Licence issues on Dark Physics

Hi,

has anyone from here bought the dark physics for dark basic pro ( http://darkphysics.thegamecreators.com/ )? I would like to know how exactly a licence agreement with ageia looks like if you're planning to do a commercial release.


Regards,

taumel

It's said if you want to make a game commercially with DarkPhysics, your game have to implement the power of AEGIA PhysX card in some manners, user must have better experience with the hardware accleration card.

The point is there need to have big difference with HW/SW implementation to encourage user to buy the PhysX card.

Actually, there're a few things that can't be done in DarkPhysics without hardware:
- Cloth Tearing
- Fluid Effect
- Most Ray Collision

Apart from that, most command will work without HW.

Hmm i'm confused.

So does that mean that:

a) You can make commercial games with the engine as long as you integrate stuff which must use the hardware? And if so the question still is if there are any further restrictions involved like pay per title or do they want a certain percentage of what a title plays in? And isn't this just a driver issue in most cases like: Use hardware if wanted and if available. If not, use cpu or say sorry not available (as for fluids) to the programmer/user.

b) Under which conditions can i make a commercial game with it when i stay away from effects like cloth and fluids? I dunno what exactly you mean with the ray collisions but aren't these used for any collision inside? Is this possible at all or is this engine only of use if i wanna play around with it at home then? What if the user has no physx hardware? Will the rest of the game run without the certain physx effect or won't the whole game run at all then?

In a positive scenario this could mean that i could make the game i want and just have to add a dumb physx effect somewhere for the licence and i would be done. Who checks this out? Is there a watermark or anything like this till i get ageia's okay?

Sorry for all the questions but this isn't clear to me.


Regards,

taumel

As I know some game made the Hardware functions optional and still be able to sell as shareware/commercial, so basically a game "implements" PhysX but not "necessary" is acceptable.

That's actually confusing aorund the DBP forum, send a demo to AEGIA and get approval can be a way to get no-cost distribution right.

That's annoying and makes it a little bit of a drag. I dunno how they came to such an agreement but it for sure isn't a nice thing for the developers. Lot's of talking about how great it is and showcases on their site but they leave out such an important issue.

That's what's nice about unity. Buy the engine and you're free to go...that's how i expect it.

From one of the DBPro Developers



It's not there yet ( his comment was made a few days ago already ) but it should be soon.

( I don't have DarkPhysics, only DBPro. Seriously considering DarkPhysics for fun though. )

But they are selling it already...

Is it known how many are developing this product (dbpro)?

Hmm funny somehow this would imply that at least the developers have to buy a physx card... ;O)

By the way what's happening with blitzMax? Some days have passed since the last update.

From what I understood, it was like so:

If you're developing free games there's no problem. If you want to sell your games, either shareware or commercial, then you have to send it to AEGIA for approval to sell.

So, what if I created an amazing game, sent it to AEGIA and they said "no!"? - I'm stuffed. Also whats stopping AEGIA thinking to themselves "hmmm, this game is AAA quality and it'll sell like hot cakes, we want out cut, lets make the buy a license".

It's not that difficult. Ageia doesn't want to give a $50,000 license away for nothing. All you have to do is make sure that the hardware-enabled mode of your game is a better experience than when it runs in just software. It's a pretty generous licensing scheme, if you ask me.

I second what Halo said. That's exactly my understanding and it is very generous.

But if this is not enough information, I guess you'll just have to see if Ageia have anything else to say when they add the info.

@Leadwerks
So no more that i would have to send my stuff in and wait for an answer?

I don't know what's so generous about this licence deal honestly as

a) I'll have to take care of stuff of that i migt not be interested in (for example if i'm only interested in some rigid bodies for a bowling game).
b) This is gamecreators product right? So it's their concern how the licence works. Personally i would just like to use it and not deal with either of them when i want to release something.
c) If you take this seriously you will have to buy a physx-card.
d) Others don't come with such limitations - see unity.
e) It wouldn't hurt them if they would leave it up to the developers what they wanna implement or not with the engine as no matter how good the physics engine is dark basic pro for sure isn't a product which you will use for AAA titles. Do you see John Carmack using Dark Basic Pro because of the cheap physics licence? So if the physics engine would be limited to the usage with dark basic pro this should be enough. Funny, once MM introduced havok in director there also came such concerns...
f) They benefit from this situation as developers learn how to use the engine and talk about it. Dunno how much influence this community has beside of buying it's own cards.
g) If they would go for a $50,000 or whatever licence for indy tools like dark basic pro then there simply would be no dark physics with them. Instead there would be one of the free physics engines which means less chance to sell their hardware until there are unified physics drivers.

For this issue, many people still using Newton instead, no nastie licensing applied, and the wrapper source is available.

The Bad thing is Newton for DBP is not well documented, making it hard to use.

To be fair, Taumel, I completely see your general point, and your individual points above are all true, but if you didn't think Ageia offered something that all the alternatives didn't, why would you be worrying about Ageia at all?

Honestly if all you want is simple rigid body physics for something like a bowling game, Newton, ODE and Tokamak ( which I used for my bowling game ) are all perfectly serviceable, and all come with generous, unambiguous free licenses.

First i would like to point out that i won't buy the product as i already own a ageia licence but when i read through it, it's just ahhhh you know?! Furthermore it's kind of a bad style selling a product without telling how it's gonna work.

I do care about a good physics engine where i don't have to take care of how to maintain it. That's what i expect from the developer of the tool in this case. If ode also does the job and they use this one instead, fine no problem with that. I just dislike using a lib from person a whilst using the community project b for this and another component c from these guys and so on. Most of the times this leads to more headaches than at least i need.

Making games is hard enough so i would like to have one address where people feel responsible and to whom i can talk to when problems show up. Simplified communication -> problems faster solved.

Another point is that there also do exist non game client work were physics could play a role and there i just can't show off stuff from the client so easily. But such a project could also be in need of a good physics engine nor would they like me to build in some hardware stuff just for the licence.

I posted on the Dark Physics board these exact problems, in fact the quote in Gabs post might be in reply to me.

Basicaly ATM Ageia have the right to stop you releaseing any product at all, without explination, if it uses Dark Phys. (And this means the software or hardware engine). Promises have apparently been made that this this will not be based on "Game Contentent, but rather Showcase use of the engine, So if it looks like a fantastic advert for Dark P, then you dont have to pay $50,000. (I think this means they will make most "Indie" products buy a lience, but.... well you know)

My stance has been that the "Criteria" that a game needs to set to be accetable by Ageia needs to be published, and rigidly fixed. And that "Chance of commercial success" should not be one of them

So basically, make sure it runs virtually backward in software mode, get a license, then release a patch to make it zoom along in software mode :)

If you don't like it, pay $200,000 for Havok. Ageia did a great thing for developers, and all you do is complain.

lol, I'm not complaining as I have zero interest in such things :)

@Leadworks
I would rather buy a product where i can get a bundeled licence without limitations like unity or go for another physics engine.

@H&K
Thanks for asking. Time will tell how much of an annoyance this really is but honestly this is a nogo for client work.

Actually i think ageia don't have much expirience in this market yet. Otherwise they would deal differently with it. I once said it: That's what havok did so well after they merged with ipion and got their product fixed. They flooded the market and a lot of products featured their engine. They were everywhere. Then they got more restricive and difficult to deal with and whoops there was ageia and new free engines.

I'm sure if agaiea don't learn from this, history will repeat iself. Moreover ageia is in the difficult position to sell it's propritary hardware. Beside of technical issues which have been reported on different sites time works against them. In the end it's likely we will end up with a DirectX versions which takes care of the physics and the driver decides if it will execute the calculations on a physics chip, a multicore environment or the gpus. If it's well done maybe all ressources can be used...

Anyway i stay with that the licence hurdle (when it will be as we think of it) is needless.

How would you feel about if BRL would say: If your game is good enough you're allowed to release it. If not then sorry, try to do a better one instead.