You can propose some idea to improve gluon. Just be clear and explain all, with pic for example!

You can propose some 2d games that you want !

Does Gluon have SVG support? With Qt's graphics framework I have resolution independence using SVG and QPainter primitives. So, how would a game look great maximized without changing screen resolution?

Gluon doesn't support SVG because it uses openGL texture. Maybe in the futur....

[EDIT: I wrote this before noticing your post saying you'll be sharing a tech preview soon. This answers a lot of what I wrote below. Thankyou! ]



I'd just love to see some kind of demo of how (if?) the workflow of Gluon is / will be. Even a youtube video. I'm talking more how the app would be used than any one feature. Is it going to be mainly accessed through scripting like Crystalspace? A gui like GameMaker? A mix (like Blenders logic bricks + python)?

There's been some nice blog posts and videos already, but they all tend to be either abstract or showing off one specific feature. I guess some kind of walkthrough on the state of Gluon as it is today is what's needed to help people understand what features already exist and what's still worth asking for.

I really want this project to succeed and to get my hands on it. I've read everything I could find on it. I still don't really understand exactly what the app is / will be.

I'd like to though.

The workflow (and UI and so on) of Gluon Creator is one of the things that we'll be working on at the sprint - but if you want some of the ideas for where we're looking, check out Unity3D

leinir wrote:if you want some of the ideas for where we're looking, check out Unity3D

Nice. Hope the sprint goes awesome!

dridk wrote:You can propose some 2d games that you want !

I've been wanting to create a GPL mario / sonic style game with free software characters for the longest time. Looking forward to giving it a shot with Gluon!

Hey, any idea what the deal would be with licensing of games made using Gluon?

Kubuntiac wrote:

dridk wrote:You can propose some 2d games that you want !

I've been wanting to create a GPL mario / sonic style game with free software characters for the longest time. Looking forward to giving it a shot with Gluon!

Hehe, a platformer or two would be kinda neat, yeah Konqi on a never-ending quest to save Kate?

Kubuntiac wrote:Hey, any idea what the deal would be with licensing of games made using Gluon?

Yup - eventually games built using Gluon are going to be entirely made up of assets (that is, graphics, sounds and scripts defining behavior) and as such a game could potentially choose any license they'd really want to If they choose to write some of the game-code in a compiled language, however, then it's going to have to be some description of a GPLv3-compatible license, as that's the license Gluon is under

Groovy.

Now for the fun part of trying to figure out what license to put art under. I've been lobbying the FSF's legal podcast guys to do a show on this. No luck so far. I think it's because the FSF doesn't really *have* a good art license.

Guess I'll just go with the same as Oxygen (LGPL / CC BY-SA?). None of the distro's seem to mind their licensing.

Kubuntiac wrote:Groovy.

Now for the fun part of trying to figure out what license to put art under. I've been lobbying the FSF's legal podcast guys to do a show on this. No luck so far. I think it's because the FSF doesn't really *have* a good art license.

Guess I'll just go with the same as Oxygen (LGPL / CC BY-SA?). None of the distro's seem to mind their licensing.

Hehe, well one of the things we're working on for Gluon's the potential for shipping games through a Steam or Impulse like distribution system - probably using GHNS for the social aspects and so on, and some extensions for managing payments/donations... yeah, plans and so on, we'll see how that one works out But, the relevance to you here is that you'd be able to create a game that, if the license of said game conflicts with the FSF's license policies only means that it wouldn't be shipped /with/ gluon, but rather /through/ gluon... but this is in the future anyway, and depends on a whole big bunch of things working out anyway

Good to know. For the record I have no plans of using a license that conflicts with the GPL. It's just that no decent GPL-like art license seems to exist. Seems to me that there are *some* types of art that *do* have similar "source code" like structure to the GPL (ie SVG) and some that don't really (PNG, JPG etc). Would be great to see someone come up with a license that was basically the GPL for art, even if it was just for that first category of art types where the original file really does let you create the final output. I'd say you could include SVG (with embedded images), ODG, MIDI, .blend (with all external data packed) and a few more. Not perfect, but a good start.

Anyway, I digress. A GHNG / GHNGC (Get Hot New Games / Get Hot New Game Content!) system would severely rock. Regarding payment systems, it might be worth having a chat with Mathieu Comandon (https://launchpad.net/~strycore)

He recently posted on Matrin Owens' blog:

Here’s my 2 cents about this.
I’m currently working on a social network project for Open Source developers. At some point I thought it would be nice it this platform allowed to pay the developers, it’s not something I plan for the earlier versions but when the project as matured enough.
The fundamental idea is to act as some sort of bank, to allow users to make micro payments. It’s not really worth the pain to use a payment platform like Paypal when you want to donate a really small amount of money. The solution for me is to put a fair amount of money (like, say 50 bucks) on a central website and then you would be allowed to redistribute it as you wish: 50 cents to Transmission, 3 bucks for Firefox, 5 for Kernel developers,etc…
When the amount of money for a project has reached a certain point (say 100 bucks) then the platform would make the payment to the developers.
The important thing is to allow people to donate really small amounts, so that in the end, more people give.
My project focuses on developers or at least contributors, but integrating this kind of mechanism right into the software center would be a great thing for regular users.
This kind of payment facility should be a trusted authority, I wouldn’t give unless I was sure I was giving to the right person. And it should have an open protocol, not specific to Ubuntu so that other distributions and websites can use it.
This would be a breakthrough in the OpenSource economic model because right now, I’m kinda wondering how I will pay the bills while still making what I love.

Don't know how he's planning it, but it's always seemed to me that the biggest problem has always been ease and cost of having many people donate small amounts (ie <$10).

if the license of said game conflicts with the FSF's license policies only means that it wouldn't be shipped /with/ gluon, but rather /through/ gluon...

lol. Sounds suspiciously like the "Gluon App Store" (the "gStore"?). Maybe it would run on portable devices like the Pandora... Anyway, I'll be happy when I've got something in my hands that lets me *make* a game first. World domination follows soon after.

Looking forward to the Gluon preview!

What would be awesome would be if Gluon Creator could use some kind of node based system for creating games. This lets artists create games without needing to learn to code first. It makes it *much* easier for people to get started. Even for people who *can* code, it makes it much faster to make prototype (make rough drafts) fast.



Ideally, it would be done in a way, where, if more flexibility was eventually needed, that any node *could* be replaced with a script later.

Despite it's tricky interface, this was the reason why the Blender Game Engine was the only one I (as an artist) was actually able to make a game in. I didn't have to learn any coding, and yet it's powerful. The combination of sensors, operands, actuators and states let's you do 99% of what you can with code. It's not perfect though and what they have is kind of "half way" towards a node system. Many people (including me) want a full visual node based system to do more powerful things.

Adding a system that let *everyone* create games, rather than just coders, would radically increase the number of users, games and creativity in the Gluon community.

Just a thought... do you want these kind of ideas on this thread or in the Brainstorm area?

Well, you say Blender, and i say Unity3D - the difference being that while Blender Game Engine is indeed made to create games, Unity3D is an entire ecosystem designed from the very ground up to create games And having seen people with little to no coding experience (the sort of people who either run away scared or curl up in a ball in a corner if you say "text editor") work with this tool, well, i really have very little bad to say about the approach. But yes, it's entirely possible we'd be able to make something similar to this, though for the time being i find it unlikely we'll be basing it visually on this graph-like system - however, that's something we'll certainly take into account when we discuss it at the sprint Thanks!

Actually I'm *not* saying Blender. I'm proposing something better than what Blender has. This is more like what CryEngine uses. I have no experience with Unity, so I really have no opinion on it. I've just loved working code-free, even with "semi-nodes". If you can create a system though, that's comfortable to create games in for a non coder (with or without my suggestion) I'll be a very happy man. If Unity's found a better (code free) way, then great! I look forward to using it.

Can you recommend anywhere I could see the basic flow of how this works? (Tutorials, videos?)


BY the Way: I *am* one of those people who "curl up in a ball in a corner if you say 'text editor'" when it comes to this kind of thing... almost! I just want to make art and put it into games!

As I mentioned in the other thread, if you have a Windows machine, you can download a 30-day free trial of Unity. You can also watch some very short video tutorials in http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/video or read through the basics in http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Unity%20Basics.html. I haven't fully explored it myself so I might be missing a few details in my assessment that follows (and I haven't gotten around to actually trying BGE either).

Unity's workflow and UI setup is actually like a mix of a programming IDE and a 3D animation software minus the modeling parts. You have a main view(s) where you can drag and drop, position and do basic manipulation (translate, rotate, scale) on 3D objects. You have panels that show the objects that belong to your current view/scene, and a panel that shows all available assets for your project. Think of that as a library, but a library that doesn't just contain 3D models or materials, but also reusable scripts and prefabs (prefabricated, ready to use "cookie cutter" object that have built-in functionality and can be reused again and again and manipulated together, like instances of trees in a forest).

What makes Unity different from the rest is that an object (technically, a "Game Object", you're gonna see that term used in Gluon Creator as well) is basically just an empty "thing". By itself, it doesn't even have a visible mesh (it only has an x,y,z position). A Game Object can then have any number of "Components" which are basically like properties of the object. And these components can be anything, from meshes, to materials, to particles, to scripts. Yes, scripts are components that can be attached to any object too.

You might get scared with the scripts part, but in Unity, a script will offer a GUI form to manipulate values. You don't have to type in code. The programmers in the game will be the ones to create the script (by typing), while non-programmers can use those scripts from the GUI and change their values to affect objects, just like any other property such as position, size, etc.

That's really just as for as I got from my brief trial of the software (I think I still have 14 days left). It's really a nice app and the UI is not that much different from your regular 3D software UI (I have 3DS Max in mind). So I think both programmers and non-programmers in a team will feel at home.

Hope that helps a bit.