I’ve been daydreaming about creating libre mods for proprietary video games that I’ve played as a kid and I would like to hear opinions on whether or not that is something worth pursuing. On one hand, a libre mod might distract from future libre game alternatives. On the other hand, it provides resources to potential libre alternatives and makes people more aware of libre culture. I would love to hear what people here have to say about this.

  • poVoq@lemmy.ml
    6·
    4 years ago

    I find that pointless, as your audience is probably not going to care, and the libre mod code itself likely can’t be used for anything outside the closed source game engine.

    But if you create some nice art assets, put them under an Creative Commons license and upload it to OpenGameArt.

    But honestly, why not a libre game or engine? There are plenty good ones that can be modded.

    • PixelCreates@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      4 years ago

      So, the focus of the mods would be non-code related asset creation. I’ll definitely post to OpenGameArt if I make anything worth putting there. While there are plenty of good moddable libre games, ReTux and SuperTuxKart come to mind, there aren’t good equivalents to 3D platformers like Super Mario 64 or Sonic Adventure. Since the only coding I want to do is making playtest scripts in python, I thought that making a libre mod would make the creation of such games easier while helping to show people the value of Creative Commons licensing. The traditional audience of players certainly wouldn’t care about the licensing but other modders that work on large-scale mods may appreciate additional assets; that being said, I think you’re right about it being pointless overall. Modders probably wouldn’t move over to libre games and I could just as easily make assets for libre games or upload assets directly to OpenGameArt.