Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Rich Geldreich On The Concerns Of Open-Sourcing In The Game Industry

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #31
    Originally posted by nomadewolf View Post
    Here's an idea: the server also renders/calculates the game and only sends you, the information you're supposed to 'watch'...
    I don't think that's viable even in ideal LAN conditions, latency-wise, let alone over the Internet. That would be like what Steam's In-home streaming does and it doesn't work as well as the native thing for me even over a GbE setup.

    Plus, people here kinda pointed me to how it's usually done and I'll read about it later.

    EDIT: This would be a thin client-like stuff, but yeah, wouldn't work. Unless you're playing in low-res and the game isn't sensitive to latency.

    Also, remember the server would be rendering stuff for everyone. Nope, not viable for someone who doesn't have the financial resources of Google, Facebook, NVIDIA and the like.
    Last edited by andrebrait; 30 November 2017, 03:16 PM.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by aksdb View Post
      So he basically thinks he threw away a lotto ticket just to realize he a would have won with it. Which in turn shows he simply had the wrong motivations for open sourcing his work. That is a valid reason to regret something. But it doesn't mean, that open source is a bad idea - as long as you know what you are doing.
      x2, sounds like he should have followed the id software model, i.e. keep it closed for a few years while you bring revenue from your product, then open source it after you've moved on and started work on the Next Big Thing. That's a win-win scenario.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by torsionbar28 View Post
        x2, sounds like he should have followed the id software model, i.e. keep it closed for a few years while you bring revenue from your product, then open source it after you've moved on and started work on the Next Big Thing. That's a win-win scenario.
        I got the impression he open-sourced the project because he needed the help. That's part of what makes this so ridiculous - he got the help and now he's complaining as though he did all the work.

        Comment


        • #34
          If you read his tweets, his main reason for ooen sourcing was because the technology he developed was not in demand at the time. Crunch was suppose introduce the need for it. From what I gathered, he regrets open sourcing it now because it is in direct competition with Basis, a better texture compression technology that he is selling. Instead other developers are using and/or building on top of crunch.

          Comment


          • #35
            And he called lgpl the kiss of death probably because game devs don't like that licensing. Devs want integration at the engine level. Making it lgpl means they can't ship their engine as is without relying on an external dependency being there.

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

              Certainly no offense to yourself but this is actually a good example of why the games industry is so against open-source. It really is due to a lack of knowledge and experience in their trade.

              I have heard a lot of games devs stating that closed source is better because hackers/crackers cannot see the code and find bugs. In reality a cracker can traverse and patch the disassembly just as easily. Also, peer review of code helps fix bugs so open-source software is often so much more secure.

              They do not understand about platforms other than Windows and how open-source can increase the lifespan, they simply have no experience in this. To them open-source means giving the game away for free... Which is simply not true. I would pay up to 10x as much for a game that is open-source. Having access to the source is a benefit I (and many others) would pay more for. Same goes to tools such as Unreal/Unity. Though not under a free license, the source access to Unreal makes it an absolute 100% no brainer choice for the future.

              Game developers are like craftsmen that make wooden toys... They are a far far shot away from an expert craftsman making beautiful wooden furniture and art. They are simply not skilled in that area.
              Exactly this. Back in the day I used to create and release HD-install patches to Amiga games so people wouldn't have to swap among those 20+ floppies and this was all done on the closed binary.

              Comment


              • #37
                Name checks out :P

                "Rich Geldreich"

                "Geldreich" is German for "Moneyrich." Not a soundalike or anything. It literally means that. I'm not making it up.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Didn't we just have an article about Unity using Crunch and he commented here that he was really excited to see the project starting to take off and be used broadly in the mainstream? Seems odd that the next week he's then complaining about how he shouldn't have open sourced it.

                  Guess he must have calculated how much money he could have made by licensing it.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

                    Also, peer review of code helps fix bugs so open-source software is often so much more secure.
                    This whole 'open source is more secure' is really complete bull at this point of time. Even with large names like Oracle, Red Hat, Apple and Canonical, nobody caught the vulnerabilities in Heartbleed and ShellShock until close to a decade later.

                    Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
                    They do not understand about platforms other than Windows and how open-source can increase the lifespan, they simply have no experience in this.
                    Windows 10 (32bit) is still binary compatible with most software from Win98. That is almost 20 years of compatibility for any legacy software, well above its typical lifespan. Most Linux application binaries can't even come CLOSE to this; they don't even survive a few glibc or libstdc++ minor version updates, and older unmaintained code often cannot even build on newer libraries even with complete source access.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Sonadow View Post
                      Most Linux application binaries can't even come CLOSE to this; they don't even survive a few glibc or libstdc++ minor version updates, and older unmaintained code often cannot even build on newer libraries even with complete source access.
                      Duh, of course they don't work, to have compatibility the code needs to be maintained, changed from time to time to make it work with current libs. That's what FLOSS helps a lot with, anyone can do the compatibility changes needed, if they want. Binary compatibility is useless anyway, usually you don't want software older than a year or two, games being an exception. Plus keeping backwards binary compatibility makes the OS keep bugs or other vulnerabilities that would be needed for the older software.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X