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Publishing free software video games

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Re: Publishing free software video games

#41

Post by noduerme »

Zambyte wrote: post #38
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?

I seek out feedback from a limited number of people, in a controlled way, when I'm working on my own projects. At least 90% of it gets filed away in my mind as valid advice, but not necessarily given the structure of what's already built, and not necessarily something I'm going to implement. A lot of it may be sound for version 2.0, but I don't need to debate the priorities. What feedback I get that shows me better ways of doing things often gets used in the next project I build.

When I find myself in the hot seat answering to questions about why code was structured this way or that, I usually already want to move on from the project, and it feels like a hostile situation. I know I can always learn and improve from feedback, but oftentimes my intention in putting something out is not to generate feedback but just to make it available. Unfortunately, I've found that most of the time this decays into situations where I have to defend my choices. Which I'll be the first to admit are often made on the spur, because if I were planning on other people picking apart my coding decisions I wouldn't be able to code my side projects nearly as quickly.

[Frequently I think this is because people need to prove they can do something better than I did, and have to grind that axe against my work; which takes whatever utility I might have made and turns it into a pissing contest].

But I just don't want to subject myself to that shit anymore, and the world can get on fine without my code.

tl/dr, the hostility and negativity that usually comes along w/ people giving their opinions makes me not want to share my work with them.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#42

Post by brucethemoose2 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #10
barbariangrunge wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreal engine is source available too I didn’t realize rimworlds source was available. I’m curious how some of their simulation works, that’s definitely interesting. If the Eula is friendly, I may take a look some day

> I didn’t realize rimworlds source was available. It isn't, it's decompiled.

And purposely not obfuscated.

Yeah, that really is bare minimum, but its still better than the deliberate obfuscation of many similar games.

Minecraft, meanwhile, is obfuscated but with public mappings. That is a weird situation, but it still works kinda like the game being source available.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#43

Post by hu3 »

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…

Rabbit hole warning!

The video "The History of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" (35 minutes) desmonstrates how an open source community can make great games! In this case, a post-apocalyptic roguelike game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nHtcmnQQvU

For an, exoctic, 11 minute review of the game watch "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead Review | Don't Drink Toilet Water" by SsethTzeentach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyoj4-niEPc

Re: Publishing free software video games

#44

Post by mid-kid »

KronisLV wrote: post #40
kevlarrelic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appa…

Yandere Simulator's case was unique. You're right that people were angry at the guy in general, and he was also quite the internet clown. But it was the first time I've seen so many people who don't program suddently have an oppinion on what good code is or isn't. When asked, they couldn't even explain why. I assure you, half of those videos are filled to the brim with milquetoast examples that I really don't feel constitute as bad code. This thankfully doesn't happen every day.

I really don't enjoy the discourse regarding "code cleanliness". A lot of the time it's just about "I prefer writing things this way" rather than the code actually being slower/harder to read/maintain/whatever. There's a billion ways to write something and none of them are outright wrong!

Re: Publishing free software video games

#45

Post by mid-kid »

TheMode wrote: post #23

What we need are programs compiled down to some minimal instruction sets, simplifying the implementation of custom vm able to run such software. The source does not mean anything if there is no working compiler, or if the compiler doesn't support your new shiny platform. It is the same for servers. Having the source for a whole hosting service depending on some specific hardware doesn't matter. If we decide to truly…

Having the code makes it easier to write a new minimal compiler, translator or interprer, just to run the specific game. Or understand how the game works to make a good rewrite/port. Not every game has a dedicated enough fanbase to do this, but having the option is always great. Rewriting the engine doesn't mean you have to rewrite all the dialogue and in-engine scripts, after all.

Of course, if you want to write and use something like SCUMM for your games, that's appreciated, too...

Re: Publishing free software video games

#46

Post by Zambyte »

noduerme wrote: post #41
Zambyte wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I seek out feedback from a limited number of people, in a controlled way, when I'm working on my own projects. At least 90% of it gets filed away in my mind as valid advice, but not necessarily given the structure of what's already built, and not necessarily something I'm going to implement. A lot of it may be sound for version 2.0, but I don't need to debate the priorities. What feedback I get that shows me better w…

A bit meta, but have situations like this happened publicly for you? I would be interested in reading some of the Helpful Feedback™ that you've dealt with

Re: Publishing free software video games

#47

Post by OldHunter69X »

hu3 wrote: post #43
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…

Rabbit hole warning! The video "The History of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" (35 minutes) desmonstrates how an open source community can make great games! In this case, a post-apocalyptic roguelike game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nHtcmnQQvU For an, exoctic, 11 minute review of the game watch "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead Review | Don't Drink Toilet Water" by SsethTzeentach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyoj4-niE…

Sseth turned me onto this game, as he has turned me onto many. His content isn't for everybody, but for it's target demographic, it is top of the line. I look forward to checking out the first video link.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#48

Post by noduerme »

Zambyte wrote: post #46
noduerme wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seek out feedback from a limited number of people, in a controlled way, when I'm working on my own projects. At least 90% of it gets filed away in my mind as valid advice, but not necessarily given the structure of what's already built, and not necessarily something I'm going to implement. A lot of it may be sound for version 2.0, but I don't need to debate the priorities. What feedback I get that shows me better w…

A bit meta, but have situations like this happened publicly for you? I would be interested in reading some of the Helpful Feedback™ that you've dealt with

Not so much publicly as most of these happened pre-2010. But like, I think when I finally decided to keep my shit to myself was when I went off on my own initiative and built a solar system construction tool for Chris Roberts to play with, a day or two after I finished his HUD demo for Star Citizen. This wasn't open source, obviously. I built in a lot of neat features for a builder tool that I would love to have if I were making a sprawling galactic open game. Chris is, obviously, a legendary coder. But he seemed to get really pissed off when I showed him this project, and told me THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY WE'RE BUILDING ANY OF THIS USING FLASH. In truth, it was only a flash project to let you drag planets and moons around, size them, set them in orbits around a star until you were happy with the solar system's dynamics, and then output a slim XML file describing each system you built. I thought it was cool. At the same time I was being publicly attacked and on/off praised all over the user forums for HUD things I'd written that no one had actually seen (and never ended up seeing).

It wasn't the first time I had a problem the public as a coder, because I wrote and ran - meaning, stayed awake and watched, 24/7 - the first Bitcoin casino of any size for a couple years, and a lot of the early players were devs of some description. It was helpful, and I shared my code with players. But it was always a case of "if I were you, I would've..."

Prior to that I had a major run-in against Fox NewsCorp when a whole platform I'd developed solo for an indie game got sold to them and they thought it was my responsibility to explain my code to them. Their strategy to get me to comply with this was to offer me half my normal hourly rate and ask me to sign a contract stating that all my intellectual property belonged to them. No one in that case ever said my code was bad, they just couldn't get a team of 10 coders to understand it so they shut it down and lost the $500k they'd paid for it.

Actually, the response to the non-commercial projects I've put out personally has been fairly "meh" in the last few years - I haven't really promoted them and presumably no one wants or needs them. I think I got like +2 votes on the last thing I showed HN. I have no problem contributing on other people's projects, but it's just a fix here and there if I see something. But the reason I didn't show the code on the thing I put up on HN last? It's that the two people who saw it would undoubtedly just tear my code to pieces, and I have moved on to other things.

/rant. Sorry.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#49

Post by Zambyte »

noduerme wrote: post #48
Zambyte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit meta, but have situations like this happened publicly for you? I would be interested in reading some of the Helpful Feedback™ that you've dealt with

Not so much publicly as most of these happened pre-2010. But like, I think when I finally decided to keep my shit to myself was when I went off on my own initiative and built a solar system construction tool for Chris Roberts to play with, a day or two after I finished his HUD demo for Star Citizen. This wasn't open source, obviously. I built in a lot of neat features for a builder tool that I would love to have if I…

Thanks for sharing :)

I'm honestly a bit young and haven't experienced such negative feedback yet. I hope I wouldn't take it personally, but I can see why that may be hard, especially coming from someone you respect like that.

Re: Publishing free software video games

#50

Post by hgs3 »

whateveracct wrote: post #13
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 should derivative works have to release assets under CC? What's the goal? Is it so bad if people still have artistic IP but the underlying code is Free?

Games are a combination of art and code. Why should programmers be the only one's required to release their work under a viral license? Artist should as well.
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