General Question Oribiter powered game?

[philquiet]

Hi!
I am new to the forum, despite having registered in 2010 to have a question answered. I'm interested in addon creation, especially advanced fictional spaceships.
Later I'll have the time to post about myself in the meet section and make an avatar. For the moment, I have a question about something that I have in mind for a while.

Is it permited and possible, with the license of Orbiter and his SDK, for either a freeware indy game or a collection of dedicated addons to be self-contained, and to be powered by the Orbiter simulator that would be distributed with it? Given of course that it's not a comercial product of any kind and the mention of something like "powered by Orbiter" is shown in big in the splash screen?

In other word, is an external program able to, say, run orbiter in console mode then use orbiter behind the program custom GUI and functionnality?

Or maybe this could be achieved as an addon, not a separate game, that would manage is own collection of add-ons, scenario files, scenery and visualisation module under a self-contained launch program? Like, for example, a laucher for the Tintin addon that would run in his own clean installation of Orbiter, complete with, say, is own music, GUI and cel-shaded visualisation module? (This is only an example, i'm not planning of doing this)

Tell me if this is a sound idea.

 

[Moach]

well, you should probably check the llicensing terms uncluded with the Orbiter distribution...

i believe you're looking at a problem that's more copyright-related than it is a technical one

programming-wise, yes, with C++ it's possible to twist Orbiter around to pull off pretty much anything - if that would actually be easier that starting from something else, no guarantees :hmm:



but for starters, going the way you suggested would at least mean you're bound to the redistribution terms on everything you mean to include... and if it anything says "don't" - well, you know what that means

as for practical advice - from my experience, i'd say not the best idea i've ever heard.... it's more likely you'll have more trouble trying to contort around existing work than if you were set on using something a little less specialized to build upon

Orbiter is not a game engine - it's a simulator in itself.... you'd have to reinvent far too many wheels to get around that

 

[N_Molson]

Depends... If you want realistic newtonian-keplerian physics, Orbiter can be an interesting platform, provided you don't mind about the no-collision detection...

It would probably possible, with a lot of work of course, to do a space combat arcade game, like FreeSpace (again, the 1st problem would be collisions, especially for the weapons effects)...

 

[philquiet]

Then I probably should go more for an addon collection than a distributed game. Like an installer that install some sort of launcher. The launcher manage the files so your normal add-ons are backuped when you play with the dedicated add-on collection.
That way no need to distribute Orbiter, I just have to instruct to install it.

 

[Moach]

that's a good alternative, provided your intended audience is willing and able to put up with the multi-step process that is installing Orbiter and all the needed "basics"

that's good for the most of us, here - but then again, this is also the geekiest hangout in these parts of the blagnets :rofl:

 

[Tommy]

Depends on what you mean by "Powered by Orbiter". If you just plan to use the physics engine, and will develop your own graphics engine, you can use the orbiterng.exe. That should be permissable - but you will likely need to have people download and install Orbiter themselves.

The non-graphic version of orbiter was designed to allow it to be used this way, and could - theoretically, be used by another game engine to handle the orbital physics and flight - with other "features" coming from the other game engine.

Note that stock and add-on vessels would likely not work correctly - you would probably need to create your own vessels, bases, and stations, etc, specifically for this purpose.

The key to the copyright seems to be "non-commercial". If you aren't charging or profiting from the game, I suspect it would be alright. Once you come up with a more specific idea on what exactly you want to do, check with martins to ensure it's alright.