Making a game open source doesn’t mean that you give people the ability to check in code.
That may be true.
Releasing the source code wouldn’t do anything unless the community is prepared to run a full network of authoritative servers like Microsoft does in order to support multiplayer games with whatever fixes they are able to come up with, not to mention matchmaking servers.
That, or go back to peer to peer networking and lobby systems, which would be absolutely terrible.
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So I understand you would take part in the development of the game yourself ?
You are talking about ripping the game, that is not what I mean.
I am talking about giving people the capability to spot bad programming code in the first place.
Or make minor additions. Like a button to invite all members of the previous match, etc.
Well, if I find a code bug or a bad implementation, I would report that. Why not?
You would ‘’report’’ it (whatever the way) but you would not take an active part yourself in the community effort you want to impulse ? We shall then have the same discussion in an equivalent thread in a near future on how badly the new dev team is working and let’s transfer the game development to another team …
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In terms of development this is hilarious , say this to a company or a dev, to release the source code they go off laughing or probably get a heart attack.
Never gonna happen , nor it should happen.
Also it would breed a new generation of hacks and what not.
This idea is, Totally out of scope.
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That won’t happen. But if someone do something along the lines of a userpatch, devs should facilitate to incorporate it.
I would actually say yes, the game runs fine for 99.99% of people, the bugs are not game breaking and if one appears it gets hotfixed pretty quickly
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What is even that broken about the development? All I am really aware of is that spectator chat is hotly demanded
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How is Microsoft gonna publish AGE OF EMPIRES 2 ULTIMATE EDITION, 8-10 yrs from now if they publish the source code?
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Guess I am one of the .01% then.
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Im not trying to be rude, I’m genuinely asking
the game often crashes when playing. Also sometimes freezes.
I play with two friends also having random crashs and freezes.
we all 3 are in the 0.01% above mentioned.
These NEVER happened neither on voobly nor on the original game.
Just lost another game because team mate crashed …
And here we go: Reversing Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition • RedRocket
People have at least 3 major misconceptions about open source:
- The backend (with it’s source code) is not an asset, but a complete liability for the managment of the game. They need to spend millions of wages to get the game refined. Because the code is really bad, bugs are hard to find, and a programmer gets >100.000 usd per year for servicing a complex app like this.
- You can hack the game TO THE MAX without the source code anyway. In the case of the guys from my link above, they used old school “CheatEngine”. There exist even more powerful tools to decompile the app, and analyze and manipulate network packages, which are free for everyone.
I will not elaborate what “someone” was able to accomplish, while playing around with the app for 10h only.
And someone never hacked a game before, nor did someone used any of the tools he needed previously, nor did he had any guide or reference from other people.
That’s why someone knows that the backend code is really bad, by the way. Because you can see the GUI bugs, but under the hood I could have only guessed that it’s the same mess.
At least in the case which I linked, it’s public what has been done.
Also even minor hacks, like full map visibility, breaks every ranked match. - open source =/= no copyright or no license. It’s possible to release the source code to vast extends, and copyright the trademark, the sounds, models, maps, etc. That has been done for e.g. Quake III Arena, which is a leading example for both an AAA game, and software engineering.
The game is remastered into Quake Live, by the way.
I am not saying that the source code should be released right now. But it is a thing, which could be taken into consideration for 2022, if issues don’t get solved.
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Just saw that link, they said they gonna disclose everything if it isn’t fixed, do they notify the devs though?
I only read the very only page I linked, I have no connection to these hackers, nor did I tracked the issue elsewhere.
I mean I am a software engineer after all lol
Open sourcing the code makes it easier to spot bugs. I had no idea that the game state are synced so badly, but imagine you have sanity check on servers, you can still have various buffer overflows / control escape stuff. These are much more easier to reproduce if you have the source code (esp server code)
E.g. for another game I played, osu, the cheat detection is kept closed at maximum to reduce the chance of hack escaping (tho the state is still really bad imo)
@UnfamousScout since the reply button did not work
As a software engineer you really need to close your eyes to not get hurt, even while reading the decomplied code. Just look at the snippets from the RedRocket post.
Trust me you will see bad codes in everywhere including big companies like google…
Back to topic - people just needs to realize that open sourcing stuff is not panacea and it takes huge effort, esp. considering complex projects such as a game.
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