Licencing Goldsrc Engine

[schnitzelboy]

hey, i've been wondering, do you think its even remotely sane to try and licence the goldsrc engine (its the one that the original half-life and counter strike ran on) so you could do a commercial port of it, kinda like gearbox did for the ps2 port?

please, don't beat me up for asking this, im a total noob when it comes to things like this.

remember that it even supports opengl rendering (though 1.0 o think) and is based on the quake engine, so i should be possible hardware wise

 

[yaustar]

It is reasonably sane as long as you have the money, can convince the owners to give you the license, have a team of developers to port and are 100% you are going to make a profit when you sell the game.

 

[ldesnogu]

It is reasonable sane as long as you have the money, can convince the owners to give you the license, have a team of developers to port and are 100% you are going to make a profit when you sell the game.

Would you put money to buy some engine that's been obsoleted by other open source engines such as Q3?

 

[yaustar]

Would you put money to buy some engine that's been obsoleted by other open source engines such as Q3?

If they offer official support then probably, yes. However, it seems to me that the OP wants a port of HL1 and Counter-strike more then a decent engine to develop with.

If I mis-read the OP's intention and you just want a decent engine to work with then yes, Q3 is probably better. I don't have experience in either so I can't judge.

 

[ldesnogu]

Can't say for sure. But even if you bought the license, I don't think that would buy you HL1 or CS. Unless you add some more money

 

[Svartalf]

Can't say for sure. But even if you bought the license, I don't think that would buy you HL1 or CS. Unless you add some more money

No. Buying the engine license would just get you the engine. You'd have to pony up even more cash to get the rights to make the game possible.

Now...would Half-Life and the original CS be worth having on the Pandora? Perhaps.

Is it going to be worth the very likely to be $100-250k US that it's going to cost you? Only if you could see the Pandora being able to sustain a 10k unit run and you were able to score something like $35-45 per unit, retail.

If I mis-read the OP's intention and you just want a decent engine to work with then yes, Q3 is probably better. I don't have experience in either so I can't judge.

Q3 may/may not be better to code for: The thing is, the engine's free and you can make your own content that's not impacted by the engine license (Just witness World of Padman to see an example of this sort of thing...).

If you're wanting your own title, Q3's going to be a more "ideal" piece like you've implied. If you're wanting HL and CS, heh... Best of luck- you're going to need a load of cash.

 

[yaustar]

Can't say for sure. But even if you bought the license, I don't think that would buy you HL1 or CS. Unless you add some more money

Point. I am half asleep and REALLY shouldn't be answering questions like these