This is episode 59 of MODSonair airing on January 26, 2007 and brought to you by MODSonline.com.

openFrag Interview
Interviewee: Nate, Lars
Website: [url=http://www.openfrag.org/]http://www.openfrag.org/

Run time: 38:34
Website Link: HERE

Remember that MODSonair is available via subscription on iTunes. Please head over there and click on the subscribe button to get us up in the rankings.
Ask us about advertising.

Show Notes (upon which the questions were based):

• What is openFrag?
• Is it a game engine or built around an engine?
• How does something like this get started?
• Is Sourceforge a good development tool?
• How does working on a game built around openFrag get in the way of development on openFrag?
• Are you building your framework from scratch or incorporating existing bits of code?
• How are game levels created?
• Are you still using NeoEngine for development?
• Why would you build off of a lesser known engine rather than one of the bigger, more well known engines?
• It is true that you can use GTKRadiant to build levels?
• How is Broken Alliance related to your project?
• Do you have other projects in development using openFrag?
• What impact does it have on development to have people help and then leave the team?
• How are you publicizing openFrag?
• Has your #1 FPS ranking on SourceForge helped your development?
• Are the tutorials and other help files to encourage others to assist in development?
• How complicated is it to currently install openFrag and what is planned?
• What type of demos are available?
• Do you have publishing plans? Perhaps something to make some money with this?
• Will you employ in-game advertising?
• Any chance to include multi-platform support?
• How far are you into development that an official release will come?
• Can a modder create custom scripts to work within the game?
• Are you working with easily obtainable software or do I have to go back and find something that is 5 years old to help with openFrag?
• Being open source, are there comments in the code that could help with develpment?
• Are you looking into physics and DirectX 10?
• What are some of the major features that sets this engine apart?
• How diverse is this engine? Can be it be used to create an FPS, RPG, etc?
• What’s more difficult, building the engine or managing the team?
• How do people get involved?
• Any closing notes such as release dates?

Lars just wrote to me with the following:

Wow these guys seem like they are having fun with this project. It sounds very interesting.

Good luck with the project guys!

Very good, just finished listening to it.

Are these guys implementing an anti-cheat structure for the engine?

No we are not, but we do know this is going to be a major issue. Its open-source, everyone who wants can have a look at the code and make something to bypass this - cheating has never been so easy :(

The only way to get this fixed is to release the official server and client under another license. We are still discussing this.

yup..
this issue has come up before and will surely come up again.

we have looked in to different ways of handling cheating, but open source or not, there has never been a simple solution that i know of (besides losing $20/month when your account is banned; and even that is not a solution but simply a punishment)

we are always interested in hearing suggestions and strategies, and the more complex they get, the better the results seem to be. but inevitably, every method we've discussed has its own drawbacks.

we plan to have "official" servers at the least. what this actually means is still undecided. but originally at least it should be a version of the server that is physically checkable by the oF team (we will have access to the server that it is running on). Or something to this effect

Perhaps just make a voting system, to leave it to the players to decide.

Will the engine be licensable to colleges to use wether for projects or cirriculum?

Good luck on the project and I'll be looking forward to seeing a release anouncement here on the engine and/or game.

The engine is developed under LGPL, which basically means you can use/change it as much as you like, as long as you make the code available to others if someone asks for it. Also, what you are making that uses the engine, must have the LGPL license aswell.