Needs a "source" format that can convert losslessly to .pie

[dak180]

Since warzone2100 (and all its art) is under GPLv2 we need a format that qualifies as a "preferred editing format".

Current candidates include .obj and .dae.

In addition to the mesh this format needs to be able to handle all the other things that .pie supports like: connectors, the animation system, special flags and team colours.

These needs might be met with a separate file or by adding the data in some way to the export format; care should be taken to make editing easy and unlikely to result in unintentional loss of data when edited in other programs.

[pabs3]

Right now it seems like PIE is one of the "preferred editing format" for Warzone2100.

It seems like PIE is annoying because it is a custom format that most 3D tools don't support.

Some folks recommend COLLADA:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/573025/which-3d-model-format-should-i-be-using

OBJ doesn't seem to have as many features.

COLLADA supports animation, for the other custom stuff I guess since it is XML you can add custom things to it, or an external file should work.

If you switch to COLLADA, it seems like loading/parsing XML at runtime might be a bad idea and the build system should create a more efficient format for runtime loading. If you do that, please do not commit any generated files into git, mandate COLLADA only be added to the VCS. Please ensure that the tools to do the generation are free software.

I wrote some guidelines about the source issue here:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Games/Upstream#Source

The Ogg files and some of the images are my main concern with WZ and "source".

[kreuvf]

Why do we need to choose a preferred format of modification? PIEs always have been edited directly before the liberation. Has this changed?

[dak180]

@kreuvf Because .pie (largely due to a lack of wider support) does not qualify as a "source" format for the GPL; it is a legal issue and since it should be something that artists should not have to think about, it should be made as painless as possible.

[kreuvf]

@dak180: I've read what pabs3 wrote on that stuff and I still do not see where the GPL forces you into having a widely supported format. As long as what we ship is the preferred form of modification and as long as we have some kind of tool available to do it (text editors are not that bad...), everything is perfectly fine. Nowhere the licence states anything about preferred formats of modification.

The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. “Object code” means any non-source form of a work. [...] The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code [...]. But maybe I missed something.

[bjorn-ali-goransson]

Closing this IMO, this one's waited long enough