$12256 / $11500
Hi Folks,
I have a plan in the works to produce a game with "action" RPG, trade and exporation elements which I feel Flare would suit very well as an engine/basis for.
I'm on the hunt for suitable developers. Paid gig. Anyone here? Feel free to message me or email me at beanbagmedia[@]gmail[.]com.
Thanks,
i
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Just so everyone else knows -- you and I talked a few days ago on reddit about game engines. We talked a bit about FIFE and Flare.
I personally don't have time to take on commissions. But any of the active Flare devs would be well qualified to help.
That's right. Very glad you piped up before the thread was deleted by moderators!
That's right. Very glad you piped up before the thread was deleted by moderators!
Hi ohaithere,
I am one of the contributors for the flare engine as you can see here https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-engine/graphs/contributors
I'd like to ask a few questions:
1) Will this be an enhancement of flare engine or are you looking for a developer, who knows how to do it and (re)implement a similar closed source version thereof?
In case you'd be looking for someone, who tailors the current engine to your needs:
2) How much time do you estimate for the features? Or rather the other way round: Which features and game mechanics are you missing and are looking for?
3) As I am currently very short on time (writing my thesis), would it be possible to split up the features, so you'd contract one feature at a time?
That being said, I'd be interested in helping you, but I cannot work on flare full-time within the next 4 months.
Hi Stefan,
Useful to put this out so others may be able to get a clearer picture. To summarize the response to your questions...
This game aims to be a commercial game, and as such I would seek to take the engine as it is and heavily modify it in a "closed" manner (i.e. we wouldn't be making these changes available openly).
In terms of feature density, there will be a number of systemic additions (trade/economy is an obvious example) which will be served well and can be handled well with python/C. A feature which may have uncertain prospects under flare is procedural/random generation. The aim is to get to a working prototype first rather than seek to finish the game as rapidly as possible. At this point I can open it to limited testing, play around, and consider my options. Regarding a total feature list, that is something I need to compare/contrast more carefully with Flare's existing roster with someone more in the know.
It is possible to contract one feature at a time, indeed it may be more productive if things are compartmentalised.
To any interested, feel free to message me privately with emails or skype.
Stefan, I'll reply to your private message in a sec.
All best and thanks!
> This game aims to be a commercial game, and as such I would seek to take the engine as it is and heavily modify it in a "closed" manner (i.e. we wouldn't be making these changes available openly).
Would you mind to elaborate more on that? Sure a commercial game likes to be closed to make money, I can understand that.
However Flare (the engine code) is currently licensed as GPL, which means, if you use flare as your engine you'd need to distribute the (modified) source code to all your customers. The spirit of the GPL is to have all the additions being open again. In short the flare source code is licensed as this https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-license-v2
That being said, I do not understand how you'd go with a 'closed manner'. If you'd want closed source, you'd be unable to base your game off the flare engine.
Trading is planned to be evolved in flare, there was a discussion at https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-engine/issues/546
so I guess maybe we're already heading in your desired direction. Feel free to have an opinion there.
I'd assume with economy you'd mean varying prices during the game (I sold 100 found daggers already, so the vendors don't pay as much any more?)
Random generation was also discussed often, but it will definitely not make it into flare 1.0, but wait for 2.0. There also have been discussions at github.
Unfortunately I don't have skype, so I'd presume emails would be fine with me.
Hi Folks,
Just to say I haven't forgotten or abandoned this. Just in planning stages, and still considering Flare as an option. Thanks for all the contributions/offers.
All best,
o
Hi All,
Thought I'd open this back up, Stefan/Ryan: haven't heard from either of you in a bit, not sure whether you are available currently?
I am not adversed to the idea of redistribution of modified code, the clarification I'm seeking of how the license works is really on a practical level: the modification of flare's functionality, how does that get reintegrated into the source, or is it a case of me making the final source of my game available to all? Some detail on how this typically works/has worked in the past would be of great help!
Thanks very much ineed.
i
That's an interesting question I've been looking for, too. I'm not quite sure how that works. I myself would be all for redistributing any extensions I made in a GPL license, but the final game itself I'd find questionable. I think it really does apply to the whole game, too, though.
I'm not a Flare developer, but I looked it up briefly and it looks cool. That said, though, in my case I plan to do all my games in HTML5 and MAYBE Unity further down the road. With HTML5, the code is naturally open source, anyway, though that doesn't mean you have to license it as a free application.
GPL is much stricter on that. Anything you make that uses GPL, period, must also be licensed and redistributed as GPL. I would presume that this would include the final game as well, unfortunately. Granted, you can still sell the game if you want to.
What kinds of platforms are you trying to distribute it on, or is it just PC?
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PC/Mac/Linux, Jaidyn.
Ah, ok. When I say "PC" I just mean regular computers in general regardless of operating system, as opposed to consoles, handhelds, or Mobile phones. So I did mean both PC and Mac. PC is sometimes used to refer to non-Mac computers but its easier just saying PC for me.
You can sell your game fine if you want. You'd still need to provide the source up online for free, but that said, you'd have it pre-compiled and everything. I'm not sure how Flare works, but I presume you'd need to compile it. A better option may be to provide the game itself for free but add something else that is worth buying.
If this was going to be available for more than just Computers there may have been a good way to market it while still making it free and open source, not that I know if Flare games can be made for consoles/Mobile devices.
I think if you required a subscription to play the game, even if the source code was available for free, that might allow you to still have it as a paid game but have the source code freely available at the same time. I'm really not sure of the best course of action here, I'm just throwing out ideas.
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Hi Jaidyn,
The aim is to have a commercial game (a paid version), and the distrubution of the game's source code would presumably include just that (that is to say, no artwork, video, sound, narrative etc). I'm sure a member closer to the project may be able to illustrate how this plays out in practice, or give an example of how this has worked in the past.
Nonetheless, thanks for your thoughts!
All best,
i
I'm not sure if the GPL allows for that based on what I read, but feel free to do some more research on the subject, and good luck. Once you've made some progress on it I'd love to see it.
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Hi,
sorry for my late reply. I do not really see a way how to accomplish the goal with not redistributing the changes added to flare.
So I'd be really interested as well, how you plan to work with the licenses here.
If you really want to have a closed source game, you'd probably not enjoy flare much, as the GPL is indeed a very viral license.
If you just want to have your assets (maps/graphics/sounds etc) closed, but the engine open, you'd have a good start using flare as engine.
Hey Stefan,
Thanks for getting back to me. So, here are a couple more specific questions. Please take this in the spirit of me respecting the work you guys have done so far and the license the engine runs under, and me not wishing to encroach or infringe upon that in any way!
In terms of where the amended code would be redistributed, would this be centrally (Github), or on my website perhaps, as a site-specific thing?
Would the redistribution be the isolated amendments/additions ("here's some stuff to plug in"), or a contiguous source with everything in (i.e. "the ohaithere version")?
How would story, game settings, art, sound, etc, be extracated from the redistributed code on a practical level?
Is there a crediting process, and if so, what/where?
A couple of very minor technical questions:
Presumably the engine in its current state can be ported to PC/Mac/Linux?
Bit of a vague question - are there any inherent resource limits that I should factor in?
Well this is up to you. For other people it would be easiest if you'd have a github repository with these changes. However, if you'd ask a laywer: "How would I follow the GPL license without providing the source code easily?", they'd maybe advise you to provide the copies of the source code on CDs (for a fee covering creation/shipping of course). This way not many people would actually care to obtain the sources.
I would be the ohaithere version.
To be honest I have no experience with this one. However there is Warsow and Quake, whose engines are open source by now, but the assets have a different license. So you still need to pay if you want to play Quake with the 'real' textures/levels/monsters, but there are enthusiasts trying to create free versions of levels/monsters/textures.
As of now we just had https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-engine/wiki/Credits, maybe a Credits text file would do.
I'm on linux, igorko (another core-developer) is on Windows, while Clint tends to develop on Mac. So I'd claim it's in pretty good shape.
The maps cannot be larger than 256x256 tiles.
Currently all the tiles for one need to be in one tileset, which (depening on your graphics card) needs to be smaller than 2048x2048 pixels.
That's what comes to my mind, not sure if there are any other limits, which may be a problem in practice.
Thanks Stefan, those are helpful answers. I'd like to open up the question of how best the non GPL stuff (assets/art/narrative/sounds etc) can/should be filtered out or extracted practically persuant to the redistribution of the new source.
Any thoughts very welcome. Clint: don't know whether you've got some perspective on this?
Thanks,
i
On a practical level its very simple. The source code is already seperate from any game data produced. There is one repository containing all of the source code (the engine), and other repositories containing game data (the games). In all cases currently, the game data is already distributed under a different license than the engine. The engine and the game data work together to produce a game but the engine could also work with completely different game data. The game data could work with a different engine if one was written to use the same format, suich as in this project: http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start.
Appreciate that clarification Ryan, thanks!
There are already other games based on the flare engine such as
https://github.com/makrohn/polymorphable
It has no connection to flare except it's using it as an engine, so the license is complely up to the composer of that game.