Black And White: Open Source?

RP writes "It will be if Peter Molyneux (the designer) has his way. I noted this link over on thecitadel.net where he is quoted as saying: "The first thing is my ambition to make the whole of Black & White, the AI engine, the 3D engine, the physics engine, open-source. Then anybody can download and use that stuff. To use it in a commercial product, you have to pay us a royalty, but, you know, absolutely free for enthusiasts to use." If you've seen any screenshots of Black and White, you know this could be exciting. " Very impressive looking stuff.

Comments

If you have to pay a royalty, it's not Open Source

[Chris Hanson]

If a product's source code is available but you have to pay a royalty for particular uses, it's not Open Source. (See Section 1 of the Open Source Definition.) Rather, it's source-available software. A lot of Sun software is like this now, for instance, including Java and Solaris.

Companies should be applauded for making their source code available, but making source code for a product available and making a product Open Source still need to be treated as different things.

more data needed

[geekpress]

Before this is determined to be A Really Cool thing, more details are needed. If someone else modifies the code, will that source be released? And how enforcable is the non-commercial bit? In other words, if another company uses the code and doesn't release the source, how will anyone know that the B&w code was used commercially?

I do wonder about players in multi-player games tampering with the code to give them godly powers -- or at lest demi-godly powers. How will such tampering be prevented, if at all?

One philosophical question: At what point does a bad license make releasing source code for software A Bad Thing? (A Bad Thing for the original developers, users of the software, and the programmers making use of the source, that is.) Is the situation made worse by calling the software "open source"?

-- Diana Hsieh

That's simply not true.

[Nicholas Vining]

> welp there goes the multiplayer =(

Finally, something I can lecture about.

I've spent a good while over the past five months working on an open source MMORPG, and one of the issues that constantly shows up is client-server security. Anybody who has the source code can modify it, and can run their own hacked client. And there's nothing that you can do about it, apart from closing certain portions of the source code, which is a Bad Thing. (One possibility would be a closed source validator which checks to make sure that the binary is "Acceptable")

That said, what you need to do in any sort of open-source project with a multiplayer function is to develop a system where you trust nobody. In other words, should player X suddenly get a +5 sword of flame and there's no way that he could have gotten it on this level other than cheating, the other clients ignore it/notify the other users/kick him out. I don't know enough about Black and White to go into more detail in terms of how you'd compensate for its actual style of gameplay, but that's one approach.

Another approach would be to maintain a list of "untrustworthy" players based, possibly, off of their IP addresses. Then, if a player is determined to be cheating, he can be blacklisted.

You CAN have secure open-source projects; this is clearly proved by Linux itself. You just need to keep this in mind when you design the game -- and you want a fairly secure multiplayer model anyways, as people will find ways to cheat no matter what. (Played Diablo lately?)

Myself, I'd love an open-source Black & White, just so I could port it to Linux and further disrupt my productivity.

Nicholas

Black & White

[drivers]

I am eagerly awaiting Black & White. Peter Molyneux has consistently put out amazing, fun, and innovative (and not in the MSFT sense) games. Games like Populous, Magic Carpet, and Dungeon Keeper. From what I've seen Black & White is another type of God game where you try to get tribesmen to worship you. However you also have a giant creature which you indirectly control. I guess it is kind of like a gigantic Tamagotchi because you have to train it and keep it happy. (It'll start eating your tribesmen if it gets hungry, for instance.) Also, it can be played in a massively multiplayer online manner.
One thing I'm looking forward to is that you cast spells (generating a thunderstorm for instance... which looks really awesome in the video clips I've seen) using "Gesture Recognition technology." For example the storm takes effect when you draw a circle in a certain manner. I'm not really sure what all that involves.
The fact that it is going to be "Open Source" (Open Source depending on what the license really says of course) is the icing on the cake.