Non GPL-only fork of OpenArena?

[Megagun]

First of all, I recognize that this might be a bit of a touchy subject, so let's try and keep community drama out of this, mkay?

About half a year ago, I prodded Tremulous content (mainly weapons) over to my OpenArena installation, since I thought that the existing OpenArena weapons content didn't "feel" good somehow, and since I thought that the Tremulous weapons felt really, really good. Not soon afterwards, I started prodding the Battlesuit and Human playermodels, added some extra skins, added some botfiles, tweaked the content a bit more, grabbed a random techy looking map from the internet, and realized that it actually felt pretty solid.

It was probably then that I decided to try and get this thing further, and I defined this "thing" as a project to deliver a pretty small package with no texturepackage, only one or two small maps, and the Tremulous weapons, my reasoning being that first of all, players wouldn't really care if the game they play is fully free (GPL) or not (some Creative Commons license), and second of all that the maps I added in might not be of the same high quality as some of the popular maps floating around on the internet that I can't really redistribute myself. Additionally, I'm not very good with the Quake engine (only really *played* quake 3, never did any levelediting, modding or modelling) and thought that I might just miss something blatantly obvious to people more involved in the Q3 scene about certain maps that I might/might not be allowed to redistribute.

Unfortunately, I then found out that the Battlesuit model too used animations from Quake 3 (Paul Steed's BIP files), posted about that on the Tremulous forums, got flamed by a part of the Tremulous community (...sigh) and didn't feel like continuing the project anymore.. Until a few days ago, when I decided to fire it back up and maybe even post about it somewhere! And today, I post about it!

So what I'm asking is some input about how to handle things, some thought (as to why I should/should not be doing this), some content tips (project is pretty much a "Sauerbraten" under the ioq3 engine: any content allowed, as long as it's redistributable by anyone (Sauerbraten's licensing of some files doesn't allow mods to use some onf Sauer's content, such as the IronSnout playermodel) and as long as it's of a nice quality that 'fits' with the rest of the artstyle of the game, or the 'community' feels like it should be added to it)...

Here's windows binaries+content, plus the src. It's nothing much, and kind of lacks character without the Battlesuits stomping the corridors (will have to hunt Steed down, or start figuring out how I can reanimate the Battlesuit model), but it's at least SOMETHING, and I didn't want this to be yet another "yay here's an idea now make it for me" kind of project, so I felt like I had to at least show *something*..

[fufinha]

Sounds cool :O

Not touchy at all

[Udi]

Sugar. Spice. And everything nice. These were the ingredients choosen to create the perfect game. But Professor Megagun accidentaly added an extra ingredient to the concoction: NON-GPL! But seriously, you surely didn't mean non-gpl only, but free as in beer fork to OpenArena, did you? If you want to keep out all the GPL-ed content and code from your game, you need to create a lot of things (even the engine lol).

If I am right, you want to make a game with all kind of licenced content, no matter of what, but it should be fitting the concept. Not all kind of licences can be redistributed in one package, that needs a lot of reading and analyzing, so be ready for some serious bookworming. But anyway: why bothering with that if the video feels just like Nexuiz: ass kicking bass sounds, future-mecha-ultra world, and clumsy moving robots. Only exception is the engine and gameplay.

So my suggestion is, not to enterily fork OpenArena, but make a content only package with the concept you like. If it is popular (it certainly will, I like better your vid than seeing half-naked cats blowing to pieces) than it will spread easier. You spare the time messing around with the engine. Or you can start an enterily new game with vanilla ioquake engine and brand new content, but making a Non-GPL fork of OpenArena will make some pretty bad reputation.

[Megagun]

I didn't want to do a non-gpl fork; I wanted to do a non-gpl *only* fork. Currently, OpenArena doesn't accept anything that's not licensed under the GPL; this project would. I also don't want to purge any non-GPL content.

I thought about making it a content package only (as in: a mod), but that'd mean that people would still need to grab the 300mb-ish OpenArena, only to not use any of it, which seemed kind of senseless to me if I could just create a nice, neat, tiny package.

[fromhell]

It exists. It's called Trepidation, and it sucks.

What's the benefit for more strict license? More opportunities to scavenge art, music and sounds from all over the internet without a FSF backlash?

[Udi]

I didn't want to do a non-gpl fork; I wanted to do a non-gpl *only* fork.

Maybe my english sucks, but I would put it in that way: not-only-gpl fork or not gpl-only fork.

Yeah there's a game called Planet T r e p i d a t i o n. But your project already looks much better than that . Well if you have time good luck with your project!

Edit: Hehe, nice filter word fromhell .

[RAZ3R]

Test because I'm curious now: CRAPPY FRANKENSTEIN PATCHWORK PIECE OF CRAP GAME NOT WORTH MENTIONING

[Megagun]

I didn't want to do a non-gpl fork; I wanted to do a non-gpl *only* fork.

Maybe my english sucks, but I would put it in that way: not-only-gpl fork or not gpl-only fork.

Wow, I'm impressed by the fact that I completely missed the obvious error there (dash should be between gpl and only, not between non and gpl. ) twice. Whoops! I corrected the title of this topic..

What's the benefit for more strict license? More opportunities to scavenge art, music and sounds from all over the internet without a FSF backlash?

Opportunities for people who create media under a license that's not the GPL to contribute to the project, rather than be forced to comply with the GPL or being forced to use a single, rather limited, file format for music because of that. Additionally, granting those who work on the project the freedom to create something that looks pretty, without having to go for GPL-only sources.

Scavenging implies a mess of different art styles. This project hopes to not be a mess of different art styles.

[fromhell]

So to not encourage the creation of Free art and open content? Great. Can't say I will ever support this idea.

[Megagun]

No, to actually encourage it, and to get stuff inside a project that would otherwise not be able to get into OpenArena due to the GPL-onlyness of OpenArena.

edit: What would you prefer; a game with a large audience yet some non-GPL assets, or a GPL-only game with a smaller audience?
Again, I doubt that the people who *play* the game really care if they have complete freedom over the game's data. Developers ofcourse prefer something as free as possible, but players? I'm fairly certain that they only really care about the game being available to them free of charge. Besides, it's not like this project will only accept "only usable in this project" type of media (such as the Sauerbraten's IronSnout model is), and as content maintainer, I'd like to have as much open content in there as possible. But if someone can't or doesn't want to license something under the GPL, but the content is of a really nice quality, why should it be disallowed just because it's not under the GPL?

[fufinha]

jehovah witness ppl often come to my door with free stuff (much of it handed on a plate), but it's only what they say that seems to matter. Next time they come I'm going to ask if i can fork it.

[fromhell]

edit: What would you prefer; a game with a large audience yet some non-GPL assets, or a GPL-only game with a smaller audience?

A non-GPL game doesn't mean instant-big player audience (see: the game I mentioned before, Alien Arena, and Sauerbraten). Not even a pricetag would do (see: Quake 4). You don't get the feats of say, having freedom for many linux distros redistributing the game via repositories.  It also doesn't have to look pretty to be popular among players (see: BZFlag). I really can't see how being strictly GPL would limit my audience.
All this project would do is encourage more selfishness which is bad because that is subject to bit-rot.
OA got its audience mainly from hitting the front page on digg in 29 Dec 06, it hasn't hit the front page again since, and it's roughly the same player amount range. What OA doesn't have that Tremulous and UrbanTerror did, is development time (OA did not start in 1999 and 2000) or over-promotion by being partners with newsies on sites like Linux.com.

It will be popular if you replace all the guns with conventional boring bullet slinging weapons and all players as soldiers though. Its sad, but its the truth of the online gaming zeitgeist.

Is this all because of Neko's leather attire? I might reduce it to a T-style game later without gibbing and move the provocative content over to a 'extreme' fork or pack or so. Time will tell.

[Megagun]

Is this all because of Neko's leather attire? I might reduce it to a T-style game later without gibbing and move the provocative content over to a 'extreme' fork or pack or so. Time will tell.

My reason for starting development on this were originally partly due to the general art style of OpenArena (which I perceive as Anime-ish). It looked kinda nice at times, but also somehow just felt.. weird... and wrong... Same for the weapons, which didn't feel very... weapon-y.. At least not as much as those in Tremulous.

[Case]

Why do you <i>want</i> to restrict players? If you don't like the style my suggestion would be to release your own free models/etc. It's a tragedy that you think vendor lock-in is a great idea.

[epicgoo]

fork?
you have ioquake3 engine and some assets gathered over the internet
it has nothing to do with openarena (except the assets you took from it)

[fufinha]

I checked this out and I have some odd problem where the exe loads, my desktop screen is shown for several seconds then the splash screen appears. Then when I'm in game I got less than 10 fps. I also have the same issue with one Falkland compiled. I will need to try the other binaries I have to see if I can isolate it. I know its not a config issue and when I load q3, everything is sweet. I have no issues whatsoever, the mouse feels great, I have a single exe for all... even a single exe for all protocols.

I did manage to move around on one of the maps like I do on a Friday night out in town but all I seen was grism and new guns. Why couldnt you just use the paks with oa and download the map as normal and let people try it out. Why is there a need for an additional executable etc?

It would be nice to maintain compatibility as much as possible rather than dozens of new varients suddenly appearing. I myself dont particulary like some stuff in OA and if it doesnt change I use my own pak. I'm glad to see that other people have started to do the same with the awful pop sound and the hit sound.

Maybe there are reasons that this has been put together as a completely different package but like I said, I'll need to try figure out what this issue is with the max 10 fps

[Megagun]

Why do you <i>want</i> to restrict players? If you don't like the style my suggestion would be to release your own free models/etc. It's a tragedy that you think vendor lock-in is a great idea.

I suck at modelling and I'm not a great artist (though anything I create myself from scratch will be GPL'd so other projects such as OA can make use of them) so I don't think me creating my own models would be a great idea, at least not if quality of the artwork is concerned.

I'm not entirely sure what Vendor lock-in is, and Wikipedia wasn't too helpful, but does it mean that a piece of content can only be used inside one specific project (in this case, my project) like the IronSnout model from Sauerbraten (which has a license that states that "it can only be used in Sauerbraten")? If so, that's especially NOT what I want. Last summer I spent quite some time on modding Sauerbraten a bit, and when my mod was nearing completion, I noticed this and some other licenses that prevented me from distributing my own content package (about 50% of the original Sauer content I didn't need, though some content which was under a "distribute with Sauerbraten only!" license I would've liked to use) and because of that started a GPL'd content package for Sauerbraten, so that people could easilly distribute mods. Unfortunately, I lost interest quickly due to several troubles encountered on the way...

Maybe there's a slight misunderstanding here somewhere.. Let me try to explain again what *really* makes this project different from OpenArena.

Okay, consider for a moment that UA and OA are the exact same projects in everything (exact same content), but with someone different doing the project leading. Now, one person steps up and shows some amazing content. Both UA and OA want to implement it in their game since it fits perfectly into the art style of both games. Unfortunately, the content's creator then makes it known that the content is licensed under a CC-BY-SA license for whatever reason (the reason for this doesn't really matter for this example). OpenArena won't introduce that content into the game, since the license isn't the GPL, yet UnnamedArena would, since the content is nice, and can be freely redistributed.

That is the fundamental difference between my project and OA. OA only accepts GPL, mine accepts other licenses, too. This doesn't mean, however, that everything will just be accepted. GPL will still be the preferred license of choice (and I will ask any contributor who made their own content completely to license their stuff under the GPL), and if someone decides to contribute content which is licensed under a more restrictive license (say, CC-BY-NC-SA), the content will have to be more amazing in order for it to get implemented into the main branch (if it doens't get implemented, an addon package will be released). Additionally, if someone comes up with a GPL'd reimagining of existing, more restrictive licensed content, than the restrictive content might go away to make room for the GPL'd content, even if the GPL'd content might be a tad less pretty. The project is focussed a bit on mods, though, so really anything in the main branch would have to be freely redistributable in any other derived project, as long as the maintainers of a derived project are willing to accept the license of the content....


As for the 'fork' thing: Isn't a fork something where someone decides to take the sources and content of a project, and then do things to them, possibly because of a dislike for the original project's way of maintaining things? That's what I've done: I've grabbed the OA sources and content, and just went from there, removing content I wouldn't need as I went..

Now, as for the FPS issues: I myself too have been getting some weird performance hits on my compile of this. It's not terrible, still get 60FPS, but just not what I'd expect from a powerful PC, what with the occasional FPS drop and all...

[Super Retardo]

1.  Some people just don't know what the fuck the word Open-source means...(and im sick hearing that goddamn free beer metaphor).  Seriously people...don't like GPL content....go build your own game....

2.  Most of the sound content for the game blows...I don't play on pure servers anymore cuz im so damn sick of hearing a wussy announcer and players that sound like they don't have the capacity for speech. 
3.  fromhell is kind of a Nazi Bitch who drives away a whole bunch of people that could make the game better...

So we really didn't learn anything we couldn't have found out from trolling club nub for a while with a thumb up our asses...

And if I didn't piss you off personally in this thread...here's a special go get f'd in the 'a.

[fromhell]

fromhell is kind of a Nazi Bitch who drives away a whole bunch of people that could make the game better...
..here's a special go get f'd in the 'a.

yeah, thanks, bye.

[kit89]

I think you have to look at your reason behind, wishing to fork OpenArena.

Most of the time when some one forks, it's because they don't like the route the original program went down. Do you feel your worries are being unheard?

If so what are these worries?
Why not instead of forking, create a list of all content you would like to remove, modify & add. With a reason behind it.

Personally I think OpenArena needs a Document detailing all content that is needing modified/improved, removed or created.

Content requested for removal must have a worthy reason to do so. And must also have a request for new Content to be created.
New Content request should state in detail what the content is and it's purpose. It should also have a variety of drawings to give example on what it should look like.
Content requested for modification should state the reason why. Whether it be performance improvements, aesthetic modification etc.


For Example:

Request For Improvement: Oa_Minia
Request: Theme Change

Reason: At the moment Oa_Minia looks very bland with no real theme flowing throw it.
I request that Oa_Minia be modified to look more derelict.
The light should be made dimmer and the creation of long shadow cast would improve the atmosphere.
I also request that Vines and plant growth should cover the arena.

<Image insert on a rough drawn Example>

I believe with these modifications the map would look more interesting & have better atmosphere.

Request Made By: kit89

All the other types of request would follow a similar structure.
With this it would make it far more easier for an artist to direct their attention to areas needing improvements.
Rather than creating new content that is not following any direction & is sub-par quality.

On that note, I am actually tempted to put my own request into practise.

[Case]

CC-BY-SA has strange attributions in it's license. So a vendor lock-in happens when I am not able to use that texture in the way that I want, but only in the way that the original creator wants me to. This attribution alone in the CC-BY-SA would cause many problems for a project if the creator ever changed his mind. You could always pester the creator for a more GPL  friendly license   Sometimes thats the only way.    I'm not saying you couldn't just do this yourself without asking first, I'm just saying your project would be doomed from the get go.

[epicgoo]

fromhell is kind of a Nazi Bitch

Nazi Bitch

stop teasing me with your word games
-----------------------
btw you will never learn the true meaning of gpl
gpl is not just open-source
although I don't like a few aspects of gpl, I respect its followers

[Neon_Knight]

I think you have to look at your reason behind, wishing to fork OpenArena.

Most of the time when some one forks, it's because they don't like the route the original program went down. Do you feel your worries are being unheard?

If so what are these worries?
Why not instead of forking, create a list of all content you would like to remove, modify & add. With a reason behind it.

Personally I think OpenArena needs a Document detailing all content that is needing modified/improved, removed or created.

Content requested for removal must have a worthy reason to do so. And must also have a request for new Content to be created.
New Content request should state in detail what the content is and it's purpose. It should also have a variety of drawings to give example on what it should look like.
Content requested for modification should state the reason why. Whether it be performance improvements, aesthetic modification etc.


For Example:

Request For Improvement: Oa_Minia
Request: Theme Change

Reason: At the moment Oa_Minia looks very bland with no real theme flowing throw it.
I request that Oa_Minia be modified to look more derelict.
The light should be made dimmer and the creation of long shadow cast would improve the atmosphere.
I also request that Vines and plant growth should cover the arena.

<Image insert on a rough drawn Example>

I believe with these modifications the map would look more interesting & have better atmosphere.

Request Made By: kit89

All the other types of request would follow a similar structure.
With this it would make it far more easier for an artist to direct their attention to areas needing improvements.
Rather than creating new content that is not following any direction & is sub-par quality.

On that note, I am actually tempted to put my own request into practise.

Then do it!
I was going to do that, with a list of links to every map thread, for example, to Cosmo, PsiScythe and Czestmyr maps. That was something I was doing at the Wiki.