Licensing the I-Novae Engine

Hey,

I have been asking for a few years on and off now @INovaeKeith about licensing the I-Novae engine for a game I have been dying to make. I want to put an end to this question. Does I-Novae intend to license out the engine any time soon? If so when can I expect the engine to be available for licensing?

Thank you for your time,

Benjamin Stanley

Addendum - I would like to put this ghost to rest one way or another.

We do intend to license the I-Novae Engine however our code base is still far too immature to offer anything other than a full source license - which we aren’t willing to do for unfunded indies/hobbyists. The current plan is to release modding tools for I:B if we raise enough money. Many of the things we have to do for modding tools we would have to do for an actual public SDK so we expect to release the I-Novae Engine for general licensing sometime after we ship both I:B and its associated modding tools. There’s a lot of overhead with releasing the engine for general consumption with things like documentation and support and we simply don’t have the time for that at the moment. We understand many people want to use our tech and all I can say in the near-term is please support our Kickstarter as that will be the quickest way to get your hands on it.

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@INovaeKeith - Thank you for the reply.

I admire the work that has gone into the engine and I do intend on supporting your company’s Kickstarter quite heavily. When you do make this engine available for public consumption. I plan on being one of the first Indie/hobbyist developers on board. At least that is the plan.

  • Ben

Thanks, that’s very nice of you :slight_smile:

@INovaeFlavien - No problem :smile:

I really want to use this engine due to the scale of worlds that it offers. I also have a idea for you guys when you do start to licensing out the engine offer it in a standalone binary format and sourcecode format.

Standalone Binary = Indies, Hobbyist developers, etc.
Sourcecode = Professional Developers.

Also will you be offering integration into Xbox one, Playstation 4 and Wii U? I know that this is very early for me to ask. But this is important to me.

Wii U is highly unlikely. PS4 and Xbox One support is possible at some point in the future but it’s really too early to tell when that would be at this point.

keith, how much for the full source licence? i am interested. thanks.

Currently that’s negotiated on a case by case basis for established companies only. Indies/hobbyists will not be able to get a copy of the engine until after Infinity: Battlescape ships and it won’t include access to the source code. We may provide early access to our tools for people who want to mod Infinity: Battlescape but that’s something that we’ll probably play by ear as our first priority will be building a fun game.

Our company is m2b llc. We are a startup, and we are willing to sign any NDA’s as necessary, we don’t plan on releasing any part of the source.

I think that’s the issue…

Seems somewhat ironic that you’d dismiss startups without even considering the possibility that they could be a well funded startup, yet expect established companies to not dismiss you?

I’m not saying it’s particularly likely - I suspect a well funded startup would have a better way to make contact than through your forums - but then, is it particularly likely that a mostly-hobby company would’ve developed an engine which in any way is better than that of a large name like Crytek, for any purpose at all?

Oooh, yeah. There is that one startup.

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I didn’t. I said I think that would be the issue.

Sorry, by “you” I was referring to INovae in general rather than you in particular. Most languages I’m familiar with have separate words for the two so I sometimes forget myself in English.

Forgive me if I misunderstood your post but it gave the impression that you, personally, thought the issue was that you, INovae, would likely dismiss startups?

We do work with funded startups and would consider working with unfunded if the team was solid enough.

No, but as Keith said, they would need to be “solid” enough. IMO,there would need to be a mutual benefit/high potential in working with an unfunded startup, as of course it would require taking time away from our own project to make the partnership work.

Actually, theres interest here in working with you guys, perhaps with some discussion we can come to an agreement. I’ve defered this to my CEO so he will answer, but i cant really answer things in detail just yet - apologies for contacting you guys on the forums, we can move on to email if you prefer, i just thought i would get an answer on a price figure straight up - i am just the guy with ideas and solutions/a game designer, and i’m looking at my options to licence an engine.

Hi, I’m the head of M2B. We are a decently funded startup and our plans are focused on a social virtual world/virtual economy like Second Life rather than the gaming market. We like the iNovae engine for its superiority in physics and graphics over what is being used in the SL/OpenSim community, but we are also looking at a few alternatives as well. We definitely want maximum performance for the price paid for the license. I’m not going to release proprietary financial info about our company on an open forum, however, so if you want to continue this discussion in more detail, with NDA’s involved, please contact me by email at bntholdings@yahoo.com.

If you want details about us, well, I was one of the top 25 land barons in Second Life, founded and/or built several of the first virtual stock exchanges, developed quite a bit of content in that economy, and have exited that economy with a good amount of funding. I’m well known in the transhumanist and libertarian communities, having helped create the Free State Project, and am the author of a NH state constitutional amendment to restrict eminent domain. Alberto has worked for me from my time in SL.

Well, I don’t disagree with your approach, but at first glance it still seems ironic.

I suspect it’s a common cost of doing business that you have to allow outsiders an occasional chuckle at your apparent idiosyncrasies. I mean you could give some price point “given the following conditions” but that could really come back to bite you in the ass later, and short of announcing another indie title being made with the INovae engine I don’t see how else you could change the appearance of non-deterministic decision making.

Come to think of it, my immediate reaction to seeing a (potentially) free webmail used for… anything at all is one of significant distrust, even though I rely on them myself and certainly consider myself trustworthy. I never claimed to be any more rational than you lot :stuck_out_tongue:

I can say up front that our alpha phase funding is in the six figures, and leave it at that. The inovae engine is a small part of that, however.

So INS have given you a quote? Otherwise how could you say this?

If I was going to approach INS about licensing, I would email them as directed on https://inovaestudios.com/Technology rather than using the forum, and I wouldn’t use a free webmail address.

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