[HN Gopher] Overgrowth: Open-Source Announcement ___________________________________________________________________ Overgrowth: Open-Source Announcement Author : kjeetgill Score : 59 points Date : 2022-04-26 05:34 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (blog.wolfire.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.wolfire.com) | daenz wrote: | idle_zealot wrote: | This doesn't sound quite right. The devs did this with their | last game, Lugaru, too. They just seem to like the old idtech | model of releasing their engines to the community when they | finish their games. I doubt they expect anyone to make another | game with the engine, it's more for modding and porting | Overgrowth itself. | Scaevolus wrote: | That's unnecessarily negative. It's a 14 year old codebase that | they want to share with people that might be interested, not a | bid to compete with other engines. | | > To be clear, this is not "the next big engine". Since great | open source game engines like Godot exist, using Overgrowth's | engine for your next game project is a bad choice in almost all | cases. However, if you.. | | > * Are interested in looking at what shipped game code can | look like. | | > * Want to look at specific code, like the procedural | animation system. | | > * Are an Overgrowth modder who wants to make a more involved | total conversion or mod. | | > Then this is for you! | daenz wrote: | "Please take our ancient codebase that will take a long time | to learn, with 0 assets to make it usable out-of-the-box, but | don't use it for a real game because it doesn't make sense to | do." | | That sounds the authors are giving up on the project, not | that it's an opportunity for Wolfire to leverage the | community to build a brand new thing. | nvrspyx wrote: | > That sounds the authors are giving up on the project, not | that it's an opportunity for Wolfire to leverage the | community to build a brand new thing. | | It doesn't have to be either of these things. They have | been very clear that they're releasing the code as open | source as a learning experience for those interested in one | or more of these three things: | | 1. Are interested in looking at what shipped game code can | look like. | | 2. Want to look at specific code, like the procedural | animation system. | | 3. Are an Overgrowth modder who wants to make a more | involved total conversion or mod | | They haven't given up on the project nor are they | attempting to leverage the community for anything. Instead, | they are releasing their code for others to see (and | potentially use) in case it's useful...full stop. The code | is released under the Apache license in the case that | someone wants to reuse the code for their own project and | sell it. Actual content is not included because then | someone could just resell Overgrowth. | | This viewpoint of yours is unnecessarily dense and | pessimistic, especially in regards to a company that has | done exactly this same thing in the past with Lugaru. | daenz wrote: | >The code is released under the Apache license in the | case that someone wants to reuse the code for their own | project and sell it. | | From their post: >using Overgrowth's engine for your next | game project is a bad choice in almost all cases. | | Also why only open source it 14 years later? Makes no | sense. | | Also this was announced a week ago and not a single | person has commented/liked/whatever on the post at the | bottom. These are all signals. | | You can call it pessimistic and dense, but I think people | who claim this project is going to be actively developed | in 5 years are being optimistic and naive. I'm willing to | make a small wager on my claim, open to any takers. | [deleted] | setr wrote: | Who said anything about leveraging the community for | anything? Stop putting words in people's mouths and | actually read what's in front of you. | | Overgrowth is the kind of legendary horrifically scope- | creeped passion project that any even mildly responsible PM | would have put to the grave a decade ago, whose developers | are so stupidly obsessed and time-oblivious with the most | minute and arbitrary details that you couldn't even dream | of a "release" version until it already happened. | | This project is the kind that can't die until they do, or | they get thoroughly bored of it. | | They released the source. That's it. I don't know why you | want so badly to assume malice | ocdtrekkie wrote: | On the contrary, accepting patches for inclusion in the | commercial game means it's very much not dead... | | It's also understandable people are shifting to using | mainstream engines as a baseline. Not just because of the | insane complexity involved in a modern AAA game, but skill | transfer. If you work 14 years on a bespoke engine, your skills | won't necessarily translate to your next job where you're using | an entirely different platform. | daenz wrote: | Why not open source it in the first 13 years? How many bugs | or modifications are there left in a 14 year old game? Unreal | Engine is like Walmart and Amazon, and indie game engines | (like this) are like the mom-and-pop shops. Time will tell if | I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. | rgovostes wrote: | Of historical interest, this game was created by David Rosen, who | started the Humble Bundle with his brother. I had no idea it was | still in development. In the early days of the project it was | pretty impressive to see the engine evolving under the work of a | single teenage developer, including features like ragdoll physics | which were novel at the time. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | Game engine development is so ridiculously hard. The industry has | plenty of little libraries that do some significant upfront | lifting, but there's just plenty out there that isn't done for | you. Stuff you wouldn't even think about until you realize you | want a feature that isn't there. And the further you progress, | and the more you learn, the fewer references and prior art you | can turn to, because the combinatorics of finding someone who has | built up all of those areas of discipline becomes exponentially | harder to find. | | There are still proprietary technologies today that are decades | old that the free and open source community has not recreated | simply because for all of the people that work in this space, | open source and commercial, there are just not many people at the | high end of the scale working on those interesting problems. | Those problems are the ones that generally become commercial | solutions because no one else is doing it. | | After over 14 years of development, I would love to hear what | little big problems like this the authors came across. | natly wrote: | It's strange how much this game has affected me over the years | (just by following its development) even though I've never even | played it. | shahar2k wrote: | considering these guys made the humble bundle in between bouts | of making this game... (plus a bunch of other projects I | personally love) | _aavaa_ wrote: | Such fond memories of this game. The fighting mechanics were | amazing. I hope that this has the intended effect, allow other | developers to learn how it was done, what mistakes look like, and | for case studies of how things are done. | JoeOfTexas wrote: | I watched this around its early days, even bought into the | kickstarter. I guess I got old cause I didn't even know it was | released haha. | | The animation techniques were pretty impressive at the time | because Unity / Unreal didn't have anything like it yet. | posnet wrote: | Link to the actual repo: | https://github.com/WolfireGames/overgrowth ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-28 23:00 UTC)