Blood source code release now a *real* possibility "thanks to Jace Hall, he wants your input"
#1 Posted 03 August 2012 - 01:12 AM
http://www.the-postm....php?f=2&t=1889
If I may editorialize, Jace has the source and wants to fix it up and add all these things, but he has reservations about releasing the source because of "cheating and hacking", even though those concerns can be alleviated. In my eyes, a closed source centralized Blood port would be a shame, in a way.
EDIT: Now the fact is revealed that Jace is up against the same brick wall as us in terms of a public source code release, and he is not interested in pursuing that, so forget about that. His own game update only, which is still a great thing.
#2 Posted 03 August 2012 - 02:28 AM
Hendricks266, on 03 August 2012 - 01:12 AM, said:
http://www.the-postm....php?f=2&t=1889
If I may editorialize, Jace has the source and wants to fix it up and add all these things, but he has reservations about releasing the source because of "cheating and hacking", even though those concerns can be alleviated. In my eyes, a closed source centralized Blood port would be a shame, in a way.
Wow, this could be huge news. Just the possibility of playing Blood at a reasonable resolution with decent performance would be incredible. I understand your reservations though. Here's hoping there's nothing major to compromise the port.
#3 Posted 03 August 2012 - 02:41 AM
Even with Shadow Warrior I think most people only use SWP now but I'm not that savvy on SW.
#4 Posted 03 August 2012 - 03:58 AM
In my opinion I played Blood at 800x600 VESA graphics on a 14 inch tube with rounded corners and small computer speakers in the 90's because of technological limitations of the time. Not because that was the quintessential way to play that game. If I could have higher resolution, 3D accelerated rendering with everything it entails, etc. I would have done it. If I want to play a non-enhanced version I would just slap it into DOSBox and be done with it.. I play source ports specifically for the improvements. But I guess that's what happens with some communities that center around an old game.. their feelings of nostalgia count more than anything to them.
I have nothing against an icculus style direct port but again... when I think source port I think of eDuke32, Doomsday Engine, etc. But I just remember the first GLROTT port being cancelled because a certain loud group where against there being any changes or improvements whatsoever. That wasn't too cool.
Besides, there's nothing to say that they can't have the same kind of voxel support that the current build ports have with OpenGL. For Blood I had been stuck playing the original with the GLIDE patch in DOSBox but the resolution is low and it is pretty buggy and crashy. I would rather have a version that I can run at arbitrary resolutions. The TC for eduke32 seems fine but it'd be nice for it to be standalone and I see Jace Hall would like for it to also be on other platforms like Mac so that's cool. I just don't know if I want to hold my breath waiting for it to happen at this point.
I'm glad though that the source isn't lost after all and he has it and seems to be willing to do something with it. I think he needs to have a little more faith that the open source community can do something good with it though.
This post has been edited by Tetsuo: 03 August 2012 - 04:05 AM
#5 Posted 03 August 2012 - 05:35 AM
#9 Posted 03 August 2012 - 01:50 PM
This post has been edited by Captain Awesome: 03 August 2012 - 01:50 PM
#10 Posted 03 August 2012 - 05:32 PM
#11 Posted 04 August 2012 - 12:12 AM
Tetsuo, on 03 August 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:
While I don't consider myself one of these people, the fact that you need a lot of resources to pull some kind of extended enhancements and Jace wants this to be free of charge are in contradiction with each other.
#12 Posted 04 August 2012 - 09:03 AM
Daedolon, on 04 August 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:
Yeah, because eDuke was so expensive to make. Thats why you get the community to make the enhancements.
This post has been edited by s.b.Newsom: 04 August 2012 - 09:04 AM
#13 Posted 04 August 2012 - 09:05 AM
#14 Posted 04 August 2012 - 09:45 AM
Daedolon, on 04 August 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:
And that's why closed source just won't work. We are relying on one person only to do something a whole community wanted to do long ago.
#15 Posted 04 August 2012 - 05:38 PM
Also, fuck you Necroslut. Learn to post.
#16 Posted 04 August 2012 - 11:32 PM
#17 Posted 05 August 2012 - 01:49 AM
I imagine Duke 3D would have a larger community and I really doubt anyone much, except perhaps two dozen cry babies, would hugely care about a ranking like that. Although I've never used or seen Duke 3D xbox live so I could be wrong, but lately I've gotten the impression that not many people play that these days either.
This post has been edited by Micky C: 05 August 2012 - 01:51 AM
#18 Posted 05 August 2012 - 04:17 AM
#19 Posted 05 August 2012 - 04:29 AM
This post has been edited by Marked: 05 August 2012 - 04:29 AM
#20 Posted 05 August 2012 - 06:49 AM
Tetsuo, on 05 August 2012 - 04:17 AM, said:
We just got a huge influx of bots last year so I made it so that the first post of every new user has to be approved just so see they're human. After that you're free to post whatever.
#21 Posted 05 August 2012 - 03:17 PM
#22 Posted 05 August 2012 - 06:06 PM
#23 Posted 05 August 2012 - 08:37 PM
#24 Posted 05 August 2012 - 09:23 PM
Open, Closed, I don't care. This is my favorite FPS of all time and I just want to play it whenever.
#25 Posted 05 August 2012 - 09:33 PM
Captain Awesome, on 05 August 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:
I'm not sure how to approach your question. Releasing the source code to something is such an unusual thing for a big corporation like Atari to do. Can you name game companies other than id and 3DR that release game source code? Also, releasing a new executable only requires licensing the IP and the original game. Releasing source code in any useful manner would require licensing it under something like the GNU GPLv2, which gives away the rights of the original devs. Companies are anathema to giving things up.
Other than that, there is simply the explanation of the difference between source code and executable binaries.
#26 Posted 06 August 2012 - 02:15 AM
Bruno Mattei, on 05 August 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:
Agreed. DOSBox works in general but it's so slow and sluggish that it's not an viable option for me. The awkward mouselook makes it harder to play than it should and playing in any resolution higher than 800x640 results in weird graphical artifacts and absolutely terrible performance. Blood deserves so much better. Really hopes something good comes out of this.
#27 Posted 06 August 2012 - 04:59 AM
Hendricks266, on 05 August 2012 - 09:33 PM, said:
As I know it, the Blood source code also contains code from RAD / Bink, which could not be released as is, and the game is dependent on the code to run. It's not even the only case of third party code inside Blood's source code. All these things would have to be heavily edited and/or cleared through the respectable companies.
#28 Posted 06 August 2012 - 07:19 AM
#29 Posted 06 August 2012 - 09:03 AM
Bruno Mattei, on 05 August 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:
Open, Closed, I don't care. This is my favorite FPS of all time and I just want to play it whenever.
"Crazy" mods would require an open source where you could add in functionality for modability. As it stands now, you can't really add anything new other than graphics, maps, or sounds. I don't think things can get 'crazy' until you have some sort of scripting language.
#30 Posted 06 August 2012 - 10:15 AM
Daedolon, on 06 August 2012 - 04:59 AM, said:
I don't know if the licensing applies to the decoder within Blood or just to the encoder tools that Monolith used, but in any case it would be simple to stub out copyrighted code and add a library derived from FFmpeg to support these movie formats.