Physics Platformer Gish Goes Open Source 58
An anonymous reader writes "After announcing plans to go open source due to the success of the Humble Indie Bundle, developer Cryptic Sea has released the source code of 2-D platformer Gish under the GPLv2. There's a mirror on github."
Re:Oil spill... (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what other indie game resembles an oil spill? [worldofgoo.com]
Humble Indie Bundle (Score:5, Insightful)
The link to the Humble Indie Bundle in this slashdot post linked to another slashdot post wherein that link to the Humble Indie Bundle linked to yet another slashdot post which finally contained the real link to the info on the Humble Indie Bundle.
We all hate it when we have to jump through multiple hoops (articles separated into an inane number of pages, exit pages/frames, etc.) in the name of reader retention when it's done by other websites. When slashdot does it, it's just as bad.
Re:Quality code (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares how bad the code is? The game got finished. It's playable and it's fun. The end user doesn't give a toss how many magic numbers there are
I think there comes a point in any project where you have a choice between "Make my code pretty and perfect" and "Get this fucking thing finished". This guy obviously chose the latter. Fair play to him. Also, the coding being vile gives the FOSS community something to do, if you think about it.
Re:Quality code (Score:3, Insightful)
Games aren't the same as any other 'nontrivial software project' (and yes thank you, I have)
Games change continually through production. Business software can do this also (changing requirements and whatnot) but nowhere near to the extent of games. Because games have to be fun. Other applications don't. What this means is that sometimes 'something has gotta give'. You cannot have a codebase that is constantly in flux and 'down with' the concept of the game and a beautiful perfectly structured codebase. The two things are diametrically opposed concepts.
I'm not explicitly stating that a horrible codebase = more likely to finish on time. I'm saying not fixating on codebase quality when your end product is a constantly moving target = more likely to finish at all