For a note, I'm not planning to leave Nexuiz nor make a game that should make people play it less. I love Nexuiz for what it is and like contributing to it with anything I can. If I make a change to my game that's still merge-able in Nexuiz and would make a good feature, I'll certainly be sharing it here. I totally plan to credit / link Nexuiz and its authors in my game too, and of course won't be selling it. Since I'll be working on it by myself for a good while, the earliest I can release a public version is around an year from now. Things I plan to keep and not keep from Nexuiz are:
- Weapons: I plan to keep some weapon models from Nexuiz but at least retexture them and change firing types.
- Player models: I plan to permanently keep some player models. I'll be retexturing some and turning them into monsters for singleplayer though.
- Menu: Will be using a different skin and rearranging lots of stuff... although I have other plans here.
- HUD: The HUD is one thing I plan to totally remake and arrange in a different way.
- Gameplay: Will of course be different and have its own settings.
- Music and Sounds: Will be changing most with stuff I found on Opengameart.
- Maps: Will be keeping many of them.
Anyway, onto the first question. My biggest concern was when and how to split the game from Nexuiz. I was planning to split it at a stable point (possibly 2.5.3) and make a new SVN repository, but would rather keep it updated from the Nexuiz SVN in areas where I won't be making changes. My fist question is if Tortoise SVN can be set to skip any conflicting subrevision, so revisions addressing anything I changed are automatically skipped. I'm seeing a lock feature in Tortoise... I'm guessing that locks files from being changed by SVN updates right? Second, when hosting your own project on SVN, is it possible to still update it from another source as well? Like mirror the original repository but with the changes I made.
Second thing I was wondering is if it's ok to let the game use the same server list as Nexuiz. Of course with a different slist modifier, I obviously don't want conflicting with Nexuiz servers and will change anything in that regard. I don't know any other DP-compatible server list, so if it's ok to leave it to the Alientrap one that would be great (I don't want to use Alientrap's server list if that's eating too much bandwitch or is rude in any way).
My third concern was where I could get new content from. There are already enough textures of different categories in Nexuiz, but I was looking for more music, sounds and especially more player and weapon models. If anyone knows any links that would be helpful. I've already been to Opengameart (awesome site btw) and google sketchup for models, but the ones there are hardly compatible with Blender which I use. Also is it ok to distribute converted Quake maps found on http://maps.nexuizninjaz.com/ from the licensing point of view? Like kzlegypt, dubenigma / Lucid Enigma... I don't mind them being Quake maps if they're ok to use.
I also have a question regarding the status of three things in Nexuiz: The Spiderbot / vehicle support, ODE physics and ragdoll physics (if any are in the works). If I can keep the unmodified parts of my game updated from Nexuiz's SVN I guess they'll be ready for both games when they will, but I was curious just in case. Also, if a character is already in .dpm format, will it need any other changes when and if ragdolls will be implemented?
I'll ask other questions if any come to mind. Thanks for the help... hope I can get it all working
I'll be heavily modifying the gamecode though.
Until the game is 'solidified' to be what I'm intending however, I'll be working on it by myself at first. At some point I'll release it.