Roars of applause as Rovio promises to promote a physics engine on all Angry Birds games
Many would say a moment like this is what the Game Developers Conference is all about.
At the end of his lively lecture, Rovio exec Peter Vesterbacka continued to charm the audience with a rapid Q&A session.
That was before a man named Erin Catto stepped up to the mic.
“Er, um, yes hello. I was wondering, what physics engine do you use in Angry Birds?” Catto asked.
“Box 2D,” Vesterbacka retorted snappily.
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“Is there any chance you could credit it on Angry Birds…?”
This time there was a pause. An awkward one.
“Sure,” Vesterbacka reasoned.
“Great,” Catto replied, “I’m the creator of the Box 2D physics engine.”
The crowd erupted into applause.
“I have to talk to you after this,” Vesterbacka said.
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This is great. Box2D is awesome.
Well deserved recognition, it's the least Rovio could do considering Box2D is free.
I was next in line directly behind Erin when he asked the question and even though I never met I couldn't help but to give him a hug. Definitely THE moment to remember at GDC so far. Although I didn't get the sense that Rovio had purposely slighted Erin so I'm guessing Peter might have been blind-sighted. Is there a backstory here?
Really no drama here, Erin asked me about the physics, I answered Box2D, Erin then asked if we would credit him and I answered "Of course". Also had a good discussion with Erin after my talk, so afraid there wasn't much drama here. Box2D is great and we are more than happy to give credit where it's due.
Box2D helped you earn millions, so to just put his name in the credits is too little (and too late)...
I suppose it is just fair you pay him some money for the physics you didn't had to build? Or maybe Rovio doesn't think his physics are worth at least $100.000,00 for example?
Is there a real possibility you at Rovio would do such thing? Words are cheap, you know.
The box2D licence isn't one designed for financial profit. Everything Rovio has done is perfectly "fair" under the terms of the zlib licence.
Having said that, it would be pretty cool if Rovio was to give Box2D some recognition (and shower the author in money)
I think the same way rkachowski, Rovio doesn't have an obligation to pay him. But still, I think that after 100 million downloads there is at least a moral obligation to pay the guy.
If you take someone's help today and denies them help the next day, you don't go to jail. You are just an ungrateful... guy. And I don't like you.
Indeed there is no wrongdoing, but it must be... I dunno, bad karma or something. Putting something out for public use like this is evidence that the creator wants to see it used and would get a kick out of that, so it's safe to say he would at the very least liked to have *known* that it was successful.
As a box2d junkie I am probably somewhat biased, but often judging from the timing of checkins and forum posts after a fix or addition you can tell the guy has spent a chunk of his weekend on it, and then he will look into a problem for some schmuck who didn't read the docs as well. With setting up and maintaining the website, repository, wikis getting hacked and all that shjt, it's a lot for one guy to cover as a spare time thing.
Unless I'm wrong Erin is also covering the server costs, so he actually pays to have people use box2d? Maybe Rovio could reimburse what has been spent on rack space since the website began (wasn't that long ago...) would be a good start.
Normally I would go on so much but I know there are people who have donated to this engine without having gained anything from it, so it's a bit of a shock to see such an opposite situation.
Agreed. No legal obligation, but a moral one. It's the least they could do to toss him a few bucks out of gratitude, in a show of goodwill.
He is obviosuly not too excited about this or wouldn't have asked the Q. Just do ur self a favor and be BIG Part of this page:
http://www.box2d.org/contributors.html
