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Dark Reign 2 Goes Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the shhhh-now dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One of Activision's last RTS games, Dark Reign 2, has gone open source under the LGPL. Although the release by a former Pandemic Studios employee was some time ago, it had happened relatively silently. With the source code now available, it is hoped that online play that isn't dependent on WON servers will be implemented and possibly ports to other platforms."

7 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Code AND Assets by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the looks of things the assets are included. There's a 790MB rar file here

    http://code.google.com/p/darkreign2/source/browse/#svn%2Ffull_game

    --
    Summation 2
  2. Illegal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Contains files like source/graphics/IMESHUtil.cpp which state: /*
      * IMESHUtil.cpp
      *
      * INTEL CORPORATION PROPRIETARY INFORMATION
      * This software is supplied under the terms of a license agreement or
      * nondisclosure agreement with Intel Corporation and may not be copied
      * or disclosed except in accordance with the terms of that agreement.
      *
      * Copyright (c) 1998 Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
      *
      *
      * PURPOSE:
      *
      * This file contains the implementation for the IMESH Utility
      * functions that manage IMESH memory, read and writing of IMESHes, etc.
      *
      *
      */

    So it should not be on Google Code

    1. Re:Illegal by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Copyright (c) 1998"

      In a just world, that would be fair game by now.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  3. Re:It just doesn't look as fun as the 2D original by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    I can't comment on the relative fun of those two specific games; but '3d' has certain advantages beyond graphical glitz that come in handy.

    Unless the game ships a fairly massive number of sprites or goes full vector graphics(also unlikely to meet 'pixel perfect' standards), the resolution-independence of 2d engines leaves... something to be desired. You can get away with modest movements up or down, in the original aspect ratio; but things get ugly and illegible pretty fast if you go outside that. Even in games where the gameplay is fundamentally 2d(Civ 4, say, is played on pretty much the same gameboard as Civ1-3, with the rules and the pieces tweaked a bit each time), the ability to splash it across reasonably arbitrary resolutions(once the initial legwork is done) comes in pretty handy in today's world of cheap pixels and eccentric aspect ratios.

  4. Be careful by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    If it's LGPL why weren't the copyright headers updated? Most still just say things like:

    Copyright 1997-1999 Pandemic Studios, Dark Reign

    Seems a bit iffy at the moment.

    1. Re:Be careful by jonwil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Judging by the amount of 3rd party code (a chunk of which I know for sure isn't open source in any way shape or form), I have strong doubts that this is legitimate.
      My bet is that someone will get in trouble for posting this code, the code will be removed (from Google code and probably also from github and elsewhere that it might be uploaded to)

      There is NO WAY that anyone connected with this would ever get permission to post the contents of e.g. 3rdparty\bink or 3rdparty\mss

  5. Legal issues ahoy! by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hacker News user gets confirmation from repo owner that this was a leak not an official open sourcing. Slashdot editors need to update the story to warn people.