Are there any examples of an "abandoned" game's fans successfully getting the game to be open-sourced?
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Club Penguin Rewritten, Toontown Rewritten, and The Legend of Pirates Online (based on Pirates of the Caribbean Online) are resurrected versions of games shut down by Disney. The former was
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Hawken was recently brought back from the dead by a few insanely dedicated fans.
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One that I'm aware of is Re-Volt. The source code for both the base game and some addons can be found here.
There was another one that I remember using years ago but I can't find it anymore. It was for another racing game called 4x4 Evo. There is the 4x4 Evolution Revival project but it's not the one I used and there doesn't seem to be any source code available.
holy shit, very cool to learn about re-volt! i loved playing that game with my brother on n64
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It is, but that's the workaround they went for, and it worked just fine in a legal sense. It was probably faster and less expensive than trying to engage in anything thats going to even risk involving a copyright attorney.
Makes sense, thanks.
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[email protected] was developed as a commercial title a few years back. I believe, @[email protected] contacted the devs to get it open-sourced.
Cool, thank you for the reference! If I decide to pursue something like this, I will know someone to ask questions to.
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While not open source, OldUnreal has taken over Unreal and Unreal Tournament with access to the source code and they release patches. The OldUnreal team has an agreement with Epic to do this.
Good to know, thanks!
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Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape.
In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
Awesome achievement, thanks for telling the story!
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Does the Unity release of Daggerfall count?
What's the story with that one? Was the original game open-sourced, or is it a rewrite?
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Club Penguin Rewritten, Toontown Rewritten, and The Legend of Pirates Online (based on Pirates of the Caribbean Online) are resurrected versions of games shut down by Disney. The former was
Cool, thank you!
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Hawken was recently brought back from the dead by a few insanely dedicated fans.
Thanks! What did they do?
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Thanks! What did they do?
Mechromancy, I guess. I genuinely don't really know.
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Mechromancy, I guess. I genuinely don't really know.
No worries, I'll check it out, thanks!
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Plenty of devs think it's easier than it is. A ton of games are built on proprietary tools, and then you get into legal hot water on whether you can even give away things like the soundtrack or assets you bought like stock sound effects.
I wouldn't be surprised if they looked at it after the petition and thought "wait, I actually can't open source this"
Winamp dumping a bunch or proprietary information on GitHub is a good example of this.
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Good to know, thanks!
Not for sure exactly, maybe there are some details on the forums?
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Freespace 2 comes to mind. The whole game engine was open source not just the game itself.
Looks like there is still a community building on it too. https://scp.indiegames.us/ -
And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Early Dooms and Quakes https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM but they aren't open source for the reasons you wanted.
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This was my favorite game as a kid. Doing fan-art and a D&D campaign about it for years got me hired on as an artist for the new one! It's gonna be wild.
Congrats!! As I'm sure you can imagine, I am incredibly excited for COI!
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Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape.
In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
I loved Sacred 2! I remember save scumming to preserve my 0 deaths streak. I'd hit the power button on the Xbox before it could save, risking corrupting my character every time.
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And if so, what tactics did they use? Pester the devs? Crowdfunding to buy the rights to the game from the devs? Something else?
Magewars had a brief revival
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Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape.
In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
I tried looking into this and I'm having trouble setting it up, although I'm on linux so that might be my doing.
I followed the guide on Darkmatters
