- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Full discussion here
A bit of a non-standard post as I don’t think you can actually play them for free yet (I can’t see any binaries available and there’s a disclaimer that you need to already own the games, presumably for assets/art), but a pleasant surprise and hopefully something to keep an eye on!
To make things extra confusing I think this is explicitly the code for the games but not the IP. As in the assets, art, etc. are not free, and you can’t just make your own game and call it Command & Conquer.
Yeah, it’s essentially just allowing people to substitute their own assets and build their own new games using the existing codebase. Like imagine if anyone could just use the StarCraft engine to make new RTS games. It means RTS games would be much easier for casual makers to work on.
It also means modders can directly access the code, to make custom mods that work directly with the game. Historically, unless a game has built-in mod support, modding is just a sort of “bolted on” addition. Because without having the source code, it’s really difficult to know why your mod that changes some seemingly small thing is breaking the entire game. But if you can see why it’s breaking things, you can devise ways to work around it.
Then it will help OpenSAGE immensely. Also it helps to preserve at least part of the game. I’d rather have the retired IP officially retired like this rather than leaving it in a limbo/grey area. Like, sure maybe the owner doesn’t pay attention, but when they do pay attention, you can get Nintendo’d anytime. But this one is pretty explicitly open sourced/retired. I also see not just the RTS but Renegade as well. The less known FPS of C&C.