5 ms·

Existential quandary here, but I loathe how we are now hitting the 20 year mark on the modern PC gaming era. 1993 opened the floodgates with Doom, and we are al

by zanny 13y ago

Existential quandary here, but I loathe how we are now hitting the 20 year mark on the modern PC gaming era. 1993 opened the floodgates with Doom, and we are already seeing the loss of many games from that era that just don't run on a modern computer but have never seen a source release to let anyone update the engines. And it only is poised to get worse over time, especially now that ARM is superseding x86 for a lot of computing. Is it reasonable to expect everyone to know how to run VMs of old operating systems (where you are already in questionable legal water if you download isos of, say, Windows 98, which is no longer available for money but still is copyrighted forever). And titles like "Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition" I feel hurt the industry hugely by presenting the legal departments an excuse to deny source release, because later on they could touch the game up for a few weeks and sell it all over again. Same way companies like Square will re-release 20 year old games like Final Fantasy rather than do source releases on the original engine code. Except for most games they won't see a re-release, and they will just drift into the binary purgatory of unrunnable titles.

DanBC 13y ago
I agree. We expect English Students to study classic texts. It is hard to impossible (especially with legal considerations) for programmers to play the classics, let alone investigate the source code. It is a very great shame that so much is effectively locked away and going to be lost.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  The original SimCity Classic source code is open source, and instructors like Chaim Gingold and Mark Sample are actually having their students study (and deconstruct) the source code: Chaim Gingold, Simulation for Games: http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/ http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/ Mark Sample, Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Videogames: http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-procedural-logic-of-crime-in-videogames/ http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-pr...
  - kineticfocus 13y ago
    Prince of Persia's source is also available... https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II
- chongli 13y ago
  When the culmination of the post-labour economy arrives, we'll realize we have no need for the notion of intellectual property either. Star Trek has set the example for us to follow!
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    We need a heckuva lot of robotics and AI for that to happen. There's no post-labour as long as human labour is still mandatory for survival. It needs to become entirely optional first.
    - chongli 13y ago
      It doesn't have to happen completely. As it is right now, we are facing a growing crisis of unemployment and underemployment. This has been termed "the Great Decoupling": http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-productivity-and-the-great-decoupling.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-produc...
lloeki 13y ago
> And titles like "Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition" I feel hurt the industry hugely by presenting the legal departments an excuse to deny source release You won't get much with just the engine source when what matter in those games is the art and general content. Plus this did not stop people to hack the BG saga into BGTuTu. Also, http://www.gemrb.org/ http://www.gemrb.org/
- zanny 13y ago
  This is exactly why I mention Baldurs Gate, because dozens of smart people took thousands of hours to reverse engineer what would have taken the legal team hours and one coder 15 minutes to relicense and release publicly. Also, the Infinity Engine was used in half a dozen titles, and while it is detrimental that pretty much nobody releases game assets under permissive terms, my point is that games are lost to obscurity because their engines don't work. For better or worse, the game data is just as compatible with its engine as it ever was.

by zanny 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

I agree. We expect English Students to study classic texts. It is hard to impossible (especially with legal considerations) for programmers to play the classics, let alone investigate the source code. It is a very great shame that so much is effectively locked away and going to be lost.

SimHacker 13y ago
The original SimCity Classic source code is open source, and instructors like Chaim Gingold and Mark Sample are actually having their students study (and deconstruct) the source code: Chaim Gingold, Simulation for Games: http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/ http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/ Mark Sample, Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Videogames: http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-procedural-logic-of-crime-in-videogames/ http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-pr...
- kineticfocus 13y ago
  Prince of Persia's source is also available... https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II
chongli 13y ago
When the culmination of the post-labour economy arrives, we'll realize we have no need for the notion of intellectual property either. Star Trek has set the example for us to follow!
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  We need a heckuva lot of robotics and AI for that to happen. There's no post-labour as long as human labour is still mandatory for survival. It needs to become entirely optional first.
  - chongli 13y ago
    It doesn't have to happen completely. As it is right now, we are facing a growing crisis of unemployment and underemployment. This has been termed "the Great Decoupling": http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-productivity-and-the-great-decoupling.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-produc...

lloeki 13y ago

> And titles like "Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition" I feel hurt the industry hugely by presenting the legal departments an excuse to deny source release You won't get much with just the engine source when what matter in those games is the art and general content. Plus this did not stop people to hack the BG saga into BGTuTu. Also, http://www.gemrb.org/ http://www.gemrb.org/

zanny 13y ago
This is exactly why I mention Baldurs Gate, because dozens of smart people took thousands of hours to reverse engineer what would have taken the legal team hours and one coder 15 minutes to relicense and release publicly. Also, the Infinity Engine was used in half a dozen titles, and while it is detrimental that pretty much nobody releases game assets under permissive terms, my point is that games are lost to obscurity because their engines don't work. For better or worse, the game data is just as compatible with its engine as it ever was.