Lee asked me to reply to this thread and clear things up somewhat. So this is the official TGC statement regarding this matter. We will not enter into discussion about this response, it is what it is.
We released the source code to the FPS Creator Game Engine to encourage people to modify it, rip it apart, recompile it and generally do whatever they wanted with it.
The one and only restriction we placed upon it was that you may not take any part of the source code and use it in a standalone "game making" application (wether that application was free or commercial).
If the modifications you make to the source mean that in order to benefit from them a user would need to own FPS Creator then that is another matter altogether. You are not in violation of the license in this case, because quite clearly you've not built a level editing / game making package with our code.
There seems to be some confusion about the fact that by releasing the game engine source that means there won't be an FPSC 2. I don't know where this misgiving stems from, but let's stop it now. The core of FPS Creator, the part that makes it unique and makes it sell, is the editor. We never released the source to the editor (and we probably never will). The source you have is the source to the game engine. Nothing more.
We are counting on the fact that people will make changes to the game engine, that they'll take it in directions we never even considered while building it. From the very first post in this thread it was clear the author of the Riker9 project appreciated this fact, and the limitations. It says quite clearly:
Quote: "Riker 9 is a new build of FPSC with fixes, improvements, and other odds and ends to make the FPSC even a better product than it already is. Riker 9 is NOT a replacement for the FPSC program, for the GUI interface of the FPSC will NOT change, only the EXE that is built when you compile the game."
This, in a nutshell, is a perfect example of what the license allows, and shows the author understands exactly what we were saying all along. The features he wishes to add "save game, load game, land mines, etc" all sound fine to us, and is exactly the sort of thing we were hoping someone would do with the source.
Someone at the start of this thread asked:
Quote: "The question then becomes: why wasn't the code related to the editor separated from the game engine's one in the first place? Reducing then the game-exe file size ..."
Well, maybe that is something you can do? It would not affect the license however, and the license wasn't written to reflect some of the editor handles still remaining either. It was written to say "make whatever you like with this source to expand FPSC further, but don't make anything that could be classed as "competition" to our product".
If all you are doing is enhancing it, then you've nothing to worry about.
People don't quit playing because they grow old.
They grow old because they quit playing.
