Does anyone know of a technical breakdown for the development of this game? Apparently, the 3D assets are real paper objects that have gone through a photogrammetry pipeline, but I've found no information about how they did it! A few years ago, I remember Meshroom [0] being the OSS reference for this, but I'm not sure what you'd use nowadays for this. I'm also curious about the Godot stuff, since I would imagine Blender Studio would've used Armory 3D [1] a few years ago to do this, after BGE went defunct. (Happy they went with Godot though, much more promising).
They've published a series of articles on this project:
>So this is how a lot of our assets ended up being primarily designed in real life as painted paper-cutout models. The models are then photographed, taken apart and scanned. Some paint samples are also created specifically to become tileable.
The paper objects were unfolded, scanned/photographed, imported into Blender, and mapped onto 3D Models of the objects; no photogrammetry was used afaik.
It's nice that the free game engine options are so much richer now than they were in 2008; if memory serves they had trouble implementing Go Frankie fully in the blender game engine, so they made one version in BGE and another in Crystal Space.
> The license of our sources is a bit muddled. We'll try to clear that up asap. The full production repository is CC-BY since it mostly includes the original art assets. The source code of the game is GPLv3 since since [sic] that makes more sense for the code base of the project.
They just aren't distributing the source for free, it seems, but you are free to redistribute it however you'd like.
If the source code is actually GPLv3 then they should be distributing the sources without any additional charges (section 6(d) is very clear on this point). Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder they can make up additional rules, but I bristle with describing this as free software under the GPLv3. As it stands, they are implicitly dual-licensing it under a proprietary and GPLv3 license.
Personally, if I was one of the people that bought the source code, I would just upload it on GitHub since you have the right to do so.
They are distributing for free. For free, they are distributing a compiled version of the game which I have no source to, and no license to creative derivative works of, or to perform or display publicly, and so on.
That thing, which they call Dogwalk, and are distributing for free, is clearly not open source.
The other thing, which they probably also call dogwalk, and they'll give you if you pay them presumably is open source (or maybe the more accurate term is "free software" since the source isn't publicly available - i.e. open), but that doesn't make the download on the page linked by HN open source.
> If I distribute GPLed software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?
> No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.
But they are distributing binaries of the game to the public for free[1] -- the text you quoted describes the exact opposite situation to what is happening. In this particular case you cannot charge separately for source code under the GPLv3 -- see section 6(d).
Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder, they can dual-license things under a GPL and proprietary license (which is effectively what they are doing here -- the DogWalk binaries available from the linked page are not GPLv3 binaries because they are not following the GPLv3 requirements). But this situation is absolutely not permitted under the GPLv3. Otherwise a company could fork a GPL'd project and just avoid releasing GPL'd source code by charging $1B for the source code.
Does anyone know of a technical breakdown for the development of this game? Apparently, the 3D assets are real paper objects that have gone through a photogrammetry pipeline, but I've found no information about how they did it! A few years ago, I remember Meshroom [0] being the OSS reference for this, but I'm not sure what you'd use nowadays for this. I'm also curious about the Godot stuff, since I would imagine Blender Studio would've used Armory 3D [1] a few years ago to do this, after BGE went defunct. (Happy they went with Godot though, much more promising).
[0]: https://alicevision.org/#meshroom [1]: https://armory3d.org/engine/
They've published a series of articles on this project:
>So this is how a lot of our assets ended up being primarily designed in real life as painted paper-cutout models. The models are then photographed, taken apart and scanned. Some paint samples are also created specifically to become tileable.
https://studio.blender.org/blog/devlog-papercraft-woods/#mak...
https://studio.blender.org/search/?type=post&project_title=D...
The paper objects were unfolded, scanned/photographed, imported into Blender, and mapped onto 3D Models of the objects; no photogrammetry was used afaik.
Not their first time around the block! https://apricot.blender.org/
It's nice that the free game engine options are so much richer now than they were in 2008; if memory serves they had trouble implementing Go Frankie fully in the blender game engine, so they made one version in BGE and another in Crystal Space.
Now you can just use Godot.
Is apricot any good? I happen to love 3d platformers, but the trailer was not encouraging.
This looks great. Just a note though that this is "free as in beer". If you want the source code you'd need to login and pay, it seems.
https://studio.blender.org/projects/dogwalk/gallery/?asset=8...
It's free as in freedom!
> The license of our sources is a bit muddled. We'll try to clear that up asap. The full production repository is CC-BY since it mostly includes the original art assets. The source code of the game is GPLv3 since since [sic] that makes more sense for the code base of the project.
They just aren't distributing the source for free, it seems, but you are free to redistribute it however you'd like.
If the source code is actually GPLv3 then they should be distributing the sources without any additional charges (section 6(d) is very clear on this point). Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder they can make up additional rules, but I bristle with describing this as free software under the GPLv3. As it stands, they are implicitly dual-licensing it under a proprietary and GPLv3 license.
Personally, if I was one of the people that bought the source code, I would just upload it on GitHub since you have the right to do so.
They are distributing for free. For free, they are distributing a compiled version of the game which I have no source to, and no license to creative derivative works of, or to perform or display publicly, and so on.
That thing, which they call Dogwalk, and are distributing for free, is clearly not open source.
The other thing, which they probably also call dogwalk, and they'll give you if you pay them presumably is open source (or maybe the more accurate term is "free software" since the source isn't publicly available - i.e. open), but that doesn't make the download on the page linked by HN open source.
> They just aren't distributing the source for free, it seems, but you are free to redistribute it however you'd like.
Yes, that was my point. I will know the license when I see it in the distributed code :)
But it's still open source!
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
> If I distribute GPLed software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?
> No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.
But they are distributing binaries of the game to the public for free[1] -- the text you quoted describes the exact opposite situation to what is happening. In this particular case you cannot charge separately for source code under the GPLv3 -- see section 6(d).
Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder, they can dual-license things under a GPL and proprietary license (which is effectively what they are doing here -- the DogWalk binaries available from the linked page are not GPLv3 binaries because they are not following the GPLv3 requirements). But this situation is absolutely not permitted under the GPLv3. Otherwise a company could fork a GPL'd project and just avoid releasing GPL'd source code by charging $1B for the source code.
[1]: https://studio.blender.org/projects/dogwalk/gallery/?asset=8...
> If you want the source code you'd need to login and pay, it seems.
So… like the GPL?
Very cool, I wish there was a web version though! I have no idea how difficult it would be to port.
Godot will export for web if it was coded with gdscript. Unfortunately, C# web export hasn't been released yet.
I joked somewhere that Unity remain the only ones who have never shipped a game of their own
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44554680
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568106
Can't unzip on MacOS
For those stuck with the same issue on MacOS, use the terminal, go to the download directory, and type: unzip DogWalk.zip