Unity OpenSource Game Template/Project?

News & General Discussion
1

Hello All,

What do you guys think about a “Unity OpenSource Game Template/Project” that is maintained by the Unity Community?

Basically the idea is an Easy-to-Use Game Template/Project that can be used to Build different kinds of Games Such as First Person Shooter / Third Person Shooter / Action / Adventure / RPGs etc…

I currently have a Game Template that was custom built with the help of some Developers I’ve hired over the past months being used for my Game Sword of Destiny http://swordofdestinyrpg.com/, and i’d be willing to offer it as a base Template to be Further Developed and Expanded to become an awesome OpenSource Unity Game Template/Project available for everyone to use for creating Commercial Games.

this is just an idea, and i’m looking for some feedback, to see if this is something others would be in support of, would like to see this happen, and or would like to contribute to it.

Let me know your thoughts…

2

Seems like a good idea! There are lots of people who want to make rpg games but can’t figure out how, or don’t have the skills or a team to pull it off. Perhaps we could make some videos on how to get started with it. Would be interesting.

3

Not sure If I want to focus on making Videos Personally, I think that could be part of the project as well… but for me I’d like to focus on Documentation that is Updated Regularly for How to use this OpenSource Game Template/Project to get started with Building this kind of Game or that kind of Game.

What I am seeing is Game Template that is Universal, and at the flip of a switch or at the Click of a Template Scene you Switch Game Template Styles…

this would have to be a very flexible Game Template that is designed using a base code that works for most gameplay styles, then pulls in other scripts, assets to better define what what game your makes… best example…

Lets say we call it “Unity OSGT” Short for Unity OpenSource Game Template…

We Load OSGT Project, and in the Project we have different Scenes, each Scene Loads a Different Template, lets say one for FPS and one for Third Person Shooter for starters…

Each template will come Ready to Go! as it all you have to do is Replace lets say a Capsule being used for the Player Model, and Enemies, same would apply for the Weapons… you can drop in any kind of weapon you want to be used in the FPS Template, Load all the Animations Easier… Load all your Player Model and Enemy Animations right in the Inspector much easier… things like this…

I have purchased lots of the Game Project / Templates Assets Available in the Asset Store, and I find most of them actually maybe all of them hard to use, and having messy setup, messy code etc…

I want to Create a Universal Game Template that anyone can easily Use and Load Assets, Animations, Special Effects, Sounds, Etc… very easily with few steps, and minor instruction from a video and documentation…

I think we can all benefit from this kind Universal OpenSource Game Template.

I am not a programmer, more of a Game Designer, and a User who wants Game Development to be much smoother, easier than it is right now… and I think with Unity it’s totally Possible…

4

so I guess you can say what i’m kind describing here is a Game Editor inside of an Editor (Unity).

what i’m looking for is a Game Template that Kind of Serves as a Basic Game Editor, allowing anyone with no programming knowlege to easily drop in assets and have a working (basic) First Person Shooter, Third Person Shooter, RPG etc… whatever in a matter of minutes to an hour or so…

and if you want additional game features ofcoarse you have to do either code it yourself or hire someone to help with that… but for the most part you can easily create a basic game with some basic game objectives and or quests already built it… Like Capture Items, Find, Kill X number of Enemies to Clear Stage, Fight a Boss to Win the Stage or Game etc…

i’m talking about a complete (basic) game creation toolkit (kinda sort of editor) but really technically is a Game Template by Unity Standards.

5

I like the idea, but it would be tough to make something that universal. What you’re describing is basically just Unity.

I could see having a handful of templates (FPS Template, RPG Template, RTS Template, etc). There are, of course, several of these already on the asset store (like ORK RPG Kit and such).

6

This is brilliant, if you can pull it off then I’m behind you 100%!

7

I would like to contribute to making an open source project (hell, I’ll manage the open source aspect) along the lines of what you are describing, but I do have a number of suggestions/things I would like to address.

First, as this is an open source project, anyone would be free to contribute, and I think that that may cause people to add features that are too generic and ill suited for what we would be trying to do. It would be sort of like now with UDK, where the base template is an FPS though the engine can be used for anything.

Also, the project would need to have clear, benevolent leaders who would essentially guide the project. Lots of OS projects fail because the contributors (which can number in the 100s) cannot agree on where to go.

Also, I agree with khanstruct. Let’s start off with something simple, like an FPS template, and then move onto something more generic.

8

+1, I agree with everything that you said. It should be closed to certain people. Also, I need an FPS template :smile:.

9

Well I don’t think it would be that hard if we just basically setup this project with Forks… meaning we have one Base Template to start with…

then we have other people choose what part they want to expand on… lets say you want to do RPG… then you use the base template code expand it for RPG, then once you have a working version of the RPG Templater we just merge your work back into the Master Base Template…

So now we have a working Universal Game Template that provide users with an RPG Template… and we just continue this onward… and expand it to add FPS, Third Person, (which actually I already have third person support and an awesome camera at that for it)

the benifit of this Univeral Game Template is that everyone is Familiar with the Same Game Template Setup, so it would not matter if you switch to FPS, Third Person, RPG, Templater (Scene) they would all share some similarities in the Setup so basically it is User Friendly…

again i must say, i think the Goal I am aiming for is a Game Editor inside of an Editor…

and I think there are lots of benifits for everyone…

  1. User Friendly

  2. Developers can Use it for any Commercial Work, and have a working base for any style of game their Client is looking to Create

  3. Game Designers can Create any kind of Game they want by simply dropping in Assets and get a Fully Playable working Game in Minutes to Hours without having to Hire a Programmer to do the Basic Game Logic because it’s already done, they can Hire Developers to do more Complex things…

  4. Again another benefit for Developers, when we Game Designers need to Hire you Programmers to Expand our Game, you Designers are already Familiar with the Game Template / Setup we are Using so it’s easy for you to Write Plugins and other Scripts to Expand it…

So overall everyone would benefit from a Single Universal Game Template that Support Multiple Gameplay Styles… I am not saying this is an easy Job! but I also don’t think it’s impossible if Developers can see the Benefit of my idea…

10

Alright, get to work, I must see it! Lol, but seriously, I hope this goes through, I love the idea.

11

LOL! well i will tell you what… I am going to try create a base template (from my code base) to give us all something to play with… as I think what I currently have and using is pretty easy to use as in… i’m almost confident anyone here with at least some little bit of experience using unity (not programming) can setup any Player Model and Enemy Easily using my base template in under an hour, or maybe even under a half-hour or less…

I’ll get to work on that… and see where we go from here…

12

Great! Is the base template for something specific? (EX: FPS, RPG)

13

well you can check it out for yourself here… it’s what im using for my current project “Sword of Destiny” what i am considering as Multiplayer / Third Person / Action / RPG

14

Great, well, why don’t we get started by creating a GitHub organization and creating the base repo. In my opinion, the base template should be relatively simple, like maybe camera scripts and basic, universal gameplay stuff. Then, once we have a working base, people can fork.

Also, licensing is important here, as if we’re not satisfied, it’s tough to change the license later. So, to get this straight from the beginning, how’s the Lesser GPL sound?

15

Sounds Good… although i’m not really experienced with GitHub and how to set that up… personally I would like to Focus on maybe Hosting a Dedicated Website for the Project, Marketing it to other Users, Maintaining a moddb.com, Twitter, Accounts, providing User support etc… and also Testing the Template, and Providing Feedback on it’s User Friendliness LOL!!

I ofcoarse would like to be part of the Leaders of the Project, by Servicing as Quality Control or something like that providing feedback based on the perspective of an Indie Game Designer with (little to no programming skill), i think this will be helpful as I can’t give a biased opinion from a programmers perspective… meaning what may seem easy and user friendly to a programmer may not to be to a designer…

I want to provide my base code, as a starting point and have programmers review it and see what they think of the code and see where it can be cleaned up and used as a starting point if possible…

and i’d like a Game Designer maybe like “dtg108” review it and see if it is as user friendly as i say it is, for a starting base template… even if my code is not used because of whatever reasons, at least it can give some idea of where to start i think…

So if you give me sometime i’ll try to get a base template out as soon as possible for us to play with…

and Sevenbits the GNU GPL sounds good!

16

Sounds good, this is going to be a great thing to do. I always wanted to create open projects that people can download and use for their personal projects. So this is going to be great.

17

I’ll be responsible for the GitHub portion, then. Though dedicated websites are great, the code base should be on GitHub. This way, development will be way easier from a programmer’s perspective. I’ve been looking for a way to give back to the Unity community; hopefully this will pick up.

I would expect you to be a project leader. :wink: Perhaps we can decide others based on involvement with the project. Most projects have 3 people or so, but some really large projects (e.g Qt, Firefox) have whole organizations behind them. So I think the traditional route would be easiest in this case.

Glad you like the GPL. Let’s be sure, though, to use the Lesser GPL - it’s perfect for this sort of thing: people who use our library in a project don’t need to open source their code, but if they fork the library or contribute code, then they do. That way, our library gets better, and people who make games with it can sell their games. :slight_smile:

18

Awesome! glad you like the idea Khelton…

I think what we will need to do is agree to keep this template as CLEAN CLEAN, and WELL COMMENTED AS POSSIBLE, and WELL DOCUMENTED AS POSSIBLE… to track changes, to modify easily, update easily, etc… etc…

the idea is ease of use, smooth game developement, for both ends, those with no programming knowledge and those with programming knowledge…

I don’t know about you but one experience that i bring to the table is this…

as an Indie Game Designer who hires other programmers to do work, what i end up seeing is other progammers hate reviewing other programmers code lol! de-coding it, and adding your updates to it etc… and if you are are Freelance Programmer yourself and reading this Thread I think you know what im talking about, how painful it is to get a new client, charge them a project fee, but once you get the source code of whatever project your working on your like HOLY SHIT what a MESS!!! I should have charged him more for this crap LOL!!!

So I hope more and more see where im going with this…

imagine lots of Serious Game Designer (wish CASH) converting moving over to Unity, as im sure many are and will continue to… and they come and stubble on our OpenSource Game Template/Editor that they can use to Create a base for their Game! and all of those who are involved in the making of the Game Template can easily expand their Client’s Code and Game because they are already familiar with the Game Template Code Base and can write plugins, and expand the games for their Client’s (using this template) Blind Folded! = )

do you see it ? = )

19

Ok, Sounds like …

SevenBits - GitHub / Repository / OpenSouce License Manager! = )

KheltonHeadley - Lead Programmer (Maybe?)

Myself - Project Lead / Marketing Manager

@SevenBits, by the way… regarding website, no i just meant a Website for Show! = ) nothing more… a dedicated website to host the Tutorials, Documentation, Pictures, Showcase Videos etc… not to host the Project Code

20

Totally see where you’re coming from. Happens to me all the time.