Dagon game engine open-sourced

[Cire]

Source code available here: https://github.com/Senscape

[Evropi]

If you like Lovecraft, you should really support the game made with this engine. See ASYLUM. It looks amazing. Even if you don't know much about Lovecraft (cos everyone who has read his works is a fan - no exceptions!), you should chip in to this anyway. Could make some great horror games with it I reckon (and feel free to change around the whole source code!).

This looks like a really high-quality open source engine and a release of a proprietary and commercial game with it just adds to the awesome. Please help fund it! It's already been greenlighted by Steam by the way.

[qubodup]

Are any art assets freely licensed?

FSF about the code license:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CDDL

Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), version 1.0 (#CDDL)
This is a free software license. It has a copyleft with a scope that's similar to the one in the Mozilla Public License, which makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL. This means a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.

Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term “intellectual property”.

[Evropi]

I don't think they are qubodup. However, they did release some 'teaser code'. I suppose it's meant to be something like a demo you can, uhh, interpret (as in Lua interpreter) yourself. Their license for the teaser though (which seems to contain only code and no art assets) clearly states

Copyright (c) 2012 Senscape s.r.l.
All rights reserved.

NOTICE: Senscape permits you to redistribute these files as long as they have not been
modified. All copyright notices must remain in place. Adapting this code for your
projects, provided the changes are significant, is fine. The exception is 'Tools.lua'
which consists of general purpose functions and may be reused as-is.

All the assets included in this project are the sole property of Senscape s.r.l. and you
are not allowed to reuse them in any way.

In short: BE NICE. This is a gift. We encourage you to share this Asylum Teaser as-is and
experiment with it all you want, but don't put modified versions out there.

At least the engine has examples you can try out, which is nice. And let's face it, you don't see proprietary developers opening up their custom engines very often. Let alone using open technologies within their engines (OpenAL,etc).

Unfortunately, the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL. You are free to link LGPL code dynamically. Same with more permissive licenses like the MIT. That said, I don't think GPL compliance is that important anymore as GPL's usage is on a great decline. Additionally, I don't think any library creator in their right mind (save for libraries like Ember.js which work on the web) would license their work under a strongly copyleft license under, say, the Sleepycat or GNU GPL licenses. So I wouldn't say the CDDL is an impediment at all to making games with this engine.

Anyway, I'd actually use this for its technical excellence. Not only does it look bloody well fantastic, it's probably very fast (C) and scriptable in Lua, so you don't actually have to write low-level code unless you want to modify significant parts of the engine.
Perhaps we can make a gameification of Ground Zero , the greatest gamebook ever made, and one of the best books I've ever read period. Very funny. Very moving. Thoroughly memorable.

[Julius]

That said, I don't think GPL compliance is that important anymore as GPL's usage is on a great decline. Additionally, I don't think any library creator in their right mind (save for libraries like Ember.js which work on the web) would license their work under a strongly copyleft license under, say, the Sleepycat or GNU GPL licenses. So I wouldn't say the CDDL is an impediment at all to making games with this engine.

It's not about it being not possible to make an open-source game with, but rather a question of license fragmentation. You may like the GPL or not, but it is the defacto standard copyleft license. And you might like copyleft or not, but for the idea to work really well people need to stay clear of alternative copyleft licenses that are incompatible with the defacto standard.
It boils down to: use the GPL (or a compatible license) or don't use copyleft at all!

[Evropi]

That said, I don't think GPL compliance is that important anymore as GPL's usage is on a great decline. Additionally, I don't think any library creator in their right mind (save for libraries like Ember.js which work on the web) would license their work under a strongly copyleft license under, say, the Sleepycat or GNU GPL licenses. So I wouldn't say the CDDL is an impediment at all to making games with this engine.

It's not about it being not possible to make an open-source game with, but rather a question of license fragmentation. You may like the GPL or not, but it is the defacto standard copyleft license. And you might like copyleft or not, but for the idea to work really well people need to stay clear of alternative copyleft licenses that are incompatible with the defacto standard.
It boils down to: use the GPL (or a compatible license) or don't use copyleft at all!

Mozilla Public License, anyone? That's a very popular license indeed, so I don't think copyleft is going anywhere, just the is decreasing in popularity.

You are missing the point. If you just write scripts that work on top of this engine, it's perfectly legal to produce games with a proprietary story or art. Under the GPL that wouldn't be possible, and the LGPL is too focused on compiled programming languages and its application is extremely ambiguous for an engine of this type. I understand your point about license fragmentation, but not only does this not affect your game, but also the GPL and LGPL seem to be geared to work around working with compiled programs. Ever heard of the classpath exception for Java? You are not allowed to change the license either - only the FSF can, and looking at the terms of the CDDL, it seems more appropriate.

[Cire]

Fyi, Senscape is considering changing the license to MPL 2.0: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.p ... post313319