Snowboarding Soul Ride Engine Goes GPL 217
TuringTest writes "LinuxGames reports this news update at the Soul Ride game site. Soul Ride is a snowboarding game with real character physics, and its engine is now released under GPL and available for download. You may see its beautiful screenshots until it gets /.ed. Note that only the engine is GPL'd, not the artwork and data. Can you imagine a GPL game with the Fellowship of the Ring crossing the Caradhras with these graphics?" I hope this release spawns a Linux-friendly snowboarding simulator -- Soul Ride is limited to Windows (9X, NT, 2000) for now.
We don't need no stinkin' snowboard... (Score:5, Funny)
real Elves don't need snowboards (Score:1, Funny)
Fallen off? (Score:1, Funny)
Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty big on snowboarding games, and this isn't a very good one. A terrible one, to be more precise. One of those cheesy OpenGL "render the entire gameworld as polygons and let the video cards horsepower deliver the framerates because its way easier than only rendering on-screen action"
I'm sorry, but those screenshots look like ass. Even by first-gen voodoo graphics standards. The game engine might be a good learning tool, but I doubt it will spawn the killer-gaming-app-for-linux.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
You can set a fixed framerate, and the terrain changes to meet your demands.
You are right that the graphic sucks, and the gameplay is nonexistant.
But hey - how much can you expect from a commercial...
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
if frameratethreshold
render(smaller_mesh)
else
render(bigger_mesh)
end if
but there's no BSP-tree type ways to clip everything outside of the viewport. It processes every triangle in the 'world' for each frame, whether it's onscreen or not.
That is to say, it says:
draw(everything)
instead of
figure_out_whats_onscreen
draw(whats_onscreen)
My point is that this is just engine just draws a bunch of polygons. No cool special particle effects, no nifty vertex shaders or pixel shaders. No bumpmapping, environment mapping. No nothing. Just a bunch of triangles. As far as something to base a real game on, it's behind even the Quake engine.
Anyways, it's still good to see people willing to give up their source, even if it's value is nil.
Ignorant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP) (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, speaking as a developer of games, you can be sure I'll _never_ release anything into the GPL. Not so much because of politics but just because I can't stand the attitude of the GPL zealots who whine and moan about everything.
Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP) (Score:2)
But you will happily read, learn from, and/or use the code written by others and released to the public?
Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP) (Score:2)
Don't bite the hand that feeds you
Re:Ignorant (NO MOD THIS PARENT UP) (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
You are so clueless it is painful. You've actually given me a headache with your unsubstantiated drivel.
Here is proof, straigh from CVS, that what you are saying is pure nonsense: the terrain rendering source of the soulride engine [sourceforge.net].
Hint: you might want to take a look at the Render function. The comments are in plain English.
OT: Screen shot comment (Score:2, Funny)
This saying baffles me. "Looking like ass" could be good (J Lo) or bad (Goatse guy).
Sorry, but "look like ass" conveys no information.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a lot to be contributed to the world through coders doing work that all can use. There is already quite a few games out, and certainly I feel the current producers do games best. There's an expensive and time consuming culture related around game design and production
Not that they're useless, far from it, but OSS efforts I feel would be best applied to 'more noble pursuits'
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Then perhaps this is one of those cases where the great credo of Linux applies--scratch your own itch.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Funny)
Not that they're useless, far from it, but OSS efforts I feel would be best applied to 'more noble pursuits'
Such as creating a miracle to bring The Man In Black back from being only mostly dead so that he can marry his True Love and make Prince Humperdinck suffer? That is a noble cause!
Open Source Club! (Score:3, Insightful)
Second Rule of Open Source Club is: You Do Not Tell Other Open Sourcers What to Code.
Re:Open Source Club! (Score:1)
Mod +1, Damn Straight.
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Hmm? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think so? I doubt very much Thatcher Ulrich would code a new crappy engine, when he could use his famous (at least among those who keep up with such things) Chunked LOD [tulrich.com] algorithm. Thatcher released a sample implementation a while ago on sourceforge with source for linux and windows.
The chunked LOD algo is capable of using HUGE datasets (eg 285MB in the demo). Unlikely then that he's doing a "render the entire blah blah" thing...
You obviously know very little about graphics programming and more importantly have spent zero time investigating your claims.
Fair enough if you don't like the screen shots, but you really can't put down the engine, or it's programmer. Thatcher Ulrich is one of very few professional game programmers who publishes (both source and papers) his CURRENT algorithms (eg not 5 year old ones like Carmack). He invented the (also famous among people who know) "loose octree" method of spacial partitioning.
Re:Hmm? (Score:2, Informative)
The preprocessing can be done by the programmer and the processed data packaged with the game. Download the Chunked LOD demo and you'll see what I mean.
The collision thing is more of an issue, but would only mean storing a seperate hierachy of collision volumes. A lot of games engines do this anyway.
The problem with any LOD scheme is that you have to update your collision volumes whenever the shape of the mesh changes.
Re:Hmm? (Score:2)
Because the programmers don't usually do graphics - you need a large team of professional artists to make good game graphics, something that OpenSource games don't seem to able to compete with, unfortunately. In a typical Id game you probably have less than 10 programmers and over 30 talented professional qualified artists working full-time. A game like BF 1942 also typically has over 30 full-time artists.
The programmers cannot "make" the game look good. Only the artists can do that. The programmer provides the technical means for the artists to be able to do what they do.
Say "Thank You", Smile, and Move On (Score:2)
Jeez, how hard is that? You got something for Christmas from that relative you barely even see, do what I told my son. Even if you don't like it, this person went to some effort to do something nice.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
You obviously don't know what you are talking about.. hell one look at the system requirements ought to tip you off if common sense doesn't considering this is designed to run well on 300mhz computers with 64 megs of ram and any card that is capable of displaying opengl
Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Great pics (Score:1, Funny)
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I would of preffered it in color tho
My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:4, Funny)
Check out these screenshots [whistler.com]. Lots of polygons and the FPS is good even on old hardware.
Seriously, sometimes reality is better.
Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:4, Insightful)
I happen to enjoy Snowboarding/skateboarding games because I liked that stuff when I was able to do it (well skateboarding anyhow, snowboarding didn't exist then, or hadn't been heard of).
Besides, in this economy, fewer people can shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars, and take time off from work, to go to some mountain resort than can shell out $20 (or $100, w/controller) for a simulation.
Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:1)
Whistler is CDN $69.50 per day (after tax) if you don't have a pass or coupon.
With a pass it gets down to approx CDN $52 (after tax) but still...
now if those prices were in USD.. they'd be like .... oh wait... what was I talking about? ;)
Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:1)
Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:1)
Games which are too abstract are harder to enjoy
I assume you're not a Tetris fan.
Re:My favorite snowboarding simulator (Score:2)
I do think you've raised an interesting and fairly deep issue, though - is there any point making games seem more "real"? If you do, does it even make the game any less abstract (being that it is, in the end, a false depiction)? I think you're saying "yes", but I probably wouldn't. It's a fascination of the industry, but I'm really not that sure it makes such a big difference to game players. Board games aren't becoming less popular lately, they're undergoing a German-led renaissance. Abstract entertainment will always be very, very popular, and so will real-world recreation. In many ways they're apples and orange anyway.
The point of "realistic" games (Score:2, Insightful)
The point of games that attempt to represent reality to some extent is that a novice player can leverage his instinctive knowledge of reality (e.g. what's gravity, what's momentum, etc) to create a base on which the player can devise initial tactics. Even Tetris does this to some extent, leveraging the player's experience with jigsaw puzzles. However, making a game's world model too accurate destroys the psychological escape factor of the game.
when I was a ski bum... (Score:2)
Server hit a mogul (Score:2, Funny)
memo (Score:5, Funny)
From: Bill Gates
to: DirectX_Devel
ALERT! - VERY IMPORTANT - ALERT!
There has been a GPL game engine released! [sourceforge.net] Consider it your top priority to make our next release of DirectX incompatible with this new viral-licensed package.
Long live Me,
-Bill
Re:What about Quake? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm curious: Does the Bill Gates in your world of fiction send one of these memos
In my wee world Bill Gates cheats at cards, steals candy from children and pees on the toilet seat.
Thanks for asking.
Screenshots listing (Score:5, Informative)
Point your WGET (to mirror) at
http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/imag
Re:Screenshots listing (Score:3, Interesting)
No it's not (Score:5, Informative)
Gee, that's funny. I guess the Linux version that I've been playing for the last two months has just been a warped dream. Maybe not? [soulride.com]
Re:No it's not (Score:2)
Slashdotted... (Score:5, Funny)
Tenebrae (Score:5, Interesting)
What would be even nicer would be a totally GPL game based on the upcoming Tenebrae 2.0 [sf.net] engine.
Woohoo (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. This is exactly the killer app Linux needs to fully make it onto the desktop. Just last week I was telling my grandmother she should install Linux, and I told her about OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, etc. But when she asked "is there a snowboarding simulator?" I knew I wouldn't be winning her over to the Linux side.
Other Screenshots Here (Score:2, Informative)
the source? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the source? (Score:3, Informative)
Go Legolas! (Score:1, Redundant)
GPL game of Caradhras (Score:2)
i.e. good fscking luck.
Re:GPL game of Caradhras (Score:2)
i.e. good fscking luck.
It could be done under Fair Use, IMO.
However, it would probably be better to do a Bored of the Rings type satire, with Frito, Pepsi, Gimlet, Legolam, Goodgulf and the rest. ROFL.
Here's a pretty good Bored of the Rings page [amethyst-angel.com].
Meh (Score:2, Troll)
Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2)
The whole spit and polish of Tux Racer (commercial or GPLed) is much nicer. That's not to say that Soul Ride is bad, it's just not in the same legue as Tux Racer.
What would be really nice (Score:5, Interesting)
3D engines really aren't the time-consuming part of creating a game. It would be nice to see some 'open sourced' player models, motion captures, sound effects, musics, etc, etc..
I know there are a ton of people versed in 3D modelling out there. Perhaps they can offer up some of their 3D 'doodles' to the OSS community for use in games. Maybe a sort of BSD/GPL liscense for artwork/data?
Re:What would be really nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, each game could render them differently, but it would be nice if there was a spec that could be followed. Each game could load the player's model, then enhance it however they see fit.
Re:What would be really nice (Score:2)
The problem with using a common format is that games work in different ways. Consider this: If we were talking about making maps interoperable, that'd be impossible: You could never share between a portals-based game (like Descent) with a BSP-tree based game like Quake, because they organize data in a fundamentally different manner.
You can't make a format common and still allow the coders any flexibility.
With say, images, it's different: it's an image, there is only so much you can do with it, but even now many of the things that an ingenius programmer (... Carmack, Romero, Sweeney... ) *could* do with an engine have yet to be conceived of: the possibilities for a full 3D interactive environment is a lot greater than for the simple things that have already been standardized.
It might be nice, but don't hold your breath.
Re:What would be really nice (Score:3, Informative)
You can. Both of those formats can be automatically compiled from a shared representation as simple polygons. The resultant map won't have the same manual optimization as if an artist had tweaked it by hand, though. For at least one of the engines, it will be slower than necessary. Quake and Descent are both 3 generations old, though, so a modern computer will chuckle at the extra work. (And the created Descent map may be quite ugly, as stretched-inverse-cubes are unlikely to gracefully represent the details of a Quake level)
The more substantive problem to sharing maps is the gameplay itself. Imagine what would happen if Mr. Quake was spawned in a Descent map: he'd run 10 meters, then fall into an inescapable depression- because the map was built for a flying hero. Likewise, a Descent spaceship might find a Quake map terminally boring ("I just fly up, over the castle, back down, and win!")
If the maps are intended for more compatible genres, then it might work a little better. At least assumptions like "player needs to walk across floor to the doorway" will hold true. But still, building a fun, professional-quality game map means tweaking to exactly challenge the player's ability to move, jump, and shoot.
Restricting the desired category of games to highly realistic ones makes the idea of sharing terrain much more worthwhile. In that case, as long as the terrain correctly duplicates the original location, then any inability of the game system to work well in it can be filed as a bug against the software.
In particular, I've noticed a trend in several FPS programs to include the Fort McKenna MOUT training grounds [sri.com] as a playable map, which becomes a common point of comparison.
Re:What would be really nice (Score:2)
Re:What would be really nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Read first paragraph [gamespy.com]
I'd have to agree with the parent though. I've noticed lots of open source 3d engines coming along. It seems no one is makeing any games from these. I guess all those people are busy moding commercial engines.
Re:What would be really nice (Score:2)
Half-Life was built on the solid foundation of id Software's Quake engine and QuakeWorld network code. While Valve made some extensive additions and even threw in a smattering of Quake II code, Half-Life's core is basically heavily remodeled, prettied up Quake tech.
There was an interesting top 10 done on Half-Life on gamespy the other day, thats where I got the above info:
Top 10 reasons why Half-Life is still #1 [gamespy.com]
Re:What would be really nice (Score:2)
AugstWest's point was that what is really needed is some open minded artists who allow their models to be used in projects where there are ideas but no "artistic gifts".
What is needed is data for skeletal modelling (eg motion capture data), models, textures, levels etc.
And even if general meshes are not really what you want in a project it's better than something that looks butt ugly.
Now people like me (mainly coders) can do a lot of good work by supplying advanced tools and engines. Eg it could be neat to have support for parametric facial animations in a game. (So if you use voice communication it will appear as if the avatar was speaking.) Or continuing on the voice track you could alter voices to better suit the gender/race/species of character talking.
There are also many areas which requires a lot of creativity for programmers. AI is a good example. And coding is quite creative by it's nature.
cool that it's GPL'd, but... (Score:1)
One small request (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One small request (Score:2)
TOns of little squawking penguins.. Big snowboard with Windows Logo.. Slalom over the penguins, nice big blood splatters...
Hrm.
Re:One small request (Score:4, Funny)
What about ones with frickin 'la-zer' beams on thier heads? Is that too much to ask? Over the top?
Re:One small request (Score:2)
So depends on your target audience.
Like SSX? (Score:2)
Yep, they are in one of the shortcuts on the Hawaii track. Penguins. Not quite filled with frickin' penguins, but they are there. Both original SSX and SSX: Tricky have it.
The first time I saw them I was seriously baked and, well... (I mean how can you do anything involving a Snowboard without weed? Well, unless you are Canadian and it is the Olympics...)
these graphics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:these graphics (Score:2)
You're pretty ignorant about graphics.
1. The proper technical name for that technique is called billboarding.
2. Billboard sprites are commonly used in games. From Doom, all the way to the latest XBox games, such as Bungine's Halo. (Look at the trees on top of the hills in the 2nd Level.)
3. How many games have you written or worked on?
Another cool thing they've done.... (Score:4, Interesting)
They've done Stratton [soulride.com], Breckenridge [soulride.com] and Jay Peak [soulride.com].
Graphics not that amazing. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I can, and it's awful.
These graphics remind me of an old landscape generator I had back on my 486. It generated a plasma-looking sky and a 3d landscape you used your mouse to fly over.
Big whoop, but I guess it's cool that the engine was released.
Re:Graphics not that amazing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare this to Soul Ride, which uses an implementation of ROAM (rigorously optimized adaptive mesh). While it isn't quite cutting-edge anymore--the original ROAM paper was written a few years back--no other published game that I know of has used it yet.
ROAM allows arbitrarily detailed terrain. It represents the terrain as a quadtree -- a space which is subdivided into four parts, each of which is subdivided into four parts, etc ad infinitum -- and by intelligently collapsing and expanding quadtree nodes based on the distance from the viewer to the terrain.
For you, this means that the hillock in front of your nose will look perfectly smooth, and the jagged peak in the background will also look perfectly smooth, and each of them will only use as many polygons as it needs to maintain the appearance of smoothness. That translates to a vastly improved framerate for you, and better memory usage to boot.
Re:Graphics not that amazing. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually your describing how quad trees work, which I Soul Rider is based on. But ROAM works by splitting triangles in halves recursively, and is quite different.
No no no (Score:2)
Re:Graphics not that amazing. (Score:2)
good direction to go (Score:1)
and releasing the data files commercially is not that bad. it might give game develoers more of an incentive to make a good plot (first person shooters) so that people would want that added material.
Good thing (Score:1)
Works on Linux Already (Score:2, Insightful)
Mental picture (Score:2)
Unfortunately, yes.
Allright! (Score:3, Funny)
We need good gpl'd games! (Score:2)
Re:We need good gpl'd games! (Score:2)
Sunspire replaced the parts they didn't make and closed it, as they are fully legally and morally within thier right to do. They made it. They own the copyright. They can do as they wish.
Since Tux Racer has been continuously in the top Sourceforge downloads, and others had made modest GPLed contributions, Sunspire figured that selling it would be a good idea. I can't fault that logic. An odd thing happened though. Some folks that might not understand or agree with the GPL felt slighted when a closed and for-pay branch appeared and refused to pay for it out of some odd sense of principle (or being cheap).
The GPLed version is still available so nothing is stopping anyone from making improvements to it.
That said, so far, the commercial version is quite a bit better. Commercial Tux Racer is $15 [tuxracer.com]. It runs under both Linux (x86) and Windows. I bought 2 copies, one for me and one for a niece of mine and I consider the price a bargain.
flame off
Re:We need good gpl'd games! (Score:2)
Sunspire then said the equivalent of: "so long and thanks for all the ideas".
Yes, they were legally within their rights, but it still doesn't seem very nice.
Re:We need good gpl'd games! (Score:2)
bad graphics (Score:2)
maybe
Re:bad graphics (Score:2)
Make that 99% of the Linux games we have now. Actually, the terrain rendering is quite nice, so is the snow texture mapping. The snowboarder figure is done with taste, though not to today's typical production values. The trees suck pretty badly, but that is exactly where somebody could go in and bring the graphics up to today's standards, relying purely on the current generation of fast GPUs to handle a lot of extra splats.
The terrain rendering is expansive - it's hard to spot a backdrop, if there is one at all.
Re:bad graphics (Score:2)
Working graphics link... (Score:2)
What!? (Score:2)
> snowboarding simulator -- Soul Ride is limited to
> Windows (9X, NT, 2000) for now.
Uh.. first of all, Soul Ride was GPL'ed at least a week ago. I downloaded it several days ago and have been playing it happily... IN LINUX.
Soul Ride was ported to Linux before it was even GPL'ed. Do slashdot editors even check the stories that they post?
Alternate URL (Score:2, Informative)
Blueberry3D (Score:2)
There are a few movies you can download from their site and they are quite impressive. Particularly the trees IMHO. (Which look very real, even close up.)
Re:Soul Ride run on linux as well. (Score:1)
And here is a link to the download page with the Linux version of Jay Peak Virtual Resort [soulride.com].
Re:Soul Ride run on linux as well. (Score:1)
Re:fizzy (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah every time I go boarding I launch myself 20 feet in the air and do a 720 backflip. And then I launch over a 300 foot vertical drop and hit the ground running without being phased.
Real physics? On one of Mars' moons maybe.
Re:fizzy (Score:2)
Re:fizzy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fizzy (Score:2, Funny)
That could just be me, though.
Real physics model (Score:2)
I've been trying to do this in the game (a free Linux demo for the Jay Peak mountain got released a while ago) too, and I end up landing on my ass pretty much every time. Seems realistic enough to me!
And then I launch over a 300 foot vertical drop and hit the ground running without being phased.
Nobody said it used a real biology model!
My dreams... (Score:2)
Real life is something different though....
Re:Released? Really (Score:2)