Topic
please... the source code
if i had it, i would have no idea what to do with it. but maybe in years,decades even, a team as talented as TS could get glitch up and running. i am asking for the code on the servers that makes the game tick (not the user data). if it cant be posted online, then what about just mailing me a large hard drive
Replies
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You don't want it. Did you read the FAQ about how power-hungry it is?
The gameplay formula is a winner. It just doesn't support a $500k/month back end that TS ended up with. - 500k.. no way.. I mean, I could see how much bandwidth the server was using but god damn.. hopefully TS can.. my god it's all falling apart, i hate this.
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Sturminator: Where did you get your figure?
Also, no one wants to host thousands of players- just play with friends.
Besides, bigger games like Ryzom (used to be #10 of top 10 MMOs) went Open Source- along with media. They didn't release sounds or world data, though- but anyone can try to develop with it, and people are trying to sort out the code right now. (Most 'professional' code is badly commented/documented- go figure)
Also all the bs about state changes is only applicable if you want to host thousands, or their data model is retarded. A game like Minecraft can have way more information movement by far, but is host-able by individuals- and if you look at the Neverwinter Nights series, the first one can host up to 64 players on one machine..
Also, concerning what _individuals_ can do, Skyrim is currently being hacked for multiplayer.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was done successfully a while ago. These are games that were NEVER intended as multi-player both reverse engineered and then made multiplayer by hobbyists. The Skyrim hack is way from complete- but shows quite a bit of potential considering how recently the game came out.
All that said, without the media content, this would be a fairly difficult game to 'recreate'. Not so much because of the quantity or quality of content- more so due to the specific nature of what makes 'Ur', Ur. You really can't do it easily- a lot of the writing is the character, and gives the game it's life. Copyright protects that content, and new stuff would likely fall short of that brilliance. You'd be playing a different, 'Ur-ish' game. Not saying it can't be done, just putting that out there.
What it will really boil down to after all excuses are made is whether TS _can_ actually share. I suspect this is not as simple an issue as they would have us believe. - Yeah it would be great if you guys released all the assets for the game. I'm sure with enough time we would be able to modify them so the game could run on a smaller scale. Of course there may also be legal stuff to worry about though.
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1. Computing power is getting cheaper every year
2. Somewhere in the world there will be 35 people both rich enough and talented enough and caring enough to run glitch. -
Legal and business matters are another issue, in addition to basic cost of upkeep. The FAQ mentions that TinySpeck is continuing as a company partly to use its unique messaging technologies, which are presumably part of the current code and also presumably also not something they want loose in the wild. Other components may -- or may not -- include licensed proprietary code that can't easily be released to other companies or individuals. TinySpeck President twitter suggests that even many art assets may not be open sourcable (twitter.com/stewart/status/...).
The code itself may not technically be under any one person's control: with 6.5 million USD in investors, there often but not always come limitations on ownership.
It could be possible to work around these issues, and some may not be present here, but it's best to be aware of them. - what about TS taking a huge backup and saving it until things get better