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EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

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Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#151

Post by Arbalest »

So they're releasing the code?

But what about the art assests. Moving to the future, those become more valuable, particularly as coding becomes more advanced. While coders have a habit of happily rewriting things to make them work better, visual stuff has a lot more nostalgia factor, as well as actually having them available makes the progress made on the code side seem a lot more real.

Surely this isn't the only game where code is only part of the issue (if it is, I really don't know what the plan is in this instance).

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#152

Post by Newtonip »

Keyframe wrote: post #134
gambiting wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this particular game was from the late 90s - we looked at re-exporting some of the assets and I have no idea how you'd even approach it without significant time investment, the tools used to make the original art no longer exist(we have the source code for the game, but not for the tools used at the time, I've gone through stacks of old CDs that had backups and 9/10 discs were just gone, completely corrupte…

As a former SGI user, I'm afraid we'll never see emulation happen.

SGI emulation has been a thing since the late 90's with SimOS (console only though) and more recently with MAME (full support for Irix desktop) as well as user space emulation with qemu-irix.

I'm running a Irix 6.2 desktop on my PC right now.

Also fun fact: up to version 6 of the MIPS port of NetBSD, you could run Irix binaries. I'm pretty sure it can boot in qemu-mips which would be another avenue for some ability to run certain Irix software on PC.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#153

Post by smichel17 »

gambiting wrote: post #82
wlesieutre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of newer games probably include middleware licensed from other companies that make relicensing more challenging

And also, art assets - I've touched on this briefly with an older game from the studio where I work, and basically we could probably release the source code, but since it was a racing game we couldn't release the art assets as they are copyrighted by car manufacturers(or at least it would be a significantly complicated legal problem to not be worth the time).

I'd say go for it and release just the source code, no assets. If there's enough people with the time and passion to recreate/replace the assets, they will. If not, no harm done :)

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#154

Post by p1necone »

jrimbault wrote: post #72
tekstar wrote: post #67

If you're looking to just play the classic C&C games including Red Alert, either single player or multiplayer, check out cncnet.org. I've been playing old classic multiplayer games with some friends while we're isolating. Halo 1 for PC, BF1942, Battlefield II. All free or like 5$. Red Alert mostly ok under WINE on OSX or Linux but it prompted me to get windows running on a machine.

Battlefield 2 can't be bought nowadays, but that doesn't stop a small community from working on mods even now. Forgotten Hope 2, one its biggest mods (a complete WW2 overhaul), had a new release last Friday.

Battlefield 2 was the last battlefield game I really enjoyed, after that the scale of the game got a lot smaller it seemed. Other than the kinda clunky gunplay it feels like the high point of the series to me still.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#155

Post by alexeldeib »

enitihas wrote: post #123
habitue wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably don't expect these companies to open source their primary competitive advantages. We expect them to open source things once good_will_value > expected_sales_volume for a given title/piece of software. The thing is right now Microsoft is getting into the habit of open sourcing things that hit that criteria, and EA is just flatly evaluating that to False every the time. Even when they aren't actively sellin…

>We expect them to open source things once good_will_value > expected_sales_volume for a given title/piece of software. The thing is right now Microsoft is getting into the habit of open sourcing things that hit that criteria, Which of their former good selling products has microsoft open sourced? Which of the microsoft open source projects were formerly for sale. I am very sure it would be very very few, and only in…

From GitHub:

Electronic Arts: 27 repos

Azure: 1.8k repos

n.b., I work in Azure, make your own conclusions.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#156

Post by rrdharan »

NoInputSignal wrote: post #108
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we could create a tax incentive for this. For example, if a publisher commits to open sourcing N years after release, they get a break on sales. Or get to capitalise R&D more aggressively during development.

IMHO, I think this counters a philosophical point of open source software. The open code to the software we use should not be a handout or a gift ex post facto. The open code to the software should be an invitation: to collaborate on it, audit it, or frankly do anything you want with it (e.g. WTFPL); before, during, and after using it.

Ironically of course WTFPL is in fact not "do anything you want with it" despite the claims of the author and fans of the license.

https://opensource.google/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl-no...

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/29718/is-the-wtfpl-g...

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#157

Post by dleslie »

bredren wrote: post #59
rnestler wrote: post #14

There is also the https://www.openra.net/ project which provides reimplementations of the classic C&C games. Me and some friends played it a few times on Linux, OSX and Windows and it worked smoothly :)

Direct link to OpenRA's 4/20/20 release highlights video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2sQP3YYBMA As noted elsewhere ITT, "we made the decision to go with the GPL license to ensure compatibility with projects like CnCNet and Open RA." Given the progress of OpenRA, and quality of the above release video, the open source version seems like it is likely to eclipse the capability of the original game in the foreseeab…

The Remaster is a visual and auditory improvement that maintains the original gameplay, save for a few minor UI improvements.

OpenRA rebalances the game significantly, improves the AI, and greatly modernises the interaction with units.

They both have their place and utility.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#158

Post by dleslie »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #136
Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #26

What does a "RedAlert.dll" actually contain? I guess it is not the remastered engine, it is not the models, animations or textures. It won't contain the mission briefing videos, the mission briefing texts or even the mission maps. It is likely not the multiplayer maps, the net code, and especially not the multiplayer server. And it sure is not the awesome music. That dll file might be mostly unit config, like the old…

That us how many open-source games works. They release it so that you can mod it, but they don't give the assets for free. Why is that a problem? Everyone wins.

What's more, they already released the original assets for free. The ISOs can be freely traded.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#159

Post by pnako »

alexeldeib wrote: post #155
enitihas wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We expect them to open source things once good_will_value > expected_sales_volume for a given title/piece of software. The thing is right now Microsoft is getting into the habit of open sourcing things that hit that criteria, Which of their former good selling products has microsoft open sourced? Which of the microsoft open source projects were formerly for sale. I am very sure it would be very very few, and only in…

From GitHub: Electronic Arts: 27 repos Azure: 1.8k repos n.b., I work in Azure, make your own conclusions.

It's mostly templates, SDKs, etc.

MS is open-sourcing the pieces of cheese that lead to their proprietary cloud-shaped trap. I don't think they've open-sourced anything related to Azure itself (i.e. if I wanted to run my own Azure-like cloud).

I'm not saying it's a bad or even unethical strategy. I'm just saying that MS is not, remotely, an open-source company.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#160

Post by dvhh »

enitihas wrote: post #77
capableweb wrote: post #9

One of the best things that could happen to the gaming landscape would be if companies like EA and similar learned from Microsoft's move to open sourcing more software and involving the community more gives them a lot more goodwill and business as a side-effect. And then us gamers get more long-lived games as a benefit as well.

But Microsoft has not open sourced anything that was making $ for them. Neither windows nor any part of office, or any part of enterprise suite. What Microsoft has open sourced are things where similar stuff was already open source, and Microsoft wouldn't have made much money selling those. e.g, VSCode, tyepscript. EA also open sources stuff like that. They even have open sourced a java library to be able to write as…

I believe a good portion of Mechcommander 2 source code was made open source (enough to compile and play it), although I don't know if the licence fit the definition of open-source

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechCommander_2

* https://web.archive.org/web/20161220070747/https://www.neowi...

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