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Surely, H Tower, the Civ II programmers aren't in retirement homes already, are they?
Gatekeeper
Gatekeeper
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"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll die defending your right to say it." — Voltaire
"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." — Confucius -
On one hand, we'd be able to edit and play the game virtually any way we wanted to, perhaps resulting in newer versions with what many would consider as better gameplay. However, it may be possible that the programmers of Civ2 are worried about the source codebeing too similar to that of other games, like SMAC or Civ3. Basically, we're probably looking at a two-sided fork.Known in most other places as Anon Zytose.
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I think you mean knife, not fork.
Unless you mean 'forking' a project in the open source way (splitting up the development tree in two differing versions).
Timetraveller does bring up a good point about Civ2 code buried in SMAC. If that's the case it would be extremely difficult to release the full source of one without the other.Skeptics should forego any thought of convincing the unconvinced that we hold the torch of truth illuminating the darkness. A more modest, realistic, and achievable goal is to encourage the idea that one may be mistaken. Doubt is humbling and constructive; it leads to rational thought in weighing alternatives and fully reexamining options, and it opens unlimited vistas.
Elie A. Shneour Skeptical InquirerComment
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Who owns the code now? Didn't Microprose go broke or get absorbed into some other company? Knowing exactly who to contact would be a good start
'Arguing with anonymous strangers on the internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable from - self-righteous sixteen year olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.'
- Neal Stephenson, CryptonomiconComment
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Case, I think they're a part of Firaxis now, which, in turn, is now known as Atari (talk about a blast from the 1980s). At least I think that's how the corporate gobble-em-up chain worked in this case.
Gatekeeper"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll die defending your right to say it." — Voltaire
"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." — ConfuciusComment
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I don't think so... MicroProse was bought by Hasbro, which then, I believe sold it's computer gaming department (focussing back on boardgames) to Infogrames. Infogrames changed its name to Atari.
Firaxis is a separate company that came about when Sid Meier split off from MicroProse (or was it Hasbro by then?), like Big Huge Games.
But Firaxis and BHG are only game design companies, so their games are published by different companies. In the case of Firaxis that's Atari (Infogrames), for BHG (at least RoN) that's Microsoft.
I guess depending on who exactly had the rights (Microprose or Sid Meier), the source would probably be owned by Atari, maybe Firaxis. And then there's maybe even a difference between the rights for the game and the name.Comment
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Probably just because when Tot came out MGE was still selling well and marketing guys decided to avoid cutting completely MGE sells.Originally posted by CapTVK
The same can be said for any other Civ game out there. Why isn't ToT compatible with standard Civ2 scenarios?
At least, this is what i think after looking at both scn file structure, there's no technical reason which prevents Tot to run Civ2 scenarios, really.
Again, Tot is not a good example: the fact that the Civ2-Tot conversion is painstakingly (aside from my lack of programming abilities) is exactly due to the lack of source-code, i don't know if you've ever tried to reverse-engineer something but usually the outcome IS a painstakingly piece of code (look at MS Office filters used by Star/OpenOffice), but the point is that in Tot 90% of the info are the same respect Civ2 (same format of tables, etc), just rearranged in other ways and with added here and there some bytes to take care of new features of Tot.Originally posted by CapTVK
Once again that can be said for any Civ game. How many Civ games offer Civ2 compatibility? Not even ToT can play Civ2 scenarios (unless you painstakingly convert them).
With the source code i'll be able to fix annoyances of CivConverter in 5 minutes (or even to integrate it in Civ2), the same can't be said for adapting Civ2 scn to Freeciv.
Probably the way to obtain the source code is to ask programmers, not Atari, if Atari holds the copyright then we're unlucky and probably will never see the source code.Originally posted by Case
Who owns the code now? Didn't Microprose go broke or get absorbed into some other company? Knowing exactly who to contact would be a good start
But it seems to me that the civ2 core followed Sid Meier (Alpha Centauri and, to some extent, even Civ3 show similarities with Civ2 core) while Microprose just kept the name (in fact if you remember Microprose licensed Activision to use its Civilization and they came out with CTP which has few things in common with Civ2)
Anyway, don't hold your breath, ID Software is the exception to the rule."If it works, it's obsolete."
-- Marshall McLuhanComment
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Civ 1 and 2 is owned by Atari (who used to be called infogrames, who bought Hasbro who had bought Microprose who made the original games). SMAC was a total rewrite which used many concepts similar to civ (by partly the same programers, but they no longer had acces to their old code and had to start anew). Civ 3 was released when firaxis was bought by or started cooperating with (not sure which one it is) Infogrames/Atari which meant that the franchise and the old code was made available to Firaxis (which by now had very few of the old programers that originally wanted to do civ 3 left, most had gone to new companies).
Or atleast this is what I seem to recall from the pre civ 3 forums but that was a while ago...
No Fighting here, this is the war room!Comment
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Well, i'm afraid that this ends our hopes.
I've still have to see a publisher which releases source code for its products.
Anyway, we could try to ask Firaxis SMAC sources
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"If it works, it's obsolete."
-- Marshall McLuhanComment
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The only Civ2 source that might still exist in some form is the one in ToT. John Possidente might know what happened to it He had access to the original Civ2 source and improved some parts. (Is he still at Firaxis? I believe he did the manual for Civ3)
But even that was a long time ago...
Empires come and go...Skeptics should forego any thought of convincing the unconvinced that we hold the torch of truth illuminating the darkness. A more modest, realistic, and achievable goal is to encourage the idea that one may be mistaken. Doubt is humbling and constructive; it leads to rational thought in weighing alternatives and fully reexamining options, and it opens unlimited vistas.
Elie A. Shneour Skeptical InquirerComment
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There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.
People don't throw stuff like that away.Comment
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hi ,Originally posted by H Tower
There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.
People don't throw stuff like that away.
, if they did that they would also loose the income , .....
as long as the game is trademarked they have the bucks , so why should they release the codes , ......
thats probably the reason they keep it , ....
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No, not the compiled master disks but the sourcecode itself can easily be lost in the corporate paperwork after a couple of takeovers and budget cuts. Most corporations don't have a proper historical archive (in the professional librarian sense) it could be a challenge to even find the damn thing.Originally posted by H Tower
There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.
People don't throw stuff like that away.Skeptics should forego any thought of convincing the unconvinced that we hold the torch of truth illuminating the darkness. A more modest, realistic, and achievable goal is to encourage the idea that one may be mistaken. Doubt is humbling and constructive; it leads to rational thought in weighing alternatives and fully reexamining options, and it opens unlimited vistas.
Elie A. Shneour Skeptical InquirerComment
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you'll find the retort to this statement in an earlier post in this thread. I suggest you go look for itOriginally posted by panag
hi ,
, if they did that they would also loose the income , .....
as long as the game is trademarked they have the bucks , so why should they release the codes , ......
thats probably the reason they keep it , ....
have a nice day
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We live in a complex corporate world."I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll die defending your right to say it." — Voltaire
"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." — ConfuciusComment
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