PPC (and other architectures) and other not so common systems

[albert]

Hi

There is a wide range of other systems than x86 and some of them aren't that uncommon.

This is the request to make the source public available to cover all this systems, because it would be very hard up to impossible to do this with different binary formats.

For example, it would be very nice to see a Cell version of it, so that you can play the game also on a Playstation3. Or in generell, I would like to see a PPC version, because I have one with Linux on it (which is not that uncommon) and I hope I will be able to play the game also.

And they are a lot more architectures.

And there are also the *BSD people, who would also be very happy if they could play the game.

If you don't want to ignore all these people, you would save a lot of work by providing simply the source.

Just wanted to say this in hope for a positive decision on this topic.

Greetings (and big thanks for all the work),

Albert Zeyer

[Belisarivs]

Game woun't be opensourced. Or it isn't planned for now, at least. Maybe in future. I hope.

I think, that WFG want to protect their work as it is only reasonable reason I see. Opensourcing was discussed here pretty often.

In fact, we can't blame FWG staff for not opensourcing game, as it is their work and so the decision.

Supported is only x86, Linux and Win. AFAIK. In fact, WFG can't support all thinkable architectures. See other commercial games. These are mostly available only for Win as DX, which doesn't provide anything OpenGL can't provide, IMHO, performs great service to bound companies to MS.

I hate it, too. You aren't only Linux user here. Which is your distro of choice? I use Debian.

[Ykkrosh]

I think what Belisarvis said is correct. We're mainly working on x86 and Windows/Linux, and have got some way towards x86 OS X; I don't think there are any unusual problems with porting to other architectures (though there are the usual issues with assembly code and endianness and library dependencies and whatever), but we haven't had the hardware and the time (and probably won't unless somebody joins us in order to help with those things).

Open source would definitely help people get the game running on obscure systems, but it has various drawbacks too - I don't think we have a clear decision on that subject at the moment. But I believe it's not a decision that needs to be made in the current stage of development - even if the project was open source, I think cathedral-style development is the only way that would work, and so it doesn't matter if any release decisions are delayed until nearer the time. But this is all just my opinion, and others may differ

Which is your distro of choice?

For me, Gentoo. I've almost memorised the installation handbook now

[Belisarivs]

I think, that bazaar style already contains all advantages of cathedral.

You can easily limit access to source repository. By setting read only to all and write access to chosen will keep you total control over development and make source available to more people/testers.

I really can't find another reason for non-opensourcing other than keeping knowledge private.

There was also mentioned, that opensourcing would screw multiplayer. I think, that this is not an issue, too.

[albert]

Sorry for my late answer, I was a bit busy because of this disturbing exames all the time...

Of course, opensourcing a game/application will not make it less secure unless it uses normal security methods. I read this argument often, but it's wrong. And if a game got its only security by the unknown code behind (like old Windows 9x and other older apps), it's not secure at all. On the other side, OpenBSD is the most secure system out there, OpenSSH is the most often used shell on Linux systems and RSA/DSA is also, mathematical proved, secure. All these are good examples, that it's not impossible to make an opensourced game/app secure.

But I know you developers know this. So I don't think, that this could be any reason for keeping the source closed. (I hope it isn't.) Of course, there are perhaps other reasons.

But back to the topic: Perhaps, I should join your team. As I have a PPC here and have some experiences with making a game/app endian and architecture indepentend, this could help the game in this issue.

PS: Realy a nice and wise choice to use Gentoo. (I am also one of these Gentoo-users.)

[Belisarivs]

Bah, Gentoo causes global warming. Save tree, use Debian.

Edited March 27, 2007 by Belisarivs