Have egosoft ever considered an open source engine? X2 or X3...

[Dave242]

As it says on the tin

If not, why not?

[pjknibbs]

Not sure what you mean. Are you asking if Egosoft has any plans to release the X2 or X3 engines as open source? If so, the answer is simple: they need to make money to survive!

[tene]

Although egosoft made an excellent game, its engine is HORRIBLE. so i don't think that you can learn something from open source or you just smash your face on the table trying to port it to somewhere.

let it be closed source

[Dave242]

Not sure what you mean. Are you asking if Egosoft has any plans to release the X2 or X3 engines as open source? If so, the answer is simple: they need to make money to survive!

Why would they not make money?
They could still sell it, just open it up.
I don't understand

[Dave242]

Although egosoft made an excellent game, its engine is HORRIBLE. so i don't think that you can learn something from open source or you just smash your face on the table trying to port it to somewhere.

let it be closed source

LOL

I see, I'm not a programmer

Is it really that bad?

[jlehtone]

What do you mean by "open source" anyway?


Btw, this is not a gameplay issue.

[Dave242]

What do you mean by "open source" anyway?


Btw, this is not a gameplay issue.

Firstly, sorry if this is in the wrong area.

Open source : http://www.opensource.org/

edit: oops...wrong url

[FyreByrd]

Well depending on what OpenSource license it would be released under, depends on whether they could still retain the right to publish the game for profit or not.

Also if you're not a programmer why would you want it open source?

If you take a big(read HUGE) game company as an example it took ID software nearly 4 1/2 years to open up the Quake 2 source code (and then in a way that meant it'd take a seasoned programmer around another year to deciepher their work!) and ID at that time had a license to print money, a small game company like EGO you'd be looking to see Opensource X2 engines at least 6-8 years after first publish and x3R engine probably the same after it's first publish date (and bearing in mind that TC is the same engine (admittidley with enhancements and modifications) so X3R code wouldn't be realeased for about 6-8 years from NOW! And that's even if EGO decided to release as Open Source (which I doubt cos there's nothing in it for them, they already have a very open moddable game without needing to open the guts up)

Essay ends....

Cheers

FyreByrd

[eladan]

I'm a big fan of open source - I think the model has a lot going for it. However, I can't see it being a likely winner for a games company.

Clearly, it's a successful model for operating systems development and server/utility development, but you have to look where they get their revenue. Most revenue for open source developers comes from donations, sponsorship, or service contracts. The latter two are probably the largest contributions. Sponsorship occurs because a large company can see the use of a particular program (i.e. the company has a use for it) so they give their resources to help in the development. Service contracts are self explanatory. Neither really makes sense for games development, so you automatically lose two of the three income streams. Relying on donations seems... iffy to me.

:EDIT: clarify where I referred to operating systems/open source

[vasmann]

Although egosoft made an excellent game, its engine is HORRIBLE. so i don't think that you can learn something from open source or you just smash your face on the table trying to port it to somewhere.

let it be closed source

Please, could you provide link to YOUR game (excellent) with PERFECT engine, or at least not yours game but excellent and perfect engine.

[KiwiNZ]

Quite frankly, it'd also open the door for a lot more competition in the field. The X engine is by far not as bad as made out by the OP. It is a pain in the neck to write such an engine for a game as complex as the X series. This will be one of the reasons why there are so few of them on the market. Making a good engine open source means other companies can safe millions in development cost and Egosoft will see diddly squat for it. These companies will then happily invade the market segment, taking away sales, making development of new games for Egosoft EVEN harder. This may sound very negative and selfish but the words come from a person that has quite happily used Linux and Open Source software for the past 16 years.
Like eladan said, there is nothing in such a move that promises ANY feasibility to Egosoft.

[grokk]

Honestly, I think they are better off holding onto the engine and just leaving the door open for mods and scripts.

Considering the niche market size of space trading/combat games, releasing the engine would only open up more competition for Egosoft.

Allowing mods and scripts as they currently do means people still buy the game, then with the help of friends can make something they consider better.

Edit: I went afk before posting and KiwiNZ has pretty much summed up what I was thiinking.

[RegisterMe]

In some respects (granted not all) Ego and we, the customers, already benefit from the open nature of the game. Few other games are as extensible as X3. Something that all the scripters and modders can attest to.

It's not the game engine itself but still....

[tene]

Please, could you provide link to YOUR game (excellent) with PERFECT engine, or at least not yours game but excellent and perfect engine.

Why x3tc slower than crysis? I can't see unimaginable poligon count or uber gfx effects, just simple lighting (sometimes i can't understand which side of gates i see) slight bump and environment mapping. Primitive UI (i can't even move windows and leave what i need on screen). AI also isn't too bright, for OOS it sholdn't be much slower than transport tycoon's.

And i think. Why it takes up to 2 minutes to load another sector, I cat start crysis or similar and load saved game in that time.

I just can't understand why it so slow, and put so much pressure on video card.

And please don't say anything about complex and therefore slow script engine. Even celeron 300 can run playstation emulator.

Just from consumer's standpoint it doesn't give much - graphics isn't very pretty compared to X-BTF, UI still in 90's, battle and trade AI (let alone autopilot) isn't greatest.

There's still single player games fans like I am, but don't forget about EVE.

[Cycrow]

Please, could you provide link to YOUR game (excellent) with PERFECT engine, or at least not yours game but excellent and perfect engine.

Why x3tc slower than crysis? I can't see unimaginable poligon count or uber gfx effects, just simple lighting (sometimes i can't understand which side of gates i see) slight bump and environment mapping. Primitive UI (i can't even move windows and leave what i need on screen). AI also isn't too bright, for OOS it sholdn't be much slower than transport tycoon's.

And i think. Why it takes up to 2 minutes to load another sector, I cat start crysis or similar and load saved game in that time.

I just can't understand why it so slow, and put so much pressure on video card.

And please don't say anything about complex and therefore slow script engine. Even celeron 300 can run playstation emulator.

Just from consumer's standpoint it doesn't give much - graphics isn't very pretty compared to X-BTF, UI still in 90's, battle and trade AI (let alone autopilot) isn't greatest.

There's still single player games fans like I am, but don't forget about EVE.

your comparing 2 complatly different games. And you also only be looking at the graphics differences of the games. The is alot more to a game engine than what it displays on screen.

TC is running a whole universe, 10000's of ships moving around in the universe.

In Cyris, it only needs to process the level you are on, not the entire game like TC has. So TC has alot more background processing going on and alot more to do

[tene]

I can't say that is completely different. It just different genres. And x3 have much simpler collision detection (no terrain and less obstacles) and have simplified rules for OOS objects.

Both have 3d engine (x3 is simpler), both have some battle ai (dunno whose better), both have simple physical model.

Where's big difference?

I cant imagine that computing direction for 10000 points which doesn't need to collide something is too hard.

[Ozman202]

its making those 10000s of units NOT collide is whats slowing the Engine down, case in point the north gate of CBSE in my game it has over 30 transports stuck in gridlock because none of them want to crash into the others.

Altough i can see competition being a GOOD thing for Egosoft think of it like this, at the moment the only people Egosoft Disapoint when something goes wrong is us, and we still buy the game solely because there is nothing on the market, if we introduced some competition it would force Egosoft to put more effort into improving their game because then they WOULD lose customers

[tene]

OOS collision detection (never seen colliding ships OOS) is pretty trivial, because we have only point with movement vector.

[RegisterMe]

OOS collision detection (never seen colliding ships OOS) is pretty trivial, because we have only point with movement vector.

OOS collision does nto happen, so no need for any detection.

[Cycrow]

I can't say that is completely different. It just different genres. And x3 have much simpler collision detection (no terrain and less obstacles) and have simplified rules for OOS objects.

Both have 3d engine (x3 is simpler), both have some battle ai (dunno whose better), both have simple physical model.

Where's big difference?

I cant imagine that computing direction for 10000 points which doesn't need to collide something is too hard.

im not sure how you can possibly think the game engines on TC and Cryis are simlar.

FPS games done have OOS, infact, very few other games do. Most of the time, when your not there, nothing happens, so theres nothing to be processed.

whereas in TC everything in the universe is always doing its thing, regardless of what sector the player is in. So it has to the process the whole universe all the time, not just a small part of it at any one time like most games do.

your simply looking at what you can see, and not including whats actually going on the background. These background stuff has to be processed as well, and the more there is, the less processing time is available for the rest.

also, do u even know how collision detection works ? saying its easy to compute collosion detection between 10'000 objects is just nonsense, no matter how simple your calculations are. And knowing the direction of your objects doesn't help with colliosions.

the very basic collosion detection requires a distance calculation between 2 objects. The distance calucation requires the use of square root, which isn't an easy calucation for computers to do.

now, if you had 10'000 objects you want to test collosions with. this means you need to test 10'000 objects, against each of those 10'000, which makes about 100'000'000 calculations, which makes up to 3'000'000'000 square root calculations a second, just on simple collosion detection. How is that simple ?

luckily, this doesn't need to happen in any games, which is y things are split into sectors, and y OOS doesn't have collosion routines, etc