Proposal: GCS Wiki

[Technopeasant]

I have been wondering what people might think about the idea of creating a wiki to cover the GCS and its games? I recently relaunched two of my wikis (PigaLore and MWM Wiki) on Miraheze and it seems to be a very good host. I am also the the assistant moderator of the Blood Wiki (and a mod on the Red Dwarf and Warren Zevon Wikias), so I have a lot of experience in this area. Might be a nice bit of fun. Would you guys be interested?

[Technopeasant]

And here it is:

pieskysoft.miraheze.org/

[Technopeasant]

Phew. I think it is coming along rather nicely.

[Technopeasant]

My favourite bit of writing I have done for the wiki so far:

"The GCS was used by many independent games and amateur projects as a game creator, largely because it minimized the amount of computer programming knowledge needed to make 3D games in its editing tools. In this sense it competed with modding bigger name commercial first-person shooters such as Doom (1993) or later Duke Nukem 3D (1996) and Quake (1996), but featured the advantage of allowing the production of stand-alone executables without requiring the purchase of the base game and were even allowed to be sold using supplied assets.

It was later competed with and/or supplanted by tools such as FPS Creator/DarkBASIC in 2000, Blitz3D in September 2001, the Retribution Engine in 2003, GameMaker: Studio from Game Maker 6 in 2004 onward, and Platinum Arts Sandbox Free 3D Game Maker in 2007. Engines of similar vintage to Power 3D, such as the Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Build and Quake engines started seeing their source code released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, providing other options for amateur first-person shooter development. Original free and open source engines such as Crystal Space (1997), Genesis3D (1998), OGRE (1999-2000), Blender (2000), Cube (2001), Panda3D (2002), Irrlicht (2003) and jMonkeyEngine (2003) also appeared.

The concept behind the Game Creation System was preceded somewhat by Incentive Software's 3D Construction Kit (1991) and 3D Construction Kit II (1992), both based on their Freespace engine. Arguably the first-person dungeon crawler creators such as The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991) by Interplay Productions based on The Bard's Tale, and Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (1993) by Strategic Simulations based on the Gold Box engine, also bear mentioning. Along with the GCS, these initial visions of easy 3D development have proved quite prescient, with modern engines such as Unity, ShiVa, Godot and even the veteran Unreal Engine increasingly emphasising ease of development over advanced features."

[Technopeasant]

It is official. Kevin Stokes says the PieSkySoft Wiki is, and I quote, "Awesome!"

There you go, ladies and gentleman. Happy New Year.

[Saturdaynight]

That is great to hear! Congratulations!

[Technopeasant]

Dec 27, 2017 15:12:03 GMT -5 Saturdaynight said:

That is great to hear! Congratulations!

I have also sent him an email asking if he knows the licensing situation of the GCS Mega Art Pack, as that would be cool to have released as public domain or Creative Commons.

Should also ask him about some mysteries, like where did Cyberpuck come from, and what is his relation to artist Colin Stokes?

[Saturdaynight]

Maybe ask him if he has ever thought about putting the PieGCS in public domain?

[Technopeasant]

I did eight years ago. He even dug up the old source code, but was not willing to release it if he could not get it to even compile.

[Mystery]

Same here, I asked him a long time ago about the source code and I was even willing to purchase the old license to get it, but he was unfortunately not willing to release it in any way. Maybe one day we can get it. I'm still looking at games like "Escape POW" with their fancy custom UI and bigger viewport and get jealous

[Technopeasant]

I get the impression he was so traumatized by the experience of providing customer support that he is worried that people will harry him if the code gives them trouble.