Isn't it about time they release the civ2 source code? - Page 2

DrSpike · June 14, 2003, 11:09

Quote:

Originally posted by CapTVK
Wake up to smell the coffee people. We've already got the Civ source code!

And this didn't help.

Also I see Mercator was clever enough to see the earlier 'a'.

I think a lot of your points reinforce the use 'the' civ source code would be.

CapTVK · June 14, 2003, 11:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Mercator
The scenario editing possibilitie are where civ2 blows just about all of its competition out of the water.

Agreed, I still enjoy playing Civ2 scenarios. I do miss Captain Nemo though.

Quote:

Even the point about the map topology (iso-maps) is a problem that's being settled right now by one of the developers (Raimar Falke).

I could add freeciv map support for MapEdit once that's done. [/QUOTE]

Now there's something nifty, I'll be looking forward to it.

CapTVK · June 14, 2003, 11:17

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike

Ok this was the bit that confused me.............but now (in the day, completely sober) I see you said 'a' civ source code not 'the' civ source code.

I'm glad that's 'a' point that's is cleared up now.

CapTVK · June 14, 2003, 11:30

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike

I think a lot of your points reinforce the use 'the' civ source code would be.

I have no doubt about that the release of 'the' source would benefit all parties.

"If" it was released, I must point out. Even if it was released tomorrow by Atari (the company formerly known as Infogrames ) it would still take considerable time (1-2 years) to see actual benefits from it. The source won't be properly documented so it will be major challenge to actually introduce new features. The Civ2 source would still be at a disadvantage compared to the Freeciv one.

DarthVeda · June 14, 2003, 16:52

You know if Civ3 and Freeciv are truly outstanding products, then the creators of both should have nothing to fear from the release of a civ2 source.

But are they so outstanding or just rehashes? Some of the attitudes in this thread really make you wonder...

DrSpike · June 14, 2003, 17:31

Well if I understand it correctly Freeciv is meant to largely be a rehash................civ3 on the other hand remade the game completely, to its detriment.

CapTVK · June 14, 2003, 18:16

Quote:

Originally posted by DarthVeda
You know if Civ3 and Freeciv are truly outstanding products, then the creators of both should have nothing to fear from the release of a civ2 source.

But are they so outstanding or just rehashes? Some of the attitudes in this thread really make you wonder...

Well, everyone likes to root for his or her particular favourites. That doesn't mean they dislike all the rest. Far from it, to give a suitable metaphor:

Same tree, different branches. What's good for the tree is also good for the branch. The direction doesn't really matter. They all grow out from the base of the tree.

Shaka Naldur · June 14, 2003, 19:43

let's ask for the code, what should we do?
we can start emailing them begging....
just pressing them a little, how much money would they lose if we got the code? NONE

what do you say?

H Tower · June 14, 2003, 20:22

Atari is still selling the game on their website, so I have a feeling they won't be releasing the code anytime soon

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec...P=0&CACHE_ID=0

Mercator · June 15, 2003, 07:05

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
Atari is still selling the game on their website, [...]

Or maybe not...

Quote:

Minimum system requirements

The Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition CD-ROM installed on your hard disk

They're just tricking us into buying an empty CD.

DarthVeda · June 15, 2003, 11:39

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
Atari is still selling the game on their website, so I have a feeling they won't be releasing the code anytime soon

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec...P=0&CACHE_ID=0

Yeah but iD software is still selling Doom 2 for $25 even though they have released the source!

I think what they did is release the source code but not the levels/art files, so you would need to own a copy of doom to actually play it unless you had your own art/levels.

So what Atari could do is remove all of the .gif files and the .dll files that store the pictures, along with all the scenarios, text files, and maps. So you'd have civ2's executable source and whatever else is needed but you'd have to own the resource files to be able to do anything with it.

H Tower · June 15, 2003, 19:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Mercator

Or maybe not...

Quote:

Minimum system requirements

The Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition CD-ROM installed on your hard disk

They're just tricking us into buying an empty CD.

I was wondering about that myself.

Quote:

orignally posted by darth veda
So what Atari could do is remove all of the .gif files and the .dll files that store the pictures, along with all the scenarios, text files, and maps. So you'd have civ2's executable source and whatever else is needed but you'd have to own the resource files to be able to do anything with it.

I hadn't thought of that, excellent point

Gatekeeper · June 17, 2003, 02:39

Hmm ... what are the odds that one or more of the Civ II programmers would be around from time to time to help "Joe and Jane Public" document Civ II source code if it ever went public?

Gatekeeper

H Tower · June 17, 2003, 03:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Hmm ... what are the odds that one or more of the Civ II programmers would be around from time to time to help "Joe and Jane Public" document Civ II source code if it ever went public?

Gatekeeper

do they let senior citizens use the internet at the retirement homes?

Mercator · June 17, 2003, 04:14

... Perhaps we should just start a petition. If CFC, Apolyton and FreeCiv all participate we should be able to get thousands of supporters.

Gatekeeper · June 17, 2003, 13:52

Surely, H Tower, the Civ II programmers aren't in retirement homes already, are they?

Gatekeeper

TimeTraveler · June 18, 2003, 13:23

On one hand, we'd be able to edit and play the game virtually any way we wanted to, perhaps resulting in newer versions with what many would consider as better gameplay. However, it may be possible that the programmers of Civ2 are worried about the source codebeing too similar to that of other games, like SMAC or Civ3. Basically, we're probably looking at a two-sided fork.

CapTVK · June 18, 2003, 16:54

I think you mean knife, not fork.

Unless you mean 'forking' a project in the open source way (splitting up the development tree in two differing versions).

Timetraveller does bring up a good point about Civ2 code buried in SMAC. If that's the case it would be extremely difficult to release the full source of one without the other.

Case · June 28, 2003, 07:40

Who owns the code now? Didn't Microprose go broke or get absorbed into some other company? Knowing exactly who to contact would be a good start

Gatekeeper · June 28, 2003, 14:16

Case, I think they're a part of Firaxis now, which, in turn, is now known as Atari (talk about a blast from the 1980s). At least I think that's how the corporate gobble-em-up chain worked in this case.

Gatekeeper

Mercator · June 28, 2003, 14:46

I don't think so... MicroProse was bought by Hasbro, which then, I believe sold it's computer gaming department (focussing back on boardgames) to Infogrames. Infogrames changed its name to Atari.

Firaxis is a separate company that came about when Sid Meier split off from MicroProse (or was it Hasbro by then?), like Big Huge Games.
But Firaxis and BHG are only game design companies, so their games are published by different companies. In the case of Firaxis that's Atari (Infogrames), for BHG (at least RoN) that's Microsoft.

I guess depending on who exactly had the rights (Microprose or Sid Meier), the source would probably be owned by Atari, maybe Firaxis. And then there's maybe even a difference between the rights for the game and the name.

Angelo Scotto · June 29, 2003, 07:15

Quote:

Originally posted by CapTVK
The same can be said for any other Civ game out there. Why isn't ToT compatible with standard Civ2 scenarios?

Probably just because when Tot came out MGE was still selling well and marketing guys decided to avoid cutting completely MGE sells.

At least, this is what i think after looking at both scn file structure, there's no technical reason which prevents Tot to run Civ2 scenarios, really.

Quote:

Originally posted by CapTVK
Once again that can be said for any Civ game. How many Civ games offer Civ2 compatibility? Not even ToT can play Civ2 scenarios (unless you painstakingly convert them).

Again, Tot is not a good example: the fact that the Civ2-Tot conversion is painstakingly (aside from my lack of programming abilities) is exactly due to the lack of source-code, i don't know if you've ever tried to reverse-engineer something but usually the outcome IS a painstakingly piece of code (look at MS Office filters used by Star/OpenOffice), but the point is that in Tot 90% of the info are the same respect Civ2 (same format of tables, etc), just rearranged in other ways and with added here and there some bytes to take care of new features of Tot.

With the source code i'll be able to fix annoyances of CivConverter in 5 minutes (or even to integrate it in Civ2), the same can't be said for adapting Civ2 scn to Freeciv.

Quote:

Originally posted by Case
Who owns the code now? Didn't Microprose go broke or get absorbed into some other company? Knowing exactly who to contact would be a good start

Probably the way to obtain the source code is to ask programmers, not Atari, if Atari holds the copyright then we're unlucky and probably will never see the source code.
But it seems to me that the civ2 core followed Sid Meier (Alpha Centauri and, to some extent, even Civ3 show similarities with Civ2 core) while Microprose just kept the name (in fact if you remember Microprose licensed Activision to use its Civilization and they came out with CTP which has few things in common with Civ2)

Anyway, don't hold your breath, ID Software is the exception to the rule.

Henrik · June 29, 2003, 09:08

Civ 1 and 2 is owned by Atari (who used to be called infogrames, who bought Hasbro who had bought Microprose who made the original games

). SMAC was a total rewrite which used many concepts similar to civ (by partly the same programers, but they no longer had acces to their old code and had to start anew). Civ 3 was released when firaxis was bought by or started cooperating with (not sure which one it is) Infogrames/Atari which meant that the franchise and the old code was made available to Firaxis (which by now had very few of the old programers that originally wanted to do civ 3 left, most had gone to new companies).

Or atleast this is what I seem to recall from the pre civ 3 forums but that was a while ago...

Angelo Scotto · June 29, 2003, 10:38

Well, i'm afraid that this ends our hopes.

I've still have to see a publisher which releases source code for its products.

Anyway, we could try to ask Firaxis SMAC sources

...

CapTVK · June 29, 2003, 18:24

The only Civ2 source that might still exist in some form is the one in ToT. John Possidente might know what happened to it He had access to the original Civ2 source and improved some parts. (Is he still at Firaxis? I believe he did the manual for Civ3)

But even that was a long time ago...
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=15101

Empires come and go...

H Tower · June 30, 2003, 04:54

There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.

People don't throw stuff like that away.

Panag · July 1, 2003, 14:05

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.

People don't throw stuff like that away.

hi ,

, if they did that they would also loose the income , .....

as long as the game is trademarked they have the bucks , so why should they release the codes , ......

thats probably the reason they keep it , ....

have a nice day

CapTVK · July 1, 2003, 16:36

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
There's no reason anyone would destroy the source code, it's still out there, probably on a cd somewhere in a vault with all the other source codes of games.

People don't throw stuff like that away.

No, not the compiled master disks but the sourcecode itself can easily be lost in the corporate paperwork after a couple of takeovers and budget cuts. Most corporations don't have a proper historical archive (in the professional librarian sense) it could be a challenge to even find the damn thing.

H Tower · July 2, 2003, 02:28

Quote:

Originally posted by panag

hi ,

, if they did that they would also loose the income , .....

as long as the game is trademarked they have the bucks , so why should they release the codes , ......

thats probably the reason they keep it , ....

have a nice day

you'll find the retort to this statement in an earlier post in this thread. I suggest you go look for it

Gatekeeper · July 2, 2003, 02:36

We live in a complex corporate world.