Future AGS development

Pumaman · Mon 03/01/2011 17:22:49

Quote from: ReAgs on Mon 22/11/2010 21:08:26
Quote from: Sslaxx on Sun 17/10/2010 19:34:19I'm surprised decompilers do not already exist for the file formats. Nothing's going to stop a committed cracker. Consider the effort it took, for example, to reverse-engineer the Z Machine (the Zip interpreter), or Ultima VII (or any of the others - projects like Exult and Pentagram). Frankly, you're probably just lucky.

I don't consider myself a cracker since I don't want to do anything wrong with the game data: I just want to be able to play those games wherever I want

Just to give you a rough idea:
- I decoded/decrypted CLIB volumes versions 0xA to 0x15 and extracted their contents. (I haven't looked into .VOX files yet, but I think they are pretty similar)

Actually after the feedback in this thread, the overwhelming opinion seems to be that it's better to be open-source and cross-platform than to protect the file formats, so I've now been persuaded that releasing the code wouldn't be a problem.

Misj' · Mon 03/01/2011 17:32:03

Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 03/01/2011 17:22:49
Actually after the feedback in this thread, the overwhelming opinion seems to be that it's better to be open-source and cross-platform than to protect the file formats, so I've now been persuaded that releasing the code wouldn't be a problem.

(not the most useful comment, but it fits my feelings...love to see where things will go from here)

Joseph DiPerla · Mon 03/01/2011 17:41:47

Wow, thats awesome CJ! This opens up many opportunities to improve AGS, port it and even give us c++ aspiring programmers something to learn from. Awesome. Thanks CJ!

monkey0506 · Mon 03/01/2011 18:59:55

I know I haven't yet played a role in adding any of these new features to the editor (although I have looked into it)..but I have mixed feelings about the engine becoming open-sourced now simply because I have been banned from using my development computer for as long as I am living with my parents..who are helping me get out of debt.

Bah, so it's selfish..but I have so many things I'd like to get my hands all over inside of AGS.

subspark · Tue 04/01/2011 01:47:00

Quotereleasing the code wouldn't be a problem

Dear CJ, I believe I speak on behalf of the AGS community to offer our biggest thanks for taking such disciplinary care in reaching this decision.
Such a generally valuable piece of software could only be fractionally as valuable to its users than as to it's creator, so again the decision was an informed one with plenty of plan-ahead.

So congratulations! This is fantastic news on a shift in, I suppose the collective understanding of trust, that was years in the making.

Thanks, mate.

bearseatbeats · Tue 04/01/2011 04:59:57

Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 03/01/2011 17:22:49

...I've now been persuaded that releasing the code wouldn't be a problem.

Wow, awesome to hear! I'm still knee-deep in writing the script for my game (progress!), but I look forward to someday being able to release it on many different platforms, and I'm personally much more concerned about that than about the game files being cracked. These are exciting times for AGS and adventure games. Good on you CJ!

deadsuperhero · Tue 04/01/2011 12:48:50

Huzzah, that means eventually someone would be able to make a port to Amiga OS 4, and I could port all my games over to a seemingly mythical platform with ease.

Wyz · Tue 04/01/2011 13:23:10

That is amazing news, well and a bit scary, but that is always my first reaction to new things.

Well, we still have to live up the test if we are worthy enough to mingle with the source, but the guys that worked on the editor source left a good impression. I haven't worked on the editor myself (I'm not very comfortable coding .net or editors in general), but I'd love to stick my head and hands in the engine source, first stop: checking how much work it would be to port it to different platforms. (did you know there is an allegro port for Amiga OS 4?

!)

Now the real beauty would be that the .ags files could go unchanged and only the engine binary needs to be specified for each platform. If people fear for decompression of these files you could still go for a static linked library that handles these files, but ohwell.

Anyway I second subspark's words!

Joseph DiPerla · Tue 04/01/2011 18:52:08

Quote from: DeadSuperHero on Tue 04/01/2011 12:48:50
Huzzah, that means eventually someone would be able to make a port to Amiga OS 4, and I could port all my games over to a seemingly mythical platform with ease.

OMG! I'm not the only one!

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Wed 05/01/2011 05:09:38

I'm not a major open source proponent because I know how it feels to design things and want to protect them, but I also don't see a problem with going in that direction when you have a nice product and don't have the time to continue improving it. It's a great alternative to stagnation, especially if you get a good group of steady contributors making (even incremental) improvements. I've seen programs go from just mild functionality to being feature-rich in weeks with a good team and good source control.

BeardFacePixelHead · Mon 07/02/2011 03:30:14

I had been wondering what was going on with this. I was looking at the release history, and it's very regular, until about 2 years ago when it just stops.

I used to use a good old game development program called Megazeux. After the source code was released, the community took it, and really ran with it, developing it well beyond anything that was ever imagined. Today, it's still popular and in use (Despite the primitive ASCII graphics.), though there has been some drama with it's development. The centralized program fragmented into several development branches, and one particular developer got a little miffed when someone created a development branch based on the branch HE started.

Going open source can only be a good thing though, from what I have seen of this sort of thing. You've raised this little guy from a little DOS based program on a dream and a lot of elbow grease, and now it's all grown up and you are setting it free. I'm confident that you are doing the right thing. You'll be proud of what AGS becomes after this. Cracked game files will have a very minor negative impact compared to what the community is going to do with this thing.

timofonic · Thu 24/02/2011 16:06:13

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Calin Leafshade · Thu 24/02/2011 16:21:34

to be honest I dont think any of that will be a problem.

The whole FOSS thing is awesome and all but I really dont think that open sourcing the engine will result in a massive in flux of serious developers hoping to revolutionise the platform regardless of the technology it employs.

Open sourcing the engine will allow a very small number of developers (most of whom are probably already in the AGS community) to fix bugs and maybe add a few small new features. The plugin interface has been available for years and it hasn't been jumped upon to add new features really with a few exceptions.

It might seem pessimistic but I really don't think that open sourcing the engine will even result in ports. The amount of expertise and time it takes to create a full port of an engine that is heavily entrenched in windows is just too great for people to bother with. They may as well make their own engine for those platforms with cross-platform compatibility in mind to begin with (namely SLUDGE). The most likely outcome in that regard is that the scummVM people get hold of it and make an interpreter.

All that doesn't mean i dont want AGS open sourced. I definitely do even if it's just for educational purposes and the odd new feature but i think we have to be realistic about the likelihood of developers with the same level of skill as CJ getting involved en masse.

Sslaxx · Thu 24/02/2011 16:25:11

The irony of all that is is that so far, Microsoft has only made vague threats - it's Oracle (who own Java) that've been the aggressors. Patent issues regarding .NET (in particular Mono) might still well be an issue at the moment, but I say (as someone who has little love of Microsoft) that it seems the safer bet over Java right now.

As for the code:

There is a site for the SVN code for AGS, and people have already been contributing.

In short: look over recent postings and use the search function. This sort of thing has been asked about - and answered - several times over.

jomalin · Fri 25/02/2011 19:50:50

I think AGS is a very good adventure game editor, but it has one lack... It only runs on Windows: the AGS Editor needs .NET framework (Windows) and the games produced with AGS Editor are win32 specific (they use directly the Windows API).

So, there is a prime question for the AGS future... Which libraries should ags EDITOR and ags GAMES use?

AGS EDITOR: Qt4? GTK+? wxWidgets?
AGS GAMES produced with AGS EDITOR: I think SDL will be the best thing

Calin Leafshade · Fri 25/02/2011 19:54:00

The ags editor is built from the ground up in .NET. The chances of anyone taking the time to *completely rebuild it* are slim.

The engine itself uses allegro so porting it would be perfectly reasonable if someone was willing to do so since allegro is cross platform.

The D3D mode obviously uses directx but changing that to SDL would probably be (relatively) trivial.

timofonic · Sun 27/02/2011 20:33:01

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redspark · Mon 28/02/2011 14:12:03

If you want to protect your AGS files from being reverse engineered, why not use some sort of encryption where the editor allows you to assign a key to the game and encrypt the data files when the game executable is created? That way anyone can create a key that is unique to their game but only protects the end game files and not the editor files.

timofonic · Tue 01/03/2011 00:59:53

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redspark · Tue 01/03/2011 03:37:33

Quote from: timofonic on Tue 01/03/2011 00:59:53
Well, that's just an obfuscation way and also avoids using the games in a portable way. It could be better for users to find a multiplatform solution, based on encrypting the game files. It's a problem to the user, similar to other kinds of DRM

I wasn't talking about DRM which is meant to deal more with deterring theft of the game/media. I was talking about encryption of the data which would deter the average joe from reverse engineering your game. CJ had said in his original post that he didn't want to give out the file formats of the data files. I was just making a suggestions on how to allow the file format too be public but have a small amount of protection similar to using a proprietary file format.

An end user wouldn't even notice that the encryption is there. I'm also not sure what you are talking about when you said something about interfering with Multi-platform solutions. Perhaps I misunderstood but there are encryption algorithms that are platform independent and should work the same on all platforms. This isn't the same as DRM type algorithms which are more involved and can be platform specific depending on implementation.