I hate when people bring up VVVVVV as a counter-argument to "But my code is embarrassing!". Saying it's an example of "truly awful code" when it's beautiful and well-structured compared to my stuff just makes me confident that I will never get over the embarrassment.
Publishing free software video games
21–30 of 103 posts
Re: Publishing free software video games
#22This is targeted toward "securing your game’s legacy", but it seems to be missing a crucial part of some games: servers. When games have a required online component, servers shutting down are the most likely reason the game becomes unplayable, more than the client not working on current platforms. So another option that could be added to the list would be to make the server free software (or at least share its binari…
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Re: Publishing free software video games
#23What we need are programs compiled down to some minimal instruction sets, simplifying the implementation of custom vm able to run such software.
The source does not mean anything if there is no working compiler, or if the compiler doesn't support your new shiny platform.
It is the same for servers. Having the source for a whole hosting service depending on some specific hardware doesn't matter.
If we decide to truly care about software legacy, we need to re-think the stack.
Re: Publishing free software video games
#24I hate when people bring up VVVVVV as a counter-argument to "But my code is embarrassing!". Saying it's an example of "truly awful code" when it's beautiful and well-structured compared to my stuff just makes me confident that I will never get over the embarrassment.
Hey, we all have impostor syndrome days. I'm 100% certain your code is better than a switch statement with over 4000 cases.
Re: Publishing free software video games
#25A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual. So, you don’t make your game foss, but rather, you build a set of foss tools for everyone to benefit from, and the community eventually begins to contribute back, and you end up with a huge machine that does really cool things. Everybody then uses these tools to make amazing th…
>A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual.
Any example of a highly successful video game developed from start as open source by the community as opposed to a company releasing their source code for free after launching a game?
Re: Publishing free software video games
#26This is targeted toward "securing your game’s legacy", but it seems to be missing a crucial part of some games: servers. When games have a required online component, servers shutting down are the most likely reason the game becomes unplayable, more than the client not working on current platforms. So another option that could be added to the list would be to make the server free software (or at least share its binari…
I write and maintain a GPLv3 multiplayer game for Android to satisfy a creative itch. While writing the game, sustainability of the server component is top of my mind. I'd hate for the game to stop working for others down the line because I lose interest or am otherwise no longer able to tend to it. For those interested, I've documented the process I adopted to try to increase the bus factor beyond one [0]. I want pe…
You could also make public servers do peer-to-peer discovery! Then if your server ever goes down, it would be enough for a single host to post the address of their server in the issues
Re: Publishing free software video games
#27A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual. So, you don’t make your game foss, but rather, you build a set of foss tools for everyone to benefit from, and the community eventually begins to contribute back, and you end up with a huge machine that does really cool things. Everybody then uses these tools to make amazing th…
>A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual. Any example of a highly successful video game developed from start as open source by the community as opposed to a company releasing their source code for free after launching a game?
Space station 13 is the best example.
It technically started closed source, but has been open source with countless forks existing in parallel for at least 90% of its lifetime.
Re: Publishing free software video games
#28A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual. So, you don’t make your game foss, but rather, you build a set of foss tools for everyone to benefit from, and the community eventually begins to contribute back, and you end up with a huge machine that does really cool things. Everybody then uses these tools to make amazing th…
>A friend explained to me that the real benefit of foss is the community building huge things together, faster and better than any individual. Any example of a highly successful video game developed from start as open source by the community as opposed to a company releasing their source code for free after launching a game?
The only ones I'm familiar with that people actually play for reasons other than the novelty/political statement of playing a FOSS game are ASCII roguelikes (most notably Nethack) and a menagerie of remakes of commercial games that have now surpassed the originals in features, graphics, and system compatibility (OpenTTD, OpenXCOM, etc.)
Re: Publishing free software video games
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tools thing seems to be the right approach. A lot of huge gaming genres came to be from modding, level editors etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_derived_... ARTS (Dota, LoL) to battle royale (PUBG, Fortnite, Apex), Tactical shooters (CS), team/hero shooters (TF, OW) and more… All of these genres came from making modding accessible and are some of the most successful genres to date. The new…
> The new trend however is to close games down, DRM, “life service”, fewer possibilities and very strict IP implications on derivative work (we own everything you create etc.) I don't know of any popular game that didn't have DRM and didn't have very strict IP implications on fan content (say, after the early 90s maybe?). It's not like the teams behind the original DOTA or CS or TF ever made money selling those, and…
Every single game that's available on GOG has no DRM. Including very popular ones like Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher series.
Re: Publishing free software video games
#30This is targeted toward "securing your game’s legacy", but it seems to be missing a crucial part of some games: servers. When games have a required online component, servers shutting down are the most likely reason the game becomes unplayable, more than the client not working on current platforms. So another option that could be added to the list would be to make the server free software (or at least share its binari…
It does address that[0], though:
> if your game has a mandatory online component based on your own servers, then making it free software doesn’t make nearly as much sense, especially if you ultimately decide to shut those servers off
[0] https://writefreesoftware.org/blog/free-software-games/#but-...