[Game] Voxus (cancelled)

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Krock
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Krock » Post

That's very sad to hear.
Could you provide us the current Voxus version for Minetest?
I think there are some people here who would like to help.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

JP; This isn't about promoting my company, at all. I decided to use Minetest because it seems like it was a decent choice for the game I had in mind, in the end it isn't as flexible as I hoped it would be and thus decided to go with a different engine. In my quest to create Voxus on Minetest I did everything that was possible to adhere to the license Minetest has and (with the bounties) tried to contribute to Minetest in the way I thought was the best option.

I'm not sure what damage releasing a game for free on Steam has and I do not share the source of Voxus (Minetest) simply because, in my opinion, there's really no good in sharing them - as stated above.

Also, I'm not sure what PM or messaging you're referring to.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

Wuzzy wrote:How can Voxus be itself free software if its game engine (Unity) isn't?
The game will be free, will be looking into ways to share the source files (Voxelmetric is obviously open source). Unity is free to use, a pro version is only required when either sales are made or if you want to get rid of the splashscreen.
rubenwardy wrote:This was the most exciting project I've seen with Minetest in a while, and I'm sad that I'll never see it running in Minetest myself.
It was possibly too exciting for Minetest in general, while it's a fantastic engine to create mods and small subgames it's nowhere near possible to create anything that differs a bit from the original formula.
rubenwardy wrote:Will you still be offering bounties, or are those cancelled as well?
Bounties are still up, I'd still love to support Minetest.
Krock wrote:That's very sad to hear.
Could you provide us the current Voxus version for Minetest?
I think there are some people here who would like to help.
As stated above, I don't think the source of Voxus does any good at this point. Most of the code is incomplete, flawed or generally just doesn't make much sense to use outside of Voxus. I am willing to share snippets here and there though for people who want to know how I did stuff.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by MirceaKitsune » Post

I find this partly funny and partly sad. Of course, you have to use whichever engine you consider is best. But I honestly don't think Minetest is so bad that developers have to switch away from it, especially at such a late stage. More so to one based on Unity, which is not (fully) open-source from what I know... meaning your game can't be FOSS to the same extent.

One suggestion however: You might consider developing the game for both engines. Things are easy and quick to do under Lua in Minetest, so it shouldn't be hard. If not, you can hopefully release the media (textures, sounds, etc) and another developer could do it instead. That might make people who expected the game for MT happy as well.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

MirceaKitsune wrote:I find this partly funny and partly sad. Of course, you have to use whichever engine you consider is best. But I honestly don't think Minetest is so bad that developers have to switch away from it, especially at such a late stage.
Well the problem is that Voxus wasn't very far in development at all. While it seems that it was pretty much done, all the features that aren't Minetest' own still had to be done. Think the crafting book (instead of the regular crafting system), the extended creative mode, any kind of monsters, environmental effects etc. - there's a really long list of features that I think are important for the game that haven't even been shared yet. So yeah, Minetest is great for Voxus at this point - but going any further would prove much difficulty.

Edit: Also, it's very difficulty to find people who can add to the existing code of Minetest. It's really complex and the fact that it's C++ doesn't help. The amount of people that are fluent in C# or JavaScript and have experience working with Unity is far, far larger.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by jp » Post

Kenney wrote:Also, I'm not sure what PM or messaging you're referring to.
I tried to "recycle" a few of your assets to one of my mod, seeing how VoXus was idling. I tried to get your permission by PM, you read it and did not even answered. I concluded (maybe wrongly) that you were here for not sharing and use VoXus as a focal point to your company, through Steam, the social networks, etc.

And I still maintain that it's paradoxical and ungrateful to close the sources of your game whereas you got people spending time to help you for free. Opening the sources/assets is the best way to enrich our collective culture.

I'm done with this topic.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Wuzzy » Post

It seems there is a lot of confusion about the terms “free software” and “open source” here.

First of all, to me, “free software” and “open source” almost mean exactly the same thing. Seriously, read and compare the official definitions. The differences are actually pretty minor.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
http://opensource.org/osd

(I also hope it should be clear to everyone here that this is NOT about price.)

Anyways: The only “real” difference between both terms lies in the motivation under which those terms are usually promoted: Free software advocades tend to argue on ethical grounds, open source advocates don't (they emphasize more on practical grounds; a bit too much for my taste. Whatever.).

Also, a software is certainly neither free software nor open source if one of its key components (in this case: the engine) is not available in source-code form. A non-restricive license is also requirement of both definitions.

So, if Unity is a requirement of running Voxus, this means that Voxus won't be neither open source nor free software.
If this was clear to you all along, then sorry for annoying you. xD


Anyhow, I (and probably others, too) would be grateful if at least the media files (images, etc.) you (Kenney) have created so far would be released for future subgame authors to play around. I bet there would be a high interest in these files. :)
It is a major falling of the Minetest project.
What else do you expect from a software with a big fat “0” in its major version number? ;-)

But yeah, Minetest still has a long way to go.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

jp wrote:I tried to "recycle" a few of your assets to one of my mod, seeing how VoXus was idling. I tried to get your permission by PM, you read it and did not even answered. I concluded (maybe wrongly) that you were here for not sharing and use VoXus as a focal point to your company, through Steam, the social networks, etc.
Ah gotcha! I often read e-mails/messages and such, and reply later on. I just get a large amount of messages a day and have to schedule a few hours every so often to answer things, while I can 'star' e-mails to answer later on that's not an option on forums for example, so I often forget to answer. Instead of giving you permission to use those I was going to offer you to create some custom textures, since I don't think Voxus' textures fit your mod pack - so yeah, I'm still up for that if you want.
jp wrote:And I still maintain that it's paradoxical and ungrateful to close the sources of your game whereas you got people spending time to help you for free. Opening the sources/assets is the best way to enrich our collective culture. I'm done with this topic.
I'm absolutely grateful for all the people who've supported me during the project. I've occasionally asked for help but in my opinion haven't abused anyones knowledge. I'm not sure if you know, but I spend a few hours a day creating sprites for the public domain to help game developers get started - I think I do enough to the open source community as it is.
Wuzzy wrote:...
Gotcha! The new Voxus will be free as in: You can download the game, and play it, without paying. Some of the sources (which can be shared) will be shared, but it won't be completely open source as Unity isn't. There will be tools added to allow for super easy modding though, that's still really important for me.

I'm planning to create a different set of voxel based game sprites that are public domain, which people can use without worrying at all about licenses. I want to keep the Voxus files for the new version.

(Preview)
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Wuzzy » Post

Okay, Kenney, one last thing:

I am also slightly surprised to hear you, Kenney, claim that there is almost nothing signicifant to release in Voxus. I am not so sure if this is 100% true.

What about the mini-helicopter? According to the first page, it is finished and working.
If this is true, then this may be something which could be useful as a mod.

According to the first page, there are also “some critters”. Is there something significant to share, like new models, mob-related code and whatnot (sorry, I haven't read the entire thread yet). Or is this all unfinished and uninteresting?

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

Wuzzy wrote:What about the mini-helicopter? According to the first page, it is finished and working.
If this is true, then this may be something which could be useful as a mod.
Ah yeah it was working about ~75%, I can release the code for that but it's not too exciting. Basically the boat mod rewritten to support flying :)
Wuzzy wrote:According to the first page, there are also “some critters”. Is there something significant to share, like new models, mob-related code and whatnot (sorry, I haven't read the entire thread yet). Or is this all unfinished and uninteresting?
Nope, nothing on the mobs was done yet. The mobs had to spawn in tar lakes which weren't in yet, and they had a few unique treats that are simply not possible in Minetest at the moment. So nothing other than a sprite was made for them.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by rubenwardy » Post

Minetest has been in development for 5 years. If this was a commercial/proprietary game, people would be upset with the progress. However it is not. My philosophy is to look at what it could be, and then work towards it, rather than settling for what we have. It's more practical in my opinion.

Whilst the code can be licensed with an open source license, Voxus won't be able to be run using purely free software so you could argue that it is non-free.

I've enjoyed (minor-ly) helping you Kenney, your insights are very valuable.
I've will keep up with the development of Voxus.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by MirceaKitsune » Post

Yep... my point as well: If Unity is proprietary, anything based on it should be considered such. That would be like if Irrlicht was commercial, or free but closed-source... Minetest wouldn't be truly open-source even if its code was the same as now.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by ABJ » Post

WOW
Sad news for Minetest, but probably another good voxel game for my inventory :D
Please do make it free and also give us a way to keep track! :)

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by TG-MyinaWD » Post

I was thinking about awhile.
But what will ever happen to servers and mp? will it still work in a way? and the bandwidth needs?

But all I know if planned add to an Console(s) you could to add split-screen/co-op I know.
I just know one my friend made an game with Unity3D an Indev MP mode and He, used this one Unity3D Script allowed us create an server without even needing to port forward. Idk the script was but was kinda cool.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by ExeterDad » Post

Dang!
God Speed Kenny. Do what you got to do :)

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by BobbyBonsaimind » Post

Kenney wrote:As stated above, I don't think the source of Voxus does any good at this point. Most of the code is incomplete, flawed or generally just doesn't make much sense to use outside of Voxus. I am willing to share snippets here and there though for people who want to know how I did stuff.
I would still ask you to consider it, a code dump is better than no code at all. Even though ideas in it might not be correctly or fully implemented, it still means that there is knowledge in the code, knowledge which others can draw from and use. It doesn't mean that anyone can use it as it stands, but from time to time I'm sure somebody finds the code very useful. As somebody who had his own idea of a subgame in his head for quite some time, I found it very useful to look at the code of others, how they do stuff and how they solved problems, even if I'm not going to use that code for a various of reasons.

In this vein I'd like to quote one of my favorite quotes, I unfortunately lost the source to this one, sorry:
We can either stand on the shoulders of giants, or on a big enough pile of dwarfs, works either way.
Personally I'd make it a "read only" repository on GitHub or BitBucket, turning off any interactions (ticket system, wiki pages etc.) and sticking a big "don't ask me about it" sticker on it. Also you should not release the assets with it, as you're obviously planning on still using them and it wouldn't be that good if they're floating around the webs before you release a version of your game.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by rubenwardy » Post

BobbyBonsaimind wrote:Also you should not release the assets with it, as you're obviously planning on still using them and it wouldn't be that good if they're floating around the webs before you release a version of your game.
He said he's remaking the textures. I'd love to see his old ones.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by ExeterDad » Post

rubenwardy wrote: He said he's remaking the textures. I'd love to see his old ones.
+100

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Minetestforfun » Post

Im very sad since i readed you last news... cancelled...
I hope you will share code/textures/models you do, even if it's not over, if you have a "free" mind it will cause you no problems ! :)

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Jordach » Post

Re: I have some old copies of Voxus textures somewhere on my drive completely redrawn from existing screenshots - providing Kenney can give me permission, I can give them to you.

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

The textures are being transferred to the new game version, so I wish to keep them solely for Voxus for the time being.
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Jordach » Post

Kenney wrote:The textures are being transferred to the new game version, so I wish to keep them solely for Voxus for the time being.
Thanks for letting me know, I'll leave them archived for eternity just in case you ever change your mind. :)

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

Hah alright, well, I'm currently working on some public domain textures though - those might come in handy for you.

Image
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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Jordach » Post

Kenney wrote:Hah alright, well, I'm currently working on some public domain textures though - those might come in handy for you.

Image
I've seen this design in a Nintendo game before. *Hint, hint.*

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Re: [Game] Voxus (cancelled)

by Kenney » Post

Jordach wrote:I've seen this design in a Nintendo game before. *Hint, hint.*
Hah yeah, I love the texture ideas Animal Crossing has.
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