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GPL Darkspace? |
Undergamer
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 12, 2002
Posts: 45
|  Posted: 2010-04-04 23:28
Since the change to dropping the subscription fee, has there been any chatter about releasing the client and server portions of the game to the open source community?
It might open up a few cross platform versions of the game to bring more people to the community.
[ This Message was edited by: Undergamer on 2010-04-04 23:29 ]
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2010-04-04 23:36
It might also spawn bad clones of the game, and give hackers ways to exploit and cheat.
Naw. I think in this aspect, the Devs should retain full ownership of the game.
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Anathemia
1st Rear Admiral
Joined: June 23, 2009
Posts: 38
| Posted: 2010-04-04 23:44
I'm fairly sure it'll never happen. But as far as the idea goes...
You never know. I remember one unspecified game that had staff that never played and made all the balancing descisions based on statistics and untested ideas. Once the company went bust they turned everything including character models over to the community. For a while it was chaos with people doing all sorts of things with the code, but one person got three other friends together and picked it up. Many initial mistakes were made and a lot of bugs had to be smashed but the game was finally playable. It eventually died anyways because no one had the money for a server and decent internet line xD
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Undergamer
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 12, 2002
Posts: 45
| Posted: 2010-04-05 06:08
Quote:
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On 2010-04-04 23:36, Kenny_Naboo wrote:
It might also spawn bad clones of the game, and give hackers ways to exploit and cheat.
Naw. I think in this aspect, the Devs should retain full ownership of the game.
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Those are valid points but looking at the route that Allegiance took, it might not be a bad long term vision. The GPL does protect the author and allows them to retain ownership.
In general exploits and cheats are inevitable even without releasing the code. If DS were as popular as WoW for instance, you'd see this kind of thing despite it being Windows only and closed source.
The downside to opening the the client and server might be fragmentation of the community. But, if just the client were opened, you'd see a rise in popularity. Take Tremulous or Quake 1/2/3 for example. Both of those were eventually opened to one degree or another with positive results.
Imagining collaborative development with additional developers isn't too much of a stretch. If a Linux/Mac DS port made it into the Debian repository you could even take advantage of free advertising. That said it's just an idea 
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Admiral Alucard (2IC)
Marshal
Exathra Alliance Fleet
Joined: April 30, 2004
Posts: 279
From: St. Helens, England
| Posted: 2010-04-05 06:41
At a wild stab in the dark, if it was t be made "public" acessable then it would probably be one of the older patches that would be given out with very limited admin tools
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2010-04-05 06:43
We welcome C++ programmers, model & texture artists, HLSL programmers, etc, onto the dev team. The only prerequisite for joining the dev team is that you can show any of these well.
Once you do that, you get access to the engine and the DS source code, as well as the resoucer.
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Undergamer
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 12, 2002
Posts: 45
| Posted: 2010-04-05 18:42
I'm interested in personally porting DS to at least 32-bit Linux. Remaining closed source isn't even a problem as long as the binary blob is packaged properly. It would be helpful to see a list of required DX/Win32 API calls and preferred versions and a list of any required 3rd party libraries. There's a good chance the client can be adapted to run on Linux using Wine as long as it's built conventionally.
One step closer to not having to run DS in a VM
We can take this off the forum if your interested. (Email or PM works).
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-Daedalus-
Grand Admiral
Joined: September 26, 2006
Posts: 549
| Posted: 2010-04-05 18:59
They won't even make the game so the users computer takes some of the CPU power needed because they think it's a risk to hacking. Chances of opening it up for the entire system is well NONE.
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Undergamer
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 12, 2002
Posts: 45
| Posted: 2010-04-05 20:22
Quote:
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On 2010-04-05 18:59, --Daedalus-- wrote:
They won't even make the game so the users computer takes some of the CPU power needed because they think it's a risk to hacking. Chances of opening it up for the entire system is well NONE.
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The idea of a decentralized p2p architecture for gaming has been tried before. Doom 3 originally had this design but the performance was so horrible on average that they opted for the traditional client-server model before release.
As for letting users run their own scenario servers, I thought this was the case a few years ago? Dropping the subscription fee seems to indicate a shift in focus from a revenue model toward a pure community model. So the emphasis on keeping the whole system closed loses relevance as time goes on.
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Either way, I think porting to other platforms closed or open should be seen as a positive growth opportunity to bring in more dedicated players.
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Faustus
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 2748
From: Austin, Texas
| Posted: 2010-04-05 21:34
I doubt I will release the full game into GPL I did release the source code at one point under basically a duel license model, only for the sake of providing a blueprint on how to use the Medusa engine. The game's assets were not including in this release, nor would they be.
If I ever do shutdown DarkSpace, then yes I will more than likely release the entire game.
-F
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Shigernafy
Admiral
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 5726
From: The Land of Taxation without Representation
| Posted: 2010-04-05 21:48
Actually Daed, we have been slowly shifting more computations to the client. There are obviously some things that are not, but the movement is generally speaking toward the client (albeit slowly).
But I appreciate your continued erroneous assumptions that paint us in a bad light. Stick to your strengths, I say!
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