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Publishing free software video games

writefreesoftware.org

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Re: Publishing free software video games

#31

Post by qwery »

DeathArrow wrote: post #25
barbariangrunge wrote: post #9

A 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?

Not sure what qualifies as 'highly successful', 'from the start', etc. but Mindustry[0] is GPL, is actively updated, accepts and includes contributions from third parties and is available commercially.

[0] https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry

Re: Publishing free software video games

#32

Post by wheybags »

Kinrany wrote: post #26
pserwylo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've had the idea for a while now to use torrent trackers as a server masterlist. Torrent trackers are already basically a way for computers to insert their IP into a list, so if you make up some fake torrent "announce hash" (I think that's the right name), then hardcode a few of the most popular open trackers, you can use the "peer list" from the tracker as a list of servers. Just haven't had a use case for it (yet).

Re: Publishing free software video games

#33

Post by engeljohnb »

hgs3 wrote: post #11

From what I understand, if a game engine's source code is GPL, there is no legal way to require derived games release their assets under a CC license. Does this mean we need a "super license" that incorporates the terms of both GPL (for the code) and CC-BY-SA (for the assets)?

Why not release the assets under the GPL?

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOtherThanSoftwa...

Re: Publishing free software video games

#34

Post by orlp »

qwery wrote: post #30
progval wrote: post #14

This 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-...

I mean, it addresses the pain point but with the wrong conclusion.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#36

Post by nottorp »

dgb23 wrote: post #15
barbariangrunge wrote: post #9

A 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…

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…

Note that they're all multiplayer competitive games. That's the easiest kind of game to make and where the creativity part matters least, with the exception of fine tuning the game mechanics.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#37

Post by noduerme »

qwery wrote: post #30
progval wrote: post #14

This 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-...

Opening the client code w/o opening the server code doesn't make much sense...?

Re: Publishing free software video games

#38

Post by Zambyte »

noduerme wrote: post #35

>> But my code is embarrassing! This has always been the first reason I haven't open-sourced some of my code. The second being that it's also totally useless, and lots of people could write it better.

I genuinely do not understand this mindset. How will you get better at writing code if you never get feedback about how your code would be better?

Re: Publishing free software video games

#40

Post by KronisLV »

kevlarrelic wrote: post #24
Kiro wrote: post #21

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.

Hey, we all have impostor syndrome days. I'm 100% certain your code is better than a switch statement with over 4000 cases.

> I'm 100% certain your code is better than a switch statement with over 4000 cases.

Then there's cases like that Yandere Simulator game, the source code of which got released/leaked and apparently it was so bad that people were making videos taking it apart, but also possibly because they disliked how the developer was leading the project: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yandere+simulat...

But also apparently even the Oracle database source code was pretty grim, this HN post and its top comment still bounces around my mind sometime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442637

I wonder what other codebases exist, where the code is inspirationally bad, as in, to the point of making most folks feel better about whatever they're writing and to dispel the illusion of code always needing to be perfect.

Communities like /r/programminghorror (https://old.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/top/?sort=top&t=a...) and /r/softwaregore (https://old.reddit.com/r/softwaregore/top/?sort=top&t=all) are probably sobering in that regard as well.

All that's missing is a site that shows examples of a bad code and how to make the code better besides that, maybe with discussions and different suggestions, based on what people believe in.

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