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EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

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Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#51

Post by klodolph »

wlesieutre wrote: post #32
capableweb wrote: post #9

One 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

This is why the original Doom (1992) source release had no sound, for example.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#52

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

capableweb wrote: post #9

One 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.

They don't want long-lived games. They want you to buy new games

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#54

Post by thrower123 »

ryandrake wrote: post #38
zantana wrote: post #7

Hey EA, how about the Bullfrog games next?

Yea, I'd always wanted to make a Dungeon Keeper 2 clone. Please! I wonder why it's not more common to open source abandonware that has exactly zero remaining commercial value. These game companies don't even have to remain as maintainers/stewards of the code. It doesn't even have to compile. Just release it, and many people will get it to work! How much expense could it be to get an intern to upload the code to GitHu…

Depending on how old it is, the source code probably doesn't actually exist in a lot of cases. Game studios weren't exactly up to the latest standards of version control, by and large. Maybe there was a self-hosted CVS instance, or a dusty old version of Perforce, or a NAS that had the drives fail eons ago...

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#55

Post by salmo »

mikekhusid wrote: post #35

I loved both of these games when they came out, but I'm completely shocked that enough people still play this game to make open sourcing the code 25 years later a newsworthy event.

Unfortunately, even though these games were really popular, there's nothing reasonably current with their style of RTS gameplay. I think the Age of Empires franchise was probably the last one that had the same feel to me. SC3 is more of a twitchy high-speed reflex game that's too hardcore for a casual like me. Modern mobile games go with the town + battles setup, probably because games need to keep drawing you in (and getting you to pay) and not just be a session when you want it.

It's probably that combined with the nostalgia of 'old folks' like me. I'd love to relive the Wilhelm scream and cheesy futurism of C&C. And I will always love the wololo of AoE.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#56

Post by tialaramex »

haunter wrote: post #6
hiq wrote: post #4

The post mentions TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll, I assume it's not the whole source of the games, is it?

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…

To just make it playable you can just have any bunch of people with suitable tools make placeholder art, a sprite that says "TANK" on it is good enough for the tank moving code to run.

But that looks really bad, and to make it look good (as almost any even mid-budget video game looks) you need an art director who can deliver consistency. For a small game that art director might also just make all the art, so it ends up consistent that way, but games even from the C&C era are too big for that to be realistic, so now you've got several (and maybe hundreds of) volunteers making art and they need to obey that director's stylistic vision or the result is something that lay people can see is "wrong" but they aren't sure exactly why.

There's a little element of this in the programming side. One guy who stubbornly insists on calling loop variables 'x' another insists they should be named 'k' and three others who don't care can already get heated. Or maybe you've run into somebody who believes code should use character U+0009 for indentation instead of using U+0020 as god intended. But the players won't notice that part, whereas if the art isn't consistent that's very visible and detracts from the experience.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#58

Post by grawprog »

haunter wrote: post #6
hiq wrote: post #4

The post mentions TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll, I assume it's not the whole source of the games, is it?

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…

The solarus engine is undertaking similar steps currently. It was originally released with a zelda fan game and alongside(but not included with) an a Link to the Past asset pack. Recently though the devs have been working on open source/CC replacements for all the proprietary graphics and sound.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#59

Post by bredren »

rnestler wrote: post #14

There 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 :)

Direct link to OpenRA's 4/20/20 release highlights video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2sQP3YYBMA

As noted elsewhere ITT, "we made the decision to go with the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA."

Given the progress of OpenRA, and quality of the above release video, the open source version seems like it is likely to eclipse the capability of the original game in the foreseeable future.

I'm curious what the OpenRA community pulls out of this newly released source code that can be used directly or by reimplemented in OpenRA to create substantial leaps in progress.

I'm also curious which of the existing OpenRA algorithms and methods are better or more efficient than the original source.

Regardless, this release and the resulting introspective should make for some good reading!

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#60

Post by [deleted] »

capableweb wrote: post #9

One 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.

[deleted]
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