Is PlaneShift graphics engine capable of environments like these?

[Kerol]

There are quite nice screenshots etc. on http://crystalspace3d.org/main/Media. That's basically all possible in PS, however the big difference between most of these games is that PS uses very large open maps, demanding the same quality and speed as a FPS in closed rooms.
So we wait for specific features enhancing speed for our situation before we enable heavy ressource-features.

PS: Completely agreed with Xillix' post.

[Induane]

I'd get turned away from an "open source license." So in my case, you'd actually lose an artist. Might want to consider that, Ahrimann. This is not a new argument, and my eyes glaze over every time someone brings it up. Not new. Stop it

Agreed, its almost impossible to know what the ratio of potential artists who are willing to work for free whom would prefer the protection of a proprietary license vs those that would prefer the freedom of an open license like Creative Commons.  It really depends on the person and I really don't think there is a good metric for measuring that.

We certainly don't lack encouragement. Where are you coming up with this? Self-imposed limitations? Perhaps only limited in that we can't dedicate 24 hours to learn how to make better art, though everything we make turns out better and better anyway. And who the hell "forces" players to thank developers..? I am so lost. And irritated at this nonsense.

I don't think anyone ever forced any players to thank the devs but there are times that I've gotten the impression that some devs consider at least some aspects of the community ungrateful so maybe he got that vibe and added the traditional political spin. 

I didn't really mean that we were lacking good artists, rather we are lacking artists who have a good amount of experience in game development (at least one AAA title on their resume) and who know how to use the engine well, which isn't their fault at all but rather the result of a lack of excellent documentation about the engine. The best artist in the world can't make a good looking game if he/she doesn't know how to leverage the engine in the most optimum manner.

Too true, there are lots of aspects of it from good knowledge of the 3d package you are using for doing things like generating low poly models and texture baking to optimizing your export for your game engine.  I'm a pretty good brain to pick for that by the way if anyone needs to know something

You can freely use the engine for your own game. But make your own levels, graphics, characters ...

Too true though its at least [somewhat] actively discouraged.  You're right though.  I don't think people really realize how much work it is actually to do something like that.  Arianna did it once for a college thing once and knows the most about it.  Creating something like that is an immense amount of work!

If anyone wants to look for a fight, I suggest they find a new hobby, the FOSS arguments bore me. Join us in making the dream of a add free fee free game possible, or please, stop wasting our time.

Awww but you know me! I'm always looking for a fight! Keeps things interesting and gives me good reason to stay up late at night working feverishly to become some leet super artist!!!  Its part of my incredibly opinionated and stubborn nature! 

Really though purely insulting arguments don't get anyone anywhere because it just makes anyone with an opposing viewpoint defensive so then they respond in a different manner that isn't usually a discussion based on merit and the whole discussion deteriorates from something that could potentially include things that are worth discussing into something with nothing really useful at all for anyone to look at at all.  I could make an argument for or against open licenses on the art without calling anyone stupid or using a condescending tone.

Ex:

Person 1.) Artists have a tendency to want to protect their work, as its theirs after all.  A license like PS makes it evident what their work will be used for so they maintain that control and protection. The license also allows it for use in a portfolio so anyone can use it to get a job so it really makes it function like an internship which you can use to get a professional job. 

Person 2.) I agree to an extent but I think the artists that are being targeted are ones whom are intending their stuff to be used for free and create it for free and that shifts the demographic of who is willing to contribute towards people who tend to be more for open style licenses.  There are large communities of people using blender and Gimp so they are people who are easier to target since they tend to fall towards the open source mentality anyways.


Note:  Both Person 1 and Person 2 have valid points.  Neither Person 1 nor Person 2 insulted anyone.  Discussion should in my opinion follow formats like that.  So long as both parties are willing to discuss things and no one results to stupidity in the face of a counter argument then while things may not change, the discussion maintains relevance much better.  Sometimes discussions don't have to be made with the intent to change things but rather to explore many possibilities, points, counterpoints, and generally allow everyone to look at different perspectives on things.  Even if things don't change its not always a waste of time ( I think many people think that if you argue something and you are persuasive [and right in your opinion] but nothing changes then you wasted your time talking to people who aren't going to change, etc don't listen, blah blah blah).

[Izzabella]

* Izzabella struts in...

wow...I'd just like to say I love the art and all the hard work the dev's have put into the game, volunteering their free time and work for our enjoyment ! And if you ask me the graphics are much better than a lot of other games I've played. And I've seen a lot of improvements in the few short years I've been around, so don't get discouraged guys, you're doing GREAT!

Besides, as a great role-playing game, just RP that its better if you hate it some much and don't have the talent to contribute anything yourself. 

[Eloras]

Well i can only endorse what IzzaBella says 
I have known about the Crystal Space engine for some time but not experienced it till i played PS and im very impressed with the way you show off its capabilities even if it can do more. I've enjoyed just strolling over the hills in PS noting the subtle light changes with the time of day and its very atmospheric i think.
You have a grand vision for the game and seem to be busilly striving to move towards that and there are many things you have chosen to do that i like greatly e.g the group feature, fighting by consent, zone of guard on dropped items, strong commitment to RP and immersion, the strong questing and many other things.
Its refreshing to play an mmo that isnt obsessed by level grinding/hall of fame and slang in local chat (IC) as so many are.
Ive only been playing PS for less than two months but ive enjoyed all of that time in the game and feel certain that will continue so a big thanks to all the people involved with making and running the game 
Eloras

[b_i_d]

Hi,

I'm new here (joined PS yesterday and the forum 10 mins ago - after a whole night of playing), but you already have me hooked on thinking about new features and licensing issues.

Although this is an old(ish) threat, I wanna leave my 2 cents here. AND I don't wanna keep the FOSS-war going, but hope to change it into a constructive discussion.

Do you (the Developers) don't want ANY free content in the game or just mostly proprietary content? (Judging from the Google Tech Talks vid I'd say it's the first one, but that may not be the best idea.)

I was thinking about something like this:
A "Free Content" area on the homepage. Where the freedom-fanatic creators (like me) can add content, that is licensed under a CC-license, but can officially be included by the PS-devs. Remember that (as the creator) you can multi-license you're work. It hasn't always have to be one OR the other. It can be both, too.

BTW, I would love an area for creators of other projects that use the PS-engine or parts of it. Could be interesting to get less of "take and use" and more of "let's work together on different projects" going.

[ThomPhoenix]

Of course you can't just make some art and "donate" it to PlaneShift, it has to be made for PlaneShift. That's part of the reason for the proprietary license. Keep the feel of the game unified and unique.

[Tuxide]

I would really be interested in such content that can be used by the engine.  Especially for acraig's engine documentation project on http://doc.hydlaa.com/ but also for our unofficial mod repository on http://sourceforge.net/projects/planeshift3dmod/ so check them both out and hit us up on FreeNode.

[Caarrie]

keep in mind that all art and content uploaded to the ps3dmods repro is under gpl2 license the same license as the open source part of ps is. If you do not want to release under that then please do not ask for access but otherwise you are more then welcome to offer your talents to the project there, keep in mind that there is a possibility that your content can be rejected to be included in the official game, and you are doing this for yourself and your fellow players only.

[b_i_d]

OK, server crashed - again! Good moment to check the forums again. (BTW: Are server-crashes once every 1-2 hours normal or did I join with bad timing?)

Of course you can't just make some art and "donate" it to PlaneShift, it has to be made for PlaneShift. That's part of the reason for the proprietary license. Keep the feel of the game unified and unique.

Yeah, I got that (from the Google Talks vid). But I think it would depend on the content.
For example: A building or character should OF COURSE be PS-only, because you would recognize it.
On the other hand there's an incredible amount of small things, that take time to make, but wouldn't be that recognizable at all: textures (wood, stone, even a carpet ...), books, grass (right now every blade of grass seems to look the same), trees, small things like a mug and much more. That's the type of content I was talking about earlier. I was talking more of the basic "building blocks" you need to create the content, not the recognizable content itself.

----

About my own contributions:

Right now I'm pretty sure I will contribute stuff. I was searching the "let's chat about tv and klick on monsters" grinder-jungle for a real online-RPG for days (and hit my head on the table when realizing that I forgot about Planeshift). So this is something I'm exited about now and when I'm exited about sth I start thinking how I can contribute. (That's why I called myselft "freedom-fanatic" in the last post.)

- Music: I'm musician, but I guess Drum'n'Bass, Glitch and Breakcore would hardly be the music you wanna hear in a fantasy environment.
- 2D: I know how to use Gimp, but that's about it.
- 3D: I never made any models - just some experimental fx-coding-stuff.

----

Which brings us to Coding, and a question for the devs:

Warning! Much text ahead, but bear with me.
The question first: Is something like the stuff I explain below in the works already - so I don't reinvent the wheel if experimenting with that?

The only thing that REALLY pisses me off in PS are the NPCs. Although I love it that you have to talk to them, it just doesn't "work" (emotionally) in it's current state. Hunting for the right keyword just rips you out of your fantasy-world and kicks your ass back into reality at once. So I'm thinking about a way to make the pretty stupid NPCs not behave like - well - pretty stupid NPCs.

A few years ago I was working with different technologies for chat-bots that were supposed to assist people using natural language. Two things I had working perfectly was some kind of "fuzzy logic", that made the bot break down all (well most) sentences to a pre-defined logical minimum and the other way around.

Example:
"Could you please give me ItemX, Kaiman?", "Kaiman, I want ItemX.", "I seriously fucking need ItemX right now.", ...
would, after a few loops through the engine, all become "GIVE ME ITEMX"

The second fuzzy logic was the other way around: You were able to write a few answers by yourself and pick one of them at random. The engine would then take this and send it through a (also pre-defined) database of words/phrases that can be changed in every sentence without changing the meaning:
- "Bye" can become "Goodbye", "Farewell", "See you", "Have a nice day/evening/night/..." (depending on the time of day)
- "Can you" becomes "Could you", "Could you please", "Would you", "Would you please", ...
- Add ", Name." or just "." to the end of a sentence at random
and so on.

That way the same sentence always looks a little different, even when you ask the same thing over and over again.
Both things are defined in simple XML-files using the "AIML" language.

That would be pretty easy to make and has great advantages:
- It could be done in the client, so that the server would (in the perfect case) just have to know one question and one answer.
- The server doesn't need to parse all the strange ways of talking people can come up with
- That could IMHO reduce the traffic and especially the load on the server a lot.
- It would work by itself in the background, so the quest-authors don't need to think about it at all.

Is somebody working on sth like this? If not I will think about putting a small demo together and post a link, depending on the amount of spare time my self-employment leaves me with.

And the best thing: That would be a part of the engine (and free), so that the FOSS-war doesn't concern me! Yay! 

[Kerol]

The answers are parsed down to root triggers. "Can I have this stupid sword now, please?" would be parsed to [can i have], [sword] whereas [can i have] would be a synonym for [give me]. So in a quest script the author only has to write "give me sword" as trigger and it *should* work for the given phrase, too.
In quests, the answer for a trigger is always the same, but in knowledge areas (KAs) which describe the normal conversation, there can be multiple replies to one trigger.
Problem is that people don't know what may be possible triggers so they don't even try talking to NPCs in the way it's meant.
Second problem is that it requires A LOT of manpower to add all the content. However, the system basically works.