Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 263 posts

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

#81

Post by soared »

enitihas wrote: post #77
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.

But Microsoft has not open sourced anything that was making $ for them. Neither windows nor any part of office, or any part of enterprise suite. What Microsoft has open sourced are things where similar stuff was already open source, and Microsoft wouldn't have made much money selling those. e.g, VSCode, tyepscript. EA also open sources stuff like that. They even have open sourced a java library to be able to write as…

You’re moving the goal posts.

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

#82

Post by gambiting »

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

And also, art assets - I've touched on this briefly with an older game from the studio where I work, and basically we could probably release the source code, but since it was a racing game we couldn't release the art assets as they are copyrighted by car manufacturers(or at least it would be a significantly complicated legal problem to not be worth the time).

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

#84

Post by squarefoot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71
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.

I wonder if we could create a tax incentive for this. For example, if a publisher commits to open sourcing N years after release, they get a break on sales. Or get to capitalise R&D more aggressively during development.

I would love to see it applied also to hardware, so that for example when a 8 years old phone that nobody would buy anymore gets opened (including chipsets) small Linux distros can be ported to it, turning it into a hacking platform, IoT terminal, media player, navigator, etc. instead of a paperweight, or worse, more junk into some 3rd world landfill.

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

#85

Post by DonHopkins »

gentleman11 wrote: post #41

Apparently the old EA head has moved on to be the Unity CEO. Good for EA, but makes me worry about Unity

To his credit, in 2007 when John Riccitiello was CEO of EA, he was instrumental in supporting our successful campaign to relicense the original source code of SimCity Classic free under GPLv3 and bring it to the OLPC XO-1 children's computer.

EA Donates Original City-Building Game, SimCity, to ''One Laptop per Child'' Initiative: https://ir.ea.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2007/...

>REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 2007--Today Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) announced the company will donate the original SimCity™ -- the blockbuster 1989 game credited with giving rise to the city-building game genre -- to each computer in the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative. OLPC is a not-for-profit humanitarian effort to design, manufacture and distribute inexpensive laptops with the goal of giving every child in the world access to modern education. By gifting SimCity onto each OLPC laptop, EA is providing users with an entertaining way to engage with computers as well as help develop decision-making skills while honing creativity. This is the first time a major video game publisher has gifted a game to the world.

Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2...

>Excerpt from page 289–293 of “Play Design”, a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Computer Science by Chaim Gingold.

>[...] The next chapter looks closely at the code to SimCity, which is possible only because it has been open sourced. There are few instances in which a company has open sourced the code to a commercial game, which makes the story of how this happened remarkable for a number of reasons. Recounting this story not only explains the provenance of my research materials, but reveals how social forces, in this case a heterogeneous collection of agents and agendas, shape software.

>[...] Surprisingly, Electronic Arts agreed to the arrangement. Their legal counsel, in consultation with Eben Moglen (Columbia Law Professor, general counsel to the FSF, and OLPC advisor), worked through the legal logistics. This effort was aided by Hopkins’s discovery and copying of the original Maxis/DUX licensing agreement, on a lark, while working on The Sims. Hopkins did the coding work of the conversion. EA executives approved of the endeavor, no doubt aided by Will Wright’s legendary persuasiveness and considerable prestige, not to mention the prestige of the OLPC project itself. [...]

Demo of SimCity on OLPC XO-1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpKhh10K-j0

>OLPC SimCity Demo: A demonstration of OLPC SimCity running on the One Laptop Per Child XO-1 laptop.

OLPC / EA Contract: https://donhopkins.com/home/olpc-ea-contract.pdf

>This license and distribution agreement (this "Agreement") is entered into as of September 4, 2007 (the “Effective Date”) by and between ELECTRONIC ARTS INC., a Delaware corporation with its principal offices at 209 Redwood Shores Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065-1175 (“EA”) and ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD ASSOCIATION, INC., a Delaware corporation, located at One Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA, 02142 ( “OLPC”).

Free SimCity Source code: https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis

>Open Source Micropolis, based on the original SimCity Classic from Maxis, by Will Wright.

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

#86

Post by Jon_Lowtek »

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.

They are not open sourcing the 25 year old games, they are open sourcing a small part of the enhanced edition (now in presale) to enable modding.

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

#87

Post by Jon_Lowtek »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #30

They're re-releasing it on Steam on June 5th as well: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_... . Maybe the source release will allow for Mac and Linux versions.

It is not the engine source that is released, just the "engine plugins that specialize generic RTS engine into Red Alert / Tiberian Dawn".

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

#88

Post by kibwen »

gambiting wrote: post #82
wlesieutre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging

And also, art assets - I've touched on this briefly with an older game from the studio where I work, and basically we could probably release the source code, but since it was a racing game we couldn't release the art assets as they are copyrighted by car manufacturers(or at least it would be a significantly complicated legal problem to not be worth the time).

I believe that's standard and well-understood; Quake's source code has famously been GPL for decades (thanks, Carmack!), but all the data files (e.g. art assets) remain copyrighted.

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

#89

Post by msrmthehomeless »

Arkanosis wrote: post #70
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.

Well, the first thing I thought while reading this was that it would have been great if Microsoft had released the source code of Age of Empires with the release of the Definitive Edition, as well as considered a LAN mode. Unfortunately, while AoE2:DE is an awesome game, they have done neither… Good thing that there are projects like OpenAge going on!

EA knows that everyone dislike them and they'll need to rebuild their trust. This is part of their gesture. MS doesn't have this problem.

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

#90

Post by zantana »

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…

War for the Overworld https://wftogame.com/ is basically DK3, down to having the original narrator from DK1/2.

I'm a big fan and played WFTO quite a bit at to the point it's hard to go back to DK2. Sadly their AI got much worse with the 2.0 patch and I gave it up.

There is a Dungeon Keeper 1 remake https://dungeonkeeper.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper_FX which similar to lots of these efforts uses the original artwork and sounds.

There are some other DK clones and descendants, but my second favorite would be the very late Dwelvers https://dwelvers.com/ which has been in development for an eternity and the developer shows up once or twice a year with an update. This is the most ambitious of the DK clones as it includes a much larger economy and even the long promised above ground!

Post reply on HN