software developer, manga scanlator

trans translator of "Magical Trans!"

You can read some of the manga I dabbled with at https://mahoushoujobu.com/
My blog is at https://mahoushoujobu.com/mlemblog/


lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

people on doomworld have some incredibly hot takes like "well doom wasn't really open source because they didn't release the dos or windows source code". sorry what the fuck are you talking about?? it's the same game. the open source release was for linux and then people ported it back to dos and windows. the game was the same all the way through. what is going on here

there's like a compulsion to defend bethesda's hoarding of its source code and i do not know what people are afraid of. what's going to happen? someone might play doom for free? oh, no! there might be pressure to release the source code for more games?? what a disaster!

everyone on doomworld would disintegrate if exposed to my full source code opinions (mandatory release 5 years after release for any company with at least 15 employees, and also you have to file a copy with the library of congress in case you go out of business, and also this applies to server software)


bcj
@bcj

Id is a beloved company so why wouldn't you defend the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought it. You've gotta have brand loyalty


lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

i love john romero so i feel a lot of Brand Loyalty towards the corporation that owns the hollow corpse of the company he founded, and also which told him to stop posting old stuff to doomworld so they could sell it instead


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in reply to @lexyeevee's post:

I sometimes do a specific distinction between source code and assets. Assets (as in levels too) are completely fine to remain proprietary, while the engine and tools must become open source. Assets can be built anew or drawn or just reused through buying them separately. We’ve seen how the games with open source engines get built upon (OpenRCT, OpenTTD, OpenXCom/Extended), and I love them for that.

Note that none of the games you listed were open-sourced - MicroProse went belly-up and got eaten by a bigger fish, leaving the games as abandonware. They were reverse-engineered either by painstakingly translating every subroutine from x86 assembly to C (in the case of OpenTTD) or just by writing a new game which happens to consume the same data files as the original.

honestly i feel like if you're releasing consumer software it should just come with the source code. companies can just run their own servers for achievements and multiplayer and such and i imagine the number of people who'll just bite the bullet and pay the like $20 for a game is still going to be enough to support development versus the like 1% of linux freaks (positive) who will bother to learn how to compile and run a video game from source

in reply to @lexyeevee's post: