Not only do the games need to be opensource, but their toolchains too. It would also be great if everything were stored in content-addressable storage. Then it wouldn't be necessary to track down stuff by follow URL paths to dead domains.
I hope that opensource game engines become more popular. It might just be a matter of time. Blender is now very popular and that's opensource.
Well for me personally it was two reasons. First was a lot of politically charged content. I don't want to see that stuff any more than I already am forced to, so I just block all of it normally, but on the ml servers it was tiring blocking so much so I just blocked the whole instance Second was the ml admin's handling of the anime community that used to be hosted there and is now hosted on ani.social. I honestly don't remember too much other than the admin claiming something along the lines of "all anime characaters are children" or something like that. I don't remember it exactly, but it was some mindless take that communicated "we don't want anything related to anime on our server."
I think a compromise could be that developers would have to open source their games if they drop support, like entire support not just maintenance mode, so that the community can maintain them from then on. They could still have some sort of licensing to ensure the code isn't used for something else or the product used for profit (this would not include something like maintenance cost for online titles so that community ran servers could be paid for).
And then the developer goes out of business or gets bought by 15 other companies, with the rights to the game being so muddy it's not even funny anymore.
It's unfeasible. Not one serious publisher will let their game be open source for fear of reverse engineering, copycat games, using engines that a company has worked on for years, etc.
If users have to agree to every bullshit license terms then I'm sure companies can do so too when it comes to some open source license that would give them legal liabilities over those who breach those terms. This is not unfeasible at all, just has to be done on a legislative level that would enforces it. The EU has done quite a few regulations for the consumer so I don't think it is out of question. But I do think it is unlikely because video games are like an enigma to most politicians and still kinda stigmatized within older generations especially.
We moved from GitHub to Gitlab and the rate at which new contributors found the project effectively halved. We had a Matrix at some point and one person used it. The reality is you have to pick your battles.
That's fine and I understand; and I'm cool if projects have multiple ways to make contributions. What I hate is when open source projects only exist and allow communications on closed platforms.
We also have forum.2009scape.org, which is open source. Any questions people have are only answered here, for the explicit purpose of better searchability of answers.
(But people hate registering on new sites)
Trust me, I know what you're saying. We did our best, but ended up deciding to focus on the project, rather than a larger movement as a whole
Gamers 😤 For what it's worth, more users, especially on a gaming-related project probably the effort providing basic support faster than it increases contributions.
The network effect is a real problem tho. Hopefully ForgeFed & Gitlab implementing ActivityPub will help with this. Same with OAuth with GitHub as the SSO provider.
Bridging Matrix seems like the best of both, but takes a lot more work.
I'm a purist, so if I see a project uses Discord, I'll immediately start looking for viable alternatives.
We do, but people don't come over. It's a service issue; if the goal is maximize contributors, you need to minimize friction. A mirror minimizes friction, but it's still a significant step over "just being on Github":
That's a shame. If GitHub didn't have their own pull request system (or at least did it the way git does) I would have suggested maybe finding a way to allow PRs from GitHub.
I'm an open source maintainer part-time. My God how I've wanted to call so many people "idiot" straight to their face.
I don't blame some people for turning bitter. You wouldn't have much faith in humanity left either, after closing your 100th duplicate issue with a solution that sums up to "read the fucking docs".
I was talking to a friend recently who was frustrated because they felt like tech support had been treating them like an idiot. They're a reasonably techy person and had gone through all the troubleshooting steps in the documentation, but the person on the phone had them do it all again. I tried to explain the perspective of the tech support guy — the fact that people often refuse to restart their PC because it feels like too simple of a step and they feel patronised by the suggestion, to the extent that people lie about whether they've done a particular troubleshooting step.
I told them that it was valid to feel frustrated with how long the call took when it could've been much quicker and simpler, but that they should attribute their frustration at people who repeatedly refuse to read the docs, rather than the tech support guy. My friend wasn't an idiot, but they were tarred with the same brush because of how many people seeking tech support are belligerent idiots.
Nah, you can't patent gameplay mechanics unless they are super specific and interconnected.
Taking what's good from other games and turning it into something new (or similar) is known as remixing and it happens all the time. Like mentioned in another comment, Palworld did this by taking the fun elements of different genres / vibes (Pokémon, Survival games, Shooters) and making that into a game.
Even the Pokémon Company had to put a statement out basically telling the Xitter drama seekers to shut up and stop reporting the game for infringement, because there wasn't any.
Just make sure (like you already mention) not to use assets, sounds, names and other IP related subjects.
It still grinds my gears that Warner Bros. patented the Nemesis System they used in their shadow of war/Mordor games. I'd love a whole genre of those kinds of games with different settings and themes.
Even in their case, the phrasing within their patent form is fairly specific to their games. Unless one completely clones the system, I would be surprised if they got legal trouble for it. Better to check with a qualified lawyer of course.
The games have a number of captains, and they will sometimes fight among themselves. The winner will get stronger and level up. The player can attack these captains, too, who may have a strong point or a weakness. If the player dies while fighting, the captain grows stronger and will taunt the player on a rematch. If the player manages to make the captain flee and live, he may develop a fear for the player
There are many things that can define the captains, such as fears (of the player, of fire, of wargs), weaknesses (to stealth, to arrows, to fire) and even immunities (to arrows, to stealth, you get the drill)
Also, if the player dies to an unamed orc, said orc will become a captain. I vaguely remember some captains coming back to life, if they weren't decapitated on the killing blow. They return weaker, but will comment on wanting revenge.
As a final note, Shadows of Mordor is a pretty fun game. Think of it as Assassin's Creed exploration with Batman Arkham City combat. Not the most faithful game to Tolkien's work, but it's good.
Almost everything they've taken down has been for name/character/assets reasons: Pokémon Uranium, AM2R, etc. Something like Ship of Harkinian, a source port of Ocarina of Time, doesn't provide any Nintendo assets and hasn't been taken down yet. To my extremely limited knowledge, gameplay generally isn't copyrightable unless it's specifically been patented for some reason, so I think you're in the clear.
Nintendo is pretty rabid about their IPs, they would personally deliver a cease and desist to a toddler drawing a Switch with crayons on cardboard, but if you mean this minigame, then you’ll probably be fine.
It seems so generic, if you really use nothing that belongs to Nintendo and maybe tweak the physics a little bit, it should pass at least as legally distinct.
And frankly, the game devs probably also took the idea from somewhere else, as I said, the mechanic seems pretty generic.
As far as I'm aware you cannot copyright game mechanics. The only instance of a copyright of a mechanic I'm aware of is from a lord of the rings leveling system (can't remember the name off the top of my head)
There has been several game "mechanics" that have been patented in the past. Two examples I know off the top of my head are "overhead arrows that point in the direction of the destination" and "minigames during loading screens".
That said, these were applied for specifically as patents in the US, and every other game made does not go through this process (especially since I doubt that this would worm in this day and age... I hope, wtf is going on across the pond) especially for entire game concepts, and OP is definitely in the clear.
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