Firstly let me introduce myself, I’ve been hovering around the forum now and again, and have created architectural applications and a few hobby games using Unity. I have previously been a Flash can do everything kinda guy, but after messing around in Papervision and Away3D (which are great pieces of code in their own right), I turned to Unity.
I was wondering are there any open source games projects open to all Unitarians (is that what Unity people call themselves?), If so could someone point me in the right direction?
If not then as I am new I don’t really know the Unity community all that well, but visiting the forums I see many devs and designers of varying degrees of skill, some wanting to donate a few spare hours for some worthy experience working with others just as enthusiastic and skilled whereas others simply wanting a full game made for free with promises of payment once its made it big etc etc. What are the opinions of the comm UNITY at starting up a totally free open source project where everyone can chip in as much or as little as they like?
The project could be hosted through a SVN, we have seen this extremely successful approach work in the animation industry http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/. A cartoon made totally open by many enthusiastic people, and successful enough to win many awards and even Disney wanted to meet the crew.
This sort of project has a way of weeding out the less enthusiastic members while promoting the enthusiastic contributors to God like awesomeness.
So, guys/girls who are passionate about Unity and games do you think its possible to here?
I’m sure if there is enough interest we can get some of the Gaming God’s and Unity Creators to act as moderators, especially during early stages of concept development, maybe we can have a vote on best ideas, and then work on creating a collective GDD (game design document), which will act as a blueprint for the rest of the development?
I’m interested to hear your views and ideas after all I could be chatting pure crazy
I doubt there’s much open source games out there. Firstly you need to understand making games is not equivalent to making a piece of software. Even if a coder release his/her code the modellors and animators, designers, artist won’t be so willing as to share their assets for free. That said if you are looking for tutorials. There’s a few over at Unity resources. And a few snippets (Small game prototypes) for free even here and there.
And we don’t call ourselves Unitarian or wahetevr. And is that what flash people call themselves? Flashian. Hahaz. Just a joke. But you can contribute back to this community by helping people code short snippets of code or make your own editor plugins for use.
I guess there could be a game project uploaded somewhere, and people could just download it as an unity package, mod it, export the unity package and upload and post the link.
It’s not exactly “open source” in the usual sense of the term but here’s an open community project someone started. Looks like it hasn’t gone very far. That’s the only one I know of.
It’s unfortunate that the SVN is pro, I’m sure as dogzerx suggests a work around could be figured out.
Zine92 many artists and 3D modelers have and do take part in open source projects, and give away all their hard work for free, again I direct your attention to Big Buck Bunny which provides all its models, characters, and whole production files for download (download production files - yep that’s everything used to make the movie - view trailer) , free for anyone to use as they please, also not 3D but another great flash animated film, which again all assets are available online for free is Sita Sings the Blues (Trailer - Website).
I know there are many bits of scattered around the forum, and many small games, however what the open source game project would provide is a full scale community driven game which has the full documentation and workflow required in creating a game, this includes a GDD, concept art so all contributors are aiming towards a collective goal rather then bits and bobs scattered all over the place. It also provides new comers and people with great ideas with the steps to making their idea a real product by following how the community project develops enforcing best practices.
Its just an idea … lol.
Regularry, I have read through the thread you posted, and will be downloading the code tonight. This is exactly the idea I had in mind, however you can see that without a SVN or repository, and a GDD, there is limited direction to the development, I will pm the main contributors and the OP with my contribution.
There’s no reason not to pursue this type of thing, but the answer to your original question is that there isn’t much in that space right now. Prime31 is running an open source UI toolkit, so there is some open source momentum building.
at starting up a totally free open source project where everyone can chip in as much or as little as they like?