I heard Trevor "Inventor of the Clockwork radio" Bayliss on the radio the other day and he mentioned in passing about copyright theft insurance. It seems to me that this might be good for AGS: if we paid for some for CJ, he could then make AGS open source without having to worry about someone stealing it and claiming it was theirs. Well, maybe there's other reasons he doesn't want to do the open-source thing, but I just thought it was an idea...
Any thoughts, folks? A quick google on my part didn't seem to find any info on where such a thign could be obtained.
I'd pitch in, for sure, but I really wouldn't want AGS to become open source. It's just a personal thing, I guess, but I think it'd almost... "dirty" the program ^_^ I'm quite happy with the way it is now. Maybe I'm scared of change, but I think there are quite a few good reasons for not making it open-source.
as cj told me, he won't make it open source.
you could easily write a decompiler for ags-games then, which means you could hack other games, cheat at them or rip their sprites and other stuff, just like it was your own game.
and we're already capable of writing plugins for different things. and i don't think that many people would understand the ags-source
I think once there is a group of 2000 members that uses the software, it can't be very likely that it'll be ripped off and people won't notice or realise where it originally came from, CJ is a god around here and the adventure game making community is not very large. Ã, And there are so many open source projects around these days, it doesn't seem very common for bad things to happen from it.
I think CJ has other reasons for not wanting it open source, one being that it'd be easier to make a decompiler for people's games (wouldn't bother me but it probably would some people), and another being that AGS is his project and hobby, I wouldn't want to open up one of my games for people to make changes and "improvements" ;) Ã, Perhaps it is a bit different for a serious piece of software, but I am sure there is some element of that.
If it was open it'd be fun to have a look around the code, and maybe see about adding some features I'd like that might not get implemented otherwise, but it is CJ's to do what he wants with, if he'd prefer the security and focus of working alone that's fine.
But if the insurance was done correctly, a licence agreement for the source could include a prohibition on decompilers and so on, and the insurance would pay for legal action to take down any websites publishing such a thing. That way, if you wanted to rip sprites, you'd have to write your own decompiler which is probably more effort than drawing some sprites, if its only for yourself.
that's about what cj told me when i asked why he won't release ags as open source under some open-source license like the gpl.
but i would like to look at the source by myself too ;)
I don't want AGS to become open-sourced either, plus I don't want to see zillions of mods different buggy versions with different "nice additions/fixes" floating around.
I wouldn't want to see AGS go open source either, but if it ever does then SHH's copyright insurance seems like a good idea. Couldn't that be done anyway? Or does he have to provide it open source :o
Is the Idea not that If he Made it Open source he would need Copyright Insurance, but seeing as it's not he doesn't need it because It's immposible or Damn hard to steal If it's not open source, So insurance shouldn't be needed.
I've thought about open source in the past, but the drawbacks seem to outweigh the benefits.
As far as I can tell, the benefits would be:
* people can add extra features that wouldn't get in otherwise
But the drawbacks would be:
* easy to write decompiler for AGS games
* some of the AGS source code, especially the older parts, is very badly written and hard to understand -- hence it would need to be reworked prior to release
* possibility of somebody 'stealing' the code and trying to pass it off as their own; but more likely would be:
* various people releasing their own versions of AGS with minor tweaks here and there, which would then introduce bugs, and people would start reporting bugs in the forums which didn't actually exist in the official version
* posts along the lines of "why did you code this bit like that?" and "wouldn't it be better if you coded that bit this way?" which would waste time
* you would no longer be guaranteed an upgrade path if you started to use a non-standard version and then whoever created it stopped maintaining it
I'm sure there's more that haven't been mentioned.
* They'd remove all the spyware
don't forget that one
Well, what about a CVS bit which allows you to view the source code that only Chris chooses for you to see.
Any code that would assist in helping you figure out how to decompile a game would not be visible.
Someone would then write their own code, post it on the CVS site. Chris has to look at it and then approve it and if he approves it, it becomes part of the official program source.
Something like Sourceforge.net.
This could help not only in adding features for the engine, but possibly allowing the engine to be ported to other OS's.
Do you think this could protect a lot of what Chris wants?
I hope this made sense, its late at night and my eyes are getting blurry.
JD
I don't think a CVS would help much, I think people can just ask CJ personally about helping and retrieve the relevant codes (if CJ permits) currently for development.
Moreover, it'll help porting the engine to OS only if the porter can get hold of the full source, I think anyone who is reliable, has enough knowledge of programming on the platform can just negotiate with CJ directly for codes (like the current *nix engines).
I think you guys are missing the biggest point of them all. Chris doesn't want to.
Case closed.
Gil, As far as I know Chris is pretty generious when it comes to porting.. Discussion with the linux porter seemed to lean that way.. as long as you are serious and know what you are doing. I think in the end it comes down to that AGS gains really no benefit from being opened up. Anything you really want to add can be done with a plug-in or chris will hard code (core) it in the engine so.. There is no point.
Quote from: MrColossal on Thu 02/09/2004 02:24:42
* They'd remove all the spyware
don't forget that one
:O, you mean that you guys actually written spyware in the source code?
Ever heard of sarcasm?
And btw, to refresh your memory, there is only one programmer.
Quote from: LostTraveler on Sun 05/09/2004 05:03:34
Ever heard of sarcasm?
And btw, to refresh your memory, there is only one programmer.
No! Don't keep perpetuating the myth! CJ is actually a large, well organized group of circus clowns who are filled with a seething hatred for FPS games and made AGS to counteract their popularity. He's Big Brother brought to life!!
one question. Why? Is CJs work not good enough? Do we need to get other inexperienced programmers to come and mod it?
I don't think the question rised due to CJ lack of ability (the community and the AGS won't be what it's now if CJ wasn't good).
Of course it seems that at the moment CJ doesn't feel like he wants to release it opensource....
Of course CJ's work is good, and we don't need others to come in and mod it, but there are many things that some people want that CJ has no intention of adding to AGS himself. Personally I would have a go at adding hardware accelerated graphics support (optional of course), or the ability to have backgrounds compressed as jpgs or the ability to resize games running in windows. If the code really is hard to understand then I probably wouldn't be able to do it anyway though, and some of these things may be added in time.
Personally I think the benefits outweigh the downsides, but then I couldn't care less if someone can decompile my games. However if CJ wants to work on it alone then that is good enough reason for me not to have it opened it up.
Also I think that an open source version could give many benefits to AGS since I see that many guys here have great ability and could give faster improvement but I also think that CJ can do the work like he's already doing satisfying every need of game creators if anyone gives him the right time to work on this (since He's doing all for free!!)
In the end I can understand that after all his efforts he doesn't want to risk to ruin all and he likes to keep his work his own...
I think that's exactly what the extensive plugin system is for.
If CJ were to make AGS open-source, he'd have to spend a lot of time either commenting it to make it more user-friendly, or being swamped by e-mails from people who don't understand his code.
Why would you want to accelerate the graphics, AGS runs at 60+ fps here and I'm on a 350 MHz box... also JPEG graphics compression isn't lossless (a simple huffman algorithm would be better). I think that if CJ doesn't want to implement some feature (e.g. SetCharacterName) he has a good reason for it and it would only overly complicate AGS if other people would implement it in his place. Plus you would get several branching versions that aren't necessarily stable or compatible with one another (look at the raging Red Hat vs SUSE debate, for instance)
My, this thread is getting long. What I find funny about it is, most people are kinda repeating themselves, which is not surprising since there are really only two opinions - yes/no, and why. And even the reasons why are being repeated.
It's funny how these things come up - the same with that 2.5D or 3D engine thread... they keep coming up, and people keep forgetting what AGS is all about - old-style adventure games. And if people want more, they have plugins. Really, what more could we want? Especially with the core engine being as wonderful as it is (and keeps getting better. Try and talk about source code IF CJ ever abandons AGS, 'cause THEN we'll need it. Until then...).
EDIT - See? I'm repeating what's been said, too! ;D
Quote from: scotch on Mon 06/09/2004 02:26:46
Personally I would have a go at adding hardware accelerated graphics support (optional of course)
I think Chris said at Brittens he had a go, and it didn't make too much of a benefit, unless that was something else ._.
Well, has anyone who wrote the plugins ever thought about giving the source code to CJ to implement into the engine? I find lots of those codes usefull becouse I would use the flashlight plugin in my games and even the math plugins.
And you can say why not just leave it alone and use the plugins? Well, becouse I develop and use Linux as well. I have a duel boot. At Work I only use linux. The linux version doesn't support plugins.
Rather than making it source, just give CJ the source to your plugins, maybe he can use it.
To put the functionality of the maths or flashlight plugins in the game itself, it would be much better (and easier for CJ) to write from scratch rather than poking around in someone else's code. The maths plugin particularly is just a wrapper to C functions.
As has been stated (GOTO 10) having little used functionality in plugins makes it easier to support and document AGS.
I'll be happy to supply the code to my plugins to anyone who wants to convert them into Linux plugins (and write a plugin manager for Linux!).
I'm hoping/guessing that AGS 3 will have floating point and maths functions.
It's off topic now but.. for anyone who, like me, wants to use higher resolutions and antialiased characters and have a chance to use some other graphical effects hardware acceleration is a massive difference.Ã, I am talking about something like going from 20-30fps on my athlon XP2600+ machine (which is what I get now in test games) to 200-300fps (which is what I get if I load the same graphics into a 3d accelerated engine).Ã, And the reason jpg is so good is precisely because it is lossy (yes, I typed lossless before the edit :'( ), just like mp3 and ogg, it produces massively smaller filesizes even over png and especially the gif style compression AGS uses now, with an acceptable loss in quality.Ã, This is a big deal for me again, because my backgrounds get up to over 2MB each as it is. I am not saying AGS should default to using lossy compression on graphics, as it would make a lot of pixel art very ugly, but it more than halves the size of my backgrounds over the current compression type and would be a worthwhile addition for me.
Plugins are great, but this kind of thing could not be done as a plugin as far as I can see.Ã, I am writing my own engine now anyway, designed for more high end graphics (and 3d too), but it would be much easier if I could add some of these things to AGS, or at least take pointers from AGS's code on how to do certain things.Ã, I will be reinventing a lot of wheels, and I am not a very good coder at all ;)
Quote from: scotch on Tue 07/09/2004 04:59:38
And the reason jpg is so good is precisely because it is lossless, just like mp3 and ogg...
Hehe.
/me loves finding typos.
Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Mon 06/09/2004 22:17:37
And you can say why not just leave it alone and use the plugins? Well, becouse I develop and use Linux as well. I have a duel boot. At Work I only use linux. The linux version doesn't support plugins.
Gee, typical Linux user ^_- "Me, me, me" "Why isn't everything compatible with Linux?" "I use Linux so everyone should" "I call it my Linux 'box'"
(Don't take any notice of me, I have a grudge against Linux because I used to have a friend that never shut up about it)
Uhmm... I am not thinking of me me me here buddy. If I use linux and someone has a game that uses plugins, that game is no good to me. At home its all fine and dandy. ButI play games at work too on my lunch break. But its all Linux. Most of the time in fact that I play a game is at work.
I only get about an hour a week to play at home on my windows box. Oh and Linux is great. My only complaint is that its hard to understand and do things in it and it doesn't have many of the commercial software found on Windows developed for it.
But lets not lose the point of this topic. I was saying , why not just give the source code to the plugins to CJ maybe he could make use of it and add a feature.Who knows.
Another possibility for CJ to open source AGS is to only give the source to people who have made great and complex games, Plugin developers (Not the math ones, my friends 9 year old brother could make that plugin), Eviltypeguy and anyone who is truly a programmer and it shows. Then have them sign a contract and have them help youdevelop and port AGS.
That could be another possibility. Atleast have them hunt for bugs or something while CJ looks to add new features.