I always thought it would be really handy to have a cleaned up SDK mod with a lot of comments and a few basic place holder units, gpled scripts, cursors, weapons, and sounds, and factions.
Every time I want to mod, I feel the need for a blank slate that I can just drop some files into and load it quickly into Spring without loading the rest of an already made mod. Such a project would likely cut down on the use of OTA content and would aid budding mod makers greatly.
I don't know if I have the time to dedicate to such a project, but I can try, would anyone else like to participate in such a project?
SDK Mod
Moderator: Moderators
I'm going to say this only once, because I spent the last few hours doing the research. There is no legal uncertainty in GPL. The text is deliberately arcane at points because it serves two masters, so to speak. The two purposes of the GPL license are thus; to protect public work as free use and to make work public and free use.
If you attempt to release a package with elements of GPL within it, according to the text of the license, the package must be GPL compliant. You may not license such a package with something which is incompatible with GPL. This is why any Spring distribution with Linux must be made entirely of GPL components. The package must be GPL, and thus the components cannot be licensed under other legal arrangements.
You can make a GPL package of content, but it will carry GPL with it into all derivative works. There is no ambiguity, this is the legal interpretation of the license. If you want something others may draw upon which does not do this, you have three major choices - Public Domain release with no license, CC-SA or an original license.
I support this project and any which produces quality content for the Spring engine fully.
If you attempt to release a package with elements of GPL within it, according to the text of the license, the package must be GPL compliant. You may not license such a package with something which is incompatible with GPL. This is why any Spring distribution with Linux must be made entirely of GPL components. The package must be GPL, and thus the components cannot be licensed under other legal arrangements.
You can make a GPL package of content, but it will carry GPL with it into all derivative works. There is no ambiguity, this is the legal interpretation of the license. If you want something others may draw upon which does not do this, you have three major choices - Public Domain release with no license, CC-SA or an original license.
I support this project and any which produces quality content for the Spring engine fully.
Please explain that to Trepan, AFAIK he said the GPL of the gadget handler and gadgets only applies to the lua scripts specifically. I've been asking for a relicensing on them (something GPL compatible of course but weaker, e.g. BSD or LGPL) but no action was taken because the GPL was interpreted as above.
I'll fork that.
I'll fork that.
This sounds like a great idea; I've been looking for something like this for a while. A basic mod file for noobs who want to get into modding (myself 
) would be great, as it would save the time it would take them to dissect an existing mod and read through old tutorials (most of which are for TA, and not great for spring).
But nanoblobs was an attempt at a mod base thing? It's a fun mod, but it doesn't exactly showcase all of spring's features...
) would be great, as it would save the time it would take them to dissect an existing mod and read through old tutorials (most of which are for TA, and not great for spring).But nanoblobs was an attempt at a mod base thing? It's a fun mod, but it doesn't exactly showcase all of spring's features...
NanoBlobs was a stab at building a practical SDK, but I was the only maintainer, and after the whole GPL fiasco, nobody, including me, wanted to bother improving it. Moreover, as was pointed out, it doesn't really show off all of Spring's featureset. However, doing that would require a terrific amount of work, and moreover, it'd be unproductive work- if you already know this stuff, you're using it, if you don't, well, time to post up what you have, and ask questions...
I don't really think we're ever going to have a real SDK, but I will almost certainly release PURE's BOS code, which is better than NanoBlobs in many ways, under the CC-SA license, after we reach the first public Betas and get feedback / bug-reports from a wider audience.
I don't really think we're ever going to have a real SDK, but I will almost certainly release PURE's BOS code, which is better than NanoBlobs in many ways, under the CC-SA license, after we reach the first public Betas and get feedback / bug-reports from a wider audience.
A simple base mod (say a commander, some form of power generator, a metal extractor, a barracks type building, and an attack unit or three) would be highly useful to noobs if it was documented. A summary of what is making each unit work, what files it depends upon and is connected to, then whoever was using this base could simply build from there. One wouldn't show all of spring's features, just the ones a new modder would be most likely to use. What I meant by that previously refering to Nanoblobs was things like the lack of a "traditional" factory; Nanoblobs could teach a lot about modding, but it's non-traditional approach might leave some of the more basic features that a new modder would look for untouched.
I tried at one point poking at BA, and started shuffling stuff around. It promply stopped working, probably because there was a list of units somewhere which I didn't edit. A mod with very little content would be useful, as it would get rid of the need to search through the immense amount of content inherent in long-lasting mods to change things.
I'm mostly ignorant when it comes to such things, but would it be necessary to release a simple base under GPL? If there was relatively little effort put into it (most things would be placeholders, to be replaced if used for a real mod) then could the creator of the mod simply say "Here's a base, use it if you want, and here's some documentation on it"? It might prevent the headaches that seem to plague this sort of thing.
I tried at one point poking at BA, and started shuffling stuff around. It promply stopped working, probably because there was a list of units somewhere which I didn't edit. A mod with very little content would be useful, as it would get rid of the need to search through the immense amount of content inherent in long-lasting mods to change things.
I'm mostly ignorant when it comes to such things, but would it be necessary to release a simple base under GPL? If there was relatively little effort put into it (most things would be placeholders, to be replaced if used for a real mod) then could the creator of the mod simply say "Here's a base, use it if you want, and here's some documentation on it"? It might prevent the headaches that seem to plague this sort of thing.
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Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
Alright, Maelstrom, you stay out. It appears that you've got a full plate.
Who I really want on this project is zwzsg. However, I might not have that privilege. As he's probably involved in some epic french underground revolution at all times of the day. That said, I know no better script writer, and I bet it wouldn't take much for him to provide use with some scratch, but very clean and elegant basic scripts for a myriad of different units.
Who I really want on this project is zwzsg. However, I might not have that privilege. As he's probably involved in some epic french underground revolution at all times of the day. That said, I know no better script writer, and I bet it wouldn't take much for him to provide use with some scratch, but very clean and elegant basic scripts for a myriad of different units.
I was just thinking this would make a great thing to include in the base package... license-wise I've always felt that a: "You may distribute this code and derivative code for free and compiled versions of this code freely as long as you credit the original authors. If you want to profit directly from it you must contact the license holder" is effectively what we are all aiming for... so which ever license that is.
Way I see it we have 5 teams, Team 0 would have:
Walking Commander That could build everything in the game (including the other team's commanders and all units)
Metal Extractor, Metal Maker, Free Energy Maker(solar), Thermal Energy Maker, Tidal Energy Maker, Wind Energy Maker, Underwater Metal Extractor, special nano turret building that costs nothing to make and generates 10,000 Metal and Energy and builds super awsome fast ( to make testing easier)
Laser Tower, Missile Tower, Nano Tower, Floating Laser, Floating Torpedo Launcher, Emp Missile tower and Nuclear Missile towers, anti air gun, air repair pad
Air Factory, Robot Factory, Vehicle Factory, Hover Factory, Boat Factory, Seaplane Factory, Everything Facory that costs nothing to build and has a super fast workertime
Construction: Airplane, Robot, vehicle, Hover, Boat, Sub, Seaplane (each can build their own factory and selected structures)
2 attack units of each vehicle type, demonstrating various weapons
about 10 special units, like transports, mines, stealth, rezers, amphibs etc.
Team 1 would be similar to team 0 except the commander could only build structures and all of the broken "make it easier to test" units would be excluded
The other 3 teams would start with an air commander, a hover commander and a "building that doesn't move" commander and various subsets of the other units buildable
Then we would have a nice simple example of everything in the game for people to play with.
The first step is to create what I can "The Unit Module" It would consist of a commander, a factory, a metal extractor and a free energy maker and the factory would build a construction unit that could build these same three building and a peewee like unit... make it really easy to drop a unit in for testing.
edit:
Oh, and I'd suggest we start with xect vs mynn since it's already Openly Sourced... I'll be willing to help with the documentation side of things and I have quite a bit of knowledge on the non-modeling/non-scripting side of modding.
Way I see it we have 5 teams, Team 0 would have:
Walking Commander That could build everything in the game (including the other team's commanders and all units)
Metal Extractor, Metal Maker, Free Energy Maker(solar), Thermal Energy Maker, Tidal Energy Maker, Wind Energy Maker, Underwater Metal Extractor, special nano turret building that costs nothing to make and generates 10,000 Metal and Energy and builds super awsome fast ( to make testing easier)
Laser Tower, Missile Tower, Nano Tower, Floating Laser, Floating Torpedo Launcher, Emp Missile tower and Nuclear Missile towers, anti air gun, air repair pad
Air Factory, Robot Factory, Vehicle Factory, Hover Factory, Boat Factory, Seaplane Factory, Everything Facory that costs nothing to build and has a super fast workertime
Construction: Airplane, Robot, vehicle, Hover, Boat, Sub, Seaplane (each can build their own factory and selected structures)
2 attack units of each vehicle type, demonstrating various weapons
about 10 special units, like transports, mines, stealth, rezers, amphibs etc.
Team 1 would be similar to team 0 except the commander could only build structures and all of the broken "make it easier to test" units would be excluded
The other 3 teams would start with an air commander, a hover commander and a "building that doesn't move" commander and various subsets of the other units buildable
Then we would have a nice simple example of everything in the game for people to play with.
The first step is to create what I can "The Unit Module" It would consist of a commander, a factory, a metal extractor and a free energy maker and the factory would build a construction unit that could build these same three building and a peewee like unit... make it really easy to drop a unit in for testing.
edit:
Oh, and I'd suggest we start with xect vs mynn since it's already Openly Sourced... I'll be willing to help with the documentation side of things and I have quite a bit of knowledge on the non-modeling/non-scripting side of modding.
I'd rather we s3o the whole thing to keep it fresh and up to date. Xect versus Mynn is a little old and crusty. We could cobble bits of existing mods, but I think that might decrease the face value of those mods. I'll look into CVC and maybe peer into Nanoblobs.
We could take Nanoblobs and rewrite it's scripts to be GPL kosher, and zwswg friendly and make everyone happy.
We could take Nanoblobs and rewrite it's scripts to be GPL kosher, and zwswg friendly and make everyone happy.
Yeah, actually, I think the MIT license is going to best for this.
Any objections?
We'll make all scripts from scratch, or at least make them appear that they've been made from scratch, and then we'll have a basic "Do whatever you want with this, sell it, eat it, snort it, but don't blame us when something bad happens." disclaimer thing. I mean, the SDK is going to be so basic and unbalance and not really even a playable game that if anyone did sell it, they would probably lose money or get BEATEN by angry.. SDK fans.. (?)
Any objections?
We'll make all scripts from scratch, or at least make them appear that they've been made from scratch, and then we'll have a basic "Do whatever you want with this, sell it, eat it, snort it, but don't blame us when something bad happens." disclaimer thing. I mean, the SDK is going to be so basic and unbalance and not really even a playable game that if anyone did sell it, they would probably lose money or get BEATEN by angry.. SDK fans.. (?)
Spring Module Development Kit
So the first thing we need done is a Commander... Do we have a 3D artist and a scripter yet?
License:
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WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
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So the first thing we need done is a Commander... Do we have a 3D artist and a scripter yet?
License:
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.