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Why did the development team decide to make open clonk instead of continuing off of clonk rage or for that mater why didn't they finish clonk extreme?
OpenClonk did in fact continue off of the source code of the Clonk Rage successor (internally titled "Clonk Zoom").
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The inventor of clonk, team leader and in fact trademark holder Matthes Bender quit indie development in early 2009 due to personal reasons. Until then, his main focus was on developing CX and besides some major decisions and release managing, he wasn't strongly intervening in CR's development (or Clonk Zoom's).On a legal basis, it wasn't possible for the team to continue publishing games named 'Clonk' without his consent. He gave the permission to work on with the engine's source code under the ISC license and also publish games under the name Clonk as long as the title was *-Clonk (meaning you have to put a word preceding Clonk and thus make it distinguishable from the official releases where a term follows Clonk). Then the rest of the team continued working.
This is also explaining in the history part of the About page.
CX on the other hand was more in Matthes' hand. He bought the licenses for the Torque engine, he payed for the model craftings, he worked on the code and directed the work of others. You could say that CX was truly 'his' and so it was his choice and his choice alone to stop developing on CX. This wasn't a team decision and we were legally bound to cease work on CX even if we didn't want to.
I see so he had all the rights to the CX project and thus you decided to make open clonk?Why did the developers choose to do open clonk in 3d modeling for the 2d world?
Who came up with the new controls and why did they choose to use them instead of the old CR controls?
>Why did the developers choose to do open clonk in 3d modeling for the 2d world?
Because it works better with zoom, doing animations is easier, there are more possibilities for object-interaction!
>Who came up with the new controls and why did they choose to use them instead of the old CR controls?
It was mostly a team effort and gets redesigned regularly :)
> I see so he had all the rights to the CX project and thus you decided to make open clonk?
Not only CX but also he holds the rights to CR. It was then either stop doing Clonk or convince him to let us go on which we did.
> Why did the developers choose to do open clonk in 3d modeling for the 2d world?
We weren't allowed to take the graphics from CR anyway and since everything had to be made anew why not take a step forward.
> Who came up with the new controls and why did they choose to use them instead of the old CR controls?
Well, I know that Newton, Matthi and me talked about new controls and stuff back in August 2009 but I can't tell you if that was the first occasion when WASD style controls were mentioned.
The reason why is simple: The old controls always have been a huge obstacle for newcomers and were simply not intuitive. But WASD are well known in gaming. Also is using the mouse for targeting.
Is the current situation comperable to the one when GWE was developed? I mean it all seems so similar: matthes being distracted with something else, so he lets the players develop the game further. Maybe some day the successor of OC will become a RedWolf Design game again, like Clonk Endeavour was a successor of the GWE.
No, the situation is not comparable to GWE. GWE was not open source, but OpenClonk is and will be forever. To get back to a shareware game is out of question.
Actually, the license permits to use the source as a basis for a non-opensource game. However, such a game would need to deliver some significant additional content so people would prefer it over the (still available) OpenSource variant.The most realistic options I can see would be
a) someone builds a commercial console port
b) someone builds a game on top of the OpenClonk engine and sells it. Think of stuff like CMC or a big adventure scenario like Exantros.
Both options would be great in my opinion, as they would benefit the community and not take anything away from it. So I'm glad the GPL nuts haven't gotten hold of OpenClonk yet.
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Didn't we publish the engine source code back then? We didn't have a "free" license or a public VCS, but otherwise development wasn't particularly more closed than it is now.
Note sure about that, at least as long as the question is about the difference between GWE and OC development. For all practical purposes we are working quite a bit like we did back then, with lots of people making contributions without any formal organization.
As far as I'm concerned, the main difference here is that the goal of OC is a lot different from the GWE project - this isn't gunning for some incremental improvements, but for a complete overhaul.
As far as I'm concerned, the main difference here is that the goal of OC is a lot different from the GWE project - this isn't gunning for some incremental improvements, but for a complete overhaul.
The organization of development may be similar, I was not in the GWE team back then. But I wasn't talking about the organization in particular. What I was trying to say is that the license still makes a huge difference. GWE was not even freeware.That OpenClonk is open source means for me:
+ it is free - all work I put into this project gratuitously in my spare time will also be available for everyone else
+ I retain all rights to what I contribute to the project, I do not transfer any ownership to someone else
+ Whatever work I contribute to the project will always remain free as part of OpenClonk
+ Noone can assert power over the project that is not doing the work*
+ Instead, decisions are made through public discussions. What counts are convincing arguments and mutual respect for each others expertise.
+ We are not limited in distribution: Clonk as a debian package wouldn't have been possible before
This is also a psychological factor. We are completely independent now. During Clonk Endeavour development I saw myself as someone helping to create the game. Now with OpenClonk, I can identify with the project much more because it is also my project. Everybody who contributed to defining what OpenClonk is now can identify with it because indeed it is also his. And that is very valuable.
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* I am not asserting that during GWE times this was not the case. I don't know about that. What I am saying is that in OpenClonk, I can be sure that it will always be like this. A monarchy with a liberal monarch that does not meddle with parliamentary politics is still a monarchy.
Don't want to come across as contradicting you, but a few nit-picks... First off, strictly speaking anybody could have taken the GWE sources and build their own, without reg-checks or anything - so technically it was free as in beer as well.
No, you don't - that's the whole point with open source. Just instead of allowing RwD to do whatever it wants with the code, you allow everybody to do what they want (modulo attribution and stuff). It is true that you retain ownership, but you don't retain all rights.
It can become part of whoever wants to use it, according to the license. Realistically speaking, it's quite improbable that anybody but the OC project will ever do this - but that rests on the strength and health of this community (= people), not license terms, just like it did before.
Yeah, but that's Debian, not us.
> + I retain all rights to what I contribute to the project
No, you don't - that's the whole point with open source. Just instead of allowing RwD to do whatever it wants with the code, you allow everybody to do what they want (modulo attribution and stuff). It is true that you retain ownership, but you don't retain all rights.
> + Whatever work I contribute to the project will always remain free as part of OpenClonk
It can become part of whoever wants to use it, according to the license. Realistically speaking, it's quite improbable that anybody but the OC project will ever do this - but that rests on the strength and health of this community (= people), not license terms, just like it did before.
> + We are not limited in distribution: Clonk as a debian package wouldn't have been possible before
Yeah, but that's Debian, not us.
> so technically it was free as in beer as well.
Not my point. Also, practically and legally, it wasn't.
> It is true that you retain ownership, but you don't retain all rights.
I know, we have different definitions of retaining all rights. I meant, keeping the copyright (in Germany: issuing an exclusive license to someone else).
> It can become part of whoever wants to use it, according to the license.
Yes, which is also good. My point: OpenClonk will always be free, my contributions there also.
> First off, strictly speaking anybody could have taken the GWE sources and build their own, without reg-checks or anything - so technically it was free as in beer as well.
Except that without game content, the engine is pretty useless. (The Clonk Planet engine license is basically the same as the Clonk Zoom engine license except that the keep-the-copyright-notice clause has a "please" and there's no explicit grant to publish or distribute anything.) Also, a public VCS makes a huge difference. Its one of the main ways of saying "you're welcome to contribute".
We totally should have imported the CP and GWE sources into our repository. It might even be worth it to create a repos with those so that anybody interested can easily graft that history to the OC repos.
Yeah, basically my point. What matters is how access is organized, not the source code license.
>We weren't allowed to take the graphics from CR anyway and since everything had to be made anew why not take a step forward.
Why not two steps and go for full 3d?
Open Clonk is a whole new game the clonks look different and controls are different.
So a game is only defined by character appearance and controls? The "whole new game" point here is more about improving upon previous code versus throwing away everything and starting from scratch.
Good point ,but It just seems so different form CR that it seems like a "whole new game."
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The idea behind is still the same. So Open Clonk is less "whole new" then a Open-Clonk-3D would be.
Besides that, there is(was?) already a project which is(was?) working on a fanmade 3d version of "Clonk". Simply check the clonkforge website for that. I am not sure if it still active. The project is called something like golden wipf extreme.
Besides that, there is(was?) already a project which is(was?) working on a fanmade 3d version of "Clonk". Simply check the clonkforge website for that. I am not sure if it still active. The project is called something like golden wipf extreme.
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