What I think...

[Witness of God]

Use the Unreal Engine. Its free to use and when you release the game you can sell it and make a profit to further the development of Mastersword into a full out game. All you have to do is give a percent of earnings to the unreal engine. You could release it on steam as a published game. Why dont you use the materials you already have and just switch engines. It would be nice to watch mastersword turn into an actual game and not slowly die.

On another topic.. whats new guys? I cant believe last time I visited was 2008

 

[Thothie]

All you have to do is give a percent of earnings to the unreal engine.

99% of 0, is still 0. [Assuming the universe doesn't implode.]

There are free versions of Unreal you can license, but if we were to leave Source (MS:U?) I dun think it'd be the first engine of choice, as no one on the MSS team has any experience with said (not counting myself). It'd have to be an engine that can at least use either Source materials or Half-Life materials. Unreal does have a VERY nice SDK, vs. Source's almost entirely third party one though - most of which you can't even use offline and/or needs to be purchased.

On the other hand, I kinda fear for MS under Source. This latest Macintosh update killed about a dozen fine Source mods, including one I had an indirect hand in, and at least one of my old favorites. Of the medieval RPG Source mods I'm aware of, only one still works (all killed by modifications to the SDK or engine over the years). I hope things will be stabilized by the time MSS comes out, but they are still messing with the HL1 engine, and it is well over a decade old now. :\

 

[Witness of God]

I believe u pay below 20% of earnings which is reasonable for starting off a game. Remember back in the days when you had 2 be rich to make a game. It would be better than nothing.

 

[Thothie]

20% of 0, is also 0 / universe imploading.



I hate to reference this movie twice in one month - but you ever see this one?

 

[Witness of God]

What are you saying lol where are you getting 0? When you finish the development of your game you release it. All your earnings you show Unreal and they will take a percentage of that profit. Profit can be used for development of next version as well as purchasing a engine license.

 

[FER]

I kinda get where hes going to.

Might be very possible to turn that 0 profit into something, just release an early solid beta, and put an option for donations with benefits thats last accordingly to the amount of money donated. Nobody will donate much to a mod mostly because buying the base game the mod requires is a donation of sorts (unless the mod is truly astounding for people to go crazy)
Money could be gotten with some effort, maybe less considering MMoRPGS (like players paying real money for items, or like in MSC, to get a character unbanned from FN)

Tough as nice as it sounds it would be cruel if most msc devs move to that engine instead of moving to source and help the MS:S team.


I guess it all depend how ambitious each one is about this. Personally, in the future, I wanna try going beyond modelling on a mod and take it a step further.

 

[Thothie]

What are you saying lol where are you getting 0? When you finish the development of your game you release it. All your earnings you show Unreal and they will take a percentage of that profit. Profit can be used for development of next version as well as purchasing a engine license.

It's a free game, thus, 0 profit.

There are free engines out there about as good as Unreal (Ogre3d for instance). Granted, no engine in existence has an SDK as robust as Unreal's.

 

[villager]

20% of 0, is also 0 / universe imploading.



I hate to reference this movie twice in one month - but you ever see this one?

Its free to use and when you release the game you can sell it and make a profit to further the development of Mastersword into a full out game.

You gotta remember to read betwe-... to read the lines.

 

[Thothie]

Eh.. No... Under that model you cannot do a release (compile a standalone) that doesn't require the SDK (which can't be legally redistributed) until you can setup a marketing model with through GT Interactive/Midway - which requires that you make a profit (sell your game - for cash - and you have to purchase the marketing model as well). There's really no way with get the full Unreal SDK without either signing over the rights to your project conditionally or paying through the nose for it. (Or piracy - but then ya get no updates.)

There is a "students" free version of Unreal (the UDK), but it does not include nearly as an extensive SDK nor modules, and is really only intended for making mods. It still beats the Source SDK for robustness, by far, but that's not saying much. Source kinda pushes the definition of "SDK" to its limits (ya just get a model viewer, no-GUI model compiler, half-assed closed-source map maker, and partial source code - everything else is third party.)

 

[Shadeska]

When Push finally comes to Shove, MasterSword will disappear for a few years and then resurface on a new engine.
Until then, don't worry about it.
Unless you're a dev.

 

[Thothie]

Meh, it's like space though. Everyone seems to think Mankind moving out amongst the stars is inevitable, but in truth, it's not. In truth, you have to take steps in that direction, that aren't being taken, and should you fail to do so, the end result is inevitable extinction.

...but I have a bit more hope for Mastersword's future than for Mankind's.

 

[DarkWasp]

I think a lot of Master-Sword fans, even those who are no longer around, have wanted a Master-Sword: Source. And I wouldn't blame them for wanting it to be just as free as the original.

I'd say that most of the stuff that has been crammed into Master-Sword: Continued's poor lil HL1 engine could be maybe several times easier and more stable to implement on Source. Though the lengths MS:C has come really really has me amazed.

The main point being, I dont feel like the source engine will be holding us back at all. I also don't think it would be fair to abbandon our HL/HL2 fans and free mod players.

 

[jon50559]

I'd say that most of the stuff that has been crammed into Master-Sword: Continued's poor lil HL1 engine could be maybe several times easier to implement on Source.

I'm sorry but that's a

From my experience HL1 is much more moddable than Source could ever be. It's more simple.

 

[DarkWasp]

I'd say that most of the stuff that has been crammed into Master-Sword: Continued's poor lil HL1 engine could be maybe several times easier to implement on Source.

I'm sorry but that's a

From my experience HL1 is much more moddable than Source could ever be. It's more simple.

From a coding point of view?

 

[jon50559]

Nay, from an everything point of view.

 

[Witness of God]

Mastersword creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After they release the game through digital distribution and they earn $15,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. Upon release they would pay US $99.99 for a Royalty Bearing license. After earning $15,000, they would be required to pay Epic $2,500 ($0 on the first $5,000 in revenue, and $2,500 on the next $10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.

Mastersword would be a published game of which Mastersword pays a 25% royalty and keeps all extra profit for themselves and further development.

 

[Thothie]

That's worse than I thought. I thought ya got the full commercial SDK under that license (tis how they used to work it at least - granted, only 1 seat then). There's no point in signing a contract and shelling out a hundred bux for the UDK when you can get that for free, at least not if your intent is to release a free game.

Just wish the UDK could take Half-Life models and BSP's... Ogre can, sorta... Half-life models and Quake BSPs at least. I can *kinda* load Half-life MAP files into Radiant, but it doesn't seem to be very stable (and only reliable on very tiny maps). Might be a trick to it, but I've not bothered to take the time to research.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I am completely opposed to making Master Sword into a commercial game. In order to make any profit whatsoever I am fairly certain the devs would have to appeal to an audience that I, for one, am not part of. I fear that MS will become cheesed up and dumbed down, for the sole sake of making dollars. When money is the prime motivator things like innovation, creativity, and quality usually get thrown out of the window.
Lets face it. Most commercial games nowadays effing suck.



However, I've never been fond of the source engine, so I would like to see the MSS team move to another engine, provided they can preserve whatever work they have that still actually exists. It'd be quite nice if MSS could be ported to an engine where the player base did not have to make any purchases whatsoever.

 

[Witness of God]

That's worse than I thought. I thought ya got the full commercial SDK under that license (tis how they used to work it at least - granted, only 1 seat then). There's no point in signing a contract and shelling out a hundred bux for the UDK when you can get that for free, at least not if your intent is to release a free game.

Just wish the UDK could take Half-Life models and BSP's... Ogre can, sorta... Half-life models and Quake BSPs at least. I can *kinda* load Half-life MAP files into Radiant, but it doesn't seem to be very stable (and only reliable on very tiny maps). Might be a trick to it, but I've not bothered to take the time to research.

Ogre is a rendering engine it isnt a game engine. Right now UDK is the best deal out there when it comes to game engines and is a good way to create a game. 100 bucks is really not that much money for launching your first game. If you would like to continue having it as a mod I really dont care. This was only a suggestion and although u would like to say its a bad suggestion it really isnt.

 

[Thothie]

The UDK doesn't seem so bad save for the lack of ability to directly import materials the MSS folks may know how to generate. Paying $100 bux for a game you never intend to make a profit on, with nothing in return, does seem like a "bad suggestion" though.

Ogre has enough API moduels for a full game system (NPC navigation, map system, animation calls, some scripts, etc.), but no tools whatsoever, kinda depending on its ability to use the output of Quake tools and other games' modeling systems.

 

[jon50559]

Thothie, I think you mis-interpret what the UDK (and WoG) says. You can distribute your UDK game for free, anywhere, to anybody. As soon as you put a price tag on it you need to pay Epic $100 up front and then for every profit made after $5000, they get 25% of your profits. So releasing a free game on UDK is free for the developers too (not counting 3rd party programs)

 

[Thothie]

Meh, was hoping for the old deal where you could get the commercial SDK if you signed the rights to your project over under a similar deal (and originally thought that was what he was on about). Still dun work though. None of our devs know how to work with Unreal's materials (I myself only have experience with the UT2k4 SDK - and only a little at that). This isn't the first time we've brought up migrating to the Unreal engine.

Esenthel, Ogre, and Apocolyx all come free (or have free variants) and take at least some of the materials the Source folks can generate, but sadly, none are as nice as Unreal. This isn't the first time we've discussed different engines either.

Also, probably most critically, Orochi is MSS's only coder ATM, so it's really all up to him. I somehow doubt he wants to start all over again. :\

 

[Witness of God]

Thats why why you recruit.

 

[Tentadrilus]

I don't see the point. "Oh hey guys, why don't you hop from an engine that's still in use that you've done on your work on from one that you have to pay for and nobody knows how to use? Excellent idea, no?"

MS:S will get the option of upgrading to Episode 3's engine when it comes out, and that will be preferable to any version of Unreal you can throw at us for quite a long time.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Why dont you just start a new, independent team, Witness of God? There is no need to use the current team members if you can find new ones yourself. Nobody will be opposed to a third Master Sword game being developed. Unless, of course, that third title means we have to abandon one of our current titles.