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Latest Humble Bundle Comes With Uplink Source Code
SharkLaser writes "The latest Humble Bundle comes with four great indie games from Introversion. Included in the pack are Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON and Multiwinia. Bonus games include Aquaria, Crayon Physics Deluxe and the recently added Dungeons of Dredmor. Introversion also showcases some of their prototypes, like Subversion City Generator which demonstrates procedural generation of complex city environments, and Voxel Tech Demo for showing destroyable environments using voxel technology. Hackers and open source programmers around the world should also celebrate — Introversion will release source code for their games Darwinia, Multiwinia, DEFCON, and most importantly, Uplink, the legendary hacking simulation that is one of a kind."
While it's definitely cool that the Bundle now comes with the code for these game, make sure you read the license for publication of any finished product; while it's understandable that Introversion would want people to pay for the software, the license requires that a developer contact Introversion if they make a port, and they don't allow porting to a multitude of consumer devices (anything nintendo, sony, or microsoft makes) even if the end-user is required to buy the media required to play the game (such that they would need to purchase the full PC version.) So keep this in mind before making a PSP version (like someone did with the Aquaria source released in the first Humble Bundle.) As a modding platform and possibly as a learning tool, providing the source is very nice of Introversion. So, for the most part, kudos to them.
I know that admitting this means I have to turn in my Obscure Indie Game Enthusiast card, but I didn't know about Uplink until yesterday when I bought the newest Humble Bundle. Played it some today. Still amazed that they made the idea work at all, and that it's actually quite a bit of fun.
We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Introversion for their pioneering work in indie games. I know that their games have a particular flair that doesn't appeal to everyone, but *that's the whole point* of indie games; with enough independent developers, you eventually get something quirky and awesome that fits your particular tastes.
Roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor, if you haven't played it yet, is worth the price of admission. Play it on hardcore mode for a very old-school Nethack experience. (You die, you die. Start over.)
It's a bit biased in favor of wizards, but it has an overall very interesting class generation system and challenging gameplay.
Plus, it's funny. Actually funny. But with good core mechanics beneath it all.
Uplink Developer CD and it's non-FOSS license with instructions on how to compile using MS Visual C++ 6.0 so what's different about this 'new' release?
I've been a long term fan of Introversion since 2002, I even went to their Darwinia launch party at their house, which was awesome. I was so stoked about the Humble IV Bundle that even though I had bought the games twice in the past (disc and steam) I had to buy this too, both to support IV and also Humble (backed by the same people who backed Google so probably don't need that much support!).
/.'ing will bake the bundle sell even more. It was at about $510,000 last night, so will be interesting to see how it goes up after this.
Regards the source. That has been available for about 6 years now on the Uplink dev disc. This costs about £20. I haven't looked into the restrictions on using it but as the previous poster recommends, contact them before doing anything that might piss them off. They're really nice guys and deserve support for making what are, really enjoyable games. Uplink was in the PC Zone top 50 games, and in LXF's top 20 games for scaring the sh1t out of you.
Hopefully this
Is this news, or is this just an advert for the Humble Bundle?
Well obviously it is an advert. It is not particularly newsworthy, because - let's face it - how many of us here are going to do anything with the source code for a game that most of us had not heard of until this bundle. That is not to say that it is a bad thing to advertise the bundle, as it is for charity after all.
That said, I'm afraid I am getting a bit bundled out. This is the seventh Humble Bundle since May last year. Add to that the similar bundles that have sprung up (eg. Indie Royale which isn't for charity and does a different bundle every few weeks) and it seems less like an event and more like a perpetual sale.
The biggest problem is that I find myself second guessing my purchases of indie software via the normal distribution methods because I wonder whether I will be seeing the title in a bundle in the near future. Should I pre-order Trine 2, or wait for the inevitable virtual giveaway one of these bundles?
Will the excess of bundles mean that developers lose more profitable sales? Or do these bundles help by getting indie titles into the hands of people who would normally buy mainstream games, and so not really diminish their usual audience?
No it's not an advert. Well, I'm not directly benefiting from it anyway (except if I get to play some good mods people will make because they saw it!). And after getting called shill thousands of (I can remember at least Microsoft, Steam, [surprisingly] Red Hat, Spotify, Logitech..), this kind of thinking on slashdot gets really old. There's always someone pointing out how this person must be a shill (or that the story is an advert) because he said he likes something.
Note to self: Do not forget to close tags or click the fucking preview button.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Two games in the suite actually require product activation. I was disappointed to find this out, as this was what started me on my migration from Microsoft, oh so long ago.
The two games in question are: Multiwinia and DEFCON.
So don't plan on enjoying these games sans-DRM.
I actually examined their music.dat (zip file), investigated the .uni file format, and even found one standalone player that could play those. But I didn't like that, so I checked the strings inside the music files, grabbed the author name, and googled. Karsten Koch: The Blue Valley (main theme, I like this one the most).
"Will the excess of bundles mean that developers lose more profitable sales? Or do these bundles help by getting indie titles into the hands of people who would normally buy mainstream games, and so not really diminish their usual audience?"
Considering the state of the game industry with heavy handed DRM, the fact that you get a games SOURCE CODE which you can modify/update/change is downright RADICAL in an age of corporate feudalism and creeping fascism. One only has to look at SOPA to see this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
Whether or not you get tired of the bundles these are people we should want around and to keep in business. More money = they have more money to invest in making their games better. While not all games on the bundle are good, it's not like gamers have many options for DRM free gaming AND being respected as a gamer and enthusiast (getting the source). So that 10 years down the line on windows 12 the game you bought can stilll be played with some coder just updating the code without any stupid emulation.
Think about all the hoops we have to go through to run old classic games - needing emulators, etc, etc. Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if customers actually got to OWN what they bought from entertainment software vendors?
I have never agreed with software licensing without any ownership stakes for customers and ability to get souce-code after the sales window of said softwareespecially FOR games. Licensing is one of those big bullshit lies greedy corporatized and indoctrinated bastards believe in and we've seen what that kind of mentality does to our rights and freedoms in society.
I'm amazed at the high average donation this time around. IIRC the last few Humble Bundles I bought into had an average of around $2. At the time of writing the average on this bundle is $3.98. I guess these games offer pretty good value.
The higher average price might also be - if you pay more then the (at payment time) average price paid then you get another two games (and so then the average goes up slightly)
The average now is $4.06