have to be real keen on a mod to try and use anything I created ;)

Also if there was some really impressive upgrade to torque that someone had worked an age on, I wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee to use that. $10-$20 for high quality / powerful code improvements would be fine, and might motivate people to write them quicker / release them.

But Shh don't tell Melv or one of our other resident torque gods...

#14 Too late ... mmmmm lovely cash. ;)

- Melv.

#15 LOL!
That was another suggestion--to set up something like blender where the coders ask for a certain amt., then when they get it the code is released.
But given the inexpensiveness of the initial TGE fee, would this be akin to selling 's record-breaking ball? Or not?

#16 Aww man guys, you gave Melv too many ideas. Now we are all in trouble. I guess I'll have to pick my favorite child and only he can goto college...

lol ;)

#17 Edit and Editorial:

Some days it's easy to get caught up in the spirit of giving, and then there are other days that remind that a person must eat as well.

Except where a law has been broken (copyrights, etc.), it ultimately boils down to what each of us feel we can give--and hopefully in the "big picture" it works out
for the better for us all.

The truth is that we, as humans, are just plain unpredictable. We can get everything handed to us on a silver CD, and innovation suffers--or it blossoms. To some innovation comes simply for the pure joy of creating. Sometimes it shows for other reasons, such as monetary or accidental. Nonetheless, it will show in many different ways.

So, is it right for someone to not release code? Beats me. But, there are alot of "not rights" in this world. However it is their 'right' and, believe it or not, we may benefit in ways we never knew possible.

Dream the dream! :-)

Eric

#18 I think the Tribes2 modding community's problem is exactly the opposite. Frankly, when all the mods are server side... then folks obsess over "stolen" scripting which is really BASIC.

This community needs to avoid such drama...

I'm on the STG team (see http://www.3dmax.org/stg/), and I have been thinking about this, especially in terms of basic scripting stuff we come up with.

It's one thing if you have a truly unique effect, but it's another thing to just release nice scripting resources for reference and general use.

To do otherwise would be to kill this community. How many T2 mods ARE there?

I trust the people here.

I believe I will bring this up with the team, so that we can have a routine process for releasing stuff publicly.

#19 I refuse to believe in the mantra that giving away something is a cost factor. You already put the work in, it doesn't cost you anything to share it. And frankly, if you belive the success of your game rests on the fact that a few clever hacks of yours remain secret, I have doubts that the game is worth anything.

From a pure practical POV, I think teams should contribute general code snippets. If you write better shadow code, or fix that avi/movie control, then why not give it back to the community? I can't think of a convincing reason why not to do it.
However, there is lots and lots of code in every project that is too specific to be of much use to anyone else. Or that would take tons of work to rip out and turn into a generic code snippet. And you are definitely not oblieged to put that work in, or to post all of your source code.


For major contributions (most of Melv's code would count here), giving it back actually gains you a benefit, namely that if it gets incorporated into TGE, you can start your next project with an engine that has your cool effect built-in, well-supported and saves you the work of porting it over to whatever changes were made in the meantime.
Personally, I think that's an absolute no-brainer.

Then again, I'm so much of a Free Software fan that I dislike the term "Open Source". Just in case it wasn't obvious. :-)

#20 When someone used some "Open source" Tribes/Tribes2 scripting it was mostly done in a rip-off sort of manner imo. I saw at least 3-4 mods that had exact copies of weapons, packs, etc that were in other mods. I don't think its really a terrible thing to use someone else's code (biggest compliment a programmer can get really) but to just steal and push the original author's name back into the shadows is a little cut throat for something like public server-side game mods.

Note that in Tribes 2, there are compiled scripts and many mods aren't releasing scripts. I never released my scripts, just my compiled dso...

Tribes was pretty unique because of the open source atmosphere. It helped people start off, no doubt, it helped me at least. Since it all was mods on top of a mostly mysterious engine, some things were so wierd you almost had to look at other's code or spend months figuring it out.

Torque modifications seem like they could be different to me. Since it's more of an endorsed method (ie, downloading a resource instead of downloading a mod, extracting it, then opening it) it should promote a little more recognition maybe? People definitely should give credit where it is due. If someone wrote all the code for 3/4 of all your cool fx, then they basically just did a ton of work for you, right? After that, it really is up to the programmer if fame and respect are all they want or if they want money. I'm not sure if costly engine additions will be very popular or not, but it is much harder to ignore a free product.

Also, Falcon is correct. I wrote some swimming code, but I am hesitant to share it not because I'm selfish, but because It just isn't complete/commented enough and it was complicated to implement. People shouldn't be throwing out huge volumes of source just for the hell of it. Snippits should be pretty modular & optimized in addition to actually working and there is no reason to share something that takes hours to work in. The compatibilty issue seems to be the biggest to me, since most of us will have a lot of things built on top of our engines, right? And I dont even want to thing about multiple engine versions!