Games: The Boundary Of Open Development? 178
Clyde writes "Computer games represent an interesting frontier for Open Source development. Unlike other desktop applications, games tend to be hybrid organisms -- half software program, half artistic work. This discussion with Scott Draeker, president and CEO of Loki Entertainment Software and Jorrit Tyberghein, volunteer project leader for Crystal Space sheds some light."
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:4)
BTW my favorite game of all time is the graphically spartan Civ2. I have to admit that sometimes you don't need flashy graphics to make a great game, but they can certainly make it better.
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
As you say: "you can get the source, but it's not worth much without a copy of the game files". But the opposite is also true: the game files are not worth much without the engine.
Here's the dilemma: Close source game: $60 (coding & art)
Developer substitutes proprietary engine with an open source engine. Maybe gets to fire half the programming staff. How much should the game cost now? Was the art worth $30? $50?
Re:Long-term benefits of open source code (Score:2)
You don't need open source code for this.
As id has demonstrated time and again with the Quake series, it is possible to design a game so that users can enhance and modify it. Another good example is the Rules Description Language [crisium.com] (and this [crisium.com] link too) of Stars! Supernova [crisium.com]. Using the RDL, the multiplayer Stars! community will be able to effect gameplay balancing changes without waiting for the developers to release a patch. They'll also be able to set up custom rules for creating themed games, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5. Stars! Supernova will also has some interesting ways [crisium.com] of letting players supply custom artwork and sound for their races. For more on this game, see news://rec.games.computer.stars [games.computer.stars].
At any rate, the point is through the implementation of good game design, developers can ensure that users will be able to update and enhance a closed-source proprietary game. It'd be interesting to see if anyone else has examples of this sort of design besides the ones I've mentioned (*hint, hint*).
Jonathan David Pearce
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:2)
You seem to be confusing "art" with "artwork". That "art" of a game goes considerably beyond the pretty (or not so pretty) pictures that populate your screen. To define it as such means you're devaluing the writing and general design of the script as well.
Personally, I consider all creative aspects of a game to be the "art" component. A game need not have incredibly flashy visuals to be artistic. Look at GnomeHack, for instance. Very simple game, minimal graphics. But there has been undeniable creativity in the design of the game. The same applies for games such as Baldur's Gate, where I am not terribly fond of the visuals, but like the writing a great deal.
I know this from experience, as co-writer on an Open Source game, Adonthell [linuxgames.com]. No one is going to confuse us with Final Fantasy VIII. But no one is going to accuse us of not being artistic wither. The fact is, Adonthell is the result of many creative people working together in an Open Source setting, and we are getting good results.
Of course, I do agree with Draeker and Tyberghein. The artistic portions of a game are difficult to Open Source, and there's no point fooling ourselves that they are of the same nature as the programming. Open Source allows for the script, for instance, to be changed every bit as much as it does the code. But would it be improved thereby? Possibly. But I'm willing to bet it wouldn't.
Re:The problem. (Score:2)
I have yet to see any software that is not a "close relative" of something that already exists in the world. Indeed, I wouldn't even limit that statement to software.
> Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
For most OS software, that is exactly the point. Maybe less often for games, although I'm creating one for the sole reason that I want something better than the current commercial leader of the genre. (Well, also for the joy of doing some "joy programming".)
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Re:Have you heard about Vampire The Masquerade gam (Score:1)
Storyteller mode without the world building tools is fairly useless.
They still haven't releasd the promised world building tools.
Canard (Score:1)
As a security system architect, allow me to point out that you are dead wrong. The security a game gets from not releasing source code is an illusion. There used to be an army of people with mediocre debugging skills who made a sport of shredding copy protection for closed source programs -- until game companies got tired of running in circles and stopped trying. For multiplayer games, the problem is even worse because all one needs to do is examine the network traffic and create a filter (to improve aim, reveal hidden enemies, and so on). If you understand graphics and can program in C (and you would need to in order to cheat using GPL'd code) then you shouldn't have a hard time using these techniques.
Encryption would help, but the reason servers trust clients is to improve performance and cryptographic operations are expensive. The difficulty here comes not from open or closed source, but from the hoards of skillful people with too much time on their hands beating on a fragile system. Consider this [tuxedo.org] Eric Raymond essay, which discusses this issue in more depth and points out that cheat programs have been developed for Quake without using the source code.
Re:A new (falulty) paradigm for game design (Score:1)
I sure wouldn't pay for a game ahead of time based on that. Even if the developer is sincere (and this would open the door for all kinds of straight con-jobs) abilty to dream and ability to deliver are very different. The first is preveleant, the second is not so.
The only developer I would even think of gioving my moeny to ahead of time woul be a big, well established and already successful group with a lot of cash on hand to voer their development costs. In which case, they don't need my money anyway.
Anyone remeber Hack? (Score:1)
JK
Re:Business Model for Open Source(TM) Games (Score:1)
1) I am not interested in your application
2) You sound excitable and suspicious therefore not a good person to give money
I'm sure you think that reading the back of a book or a computer game box is a much better way
to decide how to spend your money.
Well, go right ahead and support the marketer's kids through college.
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
Hmm - no, it always will take effort from the programmers to adapt the engine to the specific game. It's the same thing as using the Quake III engine for a game, but open-source style. Quite a few companies do that. In the end, programmers release the modifications they made to the engine, thereby helping the next game to get built! By using an Open Source engine, every game that gets written adds to the next game, gradually increasing the general state of gaming. For instance, 007: The World Is Not Enough (the game) modified the Quake III engine to let Bond be thrown around the room by explosions. If they were using an open-source engine, that would be released, and the next adventure game would have the benefit of that effect as well. I didn't say fire the programmers - I said make life easier for the programmers, and at the same time build a better game faster!
Nothing wrong with saying IMHO (Score:1)
Pronounced IMM-HOE
all we need is intergration (Score:1)
I downloaded Crystal Space [linuxgames.com] about an hour ago, and have been playing with allegro [allegro.cc] for some years.
Though both of these are fairly good GFX engines I have yet to see good integration with games engines [sourceforge.net], and porting between the to would be a nightmare.
If interfaces between GFX engines (Crystal Space does support plugins), AI,rules and scripting languages were standardised, open source game development could be onto a real winner.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
Really, that's the only way to be sure. Now, I'm pretty sure someone has come up with a similar story before anyways, and maybe that your story is a "warped" story from someone else you've heard. So why worry? What do you lose? Why be afraid over a perfectly natural thing?
- Steeltoe
Re:Games? (Score:2)
Wrong.
Game engines
[devolution.com]
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/
3D graphics
[linuxgames.com]
http://crystal.linuxgames.com/
http://www.mesa3d.org [mesa3d.org]
etc are now a mature software area, and
with today's hardware we're almost at the point where brute forcing it will be a "good enough" programming strategy.
Wrong. Copying graphics to the screen one pixel at a time will _always_ suck.
And artists are, for the most part, a greedy and opportunistic breed....
... suddenly, i feel as though i'm being trolled.
well, reading it again, he wasn't saying that OSS can't produce the code to do the low level stuff, but, since i bothered to paste those links, i'm leaving them in.
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blue
That old misconception again (Score:1)
> half software program, half artistic work.
"Unlike" other applications? I would submit (again) that one big reason open-source is having difficulting gaining users other than technicians is because of this misconception that good software consists merely of code. Even the Sorceforge Help Wanted section re-inforces the detrimental (and simply incorrect) notion that non-coders are not developers. As long as open-source developement of software is done by "developers" of the Sourceforge definition, the results will continue to be largely inaccessible to non-coders and non-technicians.
Re:Day of the tentacle (Score:1)
Let this sentence be the proof that any blatant over-generalisation about one incident to be worth null and void.
;) Steeltoe
Re:Open Source at heart (Score:1)
I don't remember any mods to Red Alert. Got any links?
Is there a FSF statement about games? (Score:1)
So are there any FSF suggestions on how to write commercial-grade games as free software, or does the FSF tolerate at least games based on non-free art.
Re:More on this topic... (Score:1)
Re:Long-term benefits of open source code (Score:3)
Ever tried changing Civ II to use a hex map rather than a faked oblique square grid? Tried changing it to let units cooperate like real armies? Tried making the AI smarter?
Yes, lots of commercial games now come with customization features. But if you don't like some of the features of the actual design, there's no way to fix it yourself. With OSS you can. I have a
ps - The Freeciv maintainers have now implemented most of the features of Civ I/II, and are increasingly talking about launching out on arbitrary extensions. I think that's the paradigm for OSS - rather than "embrace, extend, extinguish", it's "imitate, enhance, perfect". Admittedly, many are still in the "imitate" phase, but that's no reason to think OSS can only imitate.
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Half open-source (Score:3)
The ideal format of a game is to be half open-source. As the article said, a game is half a programming matter and half an artistic matter. So, the programming parts (the graphics engine) is open source [sourceforge.net] and the artistic part (the game files, wad files, hog files, whatever your game calls them-files) is distributed as the game. It's the perfect compromise. That way, people have the opportunity to improve the state of their game (doesn't work quite right on XYZ 3D Blaster? Fix the game yourself!) while the artists/writers/programmers/modelers who put their time into developing their artistic work can still get the reward for the public appreciation.
The question is, why do some games [daikatana.com] suck as much as some art sucks?
Re:Games? (Score:1)
Of course you'll still have to write the physics code, and if brute-force is good enough, then a decent engine will allow you to actually populate that world with a million characters.
The way I see it, the engines and editors will become standard, open-source, industry tools, and then the designers, and artists can make the games they want, without having to continually fight the technology.
May take some time though.
l8r
pHile
PS Awaiting embedded Linux for X-Box with interest...;)
Re:this is more of what we need (Score:1)
I am sure that Dungeon Keeper, the Civ series (for sure) and X-com allow to build more levels when you get bored.
As for the others, if they did have that, imagine the extension of playability that you see with the ones that allow you to that. Sim City allowed you to build terrain, imagine if it provided enough of a SDK so that you build your own feature addons instead of waiting 2-3 years to be able to drive/fly/create a tower in the thriving city you built 10 years ago...
That is why i quoted Doom as an example, it was designed in mind for people to easily hack it, and id could care less as long as you bought the commercial version. Personally I modded levels/sounds/sprites to hell just for fun and passed them round to friends/BBS's. And don't even get me started on Halflife with its excellent free[speech as well as beer, i don't know] mod Counter-Strike. This type of stuff can only be an improvement on 90% of the stuff out there.
this is more of what we need (Score:1)
Anyways, this is an old idea for PC games, but still a great thing to discuss. And whatever happened to that guy trying to close the source on his mod to quake1?
Pokemon (Score:1)
"as far as the general public is concerned, games borrow from popular music and film cultures, not the other way around"
I can think of at least one case where this is complete bunk. (See subject for clue;) Many many more to follow...
l8r
pHile
PS Eventually people will come to realise that film and television are just non-interactive games, and then we will rule the world! Muahahahhhaaa....;)
Open Source and 'Open Art' at work (Score:4)
It's been a while since I've had time to watch the development more closely, but it's still a superb example of the potential of open source game development. It's a very highly ambitious project which looks like it can pull off it's goals.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Half Art, half software? (Score:2)
-Dusty Hodges
Re:To quote ESR (Score:2)
I think that's a false dichotomy. I certainly want to "scratch the itch" on games. Indeed, one of the reasons I finally scratched Windows off my dual-boot system was that I was progressively losing interest in commercial games, as I almost always disliked some feature or another of any game I bought, and got aggravated at paying for flawed games that I could not fix.
> The other reason is of course the cheating issue.
I think for genre other than the live-action shoot-em-up, you can keep all the information a player isn't supposed to know on the server, and only dribble it out when appropriate. I admit that I don't have a solution for the LASEUs, but I wouldn't condemn OSS games in general due to the difficulties in producing cheat resistance in one specific genre.
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Unfortunately true (Score:4)
This is true--and unfortunate. Think of all the computer games you've played in your life. Rank them in order of "playability" (judged by how often you replayed). Now look at the top ten: How many of them had good (or even ANY) artwork? Of those that did have good artwork, for how many of them did the artwork contribute to the playability?
For me, the answer is 1 and 0. The only game I've liked enough to keep playing AND that had decent art was Civilization--and some would argue that the art sucked. In any case, the art itself had almost no contribution towards the playability.
Right now I'm hooked on xscorch [chaos2.org]. The art is pitiful. The game is addictive.
Clearly, YMMV--I'm not saying everyone is like me. But I exist (and I know I'm not the only one). Why is this market not being exploited? Make some good fun games that cost half as much (fire the art staff) as the art-filled wonders that crowd the shelves.
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*chuckle* (Score:1)
Oh, and to folks who post crap like "this should be moderated down", or "Malda, you f*cking idiot"... get a sense of humor... it's Good Thing.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
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Re:artists and copyleft (Score:1)
I'm afraid I found your post a bit confusing and hard to read, and your last point didn't seem to make any sense. I know a lot of music "superstars" have spoken out against MP3s in general and Napster in particular, and the RIAA is trying desperately to stop them from catching on. But for the most part, every musician I know likes the idea of digital music that's easy to record, distribute, and edit. Remember that there are a lot of fairly well-known musicians that have spoken out in favour of MP3s. I think most of them like it because it means their music gets wide recognition and they get their revenue from sources other than selling tapes and CDs.
Also remember that most record-label-signed artists only get about $0.02 per CD, and most (from what I've heard) even wind up in debt to their label. I imagine that not having to pay a label to distribute their music might seem quite attractive...
-RickHunter
IMHO? (Score:1)
Wasn't this a spoken conversation? Did he really say "IMHO" out loud?
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
So would you consider say game specific code, like for the AI of a end boss, or something similar should be closed as well as part that makes money? That way I'd see it being a more equal setting between artist/programmer.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
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Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
Ooh. That's a toughie - that stuff should, yeah, probly be part of the artistic stuff. However, AI like in Black & White (where you "train" your monsters - a very, very cool feature) would fall into the Open Source trap if they open-sourced the engine.
Re:this is more of what we need (Score:1)
One big reason would likely be that there is no point in doom-like openness on a console - the gamers still can't make their own mods because they've only got a console, not a computer. (Eg how could they have edited, compiled, and saved new levels?)
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
And certian games, like Half-Life, really benifit from having good graphics to help the immersion factor.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
The other problem is that it could result in new engine development slowing down. All games would have to be designed to use modified existing engines rather than designing the engine to fit the game. A lot of games are sufficiently similar for this not to matter. All first person shooters are essentially Quake. All flight sims have a sky and aircraft and and similar controls. But some games don't fit the mold. Nothing I can think of uses the same graphics technique as Grand Theft Auto. Would the result of free game engines be that new ideas are avoided? Or am I just being paranoid here?
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
Really? I think you are grossly mistaken here. We see more and more games companies going bust or cutting down in size. I think those companies really underestimate the word of mouth marketing of games titles. The result is a series of titles that are no different from each other beside the artwork they wrap around the old schemes. How much longer will we have to suffer populous clones?
I really wish this industry took a second look and started attacking niche markets more. I'd stil buy a good text adventure if it was available. New processors offer the power that could add immense levels of playability to text adventures yet the game shops are flooded with those basic types:
- F1, Grand Prix, drive fast crap (you run around in circles as fast as you can). I had more fun with the speccy racing games than the pc offerings
- Fly in the sky Flight simulator (so realistic that you need a FAA license before taking off. Sorry guys but a game is supposed to be FUN not a practice session. Games are not simulators they are for entertainment
- Kill em all bastards! Hopeless, no comment.
- Populous x (Yes AoE and AoK is in this bucket together with Caesar I, II, III and whatever else)
- "Get a hammer and hit that nail" type of things (All the Lara Cruft crap and countless others.
Now that's about it. There is NOTHING else in shops (at least here in the UK). It's completely hopeless to assume that there is a huge market for what is essentially countless clones of four basic games. In the eighties game designers had to be more inventive because they had to deal with limited resources now we have eye candy crap that can only amuse a thirteen year old and not for very long. I'd still take C64 Pirates over the lame PeeCee stuff and even lamer console crap. In the nineties we witnessed a spectacular collapse of quality in the games industry with Civ being possibly the single exception. If games companies want to stay afloat they once again have to start being innovative, throwing scores of artists at your titles will not do.artists and copyleft (Score:3)
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
You're just being paranoid. If someone wants to make a game, they'll make a game. The team that made Grand Theft Auto could just as likely made an FPS by licensing the Quake engine, so the problem already exists.
Open Sourcing of engines can actually improve games and speed development of new games, as I explained below. If the Quake III engine were an Open Source engine, then 007: The World Is Not Enough would contribute their modifications that let Bond be pushed around the room by explosives back to the engine. The next adventure game would take those modifications for their game instead of rewriting them. That means that game develepors spend more time on the game than trying to write a game engine - resulting in a better game, faster. (It also makes it easer for independent developers not backed by mega-name publishing companies to make games themselves!)
Re:Open Source Game [Development] (Score:2)
Now those customized clients couldn't just get away with making the player twice as powerful, or twice as fast, or whatever. The server set the rules for that.
What the clients could do was:
- add aim-bots that gave players perfect (easily detected by the server) or just better aim. Some players just have really, really good aim, and it's not easy for the server to tell the difference between that and a subtle, well-written aim bot.
- Presumably, any other advantage that is possible within the game physics/rules - automatically dodging rockets, detecting (beeping?) whenever anyone has you in their crosshairs, or whatever.
- Plus, see through walls, see in the dark, make all the other players look like big red targets, and other visual hacks.
A solution was developed, however. I don't remember the details, but I believe it uses a small closed-source component which does cryptographic signing and checking of the open-source clients.
Depending on the type of game, cheating can be a major or minor problem. For quake-style games (client-server, with prediction on the client) it's in-between. Everyone has to follow the rules of the server, but hacked clients can allow cheating as described.
For on-line games like chess, checkers, and cards, cheating isn't an issue because the game is really just a communications medium.
For big role-playing games, it seems to me that an open source approach could work. Since the frame rate isn't so critical, some of the cheating problems of quake can be eliminated by making more things "synchronous". For example, even if clients are hacked to make it possible to see through walls, if the server only sends information to the clients that are supposed to see it, seeing through walls doesn't get you much. This isn't done in quake because it would cause either a loss in framerate, or things "popping" into view right in front of you when the server finally gets around to sending you that information.
Anyway...
I would really like to see an on-line role playing game as much like Tolkien's Middle Earth as possible.
I think the problem with on-line role playing games isn't so much the technology, (Free/OpenSource or not) but the sociology of it. How do you deal with all the losers who don't stay in character, and just run around swearing at people or killing them?
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
(Before you think the following is a flame, please note that it isn't. This is more of an expansion refuting this statement as a bad way of saying a good point. Okay, on to my rant...)
That's exactly the kind of attitude that made copyright law such a good idea. If you want to get ideas to spread, don't tell somebody not to tell his story. That's the exact opposite of the whole free-software philosophy! Free software wants ideas to spread and the community/gift-economy is the incentive. OTOH, copyrighted closed-software uses a monopoly of limited (well, once upon a time) time as a monetary incentive. So both the closed- and open-software models are designed to spread ideas and promote the sciences and useful arts.
Telling somebody to keep their ideas to themselves is elitist and doesn't fit well into any development methodology I can think of.
(See, getting back to what I said earlier, this really sounds like a flame at this point, and I'll admit it kind of is, but read on...)
Really, that's the only way to be sure. Now, I'm pretty sure someone has come up with a similar story before anyways, and maybe that your story is a "warped" story from someone else you've heard. So why worry? What do you lose? Why be afraid over a perfectly natural thing?
This is the part of my post where I concede that you are correct. My main concern is that the previous statement could have been phrased ``That's a good thing! The free spread of information benefits society!'' So now I concede w/ the original point, you can't really control ideas and it's not a very admirable goal IMO. However, you can always use the word ``Official''. Remember, that's how you allow communities to expand on your ideas but you don't necessarily incorporate them into the core of whatever little universe you've created. They're left floating in the realm of ``unofficial''. Worrying about somebody changing something you've made is part of life -- it's part of the spread of ideas, and then there is the point that yeah, it's probably pretty similar to something that's already been done. The only way to see what happens, though, is to put it out there.
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Multiplayer is the biggest problem (Score:1)
Re:Half open-source (Score:1)
If open-source engines can effectively seperate the art of game design from the programming of game engines, that has to be a good thing. Of course, the downside is that a game is then confined to what the pre-existing engine can do.
I suppose the much derided Daikatana used the Quake 2 engine, but that alone is not a good argument for the non-reuse of engines. Deus Ex uses the Unreal engine, and seems to be widely regarded as a great game.
How all this applies to non first-person-shooters is less certain. We've already seen that engine reuse can work well for Adventure games. Real Time Strategy should also work.
I guess the concern is for the more innovative games - the more a game deviates from the strict pre-defined genres that we have in the modern games industry, the bigger the programming penalty. This could hardly provoke more conformism than we have already, though.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:2)
Strategy games, where there are a lot of random elements, are inherently more replayable than Adventures, RPGs, or even First Person Shooters.
I remember Arena, and Daggerfall attempted to apply the random-factor to RPGs, and in my opinion, it didn't work. The world was filled not with interesting people, but cookie cutter characters giving you cookie-cutter quests in cookie-cutter towns.
But just because the best RPGs and Adventures are only replayable a few times, it does not mean they're inherently inferior to Strategy games which can be replayed effectively infinitely.
Re:Multiplayer is the biggest problem (Score:2)
Re:To quote ESR (Score:1)
Even in that case, you can probably limit the ability of people to cheat enought that it doesn't matter too much. Not being a game programmer, I really don't know for sure, but that how it would seem (don't hand out stuff to the client you don't actually want the client to know about).
Open source == distributed processing (Score:1)
Open source development is, by nature, a form of distributed work. It's rare that open source software would be written by only one person, and nobody else would ever contribute, unless of course the project is utterly useless. :)
Programming is a task very well suited for distributed processing; you can have clearly defined tasks (to the point of individual APIs) and overall functionality is usually split into components. Form and function aren't exactly tied together in programming - ugly code can accomplish the task just as well and coding style doesn't necessarily show up at all in the end product.
In game art, however, form and function are generally very close to each other. Suddenly consistency of style has great impact across the project as well as individual imaginations on what the product should look like, regardless of how good the sketches were. It's important to note here that you can't generally plan consistent art by verbal description only, and still your plans are limited to bits and pieces open for artistic interpretation. If you turn it into paint-by-numbers, where's the art?
This isn't to say that distributed art is impossible, just that it's more difficult to find good artists that would effectively contribute to an open source game project. Open source art today seems limited to skins for various UIs and gadgets, and it can be argued that most of them are not art at all.
As for open source games, Nethack [nethack.org] is certainly one of the games I have spent a lot of time in my life playing. I've always known I have access to the source, but I've never looked. I could have always uncovered every bit of the game, but I chose not to. Why?
Simple - it's hard to keep enjoyment unspoiled if you see the source. This is why game development feels like actual work and not like playing around - most of the people who make games don't play their creations nearly enough. They would simply not enjoy a game they know everything about, unless they weren't actually defining the gameplay itself.
Here's where it gets interesting: if you manage to separate tool development (engine, content converters, editors, ...) from content development (gameplay, levels, story, ...) you have a solid platform for open source game development. Coders have fun coding, but ALSO playing through the content put together by some artistic and creative minds on the other side of the team. Obviously, the core game engine itself wouldn't have to be freeware or even open source, it could be a commercial product and you just create art, scripts and objects...
Jouni
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Jouni Mannonen : 3D Evangelist @ SurRender3D.com [surrender3d.com]
Re:Half Art, half software? (Score:1)
So you know, I have read the complete works of Shakespeare, and have heard most of the great works of Johann Sebastian Bach. I am not trivializing their efforts. I am saying that they are not the only art.
Re:Day of the tentacle (Score:1)
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
At least they're being realistic (Score:2)
This would allow software publishers to make money, but allow the game to be improved by the standard "many-eyes" technique. Most of the criticisms of closed-source software come from the idea that we don't want programs which we can't modify or improve--not the pipe dream of getting programs for no money. To quote Heinlein, "TANSTAAFL."
Technically, I imagine that it would be very difficult to force people to buy a license to compile or run the code, if the source code itself is freely distributable. I'm sure that whatever protection scheme the distributor came up with, crackers would crack it. Then there's the problem that even if I can't run or compile Adobe Photoshop without a license, if the code is available, I can easily cut-and-paste large sections, thereby stealing Adobe's work.
But if we could indeed enforce this restriction, I think it would be wildly beneficial for the software community. All of the positive effects of Open Source software, without the huge drawback that it's horribly difficult to make money.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
I know word of mouth can be a powerful marketing mechinism, but even if I really love a game I'll have a hard time convincing most people I know to buy one if its text based, or has really crappy graphics. Everyone I know who is just a game player, and not nescessarily into computers otherwise, wants to see nice things on the screen.
"Now that's about it. There is NOTHING else in shops (at least here in the UK)."
Well I've also seen sports games, RTSs, strategdy games, there's more then 4 basic types that are cloned.
"In the nineties we witnessed a spectacular collapse of quality in the games industry with Civ being possibly the single exception."
I wouldn't say so, take a look at Warcraft 2, Starcraft, SimCity, Master's of Orion, Star Control 2, Half Life, Asheron's Call, to name a few. These have all been very cool games, totally drawing me into their gameplay, with the addition of having nice graphics and sound even. There is a lot of crap clones out there, but there's hardly been a collapse of good games.
Multiplayer (Score:1)
- Create a level playing field check where each player's game is scanned for "illegal" modifications. The problem with that is that onesomeone will always find away around something like that and that very few people, myself included, like having their system scanned.
- The game company releases a mostly closed source game for multiplayer purposes. The problem with that being, who wants to install two games at roughly half a gig each. Then again, I suppose they could share most of the same files, but I still think it isn't the most attractive option.
I honestly believe, that games are better off in a closed/open hybrid state. I think all the development tools should be open source, as well as some of the game code and art, but the developers should keep some of the truly unique things to themselves, atleast for a little while.
Re: Black and White will be open-source (Score:1)
I suppose it's a sort of legacy to Molyneux's/Bullfrog's history as they jump to consoles forever. I wonder how much it will cost to develop for an X-Box.........
Re:*chuckle* (Score:1)
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
Re:Did they say "Open Source" Enough? (Score:1)
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
Anyone remember Star Fleet II? (Score:2)
It was mostly text, with rudimentary CGI graphics for the planetary bombardment screen. It was buggy as hell, would often crash, etc.
But it had to be one of the funnest space conquest games ever. You attack starships (represented as little greek symbols on a text starscape), board and take prisoners, torture them for information ("The Prisoners will be tortured your Excellency, Hail Zagar!"). Upon successfully bombarding a planet into submission one would typically be given 50 slaves for the conquest. Particularly wanton acts of cruelty (slaying all of the prisoners after they surrendered for example) would be awarded with a medal for "wonton cruelty to the enemy" or some such.)
Sometimes it is just plain fun to be the bad guy *grin*. The game had:
Zero Artistic Merit.
Zero Social Merit.
A Minimal Storyline.
Mediocre Programming Quality (buggy as hell).
Despite this it wsa very playable, very addictive, unbelievably fun!
The problem. (Score:5)
I have yet to see an open source project that is not a clone or a close relative of something that already exists in the world. Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
Open source breeds innovation, not invention and in the world of game design this is death.
My current theory is that new ideas need alot of high-bandwidth discussions, i.e. face to face meetings, to hash out and transfer the idea from one brain to another. Open source projects rarely have this luxury and so perhaps are forced into pointing their efforts at a well understood problem.
Summary: I find it unlikely that an amazing open source game will emerge under the current community conditions.
Hotnutz.com [hotnutz.com] - Funny
Re:Canard (Score:1)
How? If the client could provide a zero knowledge proof that the data it was sending to the server was legitiamite, all is well, but that would be impossible (practically speaking). Encryption, OTOH, isn't helpful at all. The client knows everything that is getting encrypted and decrypted, and someone can easily hack/patch the client to dump a copy to a file. It'll prevent other people from altering the game, but that doesn't seem too useful.
Re:The problem. (Score:2)
There are plenty of creative people on the net. There are plenty of good coders on the net. The only trick is getting them to talk to one another. There are plenty of people who are good at getting people to talk to one another. I do not see how this task is impossible. It just takes some work.
Summary: I find it unlikely that an amazing open source game will emerge under the current community conditions.
I find the principle difficulty in making open source games is the public perception that it cannot be done. I don't understand why the open source philosophers have to make this mealy allowance. A secondary difficulty is that the open source development community is not providing the open source media creation tools necessary to creating games.
I have yet to see an open source project that is not a clone or a close relative of something that already exists in the world. Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
Look harder. Often we pay more attention to the familiar than the unfamiliar when it comes to amature works - a time travel game may pass you buy, but you'll take note of the clone of Myth, since you already know and like it.
And also accept that many commercial games are nothing more than clones of previous games. In fact, how many of the great games out there are basically the same gameplay style, but with different graphics or a different rendering technology?
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
I think that every RTS blizzard makes (Starcraft, Warcraft (have you heard much about Warcraft 3? should be good)) relies VERY heavily on non-code based design (call it art or not). Starcraft, for instance, is really quite simple to code. But it's not so easy to make a game where there's good gameplay balance and such.
Similar - all of the Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat games - I literally DID write a fighting game [penny-arcade.com] engine in about 10 days. It wasn't fun to play, but that wsa the fault of the character design (which I would have done better at had I had more time before the deadline!). Really, you could swap in new character design files, and it could be as fun as SF2.
Is the quake engine fun to play? No. Is Quake? Hell, yeah!
limited def. of art (Score:1)
secondly, perhaps the most pressing problem with making a game even partially open-source, in the case of online multi-player games, would of course be cheating. Given the ridiculous amount of cheating and patching required for games either pre- or post-SDK release (i.e. half-life (counterstrike), qIII, diablo (trainers) etc. etc.) releasing the "graphics engine" and other aspects to the public would only provide more ammunition for cheating attacks. Of course security on open source projects (linux) is often better than closed source counterparts (m$), but given the complexity of any security model for multiplayer games and the game software itself, in many ways the more obfuscated the game code the better.
not to stop mods though.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:1)
Let me point out that those three groundbreaking games (I'm with you all the way, particularly wrt The Incredible Machine) were not a glut of innovation all at once, but trickled out over the course of about 10 years.
People have always made crappy, imitative and crappily imitative games. Oddly, game development is NOT different from other creative endeavors - truly imaginitive work is rare but delightful.
Stop complaining and have a brilliant idea, instead.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:2)
Half-Life, Out Of This World, Full Throttle, Starcraft, are all examples of old gameplay, all fantastic games and exquisitely done.
Evolutionary/revolutionary, blah.
Re:The problem. (Score:1)
Re:Games? (Score:2)
I think this is the most rediculous statement I have heard on slashdot today. And I don't THINK it's meant as a troll even.
AND
To quote ESR (Score:3)
The software industry is a service industry masquerading as a manufacturing industry. OS works because people want to "scratch the itch." The problem is the game development is actually a true manufacturing industry not a service industry. Thats one reason why OS games haven't really become popular.
The other reason is of course the cheating issue. A GPL'd game has the source code easily available, it has to by law. So anyone can take that code an recompile it an allow themselves to cheat. This is especially bad in multiplayer. See quake for an example. The GPL and code availability means that lots of good efficient designs have to be discarded because they lack the necessary security. For instance Worldforge has to use an untrusted client and server side AI. It doesn't have a choice, despite the fact that trusted clients and distributed client-side AI would be more efficient.
As for a commentary of current projects. I like worldforge, but they seem to have lost sight of their goal of a MMPOG with all the effort they are putting into this pigs game they're making. However I think in the end they may at least move online roleplaying away from the godawful D&D model of RPGs.
Re:Games? (Score:2)
>Wrong.
This remains to be seen. If I'm wrong, great! Free games to play. >}:) But the outlook now is that we're going to end up with great game concepts, and great games engines, with crappy artwork.
>>...now a mature software area, and with today's hardware we're almost at the point where brute
>>forcing it will be a "good enough" programming strategy.
>Wrong. Copying graphics to the screen one pixel at a time will _always_ suck.
You're absolutely right. Which is why, with today's hardware, you make calls to the hardware drivers to blit for you. AKA "Brute force".
I'm sorry if you feel trolled, my point wasnt that Open Source couldn't produce good games engines. The basic math for games engines and 3d graphics has not really changed in 10 years, and is unlikely to (barring quantuum computers). My point was that, culturally, the OSS model is unlikely to infect the community of games-oriented artists: It's a different culture, with a different mindset.
Go ask an ambitious and talented Graphic Arts type if you can take his/her work and give it away for free, allowing anyone to copy and re-use it as they see fit. Observe the scowl you are most likely to get in reply.
:Michael
Re:this is more of what we need (Score:4)
REALLY??? Angband springs to mind as a game that benefited from OS development. Yes, there were some truly nice mods to Quake and Doom.
But,
Day of the Tentacle
Dungeon Keeper
Populous
Elite
X-com series
Civ series
billions of others
They were all very very very closed source. Games are imaginative. Committees don't have good imaginations. OS games generally suck unless they are simply feature-crammed implementations of tried and tested formulas.
Re:Open Art in Software and Independent Film (Score:2)
We are currently undergoing a renaissance in independent film making. I've seen some incredibly high quality films churned out by teams of talented volunteers.
Those high quality films are done by small, focused groups of people with a vision. Throwing lots of people at project isn't necessarily going to make it better. If anything, I would expect it to cause the project to lose focus. This is starting to become a real issue with big open source projects.
The vision issue is just as important. Right now, almost all Linux game projects are from coders who want to clone something, be it a current game or a relic. You would think that free tools, free libraries, and free documentation would open the door to creativity; "I have something 500x more powerful than an Apple II, so I can create whatever my mind desires, unlike those game designers who had to work within the limitations of an Apple II." But it isn't happening. We're not seeing anything creative. Browse through the Linux Game Tome if you want to be slapped in this face with this.
I hereby invoke the Roman Rule... (Score:3)
Or, in other words: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Cheers,
Daniel
Even harder than games.... (Score:2)
An even harder application area than games for Open Source to get into is tax software, such as TurboTax. That's because it's not so much about the software programming, as it is about having the legions of tax accountants and lawyers who need to keep up with the huge number of changes in the tax code every year. (Voted into law by our devoted public servants, who happen to be also lawyers...... :-)
So, there will always be a few areas where buying propietary software will make sense. I would much rather pay $19 for TurboTax than to spend several hours doing the taxes myself, or to pay several hundred dollars for a tax accountant to do it for me.
Applications as art (Score:2)
First, I am sure that everyone here knows how much work goes into usability and interface design, as most people here have some modicum of programming experience. One of my favorite web pages, AskTog [asktog.com], goes into great detail on the ins and outs of computer user interface design.
I know that many people would use the building/ architecture analogy-- mere building is not art, while architecture is. "Normal" applications, they say, are mere building, while games would be considered "architecture" due to their beauty.
Poppycock! Architecture is art not because it is beautiful, although one goal of the architect is indeed visual appeal. He goes about attaining that beauty, however through the use of some language-- a visual vocabulary-- to make some statement or invoke something in the imagination of the viewer. An example: Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye [greatbuildings.com] is a private residence, but its visual elements combine to evoke a steam ship cruising across the lot. That is what makes it art. Art is communication, not pretty colors or "photorealistic backgrounds." Art tells you something that the artist wanted you to hear.
It is my opinion that the true art lies in making complex operations decipherable by even the simplest users. A good GUI is a work of art. Reducing complex-looking physical phenomena to a few mathematical equations, such as Ohm's Law or Maxell's Equations, is art. Pretty pictures are just that. And nothing more. They convey no extra message to the viewer; they are merely eye candy.
Don't get me wrong; these new games are beautiful. The intense graphics do enhance play by making it easier to submerge yourself in the play-world presented. But there's more to art than pretty pictures.
Long-term benefits of open source code (Score:3)
I think that an open source environment for games has two potential benefits - firstly for allowing bugs to be quickly fixed, and secondly to allow the game to be enhanced and updated in reponse to user requests and ideas.
The first point has already been covered many times here on /. but it is the second that interests me the most. Whereas some games aren't in particular need of new features or concepts, others can hugely benefit - think strategy games like Civilisation or role playing games like Worldforge as mentioned by another poster.
The transition from Civ to Civ II was not one of a radical change in the core concept of the game - instead it was a tweaking of rules, adding new features and expanding player options. Having the source code for the game would mean that these additions could me made as and when people wanted them, making the game improve over time.
So for this sort of game, open source would offer both of these advantages and could allow a program to outlast the platform it was written on :)
---
Jon E. Erikson
Re:Half open-source (Score:2)
Nope. What I described was a collaboration between artists and programmers as a game development team - the team produces the game, and then the programmers make the source libre for the good of the game itself. And there's more than art out there - level design, for instance, or level scripting are all places where the programmers can help in the assembly of the game files themselves. The engine [linuxgames.com] should be open source, and the part that makes it the specific game that it is, the artistic components, stay the part that makes the money.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:2)
Create an abstract RPG engine which happens to fit your storyline nicely. GPL it.
Write your game as a set of datafiles for this engine. Release them as freeware.
That way, you have an engine which can be handled by the GPL and enhanced by the world as a whole, along with your game which the world as a whole can still use but which remains true to your vision as you retain copyright.
Re:I hereby invoke the Roman Rule... (Score:2)
Maybe you're having trouble counting, but I wasn't aware that many==one
Many of the games are not really modern-commercial-style as discussed
This presumes that this is a bad thing..I don't mind attractive graphics (which most of those games (aside from NetHack, which is too cool to need them
and probably the biggest challenge in making a game is not "doing it", but finishing it
Finishing it in what way? When is a program finished? Freeciv has been a perfectly respectable Civ clone for years, but has a VERY active development team and just recently released a major upgrade.
my point is limited to disagreement that they settle the question of whether OSS will produce commercial-style modern games
Oh, there will certainly be no "commercial-style" games, but they will certainly be modern. Nothing raises my hackles more than seeing these two equated, as though anything without a huge corporation behind it is the equivalent of living in an unpainted and unsanitary wooden shack.
Daniel
Art vs craftsmanship (Score:2)
These lines have blurred mainly through the use of the term architecture IMO. True architecture (the design of buildings) has a tone of art to it, because it can incorporate visual ideas and concepts into its functionality. While people talk of computer architecture and software architecture, the same sense of art really can't apply there. There's no way to express an idea through software code, other than through direct I/O implementing true visual, textual, or audio artwork.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Re:Open Source Game [Development] (Score:2)
I think the only real way to deal with losers is to not play with them. Technological solutions to the problem (including hidden source) are bandaid solutions.
Daniel
Hmmmm (Score:2)
The author has clearly not played Koules or Liquid Wars. Now, I'm not sure that there are "better", but they're certainly "different" -- in fact, I don't think I've seen games like them anywhere else. Both these games are free software. I believe this is a simple counterexample to the above assertion.
Daniel
Games? (Score:2)
Today's games are largely about the graphical arts, soundtrack, 'look & feel' and (sometimes) storyline. Games are now about art. And artists are, for the most part, a greedy and opportunistic breed.... no 'gift culture' for them, thank you very much.
I can imagine an Open Source games culture where artsy young wannbes would use a Free Software game as a springboard for their professional career... or do little one-shots to impress their friends (I'm thinking of the amiga demo culture of the 80s & 90s here). I could also imagine a world in which a number of cheap-but-decent Shareware games were produced for Linux (this model worked well on the Mac in the 90s actually).
But I cant see Open Source games going much further than that.
:Michael
I've been hoping for something like this (Score:2)
it seems like it would be a great fit. Open source engines companies could modify to fit their game, and share the source when the game comes out. Plenty of time to get your sales in before your competition could absorb your tech.
They would still have full copyright on all the models, sounds, maps, artwork... everything else.
It would seem to be a great benefit to the game companies, and everyone in general.
Imagine all the talent currently going into mods, instead going to a bunch of individual games, many probably free. I worked on a few mods people seemed to like, just because it was fun.
but, since I'm not a game developer, I don't know. Maybe it would just encourage more really crappy games. Maybe the open source model would discourage innovation since people could pump out a game without adding much to the engine code if they didn't want to.
Who can tell. But with the release of the sourcecode to golgotha, Quake, and now the Duke Nukem 3d Build engine, It's suprising noone has taken any of these projects to the next step.
________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"
More on this topic... (Score:2)
Re:Games? Artists greedy? (Score:2)
>no 'gift culture' for them, thank you very much.
Excuse me? I completely disagree, but I would be interested to know why you believe this.
As for a 'gift culture', exactly how many new, free levels and wads were there for Doom again? Half-life?
The man-hours that have gone into the "gift culture" of art quite possibly dwarf that of the entire open source movement. Perhaps you think that these people are different from the people who work commercially? I'll think you'll find a huge proportion of those commercial artists have poured hundreds, even thousands of hours into works they have distributed freely on the internet.
You should also note that there are a few fundamental differences in how (non-code) artistic works are created. I suspect that you have misinterpreted some of the repercussions of these in forming your opinion. For example, open source code often results in something better. Open source art usually results in worthless crap. I could explain why, but it would take a while and this is just an example. Consider that things done differently != things done for inferior motives.
(NB, for the record, I consider fine coding to be an art, however I have maintained a distinction between code and art in this post to avoid confusion).
Freedom software innovations still to be completed (Score:2)
First, we need an impulsive way for artists to contribute graphics to a project. To say artists won't release their work for free is folly; I've been following a number of Quake texture sites around, looking for stuff that could be used in the version of my game that is cost-free and comes with the level editor.
I propose that something like CVS for artists is created. This would have a very simple web interface (because we want a large audience), and it would have the ability to let artists upload images. These images would go into a queue which would be checked by people in the project, and would either be put into the rejected folder (with a reason attached, hopefully), or accepted into the game project.
This would be useful to track ownership of art back to the person. Perhaps in a larger system, something like the slashdot system could be implemented.
My second innovation is game-evolution. It would be possible to have a client/server type system for an RPG where the storyline unfolds based on data sent from the server, whether it be in-game scripting or dialog. This dialog would be rewritten from time to time by the programmers, and the storyline would change- perhaps on player's input, or be added to. People would use the open source client to connect to this server, which could charge on a per-service basis.
I don't like the idea of converting something that works fine into something client/server so you can charge for it on a per-use basis, but it does deem interesting to me to have value added options.
Best Gameplay (Score:2)
Open Art in Software and Independent Film (Score:3)
From the article:
It's difficult to imagine how Open Source developers could match the speed, quality and quantity that the commercial gaming industry gives us each year. It would be like trying to film Star Wars with your friends on weekends.
Difficult, but not impossible. If an open source game project were to collect a large enough following of programmers and artists, it could 'pull a linux' on the game industry. It will take time to build that sort of following, but I am beginning to see it happen with several projects.
As for 'open art', I can see one big reason that a musician or graphic artist might donate their efforts to an open game project: exposure. Art is a competitive field. Getting your name out there by showcasing your art on a popular game could really advance one's career. The same could be said about the 'weekend Star Wars' comment. We are currently undergoing a renaissance in independent film making. I've seen some incredibly high quality films churned out by teams of talented volunteers. The lower cost of newer digital video technologies even allows for some amazingly good special effects. If the game industry falls into the pattern of Hollywood and begins churning out the same old big budget crap, look forward to the independent, volunteer game developers to pick up the flag.
Lets face it, video games are a type of art, and art is something that comes from individuals (sometimes working with other individuals), not faceless corporations. I see no reason why a properly motivated team of volunteer artists and programmers cannot produce a 'professional' level game. Time will tell I guess.
Thad
I see no reason to make a game open-source (Score:2)
Sure, there are some sections of games which might--and this is a big might--have applications in "real" software. For example, someone who designes a new 3D engines or AI module might have legitimate cause to let people review it. But let's face it--how much can anyone really learn from Heroes of Might and Magic III--and how important is it to submit it to endless peer review to get the bugs out? The worst thing a bug is generally going to do is destroy your saved game, and even though it might feel like it, that isn't the end of the world.
There are three main reasons that people write code: 1) To make money; 2) To show off or impress or entertain people; and 3) To make the world a better place. Writing an operating system, or a tool, can include all three, hence open-sourcing. But those who write games are not generally concerned about making the world a better place. They want to look cool and make money.
In conclusion, if Microsoft opened Windows 2000, but left Minesweeper in binary form, I would have no complaints.
Research (Score:2)
Most academics aren't making games, though. And meetings certainly do help! So you're partially on the right track, IMO.
Open Arts & Crafts Highly Unlikely (Score:2)
Further, let me say at the outset that OSS provides and has provided a large set of tools of enormous value to game developers. The technical side of game design is far easier today than once it was. The publication by leading lights of their technical works (which happened only under the covers in the old days) has helped to improve the state of the art greatly.
However, that being said, let me make this remark: a great game is not a pretty game; a pretty game is not a great game. A highly technical game need not be pretty or great; and vice vice versa. What is more, it is naive to believe that there is any clear division between the "art" of game design and the "pure tech" of game execution. (let alone the "art" and "pure tech" of the art).
A great game, unlike many great things, is not something that lends itself well to specification; and is particularly not something that lends itself well to production by independent actors. There is often a time when you know you are "just hacking," and you know you are "just making shit up to be fun," but it is not a readily engineerable task. The subtlest change can make a useless game great and a great game useless -- and it may have nothing or everything to do with design -- and it may have nothing or everything to do with hackery.
In short, game design, like movies, theatre and most purely artistic efforts, can be the result of collaborating artists and technicians, but to be great requires a central focused vision articulated and enforced by one or a very small community of brilliant folks. Like a director for a theatrical production, there will be much reliance on the purely artistic contributions of others and the purely technical contributions of others -- but the greatness comes from the gestalt.
The Masterplay occurs as the result of technical excellence, so perfectly and cunningly crafted as to transcend to an art. Such excellence does not happen by accident, or by consensus; at least in my experience.
Open Source Gamery may well be possible, but like Harvard Berkman Center's "Open Law" efforts, is really a different paradigm sucking up a popular term.
Yes, we will have Open Source games as we understand them, but they are unlikely to be truly great. In time, there will be collaborative game design environments, perhaps that call themselves Open Source -- but that doesn't mean anything really.
Great games will not come from consensus. Killer shoot-em-ups certainly can -- and some may be truly pretty and truly beautiful. But me-too is me-too. What will stun us is the truly surprising. the different. the great.
That will come from a small, focused group, IMHO; and not by consensus.
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:2)
Sure, if geeks want geek games, the way to do it is opensource (geeks writing their own games). But don't confuse the larger games industry with the tiny fragment which Slashdot sees.
To answer your question "Why is this market not being exploited" the answer is simple: the market is MINISCULE. Go ahead and exploit it yourself; you won't make any money - and (oddly) money is all the Sony's of this world care about.
I won't even take the suggestion seriously that we should fire half the games industry. That runs counter to my Marxist tendencies ;)
Of course, this doesn't alter the fact that 80% of video games are crap ... but 80% of ANYTHING is crap. It's a natural law.
Re:Games? (Score:2)
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
Re:Unfortunately true (Score:3)
Day of the tentacle (Score:2)
I used to be an adventure-game fan, and one of my all-time favorite is Day of the Tentacle. This is one of the best example that prove art does make the game - both visual art and the story.
For all this time since DOTT came till now, with all the neat 3D engines and all, I never saw any game (yet alone, adventure game) that reached the same level of enjoyability.
This is the ultimate proof for me that art does make the game.
Open Source Game [Development] (Score:2)