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PC Games (Games) Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

Jagged Alliance 2 Source Code Released 26

Posted by CowboyNeal from the code-wants-to-be-free dept.
kovi writes "You might remember that game - it was ported to Linux a while ago (by Tribsoft) and is one of the 'overall top sellers' at Tux Games. Well, according to this press release from Strategy First, the newest mod for JA2, 'Wildfire,' will include full source code of the original retail release! It might not be the biggest news, and it might not even matter, but it is not very frequent in the gaming industry that source code gets released." No word on what's included with the source release, but the game's been out for a week now, so likely someone with a copy knows more. S! Apparently, the Bear's Pit Forums are discussing the code as we speak, including why shooting cows is bad.
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Jagged Alliance 2 Source Code Released More

Jagged Alliance 2 Source Code Released

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  • Licencing Agreement? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What sort of licence does the source code come with? I can't imagine them wanting other companies to steal their work, so what measures have they put in place to stop other people profiting from this?

    • Re:Licencing Agreement? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Professor Cool Linux ( 759581 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @07:28AM (#8577084) Homepage
      The following is the text of the licence agreement:

      This Strategy First Inc. Source Code License Agreement ("SFI-SCLA") forms a legal agreement between you and Strategy First Inc. ("Strategy First") for the source code, related materials, or related documentation (together, the "Software").

      By using this Software you agree to be bound by the terms of this SFI-SCLA. Do not install, copy, or use the Software if you do not agree to the terms of this License Agreement. The Software is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and Strategy First is licensing the Software, not selling it.

      YOUR RIGHTS:

      You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the conditions of this License. Non-commercial purposes include, but are not limited to, teaching, research, public demos and your own experimentation. You may distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites that are intended to teach the use of the Software for academic or other non-commercial purposes. You may not use or distribute this Software, or any works that derive from it, in any form for commercial purposes. Commercial purposes include, but are not limited to, running a business, licensing, renting, or selling the Software, distributing the Software for use with any commercial products, or any other activity which purpose is to procure a profit or gain to you or others. This Software includes source code or data, and you may modify such portions of the Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes, as provided in this Licensing Agreement.

      This Licensing Agreement does not grant you a license to any of Strategy First's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using any of the information included in the Software.

      In return, you agree:

      1. That you will not remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.

      2. That if any of the Software is in binary format, you will not attempt to modify such portions of the Software, or to reverse engineer or decompile them, except and only to the extent authorized by law.

      3. That if you distribute the Software or any derivative works of the Software, you will distribute them using a verbatim copy of this License, and you will not grant any
      rights to the Software or derivative works that are broader than those provided by this Licensing Agreement. For example, you may not distribute any modifications of the Software under terms that would permit commercial use, or under terms that require the Software or such derivative works to be sublicensed to others.

      4. That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry
      prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.

      5. That Strategy First is granted, without any limitations, and on a royalty free basis, the rights to reproduce, install, use, modify, distribute and transfer your modifications to the Software source code or data.

      6. That any feedback about the Software provided by you to us is voluntarily given, and Strategy First shall be free to use the feedback as it sees fit without obligation or
      restriction of any kind, even if the feedback is designated by you as confidential.

      7. THAT THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTIES. THIS MEANS NO EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ANY WARRANTY AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE SOFTWARE OR ANY WARRANTY OF TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. THERE IS NO WARRANTY THAT THIS SOFTWARE WILL FULFILL ANY OF YOUR PARTICULAR PURPOSES OR NEEDS. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS DISCLAIMER ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.

      8. THAT N
    • Standard copyright law stops others from using the code, in the absence of the license specifically granting that, so there's no need for additional measures.
    • "You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose"

      Does that clear it up?

  • Good News probably (Score:3, Interesting)

    by root 66 ( 72128 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @07:41AM (#8577121)
    JA2 was a gorgeous game. I would love to see the development of a multiplayer mode; that would definitely be a lot of fun.

    • Re:Good News probably (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mechanik ( 104328 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @09:15AM (#8577688) Homepage
      JA2 was a gorgeous game. I would love to see the development of a multiplayer mode; that would definitely be a lot of fun.

      Definitely. Turn based multiplayer would even out the lag and twitchy reflex factors. Then the game would be about strategy and tactics, not pixel perfect aiming with your mouse, nor how many FPS you can get out of your video card, nor how low you can get your ping to the server.

      And hell, while we're at it, you could definitely combat cheating with this too. Since combat is not realtime, you would not have to offload very much processing to the client. Shooting your enemies becomes a matter of sending a "I want to shoot at the guy on my left. Server, please calculate my to-hit roll and tell me if I hit him," request, rather then "Server, please fire bullet along vector (x,y,z) which has conveniently been generated by my aimbot."

      Ahhh... a more cheat free game... tell me that's not attractive.


      Mechanik
    • It's funny you mention multiplayer... the development of JA2 originally had multiplayer code, and the remnants are all over the place. I'm currently volunteered as the "network researcher" at Bear's Pit Forum. We're missing a few headers that weren't part of the source, but someone is already contacting StrategyFirst about it.

  • Yay Turn-Based Strategy Games! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @08:21AM (#8577356)
    While Real Time Strategy games may be the more popular of the two, I think people should pick up the game just to see how the strategy genre would be if things had gone differently. Turn based strategy games are also more newbie friendly since players can take the time to look at all his/her options without being rushed (in both ways).

    Besides its only $20, some people spend more than $20 on food a day.

    • Re:Yay Turn-Based Strategy Games! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mahdi13 ( 660205 ) <icarus.lnx@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @09:34AM (#8577798) Journal
      I enjoy turn based statagy games a lot. In Fallout Tactics it has the option for real-time or turn-based, I always play the turn based which makes managing 6 solders much easier then trying to do 6 things at once.
      NOT being turned based is what completely ruined Baulders Gate for me. It is a great game, but I can not manage 6 charactores doing 6 different things at once (telling you fighters to pull back as the mage is casting a fireball and the archers to target something else...all at once!)

      And I still love the Heroes of Might and Magic games due to the turn based gameplay.

      • Re:Yay Turn-Based Strategy Games! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        NOT being turned based is what completely ruined Baulders Gate for me. It is a great game, but I can not manage 6 charactores doing 6 different things at once (telling you fighters to pull back as the mage is casting a fireball and the archers to target something else...all at once!)
        did you know you could pause the game at any time, and then give your people commands? you could also choose to automaticly pause every turn, which would make the game play pretty much turn based
    • yes, some people spend $20+ on food a day, but i spend around $8. should i buy the game, because those people, who have lots of money? ;)

      JA2 was pretty ok, nothing spectacular. imho laser squad was superior. i recently bought silent storm, which is also much better than JA2, and also cost me around 20e. should i buy a so-so JA2 while i can have silent storm? buying old and average games for what? supporting linux and games? uh... they'll have to do better than that to get my interest.

  • So what's needed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @09:41AM (#8577844)
    What do you need to get the game up and running?
    Can people distribute this code?
    Will I need to buy the original to get the data files (artwork + level maps)?

  • Jagged Alliance 2 (Score:1, Redundant)

    by lehyeong ( 569596 )
    Jagged Alliance 2 is a iso-metric view tactical squad based strategy game with some RPG elements along the lines of X-Com UFO: Defense and Laser Squad but with an off-beat personality. It's got a vast array of weapons, some deep gameplay, great voice work and a wicked sense of humour. The AI isn't great, but it's definitely worth a look especially if you enjoyed X-Com.

  • OH MY GOD! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @05:59PM (#8583537) Journal
    This is *fucking* amazing.

    JA2 is a phenomenal game. It's absolutely *fantastic*.

    JA2 is also one of the few games that has had a Linux port.

    If you'll look here [happypenguin.org], you'll notice a snapshot into the kind of problems that Linux people have had trying to keep the ported binary running on modern systems. Linux binary compatibility cross-distro and over time is not exceptional, and this source release means that Linux folks can continue to patch and play JA2 without problems well into the future.

    I'd like to give Strategy First a big thumbs up for this -- if I hadn't already purchased JA2, I'd do so again.

    Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the source release does not include the Tribsoft source for the Linux port, which means that this stuff may need to be ported again to run on Linux (but when it does, it means that Linux gamers can play the Wildfire release as well). I hope this doesn't mean that Tribsoft makes even less money from their port -- as Linux gamers already didn't give them very many sales.

  • Estimates to really start improving on JA2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ReyTFox ( 676839 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2004 @07:27PM (#8584331)
    Run to two years. That's to clean everything up, add portability, and externalize all the gameplay-related code, which is unfortunately heavily spread around throughout the source(written in C, not C++), so that modmaking becomes a viable option.

    I suspect that it would probably be easier to integrate an interpreter(such as Python or Lua) and start converting the gameplay to that, though regardless it will be quite a mammoth task to refactor the project :P
  • cvs -z3 -d:pserver:cvsanon@207.192.154.134:/home/cvs co login
    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:cvsanon@207.192.154.134:/home/cvs co ja2-src

    At the moment they need people experienced with DirectX and I guess someone would be interested in porting the whole thing to Linux / BSD.

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