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OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

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Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#71

Post by sgift »

door2 wrote: post #64
willvarfar wrote: post #15

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

who cares? intellectual property law in the united states is irrational and immoral. i strongly support evading the law or fully exploiting gray areas / unenforced copyrights.

That's easy to say if you are not the one who gets hit with a C&D plus some claim for x billion damages or whatever the going rate is these days. Life's too short to sit in courts and fight for something which is a hobby.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#72

Post by paulie_a »

willvarfar wrote: post #15

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

This is why copyright laws are terrible in the US. It is a game that came out in the 90s, copyright protection for it should be over at this point.

Personally I pretty much just ignore copyright. I don't have a bootleg factory, but at the same time I am not concerned about downloading a file like this

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#73

Post by ClassyJacket »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #52
ChrisSD wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can get dicey if you end up copying actual machine code, even if you translate it in to something higher level. One way round this is clean room design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Many EULAs state that there will be no attempt by the user to reverse engineering the workings of the program. How would that fit with clean room implementations?

EULAs are just EULAs, not laws.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#74

Post by meddlepal »

Fnoord wrote: post #69
meddlepal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic, SC2K and SC3K were Will Wright games and didn't stress too much on the city micromanaging gameplay. They were plain and simple city builders. Things changed with SC4. Weirdly SCS and the last failed SimCity are probably closer in gameplay design and feel to the older titles than SC4 but the community hated them.

How do these official Sim City games compare to the newer game Cities: Skylines. That appears to be the spiritual successor. I like that that doesn't require an always-on connection, it also seems to have good reviews (87% on Steam) but how does it compare to the official Sim City games?

I'm not big on Skylines. It looks very pretty, but the agent-simulation model has a lot of issues versus how the older SimCity games worked. To work around the quirks of the "every sim is independent" aspect you have to do weird things with city design that feel counter intuitive for various reasons... for example, who does a city of 50K need a mass transit system? Garbage management has issues too.

I will say this though, a more experienced Skylines user should comment. I bought it early on, played it for a little bit and went back to SC3K and SC4... dusted it off again and played for a little bit more but went back to SC3K again. Some of these issues may have been addressed by now.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#75

Post by romanovcode »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #55
romanovcode wrote: post #19

Gotta say 21 FPS not very pleasant to game with.

Is it really that noticeable? I don't remember ever watching a 24 fps film thinking 'this is jerky'. Is it more about the lag between input and response than any jerking?

> Is it really that noticeable?

Oh yes, it sure is.

> Is it more about the lag between input and response than any jerking?

In this example - Yes. In 3d games it would be visible jerking.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#77

Post by MaxBarraclough »

colechristensen wrote: post #22
chungy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA is actively selling SimCity 2000 at least on GOG.com. With that in mind, I think there can be no real gesture of goodfaith on the author's part. It's lazy, maybe just the "easy way" to do it in the beginning, but when the game is being actively sold, it's also slimy.

I don't think "bad faith" and "slimy" should really apply to 24 year old game assets. I value useful creation much higher than dated intellectual property. Or in other words, I do not support long-tail profit and control of any creative work.

> should

I suspect virtually all of us here agree that copyright terms are too long, but this still looks like wilful copyright infringement.

Not that it would make any difference if EA stopped selling it on GOG. The idea of 'abandonware' has absolutely zero legal standing, as far as I'm aware.

Other games companies have been very unaccommodating about this kind of thing before, even when game assets weren't used - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#78

Post by VikingCoder »

matte_black wrote: post #48
willvarfar wrote: post #15

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

I once wrote a building generator that could create SC2k pixel art buildings based off a simple floor plan and some settings. It could be used to generate a lot of assets in a hurry.

Yes, we'd love to see it!

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#79

Post by viperscape »

paulie_a wrote: post #72
willvarfar wrote: post #15

Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because i…

This is why copyright laws are terrible in the US. It is a game that came out in the 90s, copyright protection for it should be over at this point. Personally I pretty much just ignore copyright. I don't have a bootleg factory, but at the same time I am not concerned about downloading a file like this

Copyright is pretty straight forward in the US. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html This game is still under copyright and including the assets for public consumption is considered illegal, unless otherwise specified by the rights holder

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#80

Post by matte_black »

bringtheaction wrote: post #50
matte_black wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once wrote a building generator that could create SC2k pixel art buildings based off a simple floor plan and some settings. It could be used to generate a lot of assets in a hurry.

Cool, got a link for it?

Unfortunately it was quite a long time ago when I was into game development as a hobby, two MacBooks ago. I’d have to see if I still have the hard drive it was on. I never thought it would be useful for anything.

In any case I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is inspired to write a similar tool, it’s really just laying down pixels and shapes in an isometric perspective, and a few other decorative touches.

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