This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
91
Off-Topic / Re: CPGCL - Cross Platform Game Creation Language
« on: March 22, 2014, 08:19:47 am »Quote
a programming language for creating games that can produce Win, Mac, Linux, IOs and android binaries from one single source file
That's not exactly special. Languages being cross-platform has been a normal thing for decades now. Even Game Maker supports at least the popular systems now.
I'm looking at your example code, I don't see anything special about it. It looks like a variant of JSON with a couple of minor changes and the unnecessary "if" syntax. If you want to create ENIGMA files in a JSON-like structure, why not just use JSON?
Side note: no indentation = ugly.
92
General ENIGMA / Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
« on: March 21, 2014, 05:05:33 pm »So far I know people who have sold their games made in GMS and made several hundreds of $ and have not been sued by anyone yet.
Why would they be sued? YoYo Games gives you a license that allows you to do that with the games you make with GMS. Of course, the license is only granted to you if you sign a contract that puts unjust restrictions on your use of GMS, on top of the already-existing unjust restrictions of copyright. You have to agree not to reverse-engineer GMS, for example.
Perhaps it would have been a better idea not to make it open source but a shareware with limited functionality with a path to upgrade to a PRO version that allows selling, and doing whatever ... Like I said, I would have gladly paid for something like ENIGMA.
I haven't interacted with this community very much, so I don't know how most people feel about freedom. But let me tell you this: ENIGMA is nowhere near as good in a practical sense as GMS. It's not even unique for being compiled rather than interpreted anymore; GMS added a compiler. But it has two major things going for it: it's free/libre, and it's gratis. If ENIGMA wasn't free/libre, I would think it to be no better than the many other proprietary game engines out there such as Game Maker, and I would refuse to use it on the same grounds that I refuse to use Game Maker.
But ENIGMA is free/libre and shows no sign of changing this, so I recommend it to people as a potential replacement for Game Maker.
Even if ENIGMA was able to be developed into something as good as Game Maker by being just another proprietary program, it wouldn't matter. It would just be yet another proprietary program, and in the end it would be no better than Game Maker. And of course, it would not have the inherent immortality that free/libre software has.
93
General ENIGMA / Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
« on: March 20, 2014, 11:58:05 pm »
I just want to point out some things (some repeats since I started typing before Josh's post above):
- Just because the engine of the game you write is under the GPL doesn't mean your art assets are. I don't know if it's been tested in court, but it's commonly accepted that the game's data, e.g. art assets and scenarios, can be GPL-incompatible. Even completely free/libre games often choose the GPL-incompatible CC BY or CC BY-SA license for such assets, and there are several games whose engines are under the GPL, but whose game data is proprietary. Examples include Doom, AssaultCube, Planeshift, Gish, and The Ur-Quan Masters, among others.
- Just because people can obtain something without paying doesn't mean they won't pay. Supporting the developer of a game you like feels good. In fact, when people are given an option up-front of how much to pay, the average is usually well above the minimum; I recall one example of the "pay what you want" system where the minimum was $1, and the average people were paying was $3. People aren't really as rationally greedy as the capitalist model suggests.
- Just because people can provide something gratis doesn't mean they will. I actually looked to see if I could find copies of some of Jason Rohrer's games' source code so I could see what they were like before paying; these games are in the public domain, so it's perfectly legal to share. I found no such copies. It's easy to understand why if you think about it: people don't just instinctively upload everything they have a copy of somewhere on the Internet just because it's legal. They only do so if they have a reason to, and they usually only have a reason to if there's a huge demand for copies that don't cost anything. If you're at that point, you've already made a lot of money selling copies.
- Selling copies of a game isn't the only way to make money from it. If it's an online game, you can make money from server access; no proprietary software is needed for this. Crowdfunding might also be a way to get the money upfront: basically, being paid to make the game (though I don't think this has been tested much if at all).
- The point of using the GPL isn't to protect the program licensed under it; it's to protect the freedom of the users of the program. Whether or not it's worth it, that depends. I don't think it's worth it to use strong copyleft in ENIGMA's case, because people who would make non-libre game engines would just use Game Maker instead of ENIGMA. Weak copyleft should be used. But to say that it's bad simply because it results in less users ignores the whole point of the GPL. If ENIGMA was attractive enough that it could convince people to use the GPL rather than switching to Game Maker, using the GPL would make perfect sense.
- The Flightgear thing was done by a third party, and that's what made people upset: they were just putting a big price tag on something that was made by someone else and given to them gratis. If the Flightgear devs had been selling the copies and a third party had been giving away copies, it would have been very different.
- Just because the engine of the game you write is under the GPL doesn't mean your art assets are. I don't know if it's been tested in court, but it's commonly accepted that the game's data, e.g. art assets and scenarios, can be GPL-incompatible. Even completely free/libre games often choose the GPL-incompatible CC BY or CC BY-SA license for such assets, and there are several games whose engines are under the GPL, but whose game data is proprietary. Examples include Doom, AssaultCube, Planeshift, Gish, and The Ur-Quan Masters, among others.
- Just because people can obtain something without paying doesn't mean they won't pay. Supporting the developer of a game you like feels good. In fact, when people are given an option up-front of how much to pay, the average is usually well above the minimum; I recall one example of the "pay what you want" system where the minimum was $1, and the average people were paying was $3. People aren't really as rationally greedy as the capitalist model suggests.
- Just because people can provide something gratis doesn't mean they will. I actually looked to see if I could find copies of some of Jason Rohrer's games' source code so I could see what they were like before paying; these games are in the public domain, so it's perfectly legal to share. I found no such copies. It's easy to understand why if you think about it: people don't just instinctively upload everything they have a copy of somewhere on the Internet just because it's legal. They only do so if they have a reason to, and they usually only have a reason to if there's a huge demand for copies that don't cost anything. If you're at that point, you've already made a lot of money selling copies.
- Selling copies of a game isn't the only way to make money from it. If it's an online game, you can make money from server access; no proprietary software is needed for this. Crowdfunding might also be a way to get the money upfront: basically, being paid to make the game (though I don't think this has been tested much if at all).
- The point of using the GPL isn't to protect the program licensed under it; it's to protect the freedom of the users of the program. Whether or not it's worth it, that depends. I don't think it's worth it to use strong copyleft in ENIGMA's case, because people who would make non-libre game engines would just use Game Maker instead of ENIGMA. Weak copyleft should be used. But to say that it's bad simply because it results in less users ignores the whole point of the GPL. If ENIGMA was attractive enough that it could convince people to use the GPL rather than switching to Game Maker, using the GPL would make perfect sense.
- The Flightgear thing was done by a third party, and that's what made people upset: they were just putting a big price tag on something that was made by someone else and given to them gratis. If the Flightgear devs had been selling the copies and a third party had been giving away copies, it would have been very different.
94
General ENIGMA / Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
« on: March 20, 2014, 09:49:40 pm »Also on the topic of being sued.......Do people really get sued ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSF_vs._Cisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center#BusyBox_Litigation
95
General ENIGMA / Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
« on: March 20, 2014, 07:57:18 pm »
Whoa there, hang on. You forgot the GNU LGPL. If you're going to use weak copyleft, I think that's a much better choice. The MPL really is an artifact of license proliferation that happened in the past, and I think the only time it's really appropriate is when the software in question has something to do with Mozilla software, which ENIGMA doesn't. Plus, the MPL's compatibility with the GPL is complicated.
I would be in support of switching to the LGPL. The reason I would support weak copyleft for ENIGMA is if you use strong copyleft, people who want to use a proprietary license are just going to use Game Maker. I don't think ENIGMA is ever going to have enough attractive features to encourage people to switch to using the GPL for their projects, just so they can use ENIGMA instead of Game Maker.
However, it might be useful to keep some extra features that people might find attractive as plugins or something covered by the GNU GPL.
I would be in support of switching to the LGPL. The reason I would support weak copyleft for ENIGMA is if you use strong copyleft, people who want to use a proprietary license are just going to use Game Maker. I don't think ENIGMA is ever going to have enough attractive features to encourage people to switch to using the GPL for their projects, just so they can use ENIGMA instead of Game Maker.
However, it might be useful to keep some extra features that people might find attractive as plugins or something covered by the GNU GPL.
96
Teamwork / Re: I hate making user interfaces. Would anyone like to help me make an IDE?
« on: December 04, 2013, 06:25:18 pm »
True enough. I probably should learn Qt...
97
Teamwork / I hate making user interfaces. Would anyone like to help me make an IDE?
« on: December 04, 2013, 05:48:38 pm »
I've developed a universal game engine for Python called the SGE ("Stellar Game Engine"). You can think of the SGE as an alternative to ENIGMA. It has a website here:
http://stellarengine.nongnu.org
I've been facing a huge problem lately, though: now I have to make an IDE for this, particularly a room editor. But the thing is, I hate making user interfaces. It's just not the type of programming I like to do. Because of this, development of just the room editor, which I've decided to call the SELE ("Stellarly-Encompassing Level Editor"), has been horrendously slow, and every time I go to it I feel overwhelmed before I even get started.
So, if anyone here actually likes making user interfaces and would like to help, please join in! I don't even care what libraries are used. Heck, I don't really care what language is used.
This is a lot more detailed, if you're into that kind of thing:
http://www.gamedev.net/classifieds/item/2613-ide-for-a-python-game-engine-ive-written/
http://stellarengine.nongnu.org
I've been facing a huge problem lately, though: now I have to make an IDE for this, particularly a room editor. But the thing is, I hate making user interfaces. It's just not the type of programming I like to do. Because of this, development of just the room editor, which I've decided to call the SELE ("Stellarly-Encompassing Level Editor"), has been horrendously slow, and every time I go to it I feel overwhelmed before I even get started.
So, if anyone here actually likes making user interfaces and would like to help, please join in! I don't even care what libraries are used. Heck, I don't really care what language is used.
This is a lot more detailed, if you're into that kind of thing:
http://www.gamedev.net/classifieds/item/2613-ide-for-a-python-game-engine-ive-written/
98
Issues Help Desk / Re: ENIGMA not working on Trisquel (was: LateralGM crashing on OpenJDK on Trisquel)
« on: November 29, 2013, 06:47:43 pm »
OK, on IRC, fundies helped me out a bit. Here's a log of the conversation:
After I switched to fundies' fork on GitHub, I was able to compile a blank game, the FPS example, and the isometric Mario example. The platformer thing still doesn't work, and I still have the same crash with Bowser's Last Stand, so the problem's not solved, but it's a step forward, anyway.
EDIT: The rest was a corrupt GMK, as was found out on IRC.
Code: [Select]
<onpon4__> Does anyone here use Ubuntu LTS, by any chance?
<fundies> we have few ubuntu users here but not lts
<fundies> onpon4__, you have enigma issue? or ubuntu issue?
<onpon4__> fundies: http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1631.msg15755
I just wondered if I could easily weed out this problem being with Ubuntu LTS.
<fundies> can you compile empty game?
<onpon4__> fundies: Nope.
<-- theweirdn8 (6cfcb122@gateway/web/freenode/ip.108.252.177.34) has left #enigma
<DarkAceLaptop> ur hysterical fundies
<fundies> onpon4__, paste me a full log of empty gaym
<onpon4__> Sure.
<DarkAceLaptop> he means game
<onpon4__> fundies: Just up to the error, right?
<fundies> onpon4__, log from the terminal not lgm's console
onpon4__, eerything
<onpon4__> fundies: Everything, including what's printed between the error happening and LGM being closed?
<fundies> java -jar lateralgm.jar &> log.txt
after lgm opens hit run
<onpon4__> Alrighty then.
<fundies> once it fails close it n gimme log.txt
<onpon4__> fundies: Here you go: http://pastebin.com/gz8r3xF3
<fundies> DarkAceLaptop, nah its gaym
<DarkAceLaptop> fundies is still learning how to spell, you see
<fundies> onpon4__, in another terminal inside the enigma-dev directory
<fundies> make Game GMODE=Run GRAPHICS=OpenGL1 AUDIO=OpenAL COLLISION=Precise WIDGETS=None NETWORKING=None PLATFORM=xlib CXX=g++ CC=gcc COMPILEPATH=Linux/Linux EXTENSIONS=" Universal_System/Extensions/Alarms Universal_System/Extensions/Timelines Universal_System/Extensions/Paths Universal_System/Extensions/MotionPlanning Universal_System/Extensions/DateTime Universal_System/Extensions/ParticleSystems Universal_System/Extensions/DataStructures" OUTPUTNAME="/tm
p/egm2379810218064168016.tmp"
put that
npaste
DarkAceLaptop, shush ur ass
<onpon4__> fundies: I get an error with that as well.
<fundies> paste it please
<onpon4__> fundies: http://pastebin.com/GAcqp99p
<fundies> ah
that errors cause noones merged https://github.com/enigma-dev/enigma-dev/pull/528 yet
though im not sure wht lgm is having trouble running make
--> AndyEH (~Andy@pool-70-16-103-249.port.east.myfairpoint.net) has joined #enigma
After I switched to fundies' fork on GitHub, I was able to compile a blank game, the FPS example, and the isometric Mario example. The platformer thing still doesn't work, and I still have the same crash with Bowser's Last Stand, so the problem's not solved, but it's a step forward, anyway.
EDIT: The rest was a corrupt GMK, as was found out on IRC.
99
Issues Help Desk / Re: LateralGM crashing on OpenJDK on Trisquel
« on: November 29, 2013, 08:41:21 am »
That one's an error, too:
http://pastebin.com/zp70yzm1
EDIT: After fixing the get_string thing, this is now the error on the first example I tried:
http://pastebin.com/q82rJVJN
EDIT 2: Just out of curiosity, I tried a blank game with just one empty room. It failed to compile with the same error everything else is getting.
So Bowser's Last Stand's particular problem is unique to it, but there's some other problem with my setup. Maybe the problems are related somehow. I'm not sure what it is; I followed the instructions on the wiki for getting the latest revision from Git:
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Install:Git
http://pastebin.com/zp70yzm1
EDIT: After fixing the get_string thing, this is now the error on the first example I tried:
http://pastebin.com/q82rJVJN
EDIT 2: Just out of curiosity, I tried a blank game with just one empty room. It failed to compile with the same error everything else is getting.
So Bowser's Last Stand's particular problem is unique to it, but there's some other problem with my setup. Maybe the problems are related somehow. I'm not sure what it is; I followed the instructions on the wiki for getting the latest revision from Git:
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Install:Git
100
Issues Help Desk / Re: LateralGM crashing on OpenJDK on Trisquel
« on: November 28, 2013, 08:52:24 pm »
Alright, I tried this:
http://enigma-dev.org/edc/games.php?game=69
I didn't get a crash, but I got an error. This is the whole output (starting from the time LateralGM was ran):
http://pastebin.com/RZfrJXC0
This one also doesn't cause a crash, but gets an error:
http://enigma-dev.org/edc/games.php?game=68
Here's the output for that:
http://pastebin.com/8MNKZMwm
http://enigma-dev.org/edc/games.php?game=69
I didn't get a crash, but I got an error. This is the whole output (starting from the time LateralGM was ran):
http://pastebin.com/RZfrJXC0
This one also doesn't cause a crash, but gets an error:
http://enigma-dev.org/edc/games.php?game=68
Here's the output for that:
http://pastebin.com/8MNKZMwm
101
Issues Help Desk / [solved... er... and some unsolvable] ENIGMA not working on Trisquel
« on: November 28, 2013, 07:13:44 pm »
EDIT: Half the problem was solved, half was from a corrupt GMK.
Trisquel 6 is a variant of Ubuntu 12.04 with no proprietary software.
Unfortunately, when LateralGM tries to use ENIGMA to compile something on Trisquel 6, OpenJDK crashes. A log file is created, and it suggests reporting it on Ubuntu's bugtracker. (Also happens with OpenJDK 7.)
To reproduce, open this file with LateralGM (from the latest Git of ENIGMA): http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/98f24ae5
Press the "run" button. At some point during compilation, Java and LateralGM crash, producing a log file like this:
http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/a15354f1
I can't tell if this is a Trisquel bug, an upstream (Ubuntu) bug, or a LateralGM bug. Any thoughts? I'd really like to be able to use ENIGMA.
Trisquel 6 is a variant of Ubuntu 12.04 with no proprietary software.
Unfortunately, when LateralGM tries to use ENIGMA to compile something on Trisquel 6, OpenJDK crashes. A log file is created, and it suggests reporting it on Ubuntu's bugtracker. (Also happens with OpenJDK 7.)
To reproduce, open this file with LateralGM (from the latest Git of ENIGMA): http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/98f24ae5
Press the "run" button. At some point during compilation, Java and LateralGM crash, producing a log file like this:
http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/a15354f1
I can't tell if this is a Trisquel bug, an upstream (Ubuntu) bug, or a LateralGM bug. Any thoughts? I'd really like to be able to use ENIGMA.
102
Announcements / Re: Happenings
« on: January 07, 2011, 04:45:22 pm »
So, I gather that this project is finally coming close to completion? Sounds great. ENIGMA is clearly better than GM's slow interpreter from what I can tell, so who knows? Maybe people who used to use GM will come flocking over to LateralGM and ENIGMA.
Although, I personally still prefer Python.
Although, I personally still prefer Python.