I agree this would be a good change. When making a note of licence details of content I'd downloaded recently, I found that for some I'd accidentally written down the submitter as the author, for the attribution! So I think it's important to make sure the author (i.e., the one who should be attributed) is displayed most prominently.
I think the low performance may be a factor in the sluggish response. What CPU / graphics card do you have? I'm wondering if there's a problem on some systems for some reason, or if the required spec is just higher than I thought.
What's the frame rate in the 2D mode (can be changed during the game, with "View 3D/2D"), and is the UI response any better? (A different rendering algorithm is used in 2D mode.)
I also wonder if running in full screen mode (from the Preferences) is any better?
Slightly off-topic, but I was shocked to come across a similar issue with wedding photographers - that it seems standard practice for them to retain the copyright, even though you're paying them for the work. For my brother's wedding, they received the full batch of photos he'd taken, but they were stamped with an ugly "copyrighted" watermark, the idea being they'd have to pay extra for each and every photo. Couples would be committing piracy just to give a copy to their friends, or upload to Facebook.
So although it's not a game related thing, I do wonder if there does seem to be a philosophy among artists that's different to programmers. I get paid to program for my day job, but that means I don't expect to keep the copyright too.
It's only when I go to preview or edit. The Rich Text box is 7 lines high; the non-Rich Text box is 5 lines high. This is on Windows 7 (both 32 and 64 bit). My screen is 1680x150, with browser window full screen - but I had same problem on my netbook at 1024x600.
Also some other issues I've noticed (on my other computer at the moment with Opera 10.10 - I can try testing with the latest version if you like):
If I type some text in non-Rich Text, then go to preview, it's reverted back to Rich Text - but line breaks are removed.
If I only use the Rich Text editor, and post (even without previewing), it strips out the new lines.
I've uploaded version 0.14. Regarding the points above:
1. Settlers no longer enter enemy territory when at war - should fix the Settler invasion problem.
2. I've switched to using a proper event model for mouse clicks. As I say, it's unclear why it was so slow - would be curious to know if this fixes or improves the problem.
4. The problem was when units were building roads/railways - they'll now attack an adjacent unit if the odds are better than being attacked.
5. The map is now a minimap that can be onscreen all the time; it's less blurry, and has clearer, softer colours. You can also click on it to change the viewpoint.
6. There was a crash I've now fixed with listboxes, where it would crash if you clicked in the scrollbar area, when no scrollbar was displayed (this is a recent bug - in the last version I'd rewritten the routines for scrollbar drawing and input). So possibly this is what you were seeing.
The crash when no shaders were used is also fixed.
And various other improvements - you can now create custom maps using Tiled Map Editor ( http://www.mapeditor.org/ ) - it was a thread somewhere on these forums that suggested Tiled; simply making my game compatible with the Tiled file format was certainly much easier than writing my own editor from scratch.
I suspect the reason why artists often aren't willing to work for free on someone else's game are the same reasons why many programmers like me aren't willing to work for free on someone else's idea. We all have are own ideas to work on, and if it's something done for fun and for free, we'd rather do that, than do it for someone else.
Game art probably involves more work that's uninteresting to artists - it's not enough to draw a 2D character, you have to draw a whole load of frames, each in a whole load of orientations. For 3D, you have to make sure it can be animated. They have to work with the programmer to make sure it's in a format that's suitable for the game engine.
There's also consistency - a game ideally needs a whole set of work in a vaguely consistent manner, both from an aesthetic point of view (the same theme etc), and a technical point of view (e.g., 3D games ideally want meshes in the same format, with things like animation being done in the same way; if characters can hold objects, wear clothes etc, this needs to all work together too). I suspect many artists may prefer to simply work on different ideas, rather than putting their effort all into one massive project.
"My thoughts is that in the case of open source there are many games that are either uninteresting or just clones so you don't get excited about the game thus no motivation to participate"
I don't know if being clones is an issue. Games like FreeCiv and Widelands seem to have attracted plenty of people to produce content. In the commercial world, many games are clones but still attract much interest (the many FPS clones; or the ever growing Civilization franchise, as well as the unofficial Call To Power games). If anything, I'd argue clones may attract more interest, as people know and love the commercial equivalents, where as an original idea is untested - and what sounds good on paper, often doesn't work out in reality.
I think it's probably the case that artists are more likely to be attracted to established projects (or at least a playable game with placeholder graphics), than doing work for a programmer's new project that may end up going nowhere.
I find the grey text on blue rather hard to read - and the highlighted red text on blue looks particularly glaring.
I'd suggest a simple black text on white (or at least two colours with a big contrast), and keep the blue theme for areas not involving text.
Incidentally, is the page views figure broken? It shows 0 for all threads.
Also, the text box seems rather small, and with rich-text, ignores line breaks. And if I disable rich-text, the text box becomes so tiny to be unusable (I typed this in notepad, and pasted it in). I'm using Opera 11.50.
The licence proposed in that blog seems contradictory - many Open Source licences allow proprietary uses, but he says you can only pick an Open Source licence for non-proprietary use.
Furthermore, I would be wary of trying to invent new licences - what he's doing is not simply releasing under multiple licences, but adding extra conditions. I think it's much better to support standard licences rather than new ones, as there will typically be lots of uncertainties, vague areas - with standard licences like GPL and the CC licences, there are plenty of places to read up about how they work.
Regarding what you say here - isn't it already possible to say your work is licensed under multiple licences? If you're okay with CC-BY/CC-BY-SA/GPL 2+/LGPL 2+, then one can already select all of those?
If you mean a licence for art that allows it to be used however people want, then the obvious question is, why not CC0?
1. Good point - it should be easy to stop the AI moving Settlers into enemy territory. Coordinating a better invasion force is something the AI has trouble with too, though will take more work to improve (this seems to be something the official Civilization games have trouble with too, in my experience, but it's something to try improving).
2. Unfortunately I don't get that on my machines (including my netbook). My guess would be that although I've switched keyboard to being a proper event based model, mouse clicks aren't, so that's an obvious distinction. I'm now updating the mouse routines to see if that helps.
Even so, it seems odd that the response is so slow only on some machines. What sort of frame rate are you getting when this happens? (Shown in bottom left.)
3. Yes indeed, it's just Yet Another Civilization clone. I'm motivated because I enjoy programming, rather than designing - the same lack of originality would have been evident if I'd been writing Yet Another FPS game ;) But yes, I agree that differentiation is good, and I need to do things if I'm attract new people to my game rather than existing ones.
There are differences, though minor rather than dramatic. I do have ideas for possible new additions to the mechanics - as well as a fantasy style-game based on it, in fact - though I wanted to focus on getting the basics of a working game first, that I could then experiment on later. I've had too many projects in the past where I've started off writing a game that I thought was a cool idea, only to spend months on something that I then realise is unplayable, unworkable, or I just lose focus. To some degree it's also simply a learning exercise / something to develop my game engine with / something for fun - it's been a style of game I've always wanted to try writing.
The fantasty style-game, if I get round to it, would be a separate project, but using the same underlying engine.
4. This is possibly because the AI chooses to use Peasants to build roads (in Conquests, many foot units can do this, rather than just Settlers), but yes, it would be the obvious choice to attack an adjacent enemy unit where the odds are better than being attacked. Should be easy to fix.
5. Both good points, have added them to the TODO list.
6. Oops. If it happens again, it's worth checking in %APPDATA%/conquests , to see if there a file called log_assertion_failure.txt .
Power: Not yet. This was one of those attempts at a new idea that went some way, but then I struggled with. It was originally to be a "win" condition (i.e., basically a Score) - but then I didn't like the idea that player's would basically be building arbitrary things just because that's how to win. I'm tempted to agree with C-Evo's philosophy that this kind of game doesn't really need an arbitrary score, when it's usually obvious to the player by the end whether you're the leading civilization or not. So I added the bonuses effect, but yes, I think it needs something more to it.
Re: the crash without shaders - thanks for the details, I've fixed that now, for the next version.
Ah, thanks for the Tiled link - I'm now currently adding support to maps created using this program to my game Conquests. Whilst there are advantages to writing a custom tool, I think there's a lot to be said for using existing tools rather than reinventing the wheel. It means support can quickly be added, and users can use an existing, supported, cross-platform tool. There's also a lower learning curve if games tend to use existing applications, rather than all having their own custom UI for the editor.
Rather than writing a plug-in, I'm going the route of making my game compatible with the Tiled map format (which is an easy to read XML file).
Regarding the debate about barriers to entry: I think it depends on whether the kind of difficulty is the sort of skill that's necessary for quality. I mean, if we were modding the AI or other game logic, it's reasonable to except someone to be reasonably proficient with scripting - if they aren't, they wouldn't get far anyway, even if we give them a nice point and click interface.
But if we're talking about artists, level designers etc, it's not clear to me that any inability to go delving into editing files means they would be unable to create good quality work. (The converse is true too - being good at editing files certainly doesn't imply you'll create good quality work - do you really want to limit the set of people who can create content, by this criterion?)
Also we shouldn't confuse lack of desire with inability - people may have the desire and ability to create game content, but have better things to do than fight with editing config files unnecessarily (this reminds me of the attitude that plagued Linux in the past; I'm a geek and programmer, but I still have no desire to spend my time editing config files just to get simple things working).
So for my game, modding the AI or creating a new set of game rules means editing the Lua scripts, which I think is fair enough. But for someone who simply wants to create a new map, I want it to be doable using an easy tool.
(Apologies for posting on an old thread - I wanted to comment on Tiled, and then got carried away rambling.)
I agree this would be a good change. When making a note of licence details of content I'd downloaded recently, I found that for some I'd accidentally written down the submitter as the author, for the attribution! So I think it's important to make sure the author (i.e., the one who should be attributed) is displayed most prominently.
Hi,
I think the low performance may be a factor in the sluggish response. What CPU / graphics card do you have? I'm wondering if there's a problem on some systems for some reason, or if the required spec is just higher than I thought.
What's the frame rate in the 2D mode (can be changed during the game, with "View 3D/2D"), and is the UI response any better? (A different rendering algorithm is used in 2D mode.)
I also wonder if running in full screen mode (from the Preferences) is any better?
Thanks for taking a look.
Slightly off-topic, but I was shocked to come across a similar issue with wedding photographers - that it seems standard practice for them to retain the copyright, even though you're paying them for the work. For my brother's wedding, they received the full batch of photos he'd taken, but they were stamped with an ugly "copyrighted" watermark, the idea being they'd have to pay extra for each and every photo. Couples would be committing piracy just to give a copy to their friends, or upload to Facebook.
So although it's not a game related thing, I do wonder if there does seem to be a philosophy among artists that's different to programmers. I get paid to program for my day job, but that means I don't expect to keep the copyright too.
It's only when I go to preview or edit. The Rich Text box is 7 lines high; the non-Rich Text box is 5 lines high. This is on Windows 7 (both 32 and 64 bit). My screen is 1680x150, with browser window full screen - but I had same problem on my netbook at 1024x600.
Also some other issues I've noticed (on my other computer at the moment with Opera 10.10 - I can try testing with the latest version if you like):
If I type some text in non-Rich Text, then go to preview, it's reverted back to Rich Text - but line breaks are removed.
If I only use the Rich Text editor, and post (even without previewing), it strips out the new lines.
I've uploaded version 0.14. Regarding the points above:
1. Settlers no longer enter enemy territory when at war - should fix the Settler invasion problem.
2. I've switched to using a proper event model for mouse clicks. As I say, it's unclear why it was so slow - would be curious to know if this fixes or improves the problem.
4. The problem was when units were building roads/railways - they'll now attack an adjacent unit if the odds are better than being attacked.
5. The map is now a minimap that can be onscreen all the time; it's less blurry, and has clearer, softer colours. You can also click on it to change the viewpoint.
6. There was a crash I've now fixed with listboxes, where it would crash if you clicked in the scrollbar area, when no scrollbar was displayed (this is a recent bug - in the last version I'd rewritten the routines for scrollbar drawing and input). So possibly this is what you were seeing.
The crash when no shaders were used is also fixed.
And various other improvements - you can now create custom maps using Tiled Map Editor ( http://www.mapeditor.org/ ) - it was a thread somewhere on these forums that suggested Tiled; simply making my game compatible with the Tiled file format was certainly much easier than writing my own editor from scratch.
I suspect the reason why artists often aren't willing to work for free on someone else's game are the same reasons why many programmers like me aren't willing to work for free on someone else's idea. We all have are own ideas to work on, and if it's something done for fun and for free, we'd rather do that, than do it for someone else.
Game art probably involves more work that's uninteresting to artists - it's not enough to draw a 2D character, you have to draw a whole load of frames, each in a whole load of orientations. For 3D, you have to make sure it can be animated. They have to work with the programmer to make sure it's in a format that's suitable for the game engine.
There's also consistency - a game ideally needs a whole set of work in a vaguely consistent manner, both from an aesthetic point of view (the same theme etc), and a technical point of view (e.g., 3D games ideally want meshes in the same format, with things like animation being done in the same way; if characters can hold objects, wear clothes etc, this needs to all work together too). I suspect many artists may prefer to simply work on different ideas, rather than putting their effort all into one massive project.
"My thoughts is that in the case of open source there are many games that are either uninteresting or just clones so you don't get excited about the game thus no motivation to participate"
I don't know if being clones is an issue. Games like FreeCiv and Widelands seem to have attracted plenty of people to produce content. In the commercial world, many games are clones but still attract much interest (the many FPS clones; or the ever growing Civilization franchise, as well as the unofficial Call To Power games). If anything, I'd argue clones may attract more interest, as people know and love the commercial equivalents, where as an original idea is untested - and what sounds good on paper, often doesn't work out in reality.
I think it's probably the case that artists are more likely to be attracted to established projects (or at least a playable game with placeholder graphics), than doing work for a programmer's new project that may end up going nowhere.
I find the grey text on blue rather hard to read - and the highlighted red text on blue looks particularly glaring.
I'd suggest a simple black text on white (or at least two colours with a big contrast), and keep the blue theme for areas not involving text.
Incidentally, is the page views figure broken? It shows 0 for all threads.
Also, the text box seems rather small, and with rich-text, ignores line breaks. And if I disable rich-text, the text box becomes so tiny to be unusable (I typed this in notepad, and pasted it in). I'm using Opera 11.50.
The licence proposed in that blog seems contradictory - many Open Source licences allow proprietary uses, but he says you can only pick an Open Source licence for non-proprietary use.
Furthermore, I would be wary of trying to invent new licences - what he's doing is not simply releasing under multiple licences, but adding extra conditions. I think it's much better to support standard licences rather than new ones, as there will typically be lots of uncertainties, vague areas - with standard licences like GPL and the CC licences, there are plenty of places to read up about how they work.
Regarding what you say here - isn't it already possible to say your work is licensed under multiple licences? If you're okay with CC-BY/CC-BY-SA/GPL 2+/LGPL 2+, then one can already select all of those?
If you mean a licence for art that allows it to be used however people want, then the obvious question is, why not CC0?
Thanks for your response!
1. Good point - it should be easy to stop the AI moving Settlers into enemy territory. Coordinating a better invasion force is something the AI has trouble with too, though will take more work to improve (this seems to be something the official Civilization games have trouble with too, in my experience, but it's something to try improving).
2. Unfortunately I don't get that on my machines (including my netbook). My guess would be that although I've switched keyboard to being a proper event based model, mouse clicks aren't, so that's an obvious distinction. I'm now updating the mouse routines to see if that helps.
Even so, it seems odd that the response is so slow only on some machines. What sort of frame rate are you getting when this happens? (Shown in bottom left.)
3. Yes indeed, it's just Yet Another Civilization clone. I'm motivated because I enjoy programming, rather than designing - the same lack of originality would have been evident if I'd been writing Yet Another FPS game ;) But yes, I agree that differentiation is good, and I need to do things if I'm attract new people to my game rather than existing ones.
There are differences, though minor rather than dramatic. I do have ideas for possible new additions to the mechanics - as well as a fantasy style-game based on it, in fact - though I wanted to focus on getting the basics of a working game first, that I could then experiment on later. I've had too many projects in the past where I've started off writing a game that I thought was a cool idea, only to spend months on something that I then realise is unplayable, unworkable, or I just lose focus. To some degree it's also simply a learning exercise / something to develop my game engine with / something for fun - it's been a style of game I've always wanted to try writing.
The fantasty style-game, if I get round to it, would be a separate project, but using the same underlying engine.
4. This is possibly because the AI chooses to use Peasants to build roads (in Conquests, many foot units can do this, rather than just Settlers), but yes, it would be the obvious choice to attack an adjacent enemy unit where the odds are better than being attacked. Should be easy to fix.
5. Both good points, have added them to the TODO list.
6. Oops. If it happens again, it's worth checking in %APPDATA%/conquests , to see if there a file called log_assertion_failure.txt .
Power: Not yet. This was one of those attempts at a new idea that went some way, but then I struggled with. It was originally to be a "win" condition (i.e., basically a Score) - but then I didn't like the idea that player's would basically be building arbitrary things just because that's how to win. I'm tempted to agree with C-Evo's philosophy that this kind of game doesn't really need an arbitrary score, when it's usually obvious to the player by the end whether you're the leading civilization or not. So I added the bonuses effect, but yes, I think it needs something more to it.
Re: the crash without shaders - thanks for the details, I've fixed that now, for the next version.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
Ah, thanks for the Tiled link - I'm now currently adding support to maps created using this program to my game Conquests. Whilst there are advantages to writing a custom tool, I think there's a lot to be said for using existing tools rather than reinventing the wheel. It means support can quickly be added, and users can use an existing, supported, cross-platform tool. There's also a lower learning curve if games tend to use existing applications, rather than all having their own custom UI for the editor.
Rather than writing a plug-in, I'm going the route of making my game compatible with the Tiled map format (which is an easy to read XML file).
Regarding the debate about barriers to entry: I think it depends on whether the kind of difficulty is the sort of skill that's necessary for quality. I mean, if we were modding the AI or other game logic, it's reasonable to except someone to be reasonably proficient with scripting - if they aren't, they wouldn't get far anyway, even if we give them a nice point and click interface.
But if we're talking about artists, level designers etc, it's not clear to me that any inability to go delving into editing files means they would be unable to create good quality work. (The converse is true too - being good at editing files certainly doesn't imply you'll create good quality work - do you really want to limit the set of people who can create content, by this criterion?)
Also we shouldn't confuse lack of desire with inability - people may have the desire and ability to create game content, but have better things to do than fight with editing config files unnecessarily (this reminds me of the attitude that plagued Linux in the past; I'm a geek and programmer, but I still have no desire to spend my time editing config files just to get simple things working).
So for my game, modding the AI or creating a new set of game rules means editing the Lua scripts, which I think is fair enough. But for someone who simply wants to create a new map, I want it to be doable using an easy tool.
(Apologies for posting on an old thread - I wanted to comment on Tiled, and then got carried away rambling.)
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