Apparently the old EA head has moved on to be the Unity CEO. Good for EA, but makes me worry about Unity
EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
41–50 of 263 posts
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most likely the whole engine and the bare metal game without the arts/graphics and music/sound. That's how a lot of opensource clones work. For example OpenTTD [0] was reverse engineered and you have 2 options to actually play the game - either have the original game and use the arts/graphics and music/sound data from the original files - use the open source remake of the arts/graphics and music/sound The 2nd option…
At least with OpenRA you can legally download the original game content ISO CD images (EA released them as free(beer)-ware a while ago) - the only thing missing is about half of the single-player campaign missions as OpenRA can’t play the original game missions directly so the project’s contributors recreate them by-hand,
its missing missions? my openra has missions, i thought it would have been complete. only thing i noticed its missing is the so awful they are amazing videos
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#43There is also the https://www.openra.net/ project which provides reimplementations of the classic C&C games. Me and some friends played it a few times on Linux, OSX and Windows and it worked smoothly :)
Love OpenRA and play a few times each month. They release regular updates, and the gameplay is just as I remember it.
Cannot wait for the Tiberian Sun variant (currently under development).
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here’s the language they use: “Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license” I assume “their corresponding source code” means “the code for those DLLs”, but I do wonder why they bother mentioning the DLLs at all.
Even weirder considering the games were for DOS originally - and DOS doesn’t use DLLs at all.
They released remastered versions of both for windows, so maybe that was the most readily available version of the source code they had.
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#45I am really impressed that EA went with the GPL v3 license. I would have expected them to use the MIT license.
They probably want it to remain free, and not get bundled into commercial projects. Great for end users though
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#46I am really impressed that EA went with the GPL v3 license. I would have expected them to use the MIT license.
It's not surprising: The GPL mostly torpedoes commercial uses, and EA does not want to give their competitors code they can use in their own proprietary games.
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#47One of the best things that could happen to the gaming landscape would be if companies like EA and similar learned from Microsoft's move to open sourcing more software and involving the community more gives them a lot more goodwill and business as a side-effect. And then us gamers get more long-lived games as a benefit as well.
A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging
> A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging
Commonly Physics Engines, like Havok and others.
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#48What does a "RedAlert.dll" actually contain? I guess it is not the remastered engine, it is not the models, animations or textures. It won't contain the mission briefing videos, the mission briefing texts or even the mission maps. It is likely not the multiplayer maps, the net code, and especially not the multiplayer server. And it sure is not the awesome music. That dll file might be mostly unit config, like the old…
Most of the rest of the game is already probably visible in plaintext. And the big thing is, they're not releasing the copyright to their intellectual property around Command & Conquer: So to legally use this, without providing your own assets, you have to own a copy of the game.
But presumably, if you own the game, you now have everything you need to modify it however you like.
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here’s the language they use: “Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license” I assume “their corresponding source code” means “the code for those DLLs”, but I do wonder why they bother mentioning the DLLs at all.
Even weirder considering the games were for DOS originally - and DOS doesn’t use DLLs at all.
They probably wrote some kind of generic loader or wrapper for starting these games for pretty much exactly this reason (them being originally DOS games, thus expecting a DOS environment). The games then are compiled as DLLs and act like some kind of plugin for the generic loader, which is a self-sufficient project compiled into an executable.
Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging
> A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging Commonly Physics Engines, like Havok and others.
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