BIG NEWS FOR THIEF FANS!

[WizardStan]

And I dunno, maybe the dreamcast port will emulate successfully on the pandora at some point.

No, it uses WinCE (or more specifically it's something to do with memory mapping I think, Exophase is the one to explain it better) that last I heard wasn't planned to ever be part of the emulator currently being worked on.

 

[second exodous]

Flip that around and consider it.
If Valve compiled an ARM-Linux version would you pony up $50 for a licensed copy?


If Bioware/Atari were to make an ARM-Linux version of Neverwinter Nights that played on the Pandora, I'd pay $50 for it without even blinking - and I don't have a Pandora yet.


Don't ask these private companies to give away their IP for free - that isn't a good business model. However, compiling something they already own into a version that they can sell a bunch more of at full retail - that might get their attention. Unfortunately for us, we don't have 'a bunch' of people who would/could buy/play it on our platform - yet.

You understand that open sourcing the engine doesn't get you the entire game right? If they open sourced the engine then people that wanted to play the game would still have to pop over to gog.com or steam and buy the game to get the data files. The engine is the code but the art, what you see when you play the game, would still be owned by the company and they would still profit form it.


So, they could port their code to one tiny handheld, take all that time and money and might make their money back or they could open source the engine and let communities port there game engine to a myriad of handhelds, costs them next to nothing paying their legal team and to research where the code came from, and then sell more copies for the Pandora owners, GP owners, Android owners, Nokia owners, ect, that didn't already own the game.


To me it makes more business sense to open source games that have slowed down in sales and let others do the work to advertise their game on other systems that would have taken them 1000's of man hours to port to all these different platforms.


So, they port the game to Pandora and sell to a handful of Pandora owners for $50(a little steep don't you think?) or they open source it and over time when the engine is ported to many systems they sell 100s or 1000s of copies for $9.99. Best part is they never have update the version they sell, they can sell that FOREVER and the open source ports will be updated and ported to new handhelds FOREVER.


A generic Linux version is not a good idea either, it would have to be updated by the company to run on new distors/handhelds. It would be like making a generic windows version and expecting it to run on windows mobile 7, CE, and whatever windows has on the desktop at the time. Also, Linux changes and the libraries(bits of code) that old software uses might not be maintained anymore and might make your system unstable/insecure if you run those defunct libraries. Open sourcing would be the best way to maintain compatibility and keep it up to date. When the open source code is not maintained the game has died naturally to be resurrected at a later date by someone/a group who likes the game well enough to learn how to code and port it to a new platform.


Also, I'm not asking them to, I have never e-mailed/called/faxed/visited these companies before. All I'm saying is I wish these engines were made open sourced because I think it would be better for these classic games to run on more platforms because they will age better this way.

 

[gosse]

One big issue they would have with releasing the source code (that's if they wanted to, like some did - id software games, Jagged Alliance 2, MechCommander 2, etc.) a lot of games uses a bunch of licensed libraries (Havok, Renderware, Scaleform, Unreal Engine, etc.). So this means they cannot distribute those libraries with it, making it already very hard to port. However, a lot of time in those libraries' EULA, you cannot even release sourcecode that just uses the API (that's without even giving the include file and/or lib file), which means they would have to strip out all the code refering to those libraries, giving you pretty much useless code that would require tons of work to even get compiling.


Not really an issue with older games using all in-house code, however

 

[second exodous]

Oh yeah, if your game runs on someone else's engine it is more difficult but the three games we're talking about, Thief, HL and NWN are exceptions. HL runs on top of of id's now open source engines so it wouldn't be too hard for them, Thief I'm pretty sure is int the same boat as HL, maybe they run on Unreal I'm not 100% sure. NWN is in house like you said shouldn't be too difficult.


However, it is now more of a challenge to release your code through open source due to software patents, this was one of id's problems with releasing Quake III, but they worked it out. Also, if the company has ever leased out parts of their engine it might be a problem also. HL2 used some of Quake III engine in it and id had to work it out with valve on these chunks of code.


It is always a challenge releasing your game as open source and there are some definite barriers and even some that will make it impossible but still in most situations it is easier than porting the game to new platforms. There is an interview with John D. Carmack that deals with all of this but he has done so many interviews it is difficult to find.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

No thief's engine is unique, it uses the dark engine. And not as though I can really reply in a concise and technical manor, but It really isn't that easy to port an engine just because of it's parent engine. the engines are heavily modified to suit the purpose of the guys who change em, so think of it like this; you'd have to do all the work that some massive team of coders had to do to modify it, AND you'd have to be thinking the whole time 'is this exactly the same as their algorithms or will it compensate? I dunno, I don't have the bloody source code XD'


So yeah, I'm not coding wiz, but i imagine that it'd be VERY hard if not impossible without a good and dedicated team, and probably not even then..

 

[second exodous]

No thief's engine is unique, it uses the dark engine. And not as though I can really reply in a concise and technical manor, but It really isn't that easy to port an engine just because of it's parent engine. the engines are heavily modified to suit the purpose of the guys who change em, so think of it like this; you'd have to do all the work that some massive team of coders had to do to modify it, AND you'd have to be thinking the whole time 'is this exactly the same as their algorithms or will it compensate? I dunno, I don't have the bloody source code XD'

So yeah, I'm not coding wiz, but i imagine that it'd be VERY hard if not impossible without a good and dedicated team, and probably not even then..

That is what I'm saying, it isn't easy, and wouldn't be cost affective for the company to do a port for such a small platform. This is why I think releasing the code as open source and letting fans do the work is a much much better idea for companies. To play the game one would still have to have files from the game that are just visual art/sound. So, to play the game one would need to buy a copy to get those files from to play on the open source engine.


Look at games that have gone open source, if there is enough fans to do the work, which I'm sure HL, Theif2, and NWN have, then it would be ported or made easier to port to other platforms by the fans themselves. If the game in question does not have the fans with the knowhow then yes, it won't do much good to open source the game.


Every game that has gone open source still sells copies for this reason, the art is still proprietary it is just the engine that is open sourced. Copies of id's games that are open sourced are still sold to people that use the open source code because they need the art to play the game like it was, at least originally. Copies of the games that went open source through the first Humble Indie Bundle are still sold, if they were not then you couldn't' get the art to play the game.


I'm trying to be penitent with people that don't understand open source games but they've bought completely into what large corporations that don't like open source have told the masses. This is not brain surgery, companies that have released code don't regret it and still sell copies of their games.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

Of course there's nothing wrong with releasing the code under the license that the code remains intact apart from porting changes and you own the game. Even releasing it so that you still need a copy of the game, but modifications could be made, even that would be favourable to doing nothing. I just doubt it man, If EA refuses to publicly release the SS2 source code, it's pretty unlikely that Square Enix will. I don't know much about these companies apart from their lack of interest in anything but big money ventures.


I don't know about you, but apart from signing a partition, I don't really have enough energy or will power to make myself heard. I got other things to worry about.


But yeah, if it really matters to you, you should probably be trying to convince square enix rather than forumers who probably feel the same way as I do.

 

[TylerAW]

The source code is here do you think someone can release an interpreter for the engine with those files? That way it is kind of like an emulator and the legal battle goes to all of the people that do not legally own the game