- Are you alive?
Err... yes.
- Is GAUGE alive?
Err... yes.
- Why do you never update the news page or release new versions
of GAUGE?
I'm too busy coding. :)
- What is GAUGE?
GAUGE is a 3D game engine. It is open source under the terms
of the GNU Library General Public License.
- What is a game engine?
A game engine is the underlying software behind a game. It
provides the functionality which is common to all games. A
3D game engine is a game engine that is designed specifically
for 3D games (basically, any game that can benifit from a 3D
card). GAUGE will provide such functionality as rendering models
and worlds, network communications, and interfacing with the
player. By using a pre-existing game engine, game developers
can skip most of the work that goes into programming a game
and instead focus on the content of their particular game.
- Can I make commercial games with GAUGE?
Sure. GAUGE is now licensed under the GNU Library/Lesser General
Public License (LPGL). You can write a game using GAUGE and sell
it without paying any royaltees or fees of any kind. Your can
license your game under any license you wish. If you make any
changes to GAUGE itself, however, you must distribute the source
code for these changes licensed under the terms of the LGPL. See
the file "COPYING" in the source tree for more info. (Note:
GAUGE used to be licensed under the GPL, which was more restrictive.
If you get an older copy of the source code, you may find that license
instead. Please get a newer version in that case.)
- Why are you doing all this work for free?
I am an avid gamer myself. By creating a unified game engine
and letting others use it for free, I can enhance the quality
of all 3D games. If games use my engine, then the developers
can spend their time working on the game content rather than
the code. This means that I have more fun playing the games. :)
More importantly, however, I am doing this for fun. I like to code.
- Why did you choose to create your own game engine, rather than
use one of the existing ones?
This is a tough one to answer, because I don't like to publicly bash
my competitors. The short answer is that I believe I can design a
better game engine. In order to incorporate some of my ideas into
other engines, they would probably have to be redesigned and rewritten
from scratch. Of course, no other game engine author would be willing
to do that just because I told them it was needed. So, I chose to
start my own. Furthemore, this project is partially an experiment in
the field of object oriented programming. It may not work out as
well as I hope. However, I have learned far more by working on GUF
and GAUGE than I would ever have learned working within someone
else's framework.
- Does GAUGE use the XXX API?
Does GAUGE use YYY rendering algorithm?
Does GAUGE use the ZZZ file format?
Yes, yes, and yes, if someone writes plugins for them. GAUGE can
use just about any file format, API, or algorithm through
plugins.
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