Submitted 8 months ago by wawe@mastodon.gamedev.place to games@lemmy.world
@games Do you find open source games interesting/good thing as a gamer?
I am a game developer working on game called Mushy Score. I decided that my niche would be to create open source games. I think these could be helpful for developers or teachers to teach about games and how they are made. Most open source games are small game jam games, but there are few “real games” that are open source like 0 A.D. and Doom. As a non-developer do you think open source games could be good thing?
There are several open source games that I love and have played regularly:
I wish more games were open source.
Yes, but you have to remember that the developer community is absolutely tiny compared to the number of gamers.
It’s a neat gimmick, but 98% of the people who could be your audience will get nothing out of the game being open source.
I would really like it if certain specific games were more open source and more moddable, for example stellaris has an annoying formula hard coded that makes combat balancing and weapon modding very difficult. On the other hand, games like openRA exist and I’m not playing that and I’m not doing anything with the source either. That one even has fully functioning multiplayer, but it’s so built in that it’s hard to reuse for anything else. So you might end up being torn between making the game really good and making the tools and code really good.
I think the biggest appeal of open source games is as a learning resource. Maybe. idk.
Also, may I suggest panda3d, which I’m shilling for at every opportunity that I get, because it’s neat, 3d, open source and runs with C or python?
although I’ve searched for specifically FOSS games in the past it’s not really a niche, i would still pick out games in genres i liked.
still as you have said there’s a real lack of “good” FOSS games, because most people make games with engines that do not facilitate open sourcing your game, artists unfortunately think copyright is good and you can’t open source your game without also giving away your art or making your game free, or the most common case is that devs don’t know/care about FOSS.
i think FOSS games are good however i also think games need to be very opinionated pieces of software, so do not delegate your design to other or “also open sourcing your design”. the dev should ultimately be in control.
one thing I’ve seen even non FOSS games do is to use their repo as a public bug tracker, so in addition to that accepting contributions for bugfixes could also work. although i think it goes against the spirit of FOSS software you could also separate your artwork from your source code.
Open source is better for the longevity and distribution of games, also for knowing it isn’t malware. I wish more games were open-source, the industry likes trade secrets and DRM but that isn’t sustainable (most games have been lost over time, and we’re probably close to 99% of source material and documentation being extinct).
I’m a gamer and I love it. Without it I wouldn’t be able to play my favorite such as Open Transport Tycoon or OpenRA. We need more to make old games better.
I think that FOSS games are cool and can often have better hardware support and modding communities, but they often seem to focus on being FOSS rather than being a good game. However, if you can avoid that, making your game FOSS would probably be a good choice as long as you aren’t trying to make heaps of money. Some other FOSS games that I like are minetest and veloren, and classicube is also pretty cool.
You have Beyond All Reason which has both an active development cycle and player base, because it’s basically the best classic RTS available in years.
I’ve only tried open source games once or twice, but I support any open source software, so as a concept I totally think it’s a good thing.
0ad is pretty good imo
I don’t have any input as a dav but I do enjoy finding, learning about and playing open source games. There is something about it that I find interesting and although most of them are not great I check back every so often on my favourites.
I really like GNOME’s games. Flightgear is a good project too. But “real games” are usually very large projects that require several thousands of hours of labour so I think open-source is not the way to go for them, unless they choose a paid source code way with the price of a single license set to thousands or even millions of dollars (which is still not a very good way because it can be abused by the original developer)
Deestan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A game with open source is better than the same game with closed source, basically by definition.
A problem open source games tend to have, is that they often have an overly democratic development process. Art by committee can at best closely resemble another piece of art. It also makes it hard to reject ideas and kick out people who pull in the wrong direction.
The focus also often ends up on the code being presentable rather than the game being engaging. Real games that are made in reasobable time and have the necessary tons of little tweaks and adjustments needed to be fun have HORRENDOUS code as a result. Few developers are willing to settle for that if they know the world will scrutinize their code and judge them for it.