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Aquaria Goes Open Source
A post on the Wolfire blog yesterday announced that the source code for Aquaria has now been released. Aquaria, an action-adventure, underwater sidescroller from Bit Blot, was part of the Humble Indie Bundle, which was so successful that the developers of four games pledged to release them as open source. This marks the final release, following Lugaru, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture. The source code is available from a Mercurial repository.
Very reminiscent of Ecco the Dolphin. I found it a bit weird that the environments were so awesome looking while the main character looked like it was drawn by a ten year old, but other than that it was a great game. Be sure to check it out.
Living With a Nerd
I was completely blow away by this game when I bought it in the package. It's very well done and ends with you wanting more. Hopefully with this release the community can create some new stuff and drum up interest in a sequel. Don't have it? Buy it!
Quake, Quake 2, et al., are the same way.
Better known as 318230.
This opinion has come up in every story about these games. It's simply wrong. There is plenty that can be done with the code, even while the data remains proprietary.
It would be extremely nice, in fact, if it became common practice for commercial games to have open-source code and proprietary data. That way the creators could still have an obvious way to make money, while the community could take care of making the game run on different platforms etc. (I guess it wouldn't work for multiplayer due to the rampant cheating that would ensue ...)
Why a non-story? I have the data already, since I bought the game. The source code was what I was missing to be able to make some improvements I've been thinking of.
This is exactly what I wanted, and I didn't expect anything more than that.
If you're the same guy who keeps posting about this on the wolfire blog, just do a favour and stop complaining. If you don't see this as an opportunity for some improvements, then perhaps you're not really able to do any, and what you really want is free of charge game, but that was never promised in the first place.
On my part, all I wanted is the source, I got it, so I'm happy.
The outcome of the humble bundle couldn't have been better IMO, and I'll gladly contribute to any future initiatives of the sort.
If open sourcing the engine (and the level editor) is not a story, how are the people interested in making games with it going to find out about the new tools available?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
absolutely. The story is very interesting, and very reminicient of Darek Wu's other games (Like Eternal Daughter.)
The sheer number of hand drawn sprites in the game is astounding. People complain these days that games are all eyecandy, and no gameplay; This one does not go that route. The hand drawn sprites only ENHANCE the gameplay, which is at once both quite fluid, graceful, and dynamic-- and can get outright challenging and extremely difficult, depending on the environment.
I would very much like to see this game ported to other platforms, especially handhelds with analog sticks, like the PSP, or with touch screens, like the NDS.
(I guess it wouldn't work for multiplayer due to the rampant cheating that would ensue ...)
Quakeworld was an object lesson in this. Very shortly after the Quake source went GPL, you saw speed hacks. There were those in the Quake (specifically Team Fortress) community who believed that this was Carmack's poison pill to finally kill off the game. However, newer server code soon followed that detected speed hacks (among other things). And, for the most part, a game that had already survived numerous cheats before it was Open Source, continued to survive afterwards.
It should be noted that one of Carmack's discussions around that time was the problem of balancing out latency without trusting the client too much (said trust being the issue that lead to speed hacks).
Hey, I wonder: What's the smallest unit of a software bundle you could open source and still get a front page story on Slashdot?
Later is exactly it.
I'm not saying that the developer ever will, but if they were to release it as a free download then it's not going to be now, while the game is still generating a few sales.
There's no saying they won't make it free years down the line. In the meantime, bite the bullet and reward them for their hard work with a little hard cash.
Epic whale.
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