I was recently reading an article on blender.org, and this is what it said,
“Games created in Blender (.blend files) are program output and therefore not covered by the GPL. You can consider them your property, and license or sell them freely.
With stand-alone games however, any data that is included inside the actual stand-alone executable is covered by the GPL. If this is a problem then you should set up the stand-alone player so it reads from external .blend files. A common practice is to include a “please wait, loading…” scene in the standalone, and read level files externally.
The Blender standalone player or the game player can be sold commercially too, but you have to make it available under the GPL conditions.”
now i was wondering if once you create an exe for a blender game, do you own the rights to the game and can sell it if you choose, or is the game then considered “open source” and you cant sell it without running into copyright stuff?
The exe is under the gpl license, but you can license your blend files as whatever you want. If you just create an exe of your game, then your game is under the gpl, that is why it says to have an exe with a loading screen that just start your blend files externally.
EDIT: You should do a search for BPplayer.
Basically, the blend file is content, created in Blender, and that is not covered by GPL. The GPL is in effect to keep a form of Blender source, which (unfortunately) the Game Engine (and blenderplayer) is a part of, thus, your content is protected, (you cannot, [bar BBPlayer] use the blenderplayer compiled with your blend without subject to GPL, requiring you to release the source) but the program used to run it isnt. As said above, check out BBPlayer, it is for 2.5
Contrary to somewhat popular belief, the GPL licensing isn’t that restricting at all. Some engines don’t even have an option to merge the game data with the standalone player, and just allow you to push the data from a game data file into the player executable. So, this is an extra option.
For commercial / closed (not open-source) projects, it’s actually not too hard to set up - you set the game data outside of the Blender executable somewhere and encrypt it. That Blender executable is merged with a starter blend file that just runs an outside script. If someone wants the source blend file, they’ll just get a couple of logic bricks, heh. Anyway, the outside script loads in the encrypted Blender game data file, decrypts it, and loads and starts it. This should all be possible under Blender 2.5. So that’s another reason to upgrade, if you haven’t.
EDIT: Oh, and by the way, the encrypted blend game data file doesn’t have to be named ‘.blend’ at the end - it could be ‘.game’, or ‘.data’, or whatever you want to name it. You could even place dummy objects of the same size and similarly named to throw people off!
It should work very quickly, and it shouldn’t be difficult to set up. This way it can be closed-source, as well as be easy to set-up. The encryption method and password (if any) can be stored in a compiled Python file. It’s not extremely secure, as it’s possible to decompile a Python file, but it’s better than nothing, and it keeps your games closed-source.
I would recommend the Dead Cyborg way. Just zip the blenderplayer and Your game side by side and start Your game with a bat file. Dead simple and no licensing issues! Download Dead Cyborg free and look at the setup.
But some about the GPL;
The GPL don’t stop You from selling Your game (it does not even stop others from selling it). It simply demands that everyone that distribute it further (changed or unchanged) include source and allow people to change it further and distribute it further. It simply protects the freedom of the code and everybody’s contributions. A real good thing.
But that’s everybody else - You, as the copyright owning part are free to use Your code, that is 100% Your contribution however You like. You can change it and release the changed version closed source - The only thing You can’t do is to take back the freedom You have given away on the GPL released version.
If You happen to release a exe with You code embedded it will not automatically be GPL. If You distribute the result You are breaking the terms in the GPL . but that can usually at Your choice be settled with ether stopping the distribution or releasing the code as GPL. Have You made a lot of money on the distribution You may be sued over the money too.
Essentially, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your game, it just requires you to release the source of your files if you package the blend in the blenderplayer. For this reason, many wouldn’t want to sell a game via this method as it would allow a nosy user with Google to distribute the game for free.
It would be great to have someone developing some kind of way like solarlune told us, why the comunity dont join and raise money for this kind of development?
For example, good developers like agoose or solar lune allready make a lot of good stuff and share with us for free, this is awesome, but it ll be even better if we as a comuty could retribute this help somehow, so for example, I realy want some way to sell the game that Im making(a good way like a commercial game) or I really want a true reflection on my car game, or I want a montion blur script, I dont know, this was what quickly poped up on my mind. This way thos guys who want to help would be paid for that, nothing more fair.
So I sugest to create a development thread, and find out what is more essential, and then raise the money and see who want to take the job, I dont know if this would work out, but I think that we should see who would want to donate, then setup a thread with what kind of development the majority want, then price it by check how mutch such a thing would be valuable, and raise the money. When we get to the stabilished value the developer starts to work, and when its done he receive the money.
It’s not something that needs to be developed - you can do it right now, pretty simply. I posted a thread about it not too long ago, actually.
EDIT: Blend files are in binary format already - you can just add strings or take values away to encrypt them. Then, decrypt them in a script and load in the decryption, not writing back to the original file.
Ok solarlune, but not just for that, other kinds of stufs aswell, like I described, those things just passed on my mind on that time, and I didnt knew about your thread, but for example, Im not a developer, but I think that I could earn, i dont know, $500$ while otherwise I would only receive a “thanks you man”, this would be good for those who want to help the comunity( its an example I m not adeveloper, so im not want this for myself!).
I dont know, you didnt want to receive a true and paupable return? man rich or poor we all want to receive for our good projects specially when we have bills to pay food to buy…
Ah, I see. You raise a good point - I’m sure any developer would be happy to get something back for their efforts, myself included.
Perhaps that’s a good idea… Or, perhaps a section of the forum could be made for specific development requests. For example, someone who wants point shadows could put the listing in that section of the forum, and developers could respond. Something hard like point shadows, though, might require more money than something easier. So, it would be a little difficult to gauge the cost of specific jobs, as each job is different. Still, I like the idea.
Yeah, exactly, I think that someone better on english should write the thread and create a pool to see what the comunity thinks about it, I would myself, but as you guys know Im not very good on it.
Lets see what the comunity thinks about it then, what I was thinking about, was something more simple, because agoose allready tought about something like that but for the development, I was thinking about something smaller( something that would not need a new built or something) just to start and see how it ll go, because as you said , some things will be more easy to make than others and the value of that ll be diferent aswell.
We we ll need to stick that.