StarCraft Is Now Free, Nearly 20 Years After Its Release (techcrunch.com) 239
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Nearly two decades after its 1998 release, StarCraft is now free. Legally! Blizzard has just released the original game -- plus the Brood War expansion -- for free for both PC and Mac. You can find it here. Up until a few weeks ago, getting the game with its expansion would've cost $10-15 bucks. The company says they've also used this opportunity to improve the game's anti-cheat system, add "improved compatibility" with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and fix a few long lasting bugs. So why now? The company is about to release a remastered version of the game in just a few months, its graphics/audio overhauled for modern systems. Once that version hits, the original will probably look a bit ancient by comparison -- so they might as well use it to win over a few new fans, right?
20 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And then she will be doing them again soon. ;)
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It seems you're also getting Alzheimer's.
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I never started to play it. That's a game for intelligent people. I played Quake. .. and no.
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Jerking off the succubus picture in the DnD player's guide counts.
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I found competitors early on and Marine rushed Protus taking out all of their mining units before they had a single anything else. That was fun.
Also I loved going up against tanks. Find a group of tanks together and send a sacrificial peon up as close as you could get it to one of the tanks, then attack at pont blank range. All of the surrounding tanks will attack your peon destroying one of their own in the process and maybe doing damage to others.
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Not the right game, but this pro tip is still appropriate [penny-arcade.com].
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So what? Forty means nothing. You're still in the six digits range.
For OSX? (Score:2)
I have the original SC for Mac and it's an OS9 PPC program and doesn't run on OS X (anymore, they did away with Classic mode after 10.4).
I'd love to see them make an emulator or compilation for Intel OS X.
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If you want an emulator, why not just emulate the windows version? What's the difference?
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I'd love to see them make an emulator or compilation for Intel OS X.
Seems you got your wish.
Yaz
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I have the original SC for Mac and it's an OS9 PPC program and doesn't run on OS X (anymore, they did away with Classic mode after 10.4).
10.6 I believe. I keep my first Intel Mac around running that just so I can play, er, run old PowerPC software (Like SMACX).
Finally, I can play it! (Score:2)
Seriously I have never even played it. It came out after I had already reached peak gaming in my lifetime.
I'm installing it now and will soon see what all the fuss is about.
I feel like this guy [xkcd.com] except I'm on a nearly 20 year lag.
I suppose I'll get around to Half Life 2 by the time I start drawing Social Security
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Too little strategy, too much fast clicking. Each race has one or two strategies which actually work and you follow them and whoever is fastest with a mouse wins. But some people seem to need more stress in their lives.
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It's still fun for the first few hours until you discover those problems, though.
Or at least, it was at the time. Perhaps that's nostalgia and it won't actually hold up against today's gaming standards.
On the other hand, if I recall correctly it wasn't an ad-filled, pay-to-play, Internet connection required, DLC-laden product whose primary design consideration was how to squeeze every last cent out of your bank account by careful tuning to human addictive tendencies.
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Hope you have fun. I never played online or in matches with people, just went through the single-player campaign, and I enjoyed that thoroughly. I'm just realizing it's been more than a decade since I last played, so now might be a good time to give it another shot.
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I'm that guy.
I have to work for a living and I game on Linux. By the time a Linux port comes out and I actually have time to play it....
Yep, I beat Portal for the first time about October of last year.
My first taste of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Score:2)
Starcraft gave me my first taste of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Every day 8 hours CAD, 10 hours Starcraft. Hurt like a bitch after a few months. I had to give up the Starcraft for about 3 months and mouse left handed at work.
This is great but... (Score:2)
I'll wait for the Linux port. ;)
Not for PC, though (Score:2)
The PC link is broken - it only leads to a Windows .exe file, so it won't run on my PC. Yeah, alright, I'm trying to be unreasonable here, but it would be nice if at least those who are supposedly in the know (one would hope this includes the editors of /.) when it comes to computers and technology, would stop equating PC (=the hardware platform) with Windows (the OS, for lack of a better word), since there are things out there that definitely are PCs which do not run Windows.
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The PC link is broken - it only leads to a Windows .exe file, so it won't run on my PC. Yeah, alright, I'm trying to be unreasonable here,
And you succeeded brilliantly. Congratulations?
One might wonder if it will work under Wine. Have you tried?
Re:Not for PC, though (Score:4, Funny)
But the questions remain... (Score:2)
Have I enough minerals?
Must I construct additional pylons?
And what about supply depots, are additional supply depots required?
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Still an Evil Company (Score:2)
After Blizzard attacked the bnetd developers, I swore I would never buy, or even play, another Blizzard game. At that point, Blizzard became an evil company.
That still stands.
I won't even entertain the notion of putting one byte of Blizzard code on my system.
Local LAN play? (Score:2)
What about local LAN play? Blizzard ruined the entire franchise for me when they took away local play options.
I realize it's hard for a lot of people to imagine now-a-days, especially Blizzard management, but there are in fact several scenarios where not having to route through the internet is beneficial, if not a requirement.
Broken (Score:2)
I tried installing it twice after following the recommendations on the forums and all I get is:
"This application encountered an unexpected error" with a mysterious error code.
Reading through the mysterious failures to work and the various things that patch 1.18 breaks on the forum is depressing.
Ancient by comparison (Score:2)
The new graphics aren't making the original look "ancient by comparison." It looks a little better, but it's really not a huge difference. There's a Blizzard trailer with comparisons.
Re: Release it with source code unde GPL (Score:2, Informative)
Why? They are still planning on using portions of the code for the updated version, plus they are under no obligation to do so. They've already given away the game for free. Asking for the source now, just after they've released it for free, is pushing an agenda too far. Calm your crusade for a few hours, at least. Sheesh.
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GPL can never create proprietary apps/games (Score:2)
To create a proprietary version the original copyright holder has to dual license. Have two copies of their source code, one under GPL and one under something proprietary compatible. Only binaries built from the non-GPL version of
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No. You can not GPL your own code and make proprietary binaries.
Of course you can. It's still your code, you still choose how to distribute it and if you produce proprietary binaries, you don't have to release those under the GPL.
To create a proprietary version the original copyright holder has to dual license. Have two copies of their source code, one under GPL and one under something proprietary compatible. Only binaries built from the non-GPL version of the source code can remain proprietary.
So you agree with me, and with the person to whom you replied, even though this contradicts your earlier statement.
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No. A single code base can be shared under GPL and published in binary form under a different licence.
The non-GPL is an entirely separate work.
It can be built from the same code base. The GPL does not prevent this, where the code is owned by the person creating the non-GPL licenced version.
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where you run into trouble:
create app, version FOO licence under GPL && proprietary licence.
modify app, version BAR, no issue with either licence.
someone puts a patch against BAR in the GPL version out on GitHub (or anywhere else).
BAR + patch is version BAZ.
Unless you get permission from the patch creator you can't pull BAZ back into your proprietary trunk.
You can make BAZ not part of your GPL tree, just to keep the two versions consistent, but then you're letting potentially cool features go unused
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and actual use case for dual licence needing to be consistent: (each line is a release step)
FOO - proprietary only sell for $$
BAR - proprietary only sell for $$; FOO converts to GPL
BAZ patch shows up, creator ignores?
BIN - proprietary only sell for $$; BAR converts to GPL
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Ignoring submitted patches leaves you in no worse a position than choosing not to GPL in the first place, so there's still a community benefit.
You can also invite the submitter to hand over copyright (remunerated or otherwise) and incorporate into the non-GPL releases.
But yes, if you want to maintain and build a dual-licenced codebase you have extra work to do.
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If you license the free version under MIT/BSD, then derivatives can have additional requirements (e.g. derivatives could be made proprietary by someone else), so
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The copyright holder doesn't have to agree to the licence to get rights to modify and redistribute their own code, because they already have these rights anyway. (Even if they did, however, it still wouldn't be a problem, because only the copyright holde
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> You can not GPL your own code and make proprietary binaries.
Yes you can, it's call dual licensing.
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The GPL enforces freedom, while MIT/BSD licenses do not.
I've often used the term "careless licenses" to describe MIT and BSD, because the authors of software under such licenses don't care how it's used. With the GPL, in contrast, they are requiring that you keep derivatives open-source as well.
That is the main freedom the GPL is concerned about: the freedom to view, modify, and use the source code for the software you run. Not only does the GPL require the author to release source code, but it requires red
Re: Release it with source code unde GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL's negative effect on freedom
Nope. The government stepping in and putting you in jail for lynching undesireables is a "negative effect on freedom" but is still a net gain in freedom. "Forcing" freedom is still more freedom than anarchy. In practice, anarchy quickly becomes a warlord system. So GPL, forcing those who use it to remain open isn't a negative effect on freedom.
Unless you think that putting a mass murderer in prison is a negative effect on freedom.
Re: Release it with source code unde GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the GPL "requires" people to do so many things means that it's taking away freedom.
Whose freedom? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service providers? You can't guarantee 100% freedom to each of them simultaneously. They are incompatible. For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g modifying the program). So, it makes no sense simply to state that a license "reduces freedom in general". So, let's please stop saying imprecisely wrong things like "GPL code doesn't give me freedom because it puts restrictions on the way I can redistribute it". The GPL has always been about protecting the freedoms of the end-users at all cost, not the the vendors' freedoms.
Re: Release it with source code unde GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet it is the most popular open-source license by far, and has given us the infrastructure for the entire internet, powered some of the biggest supercomputers ever built which are helping to solve the mysteries of the universe and so on and so forth.
The BSD systems, even after release, and despite being arguably better in some technical measures never achieved such an impact on the world, their biggest achievement was having MacOSX based on FreeBSD. Sure the GPL precluded what apple did there - and that was why apple chose FreeBSD - but the BSD Licenses failed to build an open internet for the masses or an OS that runs most of it's servers (and a growing number of desktops and virtually all of it's mobile devices).
The GPL succeeded where the BSD licenses failed exactly because it understood that to make society, overall, more free you must REDUCE the freedom of the few in favour of the freedom of the many. Because when you do not, the few will use their freedom to remove freedom from the many - they will BECOME tyrants.
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It's been studied repeatedly - there are simply far more open source projects under the GPL-family of licenses than any other license. That implies it is chosen by more free/open source developers than any other license - which makes it the most popular.
You could argue that something like the apache license is used on projects more people use than many GPL projects - but it's used on far fewer projects, so it's definitely less popular with developers. There are specific niches where the GPL lacks popularity
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It's been studied repeatedly
So where's your cites to any of these studies?
there are simply far more open source projects under the GPL-family of licenses than any other license. That implies it is chosen by more free/open source developers than any other license - which makes it the most popular.
Oh really [github.com]?
1 MIT 44.69%
2 Other 15.68%
3 GPLv2 12.96%
4 Apache 11.19%
5 GPLv3 8.88%
6 BSD 3-clause 4.53%
7 Unlicense 1.87%
8 BSD 2-clause 1.70%
9 LGPLv3 1.30%
10 AGPLv3 1.05%
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http://redmonk.com/sogrady/201... [redmonk.com]
The very first link if you google it, is to the most comprehensive study that exists - and the most up to date data. And it clearly shows that the GPL2 is still by far the most popular license with GPL3 in second place - combined they cover a full 37% of all projects by themselves -the remaining 63% divided among ALL OTHER licenses - including the other GNU copyleft licences like the AGPL.
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The very first link if you google it,
The first link I found when I googled [google.com] it was the one I posted. It also contradicts your study.
is to the most comprehensive study that exists
By what metric? And I've never heard of "Black Duck", but everybody knows about GitHub.
and the most up to date data
The GitHub study was from March 2015, the Black Duck study from November 2014.
And it clearly shows that the GPL2 is still by far the most popular license with GPL3 in second place
But not in the GitHub study, and more importantly, there's a point of agreement that you brazenly try to spin in your favor:
combined they cover a full 37% of all projects by themselves -the remaining 63% divided among ALL OTHER licenses - including the other GNU copyleft licences like the AGPL
Yeah, that's your spin. The real story is that, collectively, the permissive licenses (BSD, Apache, and MIT) outnumber the GPL va
Re: Release it with source code unde GPL (Score:2)
Dude... stop advertising your lack of experience. 90% or more of active FOSS projects were founded before github ever existed - mostly decades before. Github represents such a tiny sample size its ridiculous to extrapolate from it. All the latesr sexy projects are there - but thats useless for this question. And we who have experience in FOSS have known black duck for decades
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Dude... stop advertising your lack of experience.
And stop advertising your disregard for facts.
90% or more of active FOSS projects were founded before github ever existed - mostly decades before.
Oh look, another unsubstantiated claim from you. New projects are being created all the time. And even many old projects have moved to GitHub.
Github represents such a tiny sample size its ridiculous to extrapolate from it.
I didn't find the number of projects for either study, so this is another unsubstantiated claim on your part. However, I can substantiate a simple Google metric:
Search results [google.com] for "github" "software": About 50,200,000 results
Search results [google.com] for "black duck" "software": About 286,000 results
All the latesr sexy projects are there - but thats useless for this question.
Maybe you should stop living in t
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it would say NOTHING about my actual claim
Tired of embarrassing yourself, so posting as Anonymous Coward now?
that the GPL built the infrastructure for the open internet
Oh, you mean like Apache, OpenSSL, and the BSD network stack?
And the claim [slashdot.org] that I was responding to was this: "It's been studied repeatedly - there are simply far more open source projects under the GPL-family of licenses than any other license. That implies it is chosen by more free/open source developers than any other license - which makes it the most popular."
And even your own study, the one that shows GPL in the best light, proved you w
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Allowing people freedom requires preventing people from restricting others' freedom. Countries have laws, and they are often long. We can't accurately compare the freedom of countries by comparing how long their laws are.
Besides, much of the GPL (aside f
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Sean Spicer seems to think we can - remember he told us Ryandontcare was better because it was shorter.
And it WAS better, if you're a billionaire, for everybody else it was basically getting raped and being told they charge extra if you want lube.
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Seriously, just do the world a favour and kill yourself.
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Sometimes, to secure the freedom of the many, you have to somewhat reduce the freedom of the few. The GPL secures the freedom of users (the many), to do so, it must somewhat reduce the freedom of programmers (the few).
This is not tyranny, this is freedom - when you increase the favour of the few at the expense of the many, that is tyranny (and why libertarianism in all it's forms is tyranical).
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Bullshit. The GPL is about freedom; the difference is that it treats freedom as a positive right [wikipedia.org] while things like the BSD license treat it as a negative right.
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It is illegal to dissasemble and modify freeware, so GPL software is not worse there.
Yes you can. If you don't modify it, you can simply copy the offer that was handed to you as your user right. (GPLv3, section 6c). Please don't spread misinformation. (Section 6c
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As has been already described above, the freedom that the GPL offers is that the amount of freedom that anyone has is never reduced... you suggest that you can make a non-free version without reducing the freeom because you allege that the free version is available somewhere... but what if you either already own or buy out the infrastructure that was being used to distribute it? You didn't own the original copyright, but if you control the communication infrastructure by which the author provided it to
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> like how StarCraft developers dis-obeyed Microsoft orders to not release on NT 4 because it was a serious Operating System.
You wouldn't happen to have a source for that by chance? Thanks.
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From a quick google search: http://kotaku.com/5942128/star... [kotaku.com]
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GPL would normally only cover the source. But right now the whole thing is freeware. I remember when Quake 1 when GPL, but we were still not allowed to include assets outside of the shareware release. It took a long time for decent total conversions to come out, and we realized that just having the source to a game didn't really mean as much as we had assumed.
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On an unrelated note, the source code will probably be a good educational tool for people trying to study video game programming.
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There are lots of books on video game programming. And GP Gems has an article on how Starcraft-like RTSs work.
Re:Free still means freedom to some of us (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Free still means freedom to some of us (Score:2)
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It's actually a perfectly accurate analogy. Getting the recipe ALLOWS you to make your own beer, it doesn't REQUIRE you to do so.
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Funny.
I was around before you and that "Free" with a capital-F shite was either done in jest or not taken seriously for years.
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I found this headline confusing
Don't worry, we understand Stallman. You'll get used to the common usage of the word eventually.
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I found this headline confusing, because when I started out here on Slashdot many of us used "free" to mean "available under a license that preserves your freedom to view source code, modify, and redistribute for any purpose" rather than merely "gratis."
Well, no. Free still means both gratis and libre. When the word appears at the beginning of a sentence like that, it's difficult to tell which meaning is intended, because the opportunity to capitalize it for emphasis vanishes. You don't get to define the word for the world, and it would be stupid if we were to use the word so differently from everyone else. That would isolate us and make us even less relatable.
"Free Software" means what you want free to mean, but only among nerds. "Free" can mean a lot of
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I found this headline confusing, because when I started out here on Slashdot many of us used "free" to mean "available under a license that preserves your freedom to view source code, modify, and redistribute for any purpose" rather than merely "gratis."
Well, no. Free still means both gratis and libre. When the word appears at the beginning of a sentence like that, it's difficult to tell which meaning is intended, because the opportunity to capitalize it for emphasis vanishes. You don't get to define the word for the world, and it would be stupid if we were to use the word so differently from everyone else. That would isolate us and make us even less relatable.
"Free Software" means what you want free to mean, but only among nerds. "Free" can mean a lot of things. One of them is libre, and you will find very few takers for changing that, because it would be dumb.
Well, I didn't argue that the word has only one correct definition, and I certainly agree that many of us including myself aren't very relatable, and those of us who use/used "free" to mean "libre" are certainly less so.
Everything I said is a statement of fact: some, but not all of us, back in the day used to use "free software" to mean something specific, and I got confused when I saw this headline because I briefly thought that's what it meant. Times sure have changed here if I'm the only one that's true
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The label was created at a strategy session of the community that already existed.
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The âoeopen sourceâ label was created at a strategy session held on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, California, shortly after the announcement of the release of the Netscape source code.
No, that is a lie [hyperlogos.org], and you should not repeat it.
Re:Free still means freedom to some of us (Score:4, Funny)
there is
There are
at least 40 definitions for the word free
"free"
in the dictionary,
dictionary.
its
It's
no one elses
else's
fault or problem you
that you
are to
too
fucking stupid to remember more than one
one.
Sorry, why were you saying he was stupid? I was a bit distracted.
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Ok, I'll bite. Why not the GPL? What is there that you'd want to do with the code and the GPL wouldn't allow you?
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A bad knockoff of 'Command and Conquer' is historically important?
And C&C was 'just' a knockoff of Dune 2?
Hell 'Warcraft' was a bad knockoff of 'C&C', starcraft was just a bad reskin of warcraft.
IIRC, that's how SC started, but they had to do a whole new engine eventually when they decided to do more than a 'knockoff'. Cloaking, stacking, burrowing, creep, higher ground advantage, floating buildings, add-ons, regeneration, etc could not be done as a warcraft reskin.
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and Warcraft 3 was less popular than its own mods
I think you mean mod, singular, and DOTA is just a mash up of Warcraft 3's heroes and Tower Defense. But the mod wouldn't have made sense at all without Warcraft 3's hero system (kill npc creeps, level up abilities, and get an utlimate). That is what MOBAs are really based on more than any other single element, and it was a direct contribution by the WC3 design team.
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DotA is definitely more than a mash-up of Warcraft 3 and Tower Defense, I mean it spawned an entire genre that has dominated gaming for the better part of 10-years.
Why do you think its popularity and longevity preclude it from being a combination of derivative ideas?
Games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch are also very popular, and TF2 has had a very long life indeed. But their core concepts were still spawned from a Quake mod called Team Fortress that was really just another Capture the Flag clone (of which there were many in those days) with classes. It's just that it was done very well and arrived at the right time to become very popular.
The original version of
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DotA is definitely more than a mash-up of Warcraft 3 and Tower Defense, I mean it spawned an entire genre that has dominated gaming for the better part of 10-years.
What I mean is that if you had only ever played League of Legends, your first time playing WC3, the first time you trained a hero from the altar, you'd just get why the genre was born out of that game. But yes I agree DOTA is a far better game than WC3/TFT and was a really ingenious distillation of its best parts along with new additions.
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OpenRA managed make C&C competitive, I really recommend that you take a look.
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Yes, but S3M and XM are still superior formats.
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Whatever. Dune II predates it.
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Forgot to take your meds this morning?
Re:Coolness (Score:5, Informative)
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My system's performance dropped sharply
From the Bonjour service?!? Just because it's Starcraft II doesn't mean you should be running it on a DX4-100.
Re:Coolness (Score:4, Informative)
Two things:
1. The PC version doesn't install Bonjour. Maybe the Mac version does, but the PC version doesn't (yes I know they should have used "Windows" instead of "PC", but that ship has sailed just like the "hacking" vs "cracking" linguistic saga)
2. Let the installer download and unpack the game files and archive the installation directory. The game itself is not dependent on any remote server and seems to be completely portable, so as long as you have the archive available, you don't need to worry. Installer stubs are becoming more and more common these days - getting riled up about such things is not worth your blood pressure.
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Starcraft was always inferior to Total Annihilation IMO. I never understood why everyone loved StarCraft so much.
Because the different races are actually different, probably. The two sides in TA were almost identical to begin with and then they made them all but identical with the addons.
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Because StarCraft was more accessible. It was fun to watch others play and you could played matches in a shorter amount of time, the latter of which is immensely important.
It's the same reasons why Supreme Commander failed to make headway into that space and the attempts to move Supreme Commander 2 into that space caused it to fail miserably.
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It was the three hour grudge matches against the AI that became wars of raw attrition that really made TA shine though.
When you can't advance on the enemy because of the wreckage from previous fights blocking the way, you know you've had a battle.
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Starcraft was always inferior to Total Annihilation IMO. I never understood why everyone loved StarCraft so much.
I would have to say big parts are because of the great single player campaign and also the custom gametype maps online (like tower defense and stuff like that).
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Well, worth keeping around to play the original..
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No, it's because some of the people who worked for Blizzard and wrote the original Starcraft code aren't at Blizzard anymore but still have ownership of those snippits of code. Remember how the industry used to be? Where code sections you wrote would remain under your power, as a part of your employment at the company? That's the reason why. They can't release to source code without permission from those people.
Hell just look at the clusterfuck with things like NOLF or SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division and s
Employees have no copyright over code (Score:2)
No, it's because some of the people who worked for Blizzard and wrote the original Starcraft code aren't at Blizzard anymore but still have ownership of those snippits of code. Remember how the industry used to be? Where code sections you wrote would remain under your power, as a part of your employment at the company?
No. Never. The Starcraft developers were Blizzard employees. Blizzards Inc owns and controls all code. Employees got paychecks in the typical "work for hire" manner that transfers copyright to the company.
The source code is not being released because it is partly still in use. The game engine is the same code in the upcoming 4K display compatible release, which is network/gameplay compatible with this free version. Its only the graphics code that is changing.
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Does distributing the original game even matter when developers can take the source and create something awesome from it?
There are free games [lgdb.org] built on those engines, like Nexuiz, Reaction, Tremulous, etc... You just need to look.