Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 46

Thread: Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

  1. #21

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by WILL
    So how blasphemous would it be to do a standard install of 0.9.20, install everything (libraries, templates, etc) that I want into an edition release and use InnoSetup to make my installation from that?

    Or is that pretty much what happens within the Laz Team anyhow?
    It more or less what the lazarus team does, but we have 'make bigide' to install everything.

    As long as take care of license of the plug-ins :-). See the FAQ about licensing in the lazarus wiki.

  2. #22
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    6,107
    Blog Entries
    25

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by FAQ
    Yes, the IDEIntf part of the IDE is licensed under the LGPL with the same exception, so that shared data structures in this part will not force you to license your plug-in or design-time package under the GPL. We want everyone to be free to choose what plug-in to use, and not limit this choice. Therefore non-GPL compatible plug-ins are allowed. Note that it's not allowed to distribute a precompiled Lazarus with these non-GPL-compatible plugins included statically; however, we do not see this as a severe limitation, since recompiling Lazarus is easy.
    Doesn't this sort of defeat the whole concept of an 'all-in-one, out-of-the-box' edition of Lazarus for game programmers?

    So if I say, added SDL, OpenAL, FMOD and OpenGL as a few examples, I cannot include the DLL files in the same installation?

    Though I think that FMOD *may* be an exception, I think the rest are freely available to distribute...
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  3. #23

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by WILL
    Quote Originally Posted by FAQ
    Yes, the IDEIntf part of the IDE is licensed under the LGPL with the same exception, so that shared data structures in this part will not force you to license your plug-in or design-time package under the GPL. We want everyone to be free to choose what plug-in to use, and not limit this choice. Therefore non-GPL compatible plug-ins are allowed. Note that it's not allowed to distribute a precompiled Lazarus with these non-GPL-compatible plugins included statically; however, we do not see this as a severe limitation, since recompiling Lazarus is easy.
    Doesn't this sort of defeat the whole concept of an 'all-in-one, out-of-the-box' edition of Lazarus for game programmers?

    So if I say, added SDL, OpenAL, FMOD and OpenGL as a few examples, I cannot include the DLL files in the same installation?

    Though I think that FMOD *may* be an exception, I think the rest are freely available to distribute...
    That depends on their license. If they did not make their License GPL compatible, for example by using LGPL, that may be aproblem, but IANAL.

    I don't think this is a problem for SDL for example.

  4. #24
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    6,107
    Blog Entries
    25

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Giving this more thought....

    I believe I know of a way around this apparent limitation in Lazarus' Licensing policy. Simply by supplying a separately downloadable module or package(s) for the Game Developer's Edition we could in fact do it in a friendly way without stepping on licensing toes.

    It's perfectly legit to bundle Laz with wrappers and open libraries, right? The problem as I see it, is the closed source (dynamic) library files that have non-GPL licencing attached to them.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  5. #25

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    If you want to get around this in a legal way, you can also have your installer provide an option to call a service (or another application) that downloads the DLL's and places them into proper folders. Of course, it could also download them as a single ZIP and extract them.

    This way, the Laz IDE is not being "Shipped" with invalid assets, and instead its an option to download . I've had to use the loophole for a few applications that required packages that had to be "Downloaded from XYZ". They never say how it has to be downloaded, just that it can't be sent with your application. Thus you provide the option to download them for the user.

    Of course, my example isn't directly in effect, but its the same idea.

  6. #26

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by jdarling
    If you want to get around this in a legal way, you can also have your installer provide an option to call a service (or another application) that downloads the DLL's and places them into proper folders. Of course, it could also download them as a single ZIP and extract them.
    I think the criterium is not what is in the installation package, but what is linked into the lazarus executable.

  7. #27

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    [quote="Vincent"]I think the criterium is not what is in the installation package, but what is ]

    An EXE can link or link to anything. Its only what you distribute with your EXE. Otherwise, you couldn't link the DX8 libraries and require a download as separate and still have your application be GPL/LGPL. And there are plenty of games out there that do this.

    The BEST solution if this was a concern would be to dynamically link the libraries instead of statically linking them. That way there are no ties that bind, and you can still provide the down-loader I talked about. Of course, that would require some changes to Lazarus itself to make it fail or recover gracefully instead of just barfing on your desktop .

  8. #28

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    [quote="jdarling"]
    Quote Originally Posted by Vincent
    I think the criterium is not what is in the installation package, but what is ]

    An EXE can link or link to anything. Its only what you distribute with your EXE. Otherwise, you couldn't link the DX8 libraries and require a download as separate and still have your application be GPL/LGPL. And there are plenty of games out there that do this.
    IANAL nor a license expert, I think you may only distribute a Lazarus executable linked against the DX8 libraries, if those libraries are part of the operating system.

    Suppose there is a typo somewhere in a lazarus menu caption, the GPL ensures me that I can fix this typo in the Lazarus sources and recompile my application with it.

  9. #29
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    6,107
    Blog Entries
    25

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Well I'll see as to how I package the dynamic libraries that cannot be included with the core installation. I'll make it as hassle free as I can though.

    Odd, question... Vista. Will Lazarus work alright on the new version of Windows? (Awaiting a snowball effect. )

    Also... would I be able to modify the Help sub menus without too much flack? I want to eventually link to:

    1) a Language Help wiki (finally a full online Object Pascal dialect manual!)

    and

    2) Lazarus GDE Manual with instructions for several ways to setup Laz/FPC to compile for different gaming platforms, etc...
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  10. #30

    Lazarus - Game Developers Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by WILL
    Odd, question... Vista. Will Lazarus work alright on the new version of Windows? (Awaiting a snowball effect. )
    Try yourself, I don't have it. I know there are some bitmap problems with win64.
    Also... would I be able to modify the Help sub menus without too much flack?
    I guess creating a package is the least obtrusivem I don't know exactly how to do it, but you can add custom menu items, the IDE is extensible.

    Of course you can patch the lazarus source too. But this is not so nice solution. :-)

Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •