Brent

Ha, thanks! That was fast

Funny that the art is almost done, but not the programming. In many opensource games its mostly the other way round: good engines, but not art. Maybe opensourcing the engine/game could attract some of those developers. Just look at the amount of shooter-style engines out there, surely a coder among them could be interested in picking up a RTS-engine /with/ art to boot.

Kickety kick! If it's still possible, I'd like my nickname to change to "Brent", without the quotes

I was going to mention ODE, looks pretty kewl too. I was simply responding to the monetary issue.

AGEIA's engine is free. http://www.ageia.com/developers/index.html

putting the code in a tarball doesn't mean one can compile it... the make and config scripts is where the magic happens, and that doesn't even take in account the obvious differences between all the platforms, for which the actual gamecode has to be tuned to get things to work.

First off: I think it's great you're considering an opensource license. The community can use such topclass work. But I do think you are not up to snuff on the intricacies of opensourcing. (which is very understandable, license-issues can be minefields). There are hundreds of licenses for starters, which can mean very different things, for end users and you the creaters. I read that you fear people 'stealing' the game. With viral licenses like the GPL this is impossible. The 'new' game would have to be GPL too, and then pointing out that they're just copycats would be easy. Then again, if they're effectivily just redistributing, whats the problem? One of the points about opensource is that these things should be possible. If you just don't want that, maybe it's just better to keep it closed after all. If people cant effectivily do anything with the code/art, then no use making it OS under some prohibitive license. About 'losing copyright'. Copyright is something that lies automatically with the original writers/artist. No action required on your part, ever. I know many people equate open source with GPL, but that of course nonsense. You could choose BSD, LGPL or as I said, hundreds other or your own custom license. I sincerely suggest contacting a legal advisor from (for example) the FSF (http://www.fsf.org/licensing). AFAIK they provide advice to developers for free for precisely these kinds of issues. Maybe others know of even more places to obtain advice (I'm not really into this either).

Yep, my bad. The lameness was directed at AoE3, AoE2 rulez!

I'm not very active here, but I sure as hell a big fan! Have been since 2003/2004 I think? Here's to hoping I'll be selected

Real mathmaticians dont use calculators

But that beta is in no way public, as only a handful of people will get to play it right?

So first theres the select beta, later the public preview? All this year?

Oooeeh, aaaahh, yeahhhh! But, somewhere else I read something about a release for select people, which is it exactly if you dont mind me asking

I think so. Yeah sure, AoE3 on graphics high looks sophisticated, but it's just bloom+HDR for the hell of it in my opinion. Like so many games these days (Need For Speed anyone) throw some pixelshader3 over to cover up that fact that its a bad game. Step a notch down to where bloom etc is off (which looks better imho, nice crisp and sharp), and you're left with graphics on par with AoM. And gameplaywise: pulease... Play the darn game, it much worse than AoM and let's not talk about AoE2 (which is King, pun intended). Lame tech-tree, lame map-mechanics and a lame campaign. Theres much better (graphically and gameplay-wise) RTS'es out there, some even older than AoE3.

And you didn't see the abomination that is AoE3 coming and warned us? Bad journalism...