Most Needed Open Source Project

A few questions on the site have mentioned the need for more open source projects. I agree and wonder what frameworks should be developed.

I'll start the list.

• A geometry kernel, including serialization (JSON, binary, compressed binary), tailored for OpenGL/DirectX
• Gesture recognition

From game development Jonathan Fischoff

• I've already complained about this in another question, but having open digital distribution systems would be glorious. This encompasses both patching systems and end-user marketplace type things. Steam handles a lot of this, but is far from an open platform. Even if it wasn't a single shared marketplace like Steam is (or how phone marketplaces are going), having a solution you could easily rebrand and deploy for yourself would be a huge step forward (assuming people actually did things like submit patches upstream and all that FOSS goodness).

  Jonathan Fischoff : +1 That's a great idea I had never thought of.

  coderanger : I've spent the last two years here working on our in-house system, so I'm probably a bit biased.

  Stewart : To be fair, this would be exceptional valuable even outside of the gaming domain!

  Noctrine : @Coderanger Open to what end? I am working on some tools like this for my website, and I would love to pick your brain.

  coderanger : @Noctrine My email is noah@, feel free to drop me a line :-)

  Joe Wreschnig : Wasn't that what Launchpad+APT was supposed to be, and it just turned into a baroque nightmare?

  Rushyo : Pure software distribution is a sorely under-loved area of open source software. I'd gladly dedicate my time to a project such as this. It's something an entire sector of the industry would appreciate. I know some of the guys at Mozilla have been looking at doing something very similar for 'web apps'. @Joe That just made me think of Sony LaunchPad @.@ urgh... nasty thing. Launchpad looks quite broad... handling development + bug tracking + hosting. Not just distribution.

  lathomas64 : what is wrong with actually using steam/steamworks?

  coderanger : Not available to everyone, can't be rebranded, bad support for large updates unless you use their file archives.
  From coderanger

• A Geometry kernel also begs for an Animation Kernel, including blending.

  From Jeff

• Not a software project, but a documentation one:

  A game technical quality checklist (like trcs or tcrs)

  Many a time the design of a production game has been affected by these quite important documents. Indie games need them as much as professional games developers do, as it's at least a simple assurance that you've done a reasonable job.

  Certification

  There couldn't be a certifying body, but it could be a self certifying thing to start with.

  If the checklist was concise, it could more easily become a generally agreed upon checklist. Once agreed upon, it might then become reasonable for distributors to allow peer review to confirm or deny claims whereupon the information becomes part of the distributors basic information package about items in its store.

  Location

  Why not start one on the game dev wiki... http://wiki.gamedev.net/index.php/Main_Page ?

  Joe Wreschnig : Obviously there can't really be a certifying body, nor are some of the TCRs from major platform holders relevant, but this is a really interesting idea. Do you know if anyone's done work on something like this?

  coderanger : There is the [evil checklist](http://creators.xna.com/en-US/help/peerreview_evilchecklist) for XBLIG games (and a corresponding not so evil checklist).

  Joe Wreschnig : The not-so-evil checklist (http://creators.xna.com/en-us/help/peerreview_notsoevilchecklist) looks much more useful outside the world of XBLIG.
  From Richard Fabian

• I guess that open service for custom avatar sprites would be useful especially with the growth of online and mobile HTML5-based games. I described the idea here.

  From Aidas Bendoraitis

• A good Flash player, since Adobe seems uninterested / underfunded in really working on theirs on non-Windows OSs, and the existing implementations are lacking (even e.g. ScaleForm has significant problems being "proper Flash" as designers/artists expect).

  Bart van Heukelom : See also http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/3563/hardware-acceleration-for-the-flash-player
  From Joe Wreschnig

• Graphics driver develpers. Without working graphics drivers other game-related projects are irrelevant.

  AMD and NVIDIA actually do make usable drivers, but I'm talking about open-source drivers. Mesa only supports OpenGL 2.1.

  edit: This answer is only applicable to GNU/Linux.

  Kylotan : Why is it so important for Linux to have open source drivers, if the proprietary drivers are usable? Putting the ideology aside, what relevance does it have to games?

  SurvivalMachine : @Kylotan: not all GPUs have proprietary drivers available. Intel is one of them, and their hardware, while not very fast, is fast enough to play many games. Gamers would enjoy faster/less buggy drivers. Reporting bugs is not enough, Mesa/Intel need more developers. To get them, they need better documentation.

  Bob Somers : @Kylotan The proprietary drivers are a huge joke at best. The performance and OpenGL support is terrible and spotty, especially in ATI's drivers. It seems like their Linux drivers were only created because somebody twisted their arm.
  From SurvivalMachine

• New Open Platform for Game Dev with : - benchamrk ( 2d , 3d , processor, etc. ) - Linux ,MAC, PC , Xbox 360 , PS 3 - plugin for all kind of ( photoshop programs , 3d , 2d )

  If you tell me that is unreal , I can assure you , it will happen.

  Ranieri : Would you like a pony with that?

  The Communist Duck : Screw all that, I just want a pony.
  From siranen

• EA STL (or equivalent).

  Joe Wreschnig : Just wondering, why? The basic approach of EASTL is detailed more than enough in the paper to copy the parts you need; the particular implementation details of EASTL are now several years old and there are probably better ways to do it on newer C++ compilers; and many of the extensions they talk about are available in Boost (e.g. boost::intrusive::list) or tr1 (e.g. standard unordered_map). There are a few useful things left in it, but I'd never say it's the _most_ needed open source project.

  Neverender : Why duplicate the effort? Why not benefit from peer review? Boost and TR1 do nothing to improve the brain-damaged allocator design, for one. Many of the proposed changes could be adopted by the STL and the STL would be better for it. But that will never happen.

  Joe Wreschnig : Well, it looks like your dream came true! http://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL
  From Neverender

• A generic, cross-platform game editing tool that allows you to edit game content (2D and 3D) for any game engine. It can be supplemented by editing & export plugins for a specific game engine, or for a specific game genre's editing needs (eg. 3D platform game editor, 2D user interface editor, 3D tilemap editor, etc).

  Rationale: most open source game engines do not provide editing tools. Most existing game editing tools are proprietary and only work with the vendor's game engine (Torque, Unity, Shiva, etc.), or have a limited use (2D Tilemap editing). If you switch engines or platforms, you usually have to leave whichever tools you were working with behind and either learn or even write a new tool, or work without any tools at all.

  What do you think of this idea? Do you think it's desireable? And would it be feasible?

  Neverender : It's feasible. And it exists. It's called 3ds Max (or XSI, or Blender, or...).

  GamingHorror : Those are 3D modellers, not game content editors. They have been, shall I say, abused for editing some games but other than throwing something together real quick they are a pain to make actual game levels/worlds with.
  From GamingHorror