This sounds like a really bad idea. Why should CZ open up their source code to the general public? Someone could take it, make a few modifications and call it their own. What other decent browser-based games make their code public?

Probably the worst proposal I’ve ever seen, I’m afraid. There’s just no good reason for this to happen.

Bonkenhi Posted:

Probably the worst proposal I’ve ever seen, I’m afraid. There’s just no good reason for this to happen.

Indeed, this is even worse than the INCIT on iPhone application.

I will bumume that by open source you mean “open to everyone” because anything else is not open source.

If FWZ went open source, two things would happen:

1- It would get forked. There will be a free version of it the very next day.

2- Everyone will be able to implement their ideas without need for ET to do it. The problem is, 99% of the ideas I’m seeing are concentrated purified rubbish (IMHO).

I don’t think open source works for browser-based games. It can work for casual games and platform games, but for something like Forumwarz, I don’t see how it could be beneficial to either side (CZ or the players).

Goatse II Posted:

I will bumume that by open source you mean “open to everyone” because anything else is not open source.

If FWZ went open source, two things would happen:

1- It would get forked. There will be a free version of it the very next day.

2- Everyone will be able to implement their ideas without need for ET to do it. The problem is, 99% of the ideas I’m seeing are concentrated purified rubbish (IMHO).

I didn’t say ET wouldn’t be able to approve the ideas himself.

CreepPipe Posted:

By no means should the code to Forumwarz be made accessible to the public. It would cause far many more problems than it provides positive third party content. I’m not even that familiar with Rails, however I’m sure I would be able to find something to exploit. Put that in the hands of someone whom actually has a decent amount of knowledge on Rails and it could become disastrous.

I am however for some sort of API which could be implemented fairly simple using RSS or JSON calls.

But as far as opening up the actual code to the public…bad idea.

I wasn’t proposing to make the entire source code available to the public.

And if Open Source has worked for other online applications, why wouldn’t it work for ForumWarz.

edit: sniped Log in to see images! CaptainDDL edited this message on 01/02/2009 1:16PM

Evil Trout Posted:

Make a copycat of Forumwarz?

Sure, it’s possible. But it tooks years of coding to get Forumwarz to this point. Any copycat would have to put in an equivalent amount of work.

If the source code was available it would just be the issue of setting up a server properly. In other words, days of work instead of years.

Wouldn’t the competition just end up making ForumWarz a better game.

Evil Trout Posted:

Having said that, I’m not convinced it really works for games, or at least it hasn’t so far.

It’s been a mixed bag for games.

Each of the ID engines (And the game-specific code for the quake game that it shipped with) has been open-sourced at some point after the next engine has been released, and we’ve seen some very interesting things result from that.

More importantly, partially open source is where a few major game companies turn a tidy profit.

Valve has it’s SDKs and quite a bit of engine code freely available, and more than a few people have bought Half-Life or Half-Life 2 just so that they could play a mod.

Quake was where Team Fortress originally started, and although ID’s current engines aren’t gathering much interest they used to have the most active mod community of all time. That Doom mods are STILL the most common kind of mod available on the internet is a testament to just how big it was.

And etc…

However, there are some key differences between ID and CZ. Suffice it to say that open-sourcing FWZ would pretty damn likely lead to CZ having serious problems in very short order.

I’m an advocate of open source, but this isn’t a situation where it works.