OpenFPS Game project, which Game Engine?

[BotDamian]

Hello dear LTT community,

I've thought of a project to start and it makes total sense to me.

 

I want to make a open source FPS game for everyone to download and use how they want, they can rebrand it, sell it, or just download it and play on the main servers.

 

The reason for the project is that I've always been a true Call of Duty player, since 2005 CoD2 times and I enjoyed the fast paste and mechanics of it.

OpenFPS should become a FPS games that anyone can download, play or edit and create their own game. The reason is to have a game to play and people being able to create mods and create their own mechanics while having a 100% functional Game they can edit, but mainly to have a game to play and enjoy.

 

So the community is also very important for people to use the project. Based on community I would say Unity, because it has a huge community and tons of tutorials and videos. Unrealengine on the other side has also blueprints and great graphics but the community is much smaller.

 

I'm one of those who values gameplay over graphics, I don't need Raytracing or such, it's enough to just enjoy the game and let the people enjoy it with low end PCs too.

 

I always used Unreal Engine but I'm open to any Game Engine that would be good for this.

For now I favor Unity, even if I haven't done anything with it.

It's not now what I know best, it's about what's the best for the project in long term.

[Eigenvektor]

Which parts of your game are supposed to be open source exactly?

 

Typically it's the engine that is open source for people to play around with and the assets (textures, models, sounds, ...) are not. Since you want to use an existing engine making that open source is out the window. Custom modifications to the engine can most likely not be made open source either, since you're bound by the license agreement of the engine concerning such modifications. This means you can, at most, make the assets used by your game open source.

[mariushm]

I don't think you're realizing how much work is involved in such a project.

I'd suggest starting by making a single player map in an existing game, for example make a Half-Life 2 / Source mod

I'd also suggest looking at other existing projects to see how many have worked on a game and how much work is involved, see for example how much time was spent on a game like the half-life remake, Black Mesa ...

 

If you use a game engine that's not yours, you'll have to respect the terms of the license agreement, and that will make things complicated for you. You may not be allowed to make your "fps game maker" with other company's IP ... each person making a game would probably have to download the engine separately and accept license terms and other things.
Also, engines are often cheap or free only under certain conditions... be careful about locking your game to an engine that may change its terms or rules.

[BotDamian]

Yes that's what I mean, my code is my code, the Engine itself like Unity or Unreal won't be open source.

But anything I add on top of the Engine will be mine and therefore open source.

Basically a github repo for people to just clone it and copy paste into a project.

[Niqesse]

I am unsing Unity and think, that as long as your idea is to share the assets and scripts, it would be a really good starting point. You should be able to upload your game as an asset pack with completed scenes, scripts etc to Unity's asset store.
However, I am not familiar with the guidlines for uploading packages to the asset store.
But one thing to look out for is to create all the asstes yourself, because of copyright and licensing.

Also nice to know: Unity lately aquired bolt, and integrated it into their Engine as "Visual Scripting" - really striking name xD.  It's a C# based visual scripting tool, really beginner friendly and I really enjoyed using it.
 

[Eigenvektor]

11 minutes ago, BotDamian said:

Yes that's what I mean, my code is my code, the Engine itself like Unity or Unreal won't be open source.

If your code is built on top of existing code, it's not that simple. Any modifications to existing code are bound by the license of that code. You can typically only make modifications after agreeing to its terms and conditions. Pretty sure you're not allowed to publish an engine built on top of e.g. Unreal Engine as your own engine.

 

11 minutes ago, BotDamian said:

But anything I add on top of the Engine will be mine and therefore open source.

Not necessarily. You are still bound by the license agreement of the original engine. Have a look at the conditions under which you are allowed to make modifications to the engine and/or the engine's code. You might be able to publish some kind of modification pack that people can install on top of the original. But they'd have to download the original engine, agree to its terms before they could then download and use your mod-pack.

 

[Kilrah]

I don't think they intend to modify the game's engine itself - just post their game code project files.

[shadow_ray]

if you would like to be truly open, then Godot is a good alternative