Considerations for La Vida game

[LiamM32]

I would like to figure out if Leadwerks would be suitable to develop La Vida, but first I'll give you some information on that game project.

 

La Vida is an open-source project for a Sims-like game. It's at an early stage of development, without any progress recently. Mike Hibbert is the leader of the project. It was originally being developed collaboratively on SourceForge, written in Python. But Mike Hibbert decided to restart the whole project on Unity, as he announced on Ubuntu forums;

Well I resisted the idea for a long time as I wanted to stay with Python. But, that wasn't happening as the 3d libraries arent easy to support across all platforms so Unity3d won in the end.

The Unity3d version was never released to the public. Mike Hibbert developed it privately, but no known progress has been made in recent months. He told me in an email in November the he's been busy with other things.

 

I am myself just a begginer in programing, and Unity3d is what I'm using in my game programing class at my high school. But I've had a bit of concern for the limitations of Unity3D, which would become more noticable further into development. I found Leadwerks on Kickstarter, and it appears better than Unity from a Linux-users perspective (Both myself and Mr Hibbert use Ubuntu), seeing that OpenGL isn't far outdated like in Unity, and that it will soon be available to develop on Linux.

I might want to propose another change to the development on the La Vida forum. Even though it will take some time to get a reply on such a quiet forum. (Want to change that? Go sign up and reply to those unreplied topics.)

 

If La Vida switched to Leadwerks, then could it use the code from the Python or Unity3D projects?

I'm also concerned about the Leadwerks license as Wikipedia says it.

allowing the creation of any type of game/simulation/visualization application with the exception of a game engine or overly modifiable game that will allow the end user to 'create something outside of the intended scope of the original product'.

La Vida is supposed to be open source. In my vision of La Vida, it should have good support for mods. Would this go against that license?

Although it's much easier to pay $100 or $200 for Leadwerks than $1500 for Unity3D, Leadwerks doesn't appear to have a free version unlike Unity. Can Leadwerks be used alongside other programs (unlike Unity3D)? I mean, could contributors who don't have Leadwerks still write code etc in a different program?

Unity3D has unbreakable limitations (like multi-monitor). But is Leadwerks designed so that any features unincluded can be coded by the user?

[YouGroove]

If La Vida switched to Leadwerks, then could it use the code from the Python or Unity3D projects?

No

LE3 is Lua or C++

Unity is C# or Javascript like or Boo Script

You'll have to rewrite all and adapt code and find equivalent functions, and LE3 has it's own functions and collision particularities (no scalable Character controller for example).

You should keep your 3D art, convert it to FBX for LE3 import, and just inspire your old gameplay and re code all in LE3

 

 

La Vida is supposed to be open source. In my vision of La Vida, it should have good support for mods. Would this go against that license?

I don't think you can give to people some LE3 engine where they could mod the game by changing Lua scripts, gameplay or other stuff.

 

Leadwerks doesn't appear to have a free version unlike Unity. Can Leadwerks be used alongside other programs (unlike Unity3D)?

No free version for now.

Explain what you mean for along side ?

any game is made on one engine only, never cooperate with another engine.

 

 

who don't have Leadwerks still write code etc in a different program?

 

Notepad or text editor for Lua

 

 

 

Unity3D has unbreakable limitations (like multi-monitor). But is Leadwerks designed so that any features unincluded can be coded by the user?

I don't know ?

[Josh]

If La Vida switched to Leadwerks, then could it use the code from the Python or Unity3D projects?

For scripting, we use the Lua programming language. Lua is the most popular script language among professional games, with hundreds of AAA titles using it: Crysis, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, etc.

 

La Vida is supposed to be open source. In my vision of La Vida, it should have good support for mods. Would this go against that license?

A "game maker" with the purpose of exposing the functionality of Leadwerks to people who don't own it is something we definitely do not want. So this is sort of in a gray area.

 

Although it's much easier to pay $100 or $200 for Leadwerks than $1500 for Unity3D, Leadwerks doesn't appear to have a free version unlike Unity. Can Leadwerks be used alongside other programs (unlike Unity3D)? I mean, could contributors who don't have Leadwerks still write code etc in a different program?

I'm not really keen on great numbers of people programming with Leadwerks without owning the software. Their experience would also not be good without the Lua debugger built into our editor. A better approach would be an open-source game for Leadwerks users.

 

Unity3D has unbreakable limitations (like multi-monitor). But is Leadwerks designed so that any features unincluded can be coded by the user?

Almost all third-party game libraries are written in C++. Since Leadwerks is written in pure C++, the standard edition allows easy importing of these libraries into a project, with no wrapping code required.