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[Caffeine]

I'm posting this here because I wasn't sure who to PM and I didn't want to make it too public. It's more of a general team Q&A anyways. Feel free to ignore me if I'm asking too much.

1. If someone wants to donate with a check instead of paypal, then where can it be sent? Is there an address in the U.S.?

2. What are your thoughts about Q3 being open sourced under the GPL? Would you rather use another engine with a more liberal license?

3. If you would rather use another engine, then which one? There are plenty of options*, though the proprietary ones tend to cost quite a lot to license. There's also the issue of converting the content...

4. Would you continue to support Linux and Mac gamers?

* To name a few: OGRE, Sauerbraten (Cube 2), and Torque all have more liberal licenses, and are more advanced than the Q3 engine. Of course, each one also has its own downsides:

- OGRE is written in C++ and, so far, no one has released anything significant using this engine. http://www.ogre3d.org/
- Sauerbraten has built-in map editing (co-op even) and a lot of modern rendering effects, including bloom lighting and normal maps. Sounds great, right? Yeah, _but_ there's a rather significant limitation: map geometry cannot be arbitrary. http://sauerbraten.org/README.html
- Torque is a fairly well-known engine (it was used for Tribes), and it costs $100 to license for "Indie" or $495 for "Commercial." http://www.garagegames.com/

Maybe someone can shuffle that around for a front page Q&A entry? Do whatever you want to do in that case; even remove or change my engine suggestions if you wish.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Lethal takes care of the bills around here. I just paypal my half to him & he does the rest. It's up to him if he wants to give you an address of some sort. I'm not comfortable with giving out my home address.

Personally, I am growing weary of working for WQ3 & don't want to drag this out forever. After the beta 2.2 release I hope the following release will be the stand alone sometime in early 2007. GPL and all. After that, the possibilities are endless as you point out. People like you will help shape WQ3 from then on. I just want to play the game & stay involved with the website in the future. Ok, maybe make another map or two....but without deadlines. However, it seems that a few of our current dev team members might wish to continue working here which is very exciting. I forsee these people as being "loosely" in charge of future development just to keep things orderly. I mean, somebody has to decide when enough contributions are made to the game to warrant new downloadable packages. Otherwise players could be forced to install new content every week to stay current with the servers. (Providing the SA brings popularity with it.) At any rate, I think we'll keep this website alive for a very long time and WQ3 fans will have a place to gather, exchange ideas & make contributions according to their own abilities in an open sourced environment. Of course, people who only want the code to make improvements to other games or port to other engines will be able to do that as well. If someone tried to make money from it though that would obviously be a legal problem for them.

[sig11]

In addition to what Red said:

2. What are your thoughts about Q3 being open sourced under the GPL? Would you rather use another engine with a more liberal license?

I'm not really fanatical about licenses. I've seen lots of debates about GPL vs. BSD. As long as it is true open source, I'm happy.

3. If you would rather use another engine, then which one? There are plenty of options*, though the proprietary ones tend to cost quite a lot to license. There's also the issue of converting the content...

The last point "converting the content" is a huge one. Converting the game to a completely different engine is beyond our possibilities. At some point there have been discussions (or even a poll ?!) about porting the game to the ET engine or Quake4. But even the ET engine being close to Q3 wasn't attractive.

Would the content be a non-issue, then it's a matter of simply knowing everything out there. I've played Cube before and saw the Sauerbraten homepage. I heard of Tribes, of course, but never of OGRE. And with WQ3 being Q3 based, I've seen some impressive improvements for the Q3 engine, but which require rewrites of the game (like e.g. XReal). But as most of us are mostly enthusiasts, I'm not sure how much would come out of that

4. Would you continue to support Linux and Mac gamers?

Yes. Although we currently don't have a visible MasOSX community, I have access to one and can and want to support it (at least the PPC version). It is also rather special that even among us Smoking Guns we are very heterogenous concerning operating systems.

[Caffeine]

Lethal takes care of the bills around here. I just paypal my half to him & he does the rest. It's up to him if he wants to give you an address of some sort. I'm not comfortable with giving out my home address.

That's fine. A P.O. Box would probably work, but the check needs to be made out to a real person or a "company." Anyways, I only asked because there are some people who refuse to use paypal -- such as myself.

GPL and all. After that, the possibilities are endless as you point out.

Well, assuming that WQ3 attracts someone(s) with noteworthy programming skills. Even then, though, the community can only do so much if only the engine code is GPL and not the mod code (that can probably remain closed, since it can be loaded as a Q3 Virtual Machine (qvm) and doesn't have to be directly linked to the engine).

People like you will help shape WQ3 from then on.

You overestimate me. I may seem enthusiastic, but truly, I was much more excited about another mod that I'd been playing since around 2001... If certain events had not occured, then I probably would have finally managed to learn C on my own for that mod (I was already running a server and changing various engine-related things).

Of course, people who only want the code to make improvements to other games or port to other engines will be able to do that as well. If someone tried to make money from it though that would obviously be a legal problem for them.

Honestly, I think the ioQ3 engine would provide a much better base than the WQ3 engine, should someone want to make a new game using a very-Q3-like one. Aspiring game creators looking for an open source engine to use probably would go for something more modern, though, such as XreaL.

As for porting WQ3 to another engine... um, no (unless someone creates/modifies an engine that can load unmodified QVMs with additional effects). You guys have to do that, unless you don't care about protecting your content (artwork, textures, maps, models, skins, sounds, etc). All of that has a license as well, I'm sure, and it's nothing like "modify and share freely," right?

@ sig11: Thanks for the info.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

the community can only do so much if only the engine code is GPL and not the mod code (that can probably remain closed, since it can be loaded as a Q3 Virtual Machine (qvm) and doesn't have to be directly linked to the engine).

We have discussed this. I would like to see the mod code released as well but it's not entirely up to me. Then there's the question of whether or not all of the ICI members can be contacted & whether or not this is something they want. Whatever happens, happens.