Dear Microsoft, let's open source Age of Empires II | Hacker News Reader

Dear Microsoft, let's open source Age of Empires II

medium.com

69 pointsarcticfox15 comments

I'm actually not sure why the source code of 15+ year old games aren't released every day. When the CD manufacturing stops and the company shuts down, etc, no one brings up the possibility of releasing the source to the community. It's possibly the only way to preserve the art history of video games besides making comparability platforms and sharing modified binaries in a legal gray area.

There are often licensing issues (e.g. with third-party libraries) that make it more trouble than it's worth for those companies.

Not to mention proprietary tools required for building, pipeline, etc. -- that is, IF they still can locate the source and IF it's even possible to build it other than in the special "build machine" they used to use.

They could at least issue a statement saying reverse engineering is ok from their point of view.

I would actually like to see more people embrace 0ad ... https://play0ad.com ... especially the AI portion of it ...

They could, but why? There's no money it in.

Open sourcing .NET means they get contributions and users who would never touch a closed source core. They also make money from things around .NET and from cross-selling products that tightly integrate with .NET.

They don't currently make any money from AoE2. Being as old as it is, it's not for sale new so when it does change hands, it's used or illegitimate. Open sourcing the engine helps the people who already handed over money but it's not going to draw in any more legitimate sales for the assets (which are usually non-free in something like this).

And there are licensing issues. If they licensed used some audio middleware or video playback stuff (very common in games) they almost certainly don't have a license to redistribute that in source form. That means either paying more or changing it out. Either way that's money they have to spend on this thing that isn't making them any money.

Not to mention there are already things like openage and 0ad which replicate or replace the engine with a ground-up free implementation.

Rather than do any of that that, Microsoft commissioned a new engine (and assets) to release AoE2HD. They're getting a £15 for everybody who wants to play their old game on new operating systems. That's just the way you make money from old games these days.

I'd be happy if they just released it DRMfree on GOG or something. It existed long before tying your game to Steam's API was ever a thing. I'd buy it again, especially if it was the original version (before they killed LAN multiplayer).

I mean, have we really learned nothing from tying our multiplayer to GameSpy?

Open source would be best, but I'm sure they want to re-release it on every DRM cloud platform to pop up for the next 20 years. Also, legal, etc.

Open Sourcing old games, sounds like a great way for people to learn and see how games were done when there was less hardware resources available :)

Absolutely! All of the devs from that era had their own bag of tricks, and the Age of Empires team had some cool ones.

MS's biggest risk with open sourcing AoE is that it will open them up to a bunch of lawsuits. They will almost certainly be hit by Patent Vultures trying to siphon off some of the large amounts of money MS has earned.

Which is why I think this is almost certainly not gonna happen.

Not gonna happen, at best you'll get an another "remake" that addresses none of the old problems and introduces new ones, similarly to how Heroes of Might and Magic III HD was released.

They still sell it, so its unlikely, but it would be nice.

Right, it would take someone from Microsoft with vision for sure. But I tried to lay out why I think it makes sense from a business perspective under the current conditions as well.

The only reason they sell it these days at all is because the community figured out how to add additional civilizations, and in a pretty cool move Microsoft actually hired those guys to do it officially and they sold 3+ million copies. So I have some faith on their vision in this arena!

They could open source the code without open sourcing the assets. Really, it's so easy to pirate old PC Games that anyone who's paying is already doing so largely for ethical reasons.

Yep, exactly!

You're entirely right, but it's not gonna happen.

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