Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 11

Thread: Y'all Kinda Crack Me Up

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Posts
    2

    Cool Y'all Kinda Crack Me Up

    Disclaimer: I am not a hardcore ADOM player. I've played it off and on in the past, but it's never been my favorite roguelike. That is no insult - I recognize that it's a great game and certainly think it deserves every possible accolade. I've followed roguelikes in general since the early 80s (Telengard, Moria).

    I have been watching the discussion about ADOM open sourcing...for about ten years. In my opinion, the game will never be open sourced.

    And there's nothing wrong with that. Now personally, I think if you're going to write code, either write it to make money or write it for fun. If the latter, share your code. Truly, roguelikes are such a tiny audience that there is no money to be made in them. If you take one and layer on expensive graphics and sound acting, you can release something like Diablo, but since the typical home coder doesn't have millions of dollars and an army of artists, roguelikes remain a small niche. roguelikes are purely hobby code, which is why personally I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to release his code. There's nothing to lose.

    But it is TB's code and so he can do what he wants. Which is keep it closed forever.

    I think TB's grip on the code is more psychological than practical. Whenever he thinks of releasing it, he conjures another reason not to and hits the snooze button on the idea again. Some past reasons (I'm sure I'm leaving some out, these are just the ones I remember):

    - "socially retarded" people.
    - possible commercial ventures
    - doesn't want cheaters, utilities, spoilers, etc.
    - and now "the angband effect"

    These are all more psychology than reality. Yes, there are jerks out there. But really, what are they going to do? Cut and paste your code into something without giving you credit? Far larger products don't worry about this (seriously, some of the biggest stuff in the world runs on open source)...and frankly, the number of roguelike projects announced and started vs. those that actually ship even in the crudest alpha quality is about 10,000 to 1. You could list all of the successful roguelike projects on two hands.

    Commercial ventures? The ADOM FAQ says "Now think of a game with ADOM's unrivaled engine and the great graphics used in Diablo and other products and you have a sure winner." Yes, but of course, Blizzard didn't license ADOM, did they? Seriously, the idea that someone is going to come along with a team of artists and drop graphical pixie dust over ADOM to make a viable commercial offering is ridiculous. If there was any commercial interest in ADOM, it would have happened long before now.

    Yes, your file formats and formulas will be out in the open. So what!? Yes, someone could cheat. But cheating in a roguelike is like cheating by playing your computer at chess and having it start without a queen or rooks...not very satisfying. Most of ADOM's "secrets" have long since been spoiled. Look at various big commercial games - there are giant wikis for some of them with every possible detail. People will either use that information or not. The idea that your playing of the game is somehow going to be ruined by someone else cheating is frankly silly.

    The "Angband effect". Well frankly, ADOM should be so lucky! What does TB expect? He'll open source the game and everyone will just fix bugs but never change anything? People who code for a hobby like to build things, and if you've ever worked with programmers you'll know that they vastly prefer to do something creative (a mod, a port, a rewrite, a new feature) than just to maintain code (drudgery). If ADOM is released, one of two things will happen. Either

    (a) there will certainly be mods, ports, different versions, a whole sea of things, and the ADOM community should be happy about it. There can still be "vanilla" ADOM with a single maintainer - Angband has its vanilla but also has Zangband, NetHack has its vanilla but also has Slash'Em, etc. The marketplace is the ultimate test - surely, some silly mods will be ignored but there will be general merging, testing, cross-patching, and all sorts of goodness. Yes, TB, you'll have to (gasp!) give up control if you open source. If you want the benefits, you have to give up control.

    or

    (b) no one will care because the number of roguelike hobbyist developers is a pretty small universe and they're already working on other projects. TB may find that there aren't enough people around to form a critical mass around ADOM. That's what happens when you wait.

    It doesn't matter...because TB is not going to open source it. If it was going to happen by now, it would. I think at the root of it,

    • TB thinks of ADOM as his baby (which it is) and the thought that someone else might touch, change, alter, or grow it bothers him.
    • The idea that someone else's name might be listed in the credits bothers him.
    • The virtually-nonexistant chance that some angel might drop out of the sky and say "Hey, we here at GizmonicsWare want to give you 1 million euros to license ADOM" makes him shrink back whenever he thinks about it.
    • I think he thinks the game is really more than it is. It's a great roguelike - one of a few of the of the top tier and many would say the best. But it's just a roguelike.
    • Dammit, he put years of blood, sweat, and tears into ADOM and just can't let it go. So despite the fact that he doesn't want to work on it any more, he will continue to endlessly discuss open sourcing it while also generating new reasons why he can't. At the same time, I suspect he'd be quite upset if someone did an open source reimplementation of ADOM.


    The near future of ADOM is fine...the far future is cloudier. Ultimately, TB won't release it but will stop releasing builds for new platforms. Or he'll be hit by a bus (I hope not!). Or a million other possibilities...20 years from now when we're all running some O/S that doesn't even exist today, ADOM will no longer be playable. We'll still be playing NetHack, Angband, Slash'Em, ToME, etc. but not ADOM.

    And you know, again, there's nothing wrong with that. TB wrote a game, shared it, people had fun playing it for a long time, and then it went away. Lots of good karma for TB.

    But it could live forever and grow. Alas.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Argentina
    Posts
    4

    Default

    ...Why did he decided to ponder about it in first place if annoys him so much, anyway? I don't agree with the unreleasable code thing, while I agree I wouldn't be that bad if he doesnt release it as well... I think it COULD BE released.

  3. #3

    Default

    For the record, the developer behind Dwarf Fortress makes thousands of dollars a month:

    http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25621.0

    The thing is, he works on the game constantly and has cultivated a large community. TB on the other hand updates the blog a handful of times a year and ADOM is dead (and when it was alive, was not being updated at the pace of DF). So money from a roguelike is possible if you treat it like a job.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Esslingen, Germany
    Posts
    3,973

    Default

    Seriously? You are expecting Thomas to kick his IT company goodbye and feed his family with donations he may or may not receive, spending his time developing games people can play for free?

    I admire Toady a great deal for his devotion, but he is not batshit crazy. He only went ahead and started living off donations because his old job was only temporary and he damn well wouldn't do this if he had a wife and kids to take care of.
    ADOM Guides - whatever you wanted to know about playing a certain class, but have been afraid to ask!

    Check out my youtube channel to see my ADOM videos, including a completed playthrough of the game. I try to give instructions, so if you want to see some place you haven't been before and get some hints on how to deal with it, this might help! There's also some other games featured there that you might find interesting.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Cleveland, OH
    Posts
    678

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Silfir View Post
    but he is not batshit crazy. .

    lol. thats all I got to say. Win.
    To this day I have not once scummed in ADOM.
    Probably why I dont have a win.

  6. #6

    Default

    Fair point. I was oblivious to the fact that TB owned a company and had kids. In light of that, it's really hard to begrudge him for putting ADOM on the backburner.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    5,014

    Default

    I don't think you could begrudge anyone that! The chances of making money out of a free game are slim. Toady has gotten lucky so far, but what's he gonna do when the interest dries up? It's quite irresponsible in my opinion to give up your whole life for a computer game. Roguelikes are made as hobbies, not life commitments.
    Platinum Edition ADOMer
    http://gamesofgrey.com - check out my roguelikes!

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    569

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey View Post
    It's quite irresponsible in my opinion to give up your whole life for a computer game. Roguelikes are made as hobbies, not life commitments.
    I don't know what's so irresponsible in that if you're making thousands in a month? There's much worse positions to be in - and if the cash stops coming from that, get a new job. Like people usually do.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    5,014

    Default

    Like I said, I think he got lucky. And I worry for how long it'll last. Of course I wish him the best of luck too - Dwarf Fortress is a truly great creation, and its great to see him profiting from his creation. I just think others shouldn't get silly ideas that this is in any way possible for others to achieve.
    Platinum Edition ADOMer
    http://gamesofgrey.com - check out my roguelikes!

  10. #10

    Default

    Verdant, I think you've hit the nail on the head. I played ADOM like crazy for about a year in 2004. I have never beaten it, and sort of got tired of dying all the time. I still come back to check for an update every so often, but have basically stopped expecting anything.

    The reason I bring this up is because while I was playing heavily and dying at level 24, I looked around for a character editor. That's when I found out that TB had done some kind of crazy encryption thing so people couldn't give themselves 1000 hp or a million gold or so on. His stated reason was because it ruined the game for everyone, or along those lines. I found that to be a little weird. If you have poured a lot of work into the code, and you don't want people reading it and telling you "that's a dumb structure" or "why not do a function call this way here?" I can understand that, but who really cares if someone jacks up their stats to crazy levels and then runs around slaughtering everything while listening to their favorite music? If you want to compare scores, it's easy, just have a tag "Char editor used" or something in the output file. It's his game, and he can do what he wants with it, but I think he is a bit control-freaky. One easy, easy way he could have his cake and eat it too is by keeping ADOM as the full game with maps and quest and characters, and just release something called IDOM (Infinite Dungeons of Monotony) which would just be the Infinite Dungeon, although it could be randomly generated maps of the surface as well, I'm sure there is not much difference the actual code. Anyway, people could run around in this game, do what they want, people could make their own modules a-la Neverwinter Nights, AND the "precious" could be kept safe and whole, since apparently it's more enjoyable for everyone to die 100's of times trying to get some kids puppy before it dies of starvation after having managed to wander though 7 caverns of terror.

    I am trying to be funny here, not insulting. There are lots of very reasonable responses to all of the objections to releasing the code, and it just boils down to "I don't want to". I, like everyone else, totally support that desire, but there is no way to rationalize it, and you have to acknowledge that by keeping it static you are letting it die a slow death.

    Again, on an attempt at humor, am I the only one who finds the "Angband effect" worry to be hilariously ironic? I mean, really, how many characters created in ADOM died due to corruption? I've had several low level ones alone fried out by freak chaos vortexes. And that is a top reason most higher level characters I played didn't make it. So I can TOTALLY understand how someone might not like to see something they put many long, long hours and their fragile hopes into get wrecked and corrupted. It shouldn't be allowed to happen! But if you can dish it.......

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •