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

Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 547 posts

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#121

Post by realitythreek »

psychphysic wrote: post #114
grishka wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Flash Player. Adobe has stated in no uncert…

Is there a risk those closed source projects would be sued following the release because they disclosed some forgotten sin? I'm thinking mostly of anti competitive practices from Windows.

There’s a bunch of costs to releasing closed source code as open source. Generally they’d have to have a team of developers review it, they’d need their lawyers to review it and any licenses. That every company that had licensed code used would also need to go through their own process.

At any time, one of them could say no and the process stops. So you’re basically paying for everyone’s time and possibly to relicense some parts. And im sure I’m missing other parts.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#123

Post by virtue3 »

vertis wrote: post #45
the8472 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elder scrolls games are very moddable and people have made total conversions and map extensions. That didn't prevent the sales of newer TES games based on slightly improved engines and slightly better assets (fan-made assets are often still ahead of the official ones, but it takes years of refinement to get to that point).

That and things like Counter Strike / Day of Defeat that started as mods had a large number of maps back in the day. 99% of them were shit and weird experiments. The ones that did rise to the top eventually got incorporated into newer versions, and indeed became games in their own right. DOTA as well, started as a mod for Warcraft 3 and eventually spawned a franchise. Trying to capture ALL the value (in this case the…

Escape Velocity was what got me into coding. I was huge into moding that game when I was younger on my old mac OS 7.x system. Absolutely fell in love with being able to extend the game.

Thanks for bringing that up. Those were good times. And agreed. Would love the source to original EV alone. Gonna take a gander at maelstrom! Thank you!

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#124

Post by qingcharles »

psychphysic wrote: post #114
grishka wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Flash Player. Adobe has stated in no uncert…

Is there a risk those closed source projects would be sued following the release because they disclosed some forgotten sin? I'm thinking mostly of anti competitive practices from Windows.

I doubt it. The Windows sources are available officially through Microsoft if you're spending enough money and your project requires them.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#125

Post by jacooper »

cubefox wrote: post #12

I remember when Far Cry came out. Around the time, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were the most anticipated games for quite a while, mostly because they promised graphics far ahead of anything released so far. But as they were delayed multiple times, Far Cry stole a lot of their thunder when it came out months before them, with similarly impressive graphics. We don't see technically ambitious PC exclusive games like this any…

Crytek still makes graphical masterpieces (and IMO crysis has one of the best FPS stories). Crysis 1 and 2 remastered are very good, and crysis 3 is still a masterpiece after more than 10 years.

And crysis 4 is coming.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#126

Post by rafram »

grishka wrote: post #107
Havoc wrote: post #2

I wish companies would just opensource really old engines for educational purposes. Maybe take game assets resize everything to 1/10th so that it looks like sht but can still be used as placeholder. Would boost the pipeline of talent for the entire industry

In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Flash Player. Adobe has stated in no uncert…

> Trident, the Internet Explorer engine.

Not really dead because it’s still shipped with enterprise Edge for sites that enable IE mode: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#127

Post by zirgs »

zokier wrote: post #90
Version467 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? That doesn't seem right. We absolutely have ambitious games on pc that bring generational leaps in graphical fidelity. Like the Witcher 3, which was absolutely stunning when it first released. Similarly (although originally a console exclusive) Red Dead Redemption 2 looks incredible on PC. We also have releases like Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice which pushed the limit of what was possible to achieve with limited r…

It depends what your reference point for the rate of progress is. The release date of Crysis is closer to release date of Doom than today, but visually Crysis holds up dramatically better than what Doom did at the time of Crysis release.

16 year old games were considered "retro" when Crysis came out. Crysis came out 16 years ago.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#128

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Havoc wrote: post #2

I wish companies would just opensource really old engines for educational purposes. Maybe take game assets resize everything to 1/10th so that it looks like sht but can still be used as placeholder. Would boost the pipeline of talent for the entire industry

My own personal and private opinion is that I wish the legislation would opensource things that are not being actively sold where the owner is a corporation.

You still have registration in USA, so if you register then you have to deposit, if you register with corporate ownership then you pay a yearly renewal, if you stop paying the deposit goes to public domain. Simples.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#129

Post by dreday »

hutzlibu wrote: post #118
Version467 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? That doesn't seem right. We absolutely have ambitious games on pc that bring generational leaps in graphical fidelity. Like the Witcher 3, which was absolutely stunning when it first released. Similarly (although originally a console exclusive) Red Dead Redemption 2 looks incredible on PC. We also have releases like Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice which pushed the limit of what was possible to achieve with limited r…

In general I agree, but I rather remember The Witcher 3 for the story and atmosphere, than for the graphics. Likewise Senuas Sacrifice - it pushed the limit for psychological games(the game is about processing loss through a psychosis, so it is not a casual game). In either case, both titles are really worth it.

I have never heard of Senuas Sacrifice, so I googled it. It's 85% off on steam summer sale ($4.49 in the US). Just an fyi for anyone else interested.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#130

Post by maccard »

torginus wrote: post #78
esperent wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is legally unfeasible. Take a look at the splash screens next time you're loading a game - especially AAA but also smaller ones too. There will beone page with a bunch of logos. Havok physics is the one that comes to mind but there's loads more. Each of these is a plugin with proprietary code. They would need to be stripped out before the code could be released, which would probably be a lot of work. And…

I'd be fine if they put up their code with the proprietary parts removed. They can just include a FIXME stating that the physics engine/video player etc. is missing. If the community picks up the code, they can just replace the missing parts.

That's gojng to be a hell of a lot of effort, unless the third party libraries were abstracted out in the first place.
Post reply on HN