List of commercial video games with available source code | Hacker News Reader

List of commercial video games with available source code

en.wikipedia.org

This is a really interesting list. BTW, don't forget to click through to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...

IMO, some of the most important/interesting games on this list are (in no particular order):

* Colossal Cave Adventure

* Zork

* Habitat

* SimCity

* Doom and its various incarnations.

* Quake

* Balance of Power

* Civilization IV -- Wow, this one was a surprise to me! I'm gonna poke around with it some.

* Civilization V -- Also a surprise.

* Elite

* Unreal, and its various incarnations

* Eliza

* Oregon Trail

* Akalabeth: World of Doom

* Empire (paging @WalterBright). I remember spending a lot of hours on this one. :-)

* Pac Man

* Pole Position

* Wizardry III

Maybe I've missed a few, but these are the ones that stood out to me.

I learned the basics of programming and C++ by reading the Half-Life game engine code which was released for the modders community back then.

To this day I think it's the best way to learn programming: read the source code of a large and successful program.

I find it amazing because the same happened to a great friend of mine that did it with Quake, hacking and cheating the multiplayer game. Now he has a fast-growing startup which he probably coded alone at least 90% of it thanks to these days.

Also good to know: pretty much all early switch games, even first party ones, ship with debug symbols!

If you're looking for a chance to get into aarch64 or are curious enough, having a peek at the 1.0 versions of Splatoon 2 or Breath of the Wild is well worth it.

gcc default settings I presume? GTA3 on PS2 also ships with names, and the android ports of most PS2 era R* games also ship with names by way of just exporting every function (and in GTA3's case even static/local names for some reason).

I wonder why most of them have proprietary data, maybe they think the engine source code is essentially worthless so open sourcing it is fine, but open sourcing the game assets means loss of control over their artistic vision of the game or the future revenue of sequels etc.

You can find a quite bit more than are on this list if you don't mind shady torrent sites

You would think there would be more interest in psychological research. Or am I wrong, and it would be a copyright violation to download the source code and assets, compile, and ask volunteers to play the game?

I have a hard time believing the courts would object to psychological research conducted this way though; would video game companies really be willing to license this way? They would be liable for any ethical violations of experimenters; it doesn't seem like it would be a simple matter from the point of view of fiduciary duty. Better to leave the men in white coats alone.

This is interesting. What sort of psychological research are you thinking could only be conducted with old games, as opposed to newer games, which one can purchase without need to compile and build?

You may be able to do some of it with mods - but you want to compare how people react with different settings, sprites, sounds, or even gameplay rules.

The release of the source code is actually more of a symbolic signal that the competitive value of the source code has reached a certain level. And that is within n orders of magnitude of the level where there is enough energy and money to pay lawyers to pursue, say, trademark violation or copyright infringement against anyone conducting such research.

So to be perfectly safe, one would be ultra-paranoid and stick to games released in the 20th century and then frame it as a kind of historical landmark in the video game market: what do video games in the 20th century say about what we knew about operant conditioning up to that point?

Example: suppose a behaviorist foundation and ask questions about really minute details related to visual and motor processing. Another: observe the expected and actual effects on behavior.

Would you conduct a Stanford Prison Experiment style of experiment if it were done with video games? That is, the players are associated with guards and prisoners, and they play out similar roles that the original experiment outlined, but in a virtual world?

The prison experiment example already has a volunteer playerbase, it's called "Jailbreak mod" and versions exist for various iterations of Counter-strike and probably other FPS games, and almost certainly Roblox. It is role-playing, and attracts certain kinds of personalities. I have played it.

There would be nothing illegal about such experiments if using legally purchased software. What would be the difference from e.g. a LAN party?

Command and Conquer remastered had it's source code released.

That includes Tiberian Dawn (aka the first game) and Red Alert.

Dont forget to search on the Internet Archive ;)

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