The Battle for Wesnoth needs help • Hacker News Board

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#51

Post by badpenny » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:57 AM UTC

anon3_ wrote: post #29

anon3_ wrote: post #12

I have to tell you, when I see GPL license on a game, I see the good intention you have. Have you considered changing the license of Wesnoth to MIT so commercial game developers can use their time and effort on components can port them to their own projects too? I can't justify investing hundreds of hours programming new components a project (even one I'm passionate about) that a later derivative can't be used by my…

Sorry for being redpilled toward the GPL crowd, but we just need to get some realities straight. There's another side to this. Have you ever played a game an felt an eery "I've felt that before", but couldn't put your finger on it? Examples include: - Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon -> Roller Coaster Tycoon. - World of Warcraft + Starcraft's Download Programs (which both used a similar, skinned UX and bittorrent down…

In other news, apples aren't like oranges.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#52

Post by J_Darnley » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:03 AM UTC

nly wrote: post #44

So far we've had one major thread calling for a rewrite in a new language, one calling for a new license, and one insinuating the devs should accept the project is done and move on with their lives. Is it any wonder open source gaming struggles with this kind of broad negativity?

On this website I am not at all surprised that people want it to be rewritten in javascript or to be relicensed from the GPL.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#53

Post by ableal » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:10 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #46

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Nethack. Sometimes the best games take a (long) while, and may never be finished.

I remember a friend of mine introducing me to Nethack and telling me that part of the fun was "hacking the game." So I downloaded the source, inverted application of damage, and recompiled. To that, my friend said "no! the hacking is supposed to be about manipulating the data files..." I replied, "my way was easier." Thanks for mentioning Nethack and reminding me of this :-).

"Username is appropriate", as they say in another venue.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#54

Post by caf » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:31 AM UTC

anon3_ wrote: post #12

I have to tell you, when I see GPL license on a game, I see the good intention you have. Have you considered changing the license of Wesnoth to MIT so commercial game developers can use their time and effort on components can port them to their own projects too? I can't justify investing hundreds of hours programming new components a project (even one I'm passionate about) that a later derivative can't be used by my…

If you build a component yourself and own all the copyright in that component, then the fact that you've contributed it to a GPL project doesn't stop you from using it in your own products as well, or licensing it again to someone else under a different (non-exclusive) license.

In fact in this situation you would be better off with Wesnoth as GPL rather than MIT, because that way your closed-source competitors can't use your component in their games.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#55

Post by thomasz » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:37 AM UTC

anon3_ wrote: post #49

vidarh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't justify that, then don't contribute. It's that simple. The license wasn't chosen randomly - it's there exactly so you can't use their time and effort by porting their components to closed source projects. It's not an unintended side-effect.

> If you can't justify that, then don't contribute. It's that simple. So tough? You're a disciplinarian huh? Just world enough for ya? Have a bit of sting and a zing, with pure truth: LLVM and Clang are healthy and GCC is becoming obsolete. Then there's gems like cocos2x-x, chromium, .NET and such. Very hearty with all those commits. :^) > The license wasn't chosen randomly Do you understand the ramifications of the…

If your code is in fact completely yours, and not derivative work of others, you can simply re-license. If it isn't, you can hardly claim that you were duped. Or are you really saying that anybody mislead you on the copyleft aspects of the GPL?

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#56

Post by INTPenis » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:48 AM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #2

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even though they haven't been changed for decades. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent game. But declining interest seems to indicate that maybe it is just finished?

This is a good point.

Also as one who lived through the times when gaming on Linux was almost unheard of, or required a lot of imagination, I think Wesnoth is part of gaming history right now. The future is here and Valve helped bring it about, the quality and quantity of games on Linux has completely transformed in the last 5 years.

So gamers looking for entertainment on Linux have so much more to look forward to right now than Wesnoth. It's time to move on.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#57

Post by aliem » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 10:53 AM UTC

deevus wrote: post #27

I wonder how much work it would be to get the basic game working using Unity with the assets already available...

I guess this will violate the GPL license unless you are not going to release it to the public in any form.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#58

Post by irascible » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:04 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #35

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? C++ is over 30 years old, whereas JavaScript is 20 years old. Besides, the latter surged in popularity only recently. Based on these facts alone, we can comfortably assume that experienced C++ developers are older on average. I can see why this is a controversial assumption though.

Seriously, please drop it. Javascript is not used to code games much, C++ is. Javascript is pretty awful performance wise. Also, porting a whole code base to another language at this stage in the game is such a colossal task. Are you even a developer? I'm not sure you realise how infeasible what you're suggesting is.

emscripten would like to have a word with you. Also, Javascript is one of the most heavily optimized dynamic languages in existence, and has orders of magnitude more code and programmers using/written in it, than java, scala, ruby, lua, etc. Rewriting any game in javascript is imho a great idea. (I am a C/C++ game developer with ~25 years of experience.)

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#59

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:21 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #4

Perhaps the issue is that they are looking for intermediate to advanced C++ programmers who have experience with very large code-bases. That's a tiny portion of the programmer population. I know this is a risky thing to say here, but I wonder if they should re-write the game in a more common/popular language, maybe something web-based like JavaScript. They would have a much bigger talent pool to pull from, gain acces…

"Bigger pool" maybe, but the average "JavaScript programmer" is less talented than the average C++ programmer and less likely to be aware of the performance issues abstracted away by JavaScript, which was designed "to make the monkey dance when you moused over it".

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#60

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:33 AM UTC

Udo wrote: post #45

kazagistar wrote: post #2

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even though they haven't been changed for decades. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent game. But declining interest seems to indicate that maybe it is just finished?

I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game…

I wanted to verify your comments about speed, and found this interview http://www.linuxexpres.cz/rozhovor/interview-david-white where the original developer says:

"However, I wanted to be able to develop Wesnoth quickly, using the latest technology and latest C++ features. Because of this I didn't spend much time focusing on things like minimizing the memory Wesnoth takes up, or trying to make it ultra-fast. This does limit its portability a little in that it is difficult to get working on systems with limited memory"