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OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

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21–30 of 130 posts

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#21
post #2

Hmm - cool project. Don't want to be a buzzkill, but copyright? Should probably remove the assets to avoid a takedown.

I immediately cloned it for this reason just in case. Wanted to make sure I didn't miss the opportunity to play this game again in case they did a take down. Still have the old games, but I haven't had the willpower to learn how to use Wine.

Sim City 2000 is on GOG, where it is playable on modern computers. They also sell Sim City 3000 and 4, without DRMs.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#22
post #17

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

EA is actively selling SimCity 2000 at least on GOG.com. With that in mind, I think there can be no real gesture of goodfaith on the author's part. It's lazy, maybe just the "easy way" to do it in the beginning, but when the game is being actively sold, it's also slimy.

I don't think "bad faith" and "slimy" should really apply to 24 year old game assets.

I value useful creation much higher than dated intellectual property. Or in other words, I do not support long-tail profit and control of any creative work.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#23

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

That's what openttd.org has been doing.

When they grew in popularity they gathered to completely redraw new assets from scratch.

It's a good way to kick start an MVP.

Also the technology choice doesn't really matter, there's a sweet spot where the new features outbalance the nostalgia of running the original game. At least that's what I think when I play OpenTTD

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#25

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

That's what openttd.org has been doing. When they grew in popularity they gathered to completely redraw new assets from scratch. It's a good way to kick start an MVP. Also the technology choice doesn't really matter, there's a sweet spot where the new features outbalance the nostalgia of running the original game. At least that's what I think when I play OpenTTD

OpenTTD didn't actually include the assets, you had to use ones from the real game (until their project to draw their own had enough).

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#27
I was actually making an open source sim city clone in JS myself a while ago. Didn't get this far at all, but I was mostly in it to test if I could get async updating from the simulation portion. Essentially doing threading in JS. Which I was somewhat successful in using Web Workers and shared buffer arrays, would be interested in helping with this project. Unfortunately in my research I didn't find any concrete documentation on how the simulation algorithm actually works, so I doubt this would end up a direct clone on SC2K.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#28
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like thin ice. Basically they're hoping to remain too small for EA to bother with. IIRC, the usual workaround for asset licensing is to make an automated extractor for people who have the original game. This buys you time while you work on drop-in replacements.

Certainly bad practice. If developers want automation it's better to suggested to download assets (or even do it automatically) from Web Archive. They're exempt from DMCA and it's trustworthy source. https://archive.org/details/SimCity2000_Special_Edition_Maxi...

I actually got 7/9th's of the way through doing this for the FMOD dependency of http://www.bay12games.com/ww1medic.

Specifically: http://web.archive.org/web/20070806010730/http://www.fmod.or...

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#30

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

How do these types of projects get around the fact that the new source code is clearly a derived work of the old game? I’m not saying they copied code, but they must be copying the design or the game would be a different game.
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