Just a general question. outside of, err… freedom. what benefits for let’s say, a game developer or gamers alike from an open source game?

  • @testman@lemmy.ml
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    113 years ago

    mod development is much easier if you don’t have to reverse engineer the whole game engine

    • @wiki_me@lemmy.ml
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      43 years ago

      Not to mention that closed source developers have an interest in preventing third party mods development (because they can compete with the regular offering).

  • Ephera
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    73 years ago

    My favorite aspect of open-source games is that everyone involved has a good time.

    I do while playing. The devs do while developing. And if the devs have a less good time every now and then, they push through that, because they want other people to have fun.

    That’s just a whole load of wholesome and makes me enjoy the games a lot more.

  • poVoq
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    63 years ago

    Well, obviously the same as any other open-source software project, i.e. that it can be collaborated on easily and can never truly die as you can always fork the code and continue developing it when the original developer abandons it.

    I think the latter is especially important for multi-player games that commonly get abandoned and shut down these days.

    • @Evelyn@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 years ago

      That kind of reminded me this question I had a while ago. While I don’t know the technicalities, I haven’t heard of anti-cheat on open source multiplayer games. that sort of makes sense as I don’t know any competitive multiplayer open source game as of yet, typically that would be a fps shooter type game. Is open source anti cheat even possible?

      • poVoq
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        3 years ago

        There are many anti-cheat technologies used in open-source games server-side. However client-side anti-cheat can in principle never work on devices that the user has full control over (Linux), but only on locked down systems like consoles and to a very limited extend Windows (and those that exist there are basically root-kit like viruses).

          • poVoq
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            33 years ago

            Pretty well for most type of games, but it can’t really prevent aim-bots and such things. There are however statistical methods to identify users likely using aim-bots and kick them or inform server admins.

      • @Ghast@lemmy.ml
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        33 years ago

        I never fully understood anti-cheat. If I want to play a game of chess with friends, and then we switch up the rules, that’s nobody else’s business.

        I’m no gamer, so I may be talking nonsense, but it seems to me anti-cheat is best handled like any other federation - you make the protocol open (including open to cheaters), then allow people to form communities which they can gatekeep as they please. I’d like the ability to play with anyone, and define for myself what counts as ‘cheating’.

        • Ephera
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          43 years ago

          Cheating only starts to become a problem when you add competitive aspects to a game, like a global leaderboard or esports tournaments. And the competition is greatest when everyone is on the same leaderboard.

          Competitive aspects can be fun to some people, but yeah, I don’t see it as that big of a deal when open-source games can’t do that as well as proprietary titles.

        • @Evelyn@lemmy.mlOP
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          33 years ago

          that’s not really cheating. that’s modding. at your own game It’s probably fine to change things up a bit. but on a level that has to do with other people, for an example esports, nobody wants a cheater.

  • @onlooker@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    I think they’re very awesome when it comes to game preservation. Or heck, how about genre preservation? For example, arena shooters. You would be hard-pressed to find an arena shooter that is actively played and maintained nowadays. I can only think of Xonotic and to a lesser extent the lazily named Warfork, both open-source games.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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    53 years ago

    some of the major ones are:

    • modding
    • porting old games to new hardware to keep them alive
    • education where people can learn how the engines are made
    • code reuse, open source engines can be built and extended upon allowing people to focus more on improving gameplay instead of reinventing the wheel
    • ability to run games on different platforms such as Linux by leveraging community effort
  • @uberstar@lemmy.ml
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    43 years ago

    An open-source game could continue to live “to tell its tale” to a new generation of gamers if the original developer decided to leave the project while interest of its community is maintained. You could easily get community-supported remasters, rewrittens, ports, etc…

  • @PeterLinuxer@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    One big advantage is that you have less dependency. Dependency in proprietary SW/games means: You are stuck to vendor-lockin, the creator’s mercy to give bugfixes, mod-ability, enhancements, additional content, updates, follow-ups and mods.