[Chicken-users] Chickenizing Sauerbraten

[Brandon J. Van Every]

I keep looking around for MIT, BSD, zlib/libpng, or even LGPL games that 
are written in C, use OpenGL, and are worth "Chickenizing" for 
proto-commercial purposes.  I still haven't really found anything yet; 
can't tell you how many times I've cranked up the SourceForge search 
filters.  Recently I started using Google for my searches to cast a 
wider net.  I located a project called Sauerbraten 
http://sauerbraten.org/ which is zlib/libpng licensed and written in 
C++.  C++ is really hard to get away from.

Sauerbraten hasn't committed to any kind of scripting language yet.  I 
asked them whether they would be interested in Chicken Scheme.  
http://www.cubeengine.com/forum.php4?action=display_thread&thread_id=813  
They said:

"Basically, Aard decided against using any scripting language at all. 
The reasoning is that he only wants people with a clue doing anything 
significant with the engine, rather than someone changing 3 lines of 
script code and declaring it their own fantastical new game they made 
themselves. The C++ code is small and easy to understand, so the 
scripting is rather unnecessary.

And for anyone with a clue who wants to use a scripting language for 
their own Sauer project, it's trivial to add."

Also, this guy Aard is a language design junkie.  
http://strlen.com/proglang/index.html  So if they ever add a scripting 
language, he'll just make one.  The upshot is that Sauerbraten might be 
good starter code, but I'll be completely on my own.  Nobody from 
Sauerbraten is going to be interested in my work. 

So my question is, does anyone here want to form a team to Chickenize 
Sauerbraten, basically forking the project?  I don't know their 
codebase, so I don't know how much C++ compatibility is worth keeping, 
vs. just refactoring whatever into Scheme.  We could put an original 
Sauerbraten build in a Darcs repository and take dumps of their changes 
periodically.  Then have another Darcs repository for Chickenized 
Sauerbraten.  I imagine there's some way with Darcs' patch theory to 
pass patches back and forth as we see fit.  Darcs is a distributed 
revision control system, this kind of problem is part of what it's for.

Another wrinkle is that the code is zlib/libpng licensed, but the 
artwork isn't.  It's under various individual licenses, I don't know 
what yet.  Replacing any poorly licensed artwork and making the 
licensing uniform would need to be done at some point.  But it is not an 
initial priority; I'm just saying the game project is not "commercial 
ready."

So, let me know if you're seriously interested.  Also if you know of any 
suitable OpenGL C game projects with liberal licenses that would be 
better candidates.  I don't know how far Chicken will get with C++, with 
or without SWIG.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every