First post, by dhruba.bandopadhyay
I was just reading about the retro remakes. A lot of them are very good and that's because of the company releasing the source code as open-source.
But there are still many old games that are still kept closed-source. Many classics I really want to see open-source are:
- Blood (currently owned/bought by Atari)
- Carmageddon (similar confusion about who owns rights)
- Die By the Sword
- Alone In The Dark
- Dark Seed
- Bioforge
If the companies released their old games as open-source then it will be beneficial & educational to everyone. The games will indeed get a revamp in it's game and graphics engine. There's nothing more original than the original games that started it all (and inspired most of today's PC & console games). Massive benefits of open-source (educational, company can get ideas from the open-source community on WHAT gamers really
want to see/play, etc.)
That totally sucks, on maxpayne website, it says Windows XP is not supported. So we buy a game, play it, then new Windows come out and that game won't run anymore. It's like Prey, Duke Nukem Forever and ( put your fave game here ) will not work next year. Emulation is good but only for 2D or basic 3D games. Hardcore assembly software 3D games run terribly under a DOS emulator. And VDMSound (Sound Blaster emulator) runs terribly under XP SP2 and will not work under 64-bit Windows. Point is, we buy a game today, don't expect it to run on our new PC & new windows next year. Try running Max Payne under VMWare - that'll be sight for sore eyes.
We should start petitions for our favourate past time games stating:
- those games we paid for will not run on new PCs with new Windows (especially Max Payne)
- open-source will give developers new ideas on how end-user gamers like their games to be made, etc. hence develop better games that gamers will definitely buy
Like I said, old company is not losing anything from releasing a 10 year old game code, if that game is off the market and no sale made for 5 years. but they get to see bedroom programmers porting the game, updating the graphics & engine, and modifying the game to something the gamers like. Take for example Battlefield 1942. the SDK comes out. a group of bedroom programmers made the mod Desert Combat. it was one of the most popular mods & won GameSpy Mod of the Year 2004. Battlefield 1942 company bought those bedroom programmers to work for them on Battlefield 2.
Same goes for Counter-Strike. Need I say more?