Column #129; By DarthVeda

[DanQ]

DarthVeda pleads to MicroPROSE to release the source code of Civilization II in his latest article, "Microprose Should Release the Civilization II Source".

Comments/questions welcomed.

----------------
Dan; Apolyton CS

[CapTVK]

I'm all for releasing the Civ2 (MP) source it would be great boom Civ2fans and give 'Microprose' a fair amount of street credit.

All fine and well but the problem is that there are not much business related barriers to releasing the source. (Civ3 is on the horizon and the Civ2 engine has reached the end of the line with ToT). Indeed there might be some benefits for releasing the source to the public.

The trouble is the legal barrier, I've been studying the gaming industry for some time now and the biggest obstacle would be convincing the lawyers. When Hasbro took over MPS I guess they also gained control of their games library, including source codes.
Writing letters pleading/demanding them to release it just won't help. If this plan wants to succeed you'll need a high ranking champion within MPS/Hasbro organization itself to force the issue. No matter how massive the outside requests it ain't gonna happen without inside support.

So in short, if we want to the source to be released we'll ahve to take the long route. Write letters to the right people (programmers/design leaders who've moved up in the organization) and convince of the benefits of releasing the code.

For the meantime our best bet is FreeCiv

Of course someone could accidently put the source out with the "trash"...

[CapTVK]

Nothing?
You would expect more response on this sort of subject. Come on people, what's your view on this!

[St Leo]

I support the motion.

------------------
St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

[Scouse Gits]

It is hard to disagree - of course source code should be made public - after a reasonable time period for expoitation.
Unfortunately there is virtually no incentive for the games companies to do this ...


------------------
____________
Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[Steve Clark]

Street credit??? That and a nickle leaves you with...absolutely nothing of any worth.

[DaveV]

A good idea in theory, but it ain't gonna happen. Even if, by a miracle, Microprose/Hasbro were convinced to release the source out of pure altruism, it would be a lot of work for anyone to pick up the code and do something with it (go back and review some of the ToT threads. The programmers knew about some of the bugs and wanted to fix them, but they didn't have enough man-hours to do it).

A much better bet is Freeciv - they've proven they have the ability and motivation to write and debug a Civ-like game. Maybe someday it'll even run on my machine...

[Sieve Too]

Hey Darth! No stealing my name!

But seriously. I guess we could all wait out the length of the copywrite - somewhere around 75 years!

[Tom DeMille]

It would be nice to dig around in the sourcecode and pick out the formulas that are used for calculating trade bonuses and such, but I'm not holding my breath...

[Gedrin]

You know there is a hitch... one risk any company takes when releasing source is revealing the quality of their programmers... and the public opinion fallout that might incur.

Gedrin

[Krusty]

They did it with doom, why not Civ 2.Anyway, can't they make it so you need the original Civ 2 to use the source?