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Penumbra: Overture Goes Open Source
As promised when the Humble Indie Bundle hit $1 million in donations the other day, indie developer Frictional Games has released Penumbra: Overture's source code. "The code for Penumbra: Overture is a continuation of the one used for the tech demo + some addition for the not so long lived Robo Hatch project. It also contains some code from Unbirth, giving it quite some history." The release also includes the HPL1 engine. "This is engine that has powered all of the Penumbra games and it even includes the stuff used to create the 2D platformer Energetic. The engine code was started in December 2004 and was actively developed until early 2008." The repositories are available at github.
FREE software shouldn't be like that. FREE sfotware is about giving back your changes to the community, to the centralized repository. Git is dangerous for free software.
Where is it defined that free software is about giving back your changes?
If you want truly free software, then you have to take the both worlds and accept that people aren't required to contribute back. Even less so if they just keep those modifications private and to themself, which even GPL allows. It isn't really any better than proprietary software if you also want to make restrictions and demands on how you can use free and/or open source software.
I've never heard of this game and neither the summary nor TFA actually told me anything about it. According to Wikipedia, it's a first-person adventure game with a focus on Newtonian physics, improvised weapons, and no firearms. Is it really too much effort for the person writing the summary to bother saying that?
The story isn't really about what kind of game Penumbra is... It's about the fact that the source code was opened up. With the source code now available, the content of the original game is somewhat irrelevant as people will (hopefully) use the code to develop their own games.
Additionally, this is not the first mention of Penumbra or the Indie Bundle here on Slashdot. One of the previous stories is mentioned (and linked-to) right in the summary.
I mean... Sure, they could have included a description of the game... And they could have provided a description of the Indie Bundle as well... And defined what Open Source means... And what github is... And maybe some of that stuff might have been useful... But at some point it just seems kind of excessive.
The story is about the code, and they provided a description of the code.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Nice job selectively quoting to be misleading. Here is the entirety of that quote:
In other words, this is the entirety of the source code for Penumbra: Oveture. AI, GUI, etc are all present. What it isn't is the sourcecode for the next two games in the series, Black Plague and Requiem.
*Note that the art resources have not been open sourced. You should still purchase the game if you want to play it, but now you can build your own binary. This is basically what iD has done in the past with their old Quake engines.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I love people who rant about freedom as they try to tell other people what to do.
People are gaga over git. You shouldn't be. Git is a decentralized vcs... Use bzr or mercury if you like FREE software.
Let me translate: "Don't use git. Git is bad because it's a decentralized VCS. Use one of these other decentralized VCSs instead."
Troll.
These games from the Humble Indy Bundle have not been released under a free license, nor does it appear they will be. All that is being released are their engines.
Following the ID tradition.
There are already dozens of free software game engines available with no free software games which use them.
And because of Engine only releases Open Source developers have been able to produce a host of new games. From the Quake engines alone we have Tremulous, Warsow, Alien Arena just to name a few.
Having a proven Engine under your Project allows developers to focus on Assets and Level Design and tweaking the gameplay to a much larger degree than is possible if developing the engine as well.
There is another benefit to the original developers and users in that their games survive onto the next era of computing and gaming devices.(iPhones, Androids and insert your favorite tablet device here)
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
With that said I question their motives it seems to me like they're using this release as an excuse to not have to provide support for their old games.
sounds like a fair trade to me. They get to stop supporting it, we get the source. Everyone wins. Who cares if we don't get game assets, or the engine to the new games? Maybe if those games run their course, we'll get the new code, and the best parts of it can be merged in, or the best mods can be merged to the new tree.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It won't run on their later games because the AI for infected plus GUI elements are missing.
there, fixed.
It lacks GUI elements added in later games. It also adds AI for creatures found in later games - all three enemies found in Overture are included. (one of the humans in the Overture is never seen, the other is strictly scripted, no AI)
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This is Slashdot, not the AP. Editors should assume a familiarity with a wide swath of technological, scientific and gaming elements for the large majority of their readers. For the rest, seriously just read the article, ask a question or Google it. There is no reason to complain on a forum that the description of something is vague, you are on the frigging Internet.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
As a counterpoint, I'd just like to weigh in with my opinion that the second and third in the series are rather disappointing. I kept playing because the plot was, indeed, engrossing. There is no question there: they've absolutely nailed the video game "port" of a good Lovecraft story. There is no doubt that they are worth the price; however, I felt a bit cheated with the sequels. The plot begs you to continue, but the gameplay becomes a tedious challenge instead of a nerve-tingling joy. Overall, the series succeeds on the strength of its plot, despite gameplay; whereas the first entry masterfully combined them both.
Part two, Black Plague, replaces a menacing enemy with an outright frustrating one, and its puzzles begin to wear thin. The horror in the first part, Overture, comes from a series of uncannily well-executed escalations: at the moment you are finally exasperated from running from an enemy, circumstances turn in your favor. As you acclimate to this, another enemy is introduced requiring more adaptation. This staging was nothing less than a stroke of genius.
In contrast, for the entirety of Black Plague you are completely defenseless. This would be OK were it not for the scripting/AI of your sole enemy. Occasionally you may even need to engage and run away from an enemy since they are blocking a goal. Repeated ad nauseam, this is not scary; it's just annoying. These frustrations are also present in Overture, but as an exception. In Black Plague they have become the rule.
Likewise the stealth-orienteering of Overture has been mostly replaced by puzzles which are either insulting straightforward or require rather silly, contrived solutions in the spirit of Sierra games (although simpler). Certain sections require the use of a (filth-encrusted) gas mask which serves, gameplay-wise, only to make life more difficult by obscuring your vision. Again, this is neither challenging nor scary; it's just annoying. To add insult to injury, your character has in his inventory a bottle of alcohol and a rag which cannot be used to clean the damned thing; you see, they are for use in a puzzle later on. Further, as in most physics-puzzle games, the promise of "multiple solutions" reminds one of the hillbilly bar in Blues Brothers which played both kinds of music, country and western. Indeed, one may cross an obstacle using either a stack of crates or a stack of barrels.
With the final entry of the series, the developers seem to have finally accepted defeat in the combat/stealth genre; it's a pure first-person puzzle-platformer which, to put it mildly, deviates somewhat radically from the spirit of the first two and borrows quite a bit from the spirit of Portal (to which there is a bit of an homage in the second level), as a somewhat deranged alien intelligence guides the character through a sequence of tests. At least it's passable gameplay, but the gameplay and the plot have at long last become totally orthogonal.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky