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Wednesday, September 16, 1998 | |
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New Wanted Models.
The next Squawk Game Engine online planning meeting will be Saturday, September 19 at 10:00 am PST (6:00 pm GMT).
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Friday, September 11, 1998 | |
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SQUAWK GAME ENGINE
MAP EDITING
CHANGES
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Thursday, September 10, 1998 | |
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Free game programming libraries seem to be falling out of the sky. They aren't really: Free software depends on YOUR contribution and support. Check out PenguinPlay Game SDK. This project has been targeted mainly at Linux, but it will probably be be portable to other operating systems. I don't know if they've decided on a licensing scheme yet, but it is likely to be GNU.
I have also updated the Squawk Game Engine page. The Squawk Game Engine isn't just another game engine; It's a community effort to combine free game development technologies and make game development accessible to beginning programmers and non-programmers.
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Monday, September 7, 1998 | |
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Mapes has cleaned up the log of last Tuesday's Squawk Engine online meeting.
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Thursday, September 3, 1998 | |
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Check out the log of the first Squawk Engine online meeting.
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Tuesday, September 1, 1998 | |
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GAME ENGINE PLANNING MEETING
The first monthly Squawk Game Engine Online Planning Meeting will be today from 1 to 5 pm PST (-8 GMT) Use a telnet or MUD client to connect to my IP address. You can find my IP address using ICQ, or let me know ahead of time that you want to join the meeting and I will e-mail you my current IP address. Connect to port 8000, and if you are using a generic telnet program like the telnet.exe that comes with Windows 95, you might want to turn "local echo" on.
CRYSTAL SPACE FREE 3D GRAPHICS ENGINE
Check out the Crystal Space home page. This 3D engine is being distributed under the GNU Public License (specifically as a library that can be use in GNU and proprietary, non-GNU programs). This should fit together nicely with our free Squawk Game Engine. It already has some pretty impressive demos. Unlike many popular 3D engines it supports both 16 and 8 bit color depths - and a full set of special effects (translucency, colored lighting, reflections) in both modes.
There are other graphics engines out there that are being called "free". Most notably the Genesis 3D engine. But these engines are not really free. They are useful because it costs no money to develop certain kinds of games for them. But they don't give you all of the game's source code, which limits what you can make in the short term - and how competitive your game can be in the long run.
Nothing prevents them from releasing a new version and jacking up the price until it's totally out of your reach. The very fact that Genesis 3D charges $50 thousand dollars for a temporary source code subscription should tell you you're missing something. Think about this: with that $50 thousand dollars you could hire an extra programmer to make major enhancements to a truly free game engine and at the same time benefit from the invesment of time and labor other programmers have put into it.
The bottom line is that freedom is not just about money. For more philosophizing, visit the gnuts at the Free Software Foundation. To see the Crystal Space Free 3D Engine in action and in development, visit the Crystal Space website.
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1998 - JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JLY AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC | |
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1997 - JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JLY AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC | |
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