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Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

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Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#541

Post by account42 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #149
concordDance wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should really happen is a law that video games get declared public domain and have their source code released after 10 years. All assets and dependencies would get automatically released under a license allowing for their use in that game and derivatives of it. As it is, the source is mostly just lost to time, making humanity poorer.

There's a lot of games that have a shelf life of more than a decade. Maybe make that "10 years after the game is no longer sold".

Practically only games that are continuously updated have longer shelf lifes. In that case only the original version would have to be opened after 10 years and later modifications would have to wait ten years after their release.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#542

Post by account42 »

Vespasian wrote: post #164
flohofwoe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of games that have a shelf life of more than a decade. Maybe make that "10 years after the game is no longer sold".

That (maybe) would have worked in the olden days of physical disks or catridges. Today it is trivial to keep the game on steam with zero sales (or almost zero). If lawmakers wanted to pass a law that actually made this happen they needed to stipulate a cut off date (and potential compensation) as well as rigid rules about what one can do with the released code.

> and potential compensation

Why would there be a need for compensation. Copyright is only granted in the first place so that more things will (eventually) enter the commons. Rolling back the perversion that is the current copyright terms doesn't need anything to balance it out since the current sitation is already so unbalanced in the other direction.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#543

Post by sixothree »

maccard wrote: post #237
sixothree wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters 17 years later if you’re still in the same code base.

Best practices evolve. This code base predates modern smart pointers, and from experience bit fields were a requirement on some of those... tougher platforms.

It was a little bit tongue in cheek. But I'm currently in a code base that is almost exactly 10 years old. And of course all of the developers have personally grown in that time. But some of the practices were dependent on the technology choices available at the time.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#544

Post by maccard »

orra wrote: post #282
maccard wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same thing - one is redistributing the API (which is what we're talking about here) and the other is implementing an API.

To be clear we are talking about releasing code which calls into an API. Agreed you can't redistribute somebody else's SDK without permission.

To use bullet physics as a hypothetical example, if my game was the hello world example [0], I would expect that practically that entire file would be un-distributable.

[0] https://github.com/bulletphysics/bullet3/blob/master/example...

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#545

Post by maccard »

someplaceguy wrote: post #192
hesdeadjim wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends, if it’s code calling a console SDK API then you are bound by terms of the NDA to not publicly share it — forever. Even just function names! More realistically, a drop of source code is basically painting a big target on your company to get sued by a troll. I’ve wanted to release my game’s source but am terrified of this.

Perhaps you could just rename the function names, structure fields, etc, to something different but similar? e.g. instead of ps3_fly_up(...) you'd rename to something a bit more generic like sdk_float_up(...) or something like that. It could require a bit of creativity and some work but with a sufficiently-intelligent IDE it'd just be a one-time rename per function name + structure name + field name.

And all of the parameter types, e.g. btVector3 needs to become a new non-sdk specific name.

> It could require a bit of creativity and some work but

Honestly, you can stop there. This is why it's not done - the value is small, it requires creativity and work and...

> just be a one-time rename per function name + structure name + field name.

https://sgringwe.com/2019/10/10/Please-just-stop-saying-just.... In this particular case "what about legal" pretty much stops the "just" dead in it's tracks.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#546

Post by scraft »

shultays wrote: post #371
grishka wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ReactOS is a reimplementation of most of Windows, including the shell and the kernel. Anecdotally, I once installed Ubuntu + Wine for someone non-technical who broke several Windows installations by infecting them with ransomware. He used it for like half a year calling it "this strange Windows" because some people don't know what an operating system is. He eventually irreparably broke its file system because a…

shutting down his machine by pulling the plug while it was running Well, if windows was more reliable when it comes to unexpected shutdowns then it is also partially linux's fault. I have a similar experience as well. I have a pi server and I was trying to use an ntfs external hdd. For some reason it breaks the file system if I remove hdd or shutdown pi unexpectedly. I am not expecting there to be no data loss if i a…

> if i am not writing or editing a file, just doing nothing, then why FS breaks?

For a few reasons, but the most common is that when you write a file, you 'fwrite' operation doesn't typically immediately write blocks to the disk, instead it gets written to caches that will be written to disk in due course. Changes to the disk, tables with crucial data, etc again are just updated in memory, and written to the disk at a 'sensible' time. It's possible that you aren't actively performing operations to modify the disk, but various previous changes are sitting in memory waiting to be synced. If you kill the power then these changes aren't flushed so you can end up with corruption/filesystem problems. The main reason things work this way is for performance.

Re: Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)

#547

Post by squeaky-clean »

barrkel wrote: post #538
squeaky-clean wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (since enemy patrols respawned, there was no point killing them) This is the main thing that made it not fun for me, lol. There really is no point in partaking in random combat in the open-world. It's always better to run away or sneak past them. Fine in a stealth game, but FC2 didn't have great stealth mechanics beyond crouching and staying far away from enemies.

I thought it simulated reasonably well the dynamics of a lone gunman on a mission in a civil war. It seems to me the only way to navigate such warzones would be stealth or disguise. All the other FC games are stealth games too, BTW. The later FC games made it even more explicit, with bonuses for never setting off alarms and so on.

True but it just felt too fast with the respawns. Maybe my memory is wrong but it felt like going far away enough to despawn that zone from RAM was enough to make them respawn. I would have preferred a few days. If I clear a camp enough, maybe have them bring backup.

I stopped playing the series after 3 because they did feel that way, but without gameplay features I wanted to match. Games that rewarded stealth, but without stealth-specific mechanics like you'd find in Hitman or MGS. It feels like the writers want to encourage stealth but the game designers didn't. At least for 1-3. The original I definitely accepted it more because of the era.

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