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| - | /* Created here in the Wiki rather than in the Joomla CMS for easier editing and due to the automatic TOC creation. */ | ||
| - | ====== Licensing FAQs, Overview ====== | ||
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| - | This page provides answers to the most frequently asked questions related to licensing the Cafu engine. | ||
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| - | For FAQs about other aspects of Cafu, please refer to the main //Support// menu above. | ||
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| - | ====== Licensing FAQs, Part 1: Cafu Features ====== | ||
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| - | ===== Can I preview and evaluate Cafu? ===== | ||
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| - | Yes, there are several previews and samples available so that you can evaluate the Cafu engine thoroughly and get an impression of what coding with Cafu is like: | ||
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| - | * The [[http://www.cafu.de/downloads|Cafu live demos]] for Windows and Linux include the Cafu engine itself, the Cafu World Editor "CaWE", and all tools to make new worlds, as well as the source code of the DeathMatch sample game and all scripts. | ||
| - | * We've prepared a **[[licensing:samplecode|C++ sample source code page]]** that shows you //real source code examples// from the Cafu core code. | ||
| - | * The Cafu libraries documentation (API) is available [[http://www.cafu.de/api/|online]], | ||
| - | * Compiling the full Cafu source code is documented publicly in the documentation Wiki at chapter "[[:#at_the_corethe_c_source_code|At the Core: The C++ Source Code]]". | ||
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| - | ===== How do I compile the Cafu source code? ===== | ||
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| - | Compiling all Cafu source code is very simple and kept identical on all supported platforms. Here is an overview: | ||
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| - | * On Windows, you need Microsoft Visual C++ 8 (2005) or 9 (2008). Good news is that the Cafu source code has been kept so clean and portable that the **freely available Express Editions** can be used. | ||
| - | * On Linux, you need g++ 4.2 or newer. | ||
| - | * On all systems, you also need [[http://www.scons.org|scons]], which automatically handles the whole build process in a single simple command-line call: ''scons -Q'' | ||
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| - | For more details on building Cafu, please see chapter "[[:#at_the_corethe_c_source_code|At the Core: The C++ Source Code]]" in the documentation. | ||
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| - | ===== Is Cafu open-source? ===== | ||
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| - | No, the Cafu source code is only available [[http://www.cafu.de/licensing/overview|under license]], and all licensees are required to keep the source code confidential. You may modify the source code for use in your own products as much as you want, but you may not redistribute your modifications to anyone who is not a licensee. | ||
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| - | ===== Does Cafu support multi-player internet or LAN games? ===== | ||
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| - | Yes, fast and well-designed networking code is built into the Cafu engine. | ||
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| - | ===== Does Cafu work on Linux? ===== | ||
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| - | Yes, Cafu works on all i686-based (desktop) Linux systems that come with libc6. In other words, Cafu works on all contemporary Linux distributions like Debian, ubuntu, kubuntu, (open)SuSE, Red Hat, Gentoo, Fedora etc. as smooth as under Windows. | ||
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| - | ===== On what graphics hardware does the Cafu engine work? ===== | ||
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| - | Due to the flexible and modular architecture of the Cafu rendering system, the Cafu engine runs on a much wider range of graphics hardware than most other engines: Older systems that only support OpenGL 1.2 are supported as well as the latest hardware with programmable pixel-shaders and dynamic lighting effects. | ||
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| - | Thanks to the Cafu material system, this flexibility is transparent to the users: You define a material once, and it works on every available hardware, with automatic reduction of features when the hardware does not support them. | ||
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| - | The secret behind the graphical power of the Cafu engine is that it is able to combine Radiosity lighting techniques with dynamic per-pixel lighting - a unique feature that allows Cafu to work on the broadest range of hardware and still provide exceptionally fast and realistically looking results. | ||
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| - | ===== Are there any limits in polygons per model, or polygons per frame? ===== | ||
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| - | There are no inherent limits build into the Cafu engine. It's framerate and performance mostly depends on the graphics hardware, and is in turn generally dependent on graphics processors fill rate on most modern architectures. | ||
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| - | Cafu employs precomputation of potentially visible objects and level-of-detail techniques in order to automatically reduce the number of relevant polygons as much as possible per frame, but the framerate also depends on level design, number of types of light sources and shadows, the materials employed, etc. | ||
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| - | We're happy to review your levels and give you performance and tuning tips. | ||
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| - | ====== Licensing FAQs, Part 2: License Details ====== | ||
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| - | ===== Is a student version available? ===== | ||
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| - | Yes, students can purchase a Cafu Standard License at up to 50% discount. Moreover, licenses are available for universities and institutions that wish to use the Cafu engine as a teaching tool. Please refer to the [[http://www.cafu.de/licensing/overview|Licensing Overview]] for more details. | ||
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| - | ===== How long is my download account valid? ===== | ||
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| - | For all license types, the licensing fee includes unlimited access to the latest Cafu source code downloads. | ||
| - | That means that without any additional cost, your download account never expires -- it remains valid even after the completion of your title(s). | ||
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| - | ===== When do I need a Professional License? ===== | ||
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| - | You need a Professional License rather than a Standard license if one or both of these conditions are met: | ||
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| - | * You have a publisher and the publisher is or has ever been a member of the "[[http://www.theesa.com/|Entertainment Software Association]]" (ESA) or the "[[http://www.elspa.com/|Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association]]" (ELSPA). The current member list of the ESA is available [[http://www.theesa.com/about/members.asp|here]], and the current member list of the ELSPA is available [[http://www.elspa.com/?l=members&display=members|here]]. | ||
| - | * You are developing for a game console such as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii. | ||
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| - | The Professional License is different from the Standard License in these regards: | ||
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| - | * Wish the Professional License, you can publish your title with one of the major publishers (members of the ESA or ELSPA as described above). With the Standard License, //you can still publish via a publisher// that is not such a member. | ||
| - | * The Professional License is for a single title only, whereas with the Standard License, there is no limit in the number of titles that you can produce. | ||
| - | * The Professional License is valid for an entire development team. The Standard License is for one person only, you need a separate license for each programmer. | ||
| - | * The Professional License includes additional support: On our forums, a separate forum is established for the private access of your team only, and your requests have higher priority. | ||
| - | * The Professional License reverts to the Standard License after your title ships. That means that you have still have unlimited access to the latest source code version, but have to renew your license for the next title that is published with a major publisher. | ||
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| - | Note that you can start with a Standard License for each of your programmers and later upgrade to a Professional License for the difference in cost. | ||
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| - | ===== When do I need an Applications License? ===== | ||
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| - | You need an Applications License rather than a Standard license if one or both of these conditions are met: | ||
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| - | * You are developing a product that is sold for $80 (USD) or more. | ||
| - | * You are developing a product for company-internal use that is made available to at least 50 people. | ||
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| - | Note that you can start with a Standard License for each of your programmers and later upgrade to an Applications License for the difference in cost. | ||
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| - | ===== What external libraries are used in Cafu? ===== | ||
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| - | The Cafu engine and its tools employ several external libraries. In order to keep licensing considerations regarding these libraries simple, we use only external libraries whose licenses allow free commercial use, or come with restrictions that are all easy to meet (e.g. mention the library in the programs "About" box), or are under the LGPL. | ||
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| - | Libraries that are under the LGPL can well be combined with commercial programs even if they are linked statically to the application and the application source code is not to be provided: A library author analyzed this very well at http://teem.sourceforge.net/lgpl.html | ||
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| - | Here is a complete list of external libraries used in Cafu: | ||
| - | ^ Library ^ Version ^ Use in Cafu and Notes ^ License ^ | ||
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| - | | [[http://developer.nvidia.com/Cg|Cg]] | 1.3 | [optional] Used for implementing one of the Cafu renderer DLLs. | See [[http://developer.nvidia.com/page/cg_main.html|NVidia website]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/Portal:COLLADA_DOM|Collada DOM]] | 2.1.1 | Not yet used in Cafu at all, intended for Collada support in the future. | [[http://research.scea.com/scea_shared_source_license.html|SCEA Shared Source License 1.0]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/default.aspx|DirectX]] | 7 | [optional] Used for mouse input under Windows, easily replaced if desired. | See [[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/default.aspx|Microsoft website]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.fmod.org/|FMOD]] | 3.75 | [optional] Used in one of the Cafu sound system implementations. FMOD requires a commercial license for commercial use, but we fully support OpenAL as an alternative, see below. | See [[http://www.fmod.org/index.php/sales|FMOD website]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/default.aspx|freealut]] | 1.1.0 | The OpenAL utility library that helps with completing a few common tasks. | [[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/library.html|LGPL v2]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.freetype.org/|freetype]] | 2.2.1 | [optional] We use freetype in the "Font Wizard" in the world editor "CaWE" for creating font bitmaps, it's not used within the Cafu engine itself. | [[http://freetype.sourceforge.net/FTL.TXT|Asks for citation in the program banner.]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.ijg.org/|libjpeg]] | 6b | For loading images in jpeg file format. | custom licenses, all allow free commercial use. | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html|libpng]] | 1.2.8 | For loading images in jpeg file format. | [[http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libpng-LICENSE.txt|libpng-LICENSE.txt]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/|libnoise]] | 1.0.0 | [optional] Used in the world editor CaWE for random terrain generation, not used in the Cafu engine itself. | [[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html|LGPL v2]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.xiph.org/ogg/|libogg]] | 1.1.3 | For Ogg Vorbis music file playback. | [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php|BSD license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/|libvorbis]] | 1.2.0 | For Ogg Vorbis music file playback. | [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php|BSD license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://xmlsoft.org|libxml2]] | 2.6.32 | Used by the Collada DOM library (currently not used at all). | [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html|MIT license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/developers.php|lwo]] | 8 | [optional] We use small parts of code from the LightWave 8 SDK for lwo model file loading. | Neither code nor SDK nor website mention an explicit license. | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.lua.org|Lua]] | 5.1.1 | The script language that we use for GUI script, map/entity scripts, the console interface and many other tasks. | [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html|MIT license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.mpg123.de|mpg123]] | 1.4.1 | [optional] For mp3 music file playback. | [[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html|LGPL v2]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/default.aspx|OpenAL]] | 1.1 | The OpenAL implementation under Windows, used in the related Cafu sound system DLL. OpenAL is now the main and default music playback API with the Cafu sound system. | No explicit license under Windows. | | ||
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| - | | [[http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html|openal-soft]] | 1.3.253 | The OpenAL implementation under Linux, used in the related Cafu sound system DLL. OpenAL is now the main and default music playback API with the Cafu sound system. | [[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/library.html|LGPL v2]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.pcre.org|pcre]] | 7.6 | Used by the Collada DOM and libxml2 libraries (currently not used at all). | [[http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php|BSD license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.wxwidgets.org|wxWidgets]] | 2.8.7 | The world editor CaWE is entirely built on top of this cross-platform application development library. | [[http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence3.txt|wxWidgets license]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.artpol-software.com/ZipArchive|ziparchive]] | 3.2.0 | [optional] Used for loading (encrypted) zip archives by the Cafu file system. There are several licensing alternatives for ZipArchive available (GPL, commercial or custom), but you don't really need it at all. | [[http://www.artpol-software.com/ZipArchive/KB/gpl.aspx|Several variants]] | | ||
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| - | | [[http://www.zlib.net|zlib]] | 1.2.2 | for jpeg and png image loading | zlib.h | | ||
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| - | Libraries that are marked as optional can easily (i.e. with no or little effort) be omitted when building and using Cafu. The same is generally also possible for the other libraries, but either comes with more effort involved or with greater discomfort or feature loss. | ||
licensing/faqs.1262218842.txt.gz ยท Last modified: 2013-01-07 12:07 (external edit)