Commercial Dev Tools?

Monday, July 9, 2012 - 23:51

I know that our games have to be able to build and run on free open software, but are we allowed to use non-free stuff for our development as long as they run on free as in freedom software for the judges? For instance, via my university, I got access to:

- Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

- Photoshop

And I am used to them both for dev work. Visual studio doesn't effect stuff as much as photoshop. My game requires buildings, so I'm assembling them with the provided tilesets in Photoshop, and I'm saving the psd files, and later exporting them to png to use in my game.

Thanks for the input!

Nushio

joined 12 years 8 months ago

Monday, July 9, 2012 - 23:59

The game must be built using Free (as in freedom) tools. Visual Basic 2010 could be an impediment, but only if the software can't be built without Visual Basic.

As for Fotochop, I believe that's fine and perfectly usable. Apparently, while devs are restricted in what we can use and develop, artists aren't. =P

madmarcel

joined 12 years 5 months ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 00:43

At a guess I'd say that you're ok, as long as someone can compile your code with something other than a compiler that came with Visual Studio.

What language are you using to develop your game?

http://madmarcel.github.io

pennomi

joined 14 years 1 month ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 02:27

Quoting the official rules:

Platform: Your code must be able to be compiled and run on a 100% free-as-in-freedom platform. It may not make use of any proprietary libraries or VMs. Just to be clear, we cannot accept games that will ONLY run on one of the following: Flash, Silverlight, XNA, Unity, Windows, MacOS (or OSX), iOS, proprietary JVMs, or similar. It is perfectly acceptable if your game runs on any of these platforms, but it must also work on an open platform (we strongly recommend making sure that your program run on modern flavors of GNU/Linux, as all of the judges will have access to it).

There is nothing in here that I can see that says you must DEVELOP on a free software stack. On the other hand, it must be able to be COMPILED on a totally free software stack.

rwhwilliam

joined 12 years 7 months ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 08:21

@madmarcel: C++

Thanks for the help guys :)

Nushio

joined 12 years 8 months ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 10:06

As a recommendation, I'd try to setup a Linux VM (At least) and try to build the code using gcc or something similar to see if it works on Linux as well. :-)

rwhwilliam

joined 12 years 7 months ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 12:15

Aye Nushio. I have nightly builds on Ubuntu to make sure its working :)

RainyMirror

joined 12 years 5 months ago

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - 13:08

Also be sure to not be dependant on libraries that are not open source!