[HN Gopher] Spine - 2D skeletal animation for games, with physic...
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       Spine - 2D skeletal animation for games, with physical secondary
       motions
        
       Author : diggan
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2024-08-16 17:40 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.esotericsoftware.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.esotericsoftware.com)
        
       | telchior wrote:
       | Spine is really lovely. It was great back in 2019 when I used it
       | to release a game. They released the 4.0 version a year later
       | with a lot of updates and while I have no plans to make another
       | 2D side-scrolling type of game... this one piece of software is
       | what makes it tempting.
       | 
       | The thing I REALLY appreciate is the lifetime license. Checking
       | my emails, I bought the professional version in 2015 for $289.
       | Now it's almost a decade later, still getting awesome updates,
       | and I can still get the latest version. Totally unlike the
       | current trend... I'm looking at you, $20 / month for Speedtree.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | I mean, Spline seems to do the same thing if your company makes
         | enough money:
         | 
         | >Spine Enterprise is required for businesses with $500,000 USD
         | or more annual revenue. The license allows Spine Enterprise to
         | be used by the specified number of users for a period of one
         | year. All updates are provided during this time. After one
         | year, Spine Enterprise must be licensed again to continue using
         | Spine Enterprise.
        
       | ugh123 wrote:
       | Spine is cool, but I find it ridiculous for more and more tool
       | software for games to force Enterprise licenses, rev share, etc
       | onto developers.
       | 
       | >Businesses with more than $500,000 USD annual revenue require a
       | Spine Enterprise license
        
         | yellowapple wrote:
         | If you're making $500k/year in revenue, Spine's license cost is
         | probably the least of your worries.
         | 
         | I tend to be averse to proprietary dependencies more from a
         | maintainability/longevity aspect than a cost aspect. If
         | Esoteric Software goes out of business, who develops future
         | versions of Spine? Are they kind enough to open-source it
         | before turning the lights off? Does it get sold to some other
         | company that runs it into the ground? Does development just
         | cease? Are there licensing servers that the tools and SDKs and
         | such have to ping to be functional, and if so, what happens
         | when those servers shut down?
        
           | a1o wrote:
           | To be honest I am surprised there isn't an open source
           | alternative for this type of animation in 2D - I only know of
           | blender and lottie as somewhat closer to it but nothing that
           | is quite like Spine.
        
             | npinsker wrote:
             | Blender (via https://github.com/ndee85/coa_tools) and
             | Godot's Skeleton2D node are both open-source. I'd assume
             | Spine's advanced features far outpace them, but I also
             | suspect the need for such features is rare.
        
           | ugh123 wrote:
           | It just seems like a "money grab" for them to claim a chunk
           | of success for my game/product each year when I probably
           | don't need any more support for the tool than when I was <
           | $500k/year in revenue.
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | The enterprise license here seems pretty reasonable.
         | $2.5k/yr+$370/yr per extra seat with no revenue share, and no
         | cutoff for your existing products at the end of the year.
        
       | a1o wrote:
       | It would be great if it was possible to develop a plugin for an
       | engine to load spine in a game and let the decision of the
       | license to the game developer (and not the engine developer).
       | Right now you either are blessed that the spine devs decided to
       | care for your engine or you aren't. It would be nice if a FOSS
       | engine dev could develop a Spine plugin and then a game dev that
       | was thinking about that engine could either opt to use it or not.
        
         | taormina wrote:
         | This is basically what the community is already doing. This is
         | the package I've been using in Flame and its license
         | (https://pub.dev/packages/flame_spine).
         | 
         | "License
         | 
         | The code and all associated assets of the flame_spine package
         | is distributed under the MIT License (see the LICENSE file).
         | HOWEVER, as flame_spine includes Spine Runtime libraries, your
         | use of flame_spine in your games or other products is also
         | subject to the terms and conditions of the Spine Runtime
         | License Agreement (see the LICENSE file).
         | 
         | In particular, in order to use flame_spine you are required to
         | obtain a valid Spine Editor License."
        
           | a1o wrote:
           | In the legalese text it's written in way that the person that
           | is making the plugin must also hold a license which is too
           | much, not going to pay to do work.
        
       | taormina wrote:
       | Spine is fantastic. I'm using it for my latest game, Danger
       | World. All of the animations my artists are working on are done
       | in Spine and I'm able to use a bridge package that someone wrote
       | to integrate what I need into Flame's engine.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-19 23:00 UTC)