Home

Welcome

Welcome to the OpenSauce Wiki!

Here you will find the documentation that accompanies OpenSauce. If anything is missing or you think that there is something wrong with the documentation let us know an we'll see about rectifying the issue.

The Codebase

The OpenSauce codebase is a constantly evolving beast, and it has its nuances and requirements—the same as any other project.

• History
• Using the Code
• Coding Standards
• Source Tree Setup
• Visual Studio Setup

Halo Custom Edition

Currently, Halo Custom Edition is the primary target of OpenSauce. In the distant past, work had been done for OpenSauce for Halo 2, but that game bombed so we don't do anything for it any more.

• Home

Licensing

OpenSauce is licensed under GPLv3. The main reasoning behind this is to force the community to share derivative works.

Another major bullet is the fact that the engine extensions (e.g. OpenSauce for Halo1_CE) don't allow for additional plugins. So a third party can't create their own special little modification and have it plug into the existing engine extension binary. The codebase is far too developed to mould it into something that could support such functionality.

Because the Blam engine is a closed source system to multiple games, everyone benefits from shared research.

Sometimes, people create really cool food based on different mixtures of others' recipes. The same goes for code. With all derived works requiring source modifications to be released, we can see if there are things which we would like to see integrated into the main source tree of OpenSauce; for example, the PostProcessing render modifications for Halo1_CE.

Exemptions

There are two ways to be exempted from any facets of the GPL license currently used:

• You were originally a developer for an official Blam engine based game (namely, Bungie). Without you, this codebase would not exist, so feel free to do as you please with what you see or what you do.
• You provide enough reason to Kornner Studios for why your modifications should be exempt from public source sharing.

What would be a good reason for gaining exemption? If in case you're developing new networking or cheat detection code which requires algorithms to be kept under wraps.

Conclusion

The Blam engine is a fracking fun engine to play with. As gamers and modders alike, everyone should have the same chance to play within the same sandbox as long as such playing isn't wrecking the good times of others. The Halo modding community doesn't have the resources found in other engine communities (say, Source engine) where there is official documentation and tools (well, some Halo games come with some of said things...but their usefulness is debatable). So we're left to work with each other to make our own tools for an existing sandbox.