38 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

[Importend Edit at the end]

There was this idea burried in another topic so I am seperating this a bit to maybe get a bit more attention to the idea that I find quite interesting.

The basic idea is that if PGI would release the client side source code of the game, some people here could pick that up to create new features, optimize the code and similar stuff in a seperate test envoirment that has nothing to do with the currently running game.

When they have worked on that part and got it running, they could then pitch their idea to the rest of the community and PGI.
When PGI likes what they see, they can incooperate it into the official release.

The reason for doing this would be and I think many here will agree, I have high doubts that we will see much progress, let alone the implementation of new features, content and optimization of MWO in the future.

The main reason for that will most likely be that MWO dosn't make much money for PGI anymore. From an economical standpoint putting people to work on it is hard to justify when you need to run a company that has to pay bills. Problem is that this creates a viciouse circle of where, when you don't work on MWO you will loose more players but because you allready lost so many you can't put people to work on it loosing more players....etc.

So the idea was brought up what if the community builds stuff in a test envoirment to build new features, smashes bugs, etc. and PGI only has to take things over.
That would reduce costs greatly. We could have new features beeing worked on and maybe, just maybe we can get MWO back on the track.


There are two big points stopping that.

First and most importend, PGI needs to release the code. Without it nothing can happen. So how to reach out to them?
Forums I guess will hardly work, twitter maybe but I have the feeling they only listen to a very few people. Sending support emails about?
Maybe Sean, Barradul and some other youtubers/twitch people could pick that topic up?

Secondly....are there people in this community that would support this? A released source code without anyone working on it won't help either.

So if you have any ideas on how to get PGI to release the code or if you are willing to work on a MWO Open project leave a comment.

[EDIT]
Because some people seam to get the wrong impression, maybe it my wording but I want to clear one importend thing up.

By open I don't mean that PGI would just drop the code and leave the room. The idea is centered around us working on the client side of the code. So not everything is there...its more like half the game.
Secondly, everything that would be done would go to PGI for review and implementation. Theirby handing over whatever you did to them.

While I find it somewhat sad that people would have to give up on their work, so to say, it could in the long run improve MWO, a game that and why else should we be here, like for some reason.
Maybe its a small sacrifice for getting a better game.

So I am not asking PGI to give up on their game, the IP or anything but haveing an open work envoirment that allows a much more direct contribution by the community in form of working on patches, optimising the code or creating maps that are directly ready to be tested and not just ideas floating around in the forums.

Edited by Nesutizale, 27 July 2020 - 11:10 AM.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Team 17 gave a trusted group access to their source code and as a result Worms Armageddon is getting a substantial update 21 years after release.

()

[Scout Derek]

.

Edited by Scout Derek, 10 August 2020 - 06:08 AM.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Scout Derek, on 20 July 2020 - 07:25 AM, said:

You don't reach out to them.

Tell ya what, I'm giving you a homework assignment.

Readup this, Also read this, and then read this. Lemme know when you think there's a viable solution to getting them to listen or be even reasonable.

Bonus clip

Seeing posts with over 100 likes as opposed to the max 10 we see these days is kind of a blast from the past, and a little sad.

[Nesutizale]

Society goes downhill...no one likes anyone anymore

[martian]

Nesutizale, on 20 July 2020 - 03:07 PM, said:

Society goes downhill...no one likes anyone anymore

I like your OP, but I am afraid it is too late now. People either have moved away or they lost all hope.

[ShiverMeRivets]

PGI is a commercial company. If you want them to do something for you, you have to show them what they have to gain from this. Does releasing the code will increase the profit line for PGI?

[Gagis]

Obstacle #3. They probably use a lot of third party code under licence they are not legally allowed to release.

[martian]

ShiverMeRivets, on 25 July 2020 - 09:03 AM, said:

PGI is a commercial company. If you want them to do something for you, you have to show them what they have to gain from this. Does releasing the code will increase the profit line for PGI?

Well, for example creating more maps could be incentive for some players, who have left because they were bored to death with playing Canyon and other similar maps with one central feature twenty times in a row, to return.

Maybe such players would be willing to spend their money on new 'Mechs or maybe on old 'Mechs that were released during their absence. Of course, such players would have to be sure that there is more new incoming than just one map.

Edited by martian, 25 July 2020 - 11:25 AM.

[jjm1]

Gagis, on 25 July 2020 - 09:06 AM, said:

Obstacle #3. They probably use a lot of third party code under licence they are not legally allowed to release.

Yeah Crytek, the desperately cash strapped company that already tried to sue Cloud Imperium Games. Part of the lawsuit was for having screenshots of some Cryengine code open on a screen in a dev diary video that literally nobody would ever care about or be able to use if they did. I think they dropped it at least, but that's who we are dealing with here for the same engine.

[Nesutizale]

ShiverMeRivets, on 25 July 2020 - 09:03 AM, said:

PGI is a commercial company. If you want them to do something for you, you have to show them what they have to gain from this. Does releasing the code will increase the profit line for PGI?

There are two lines of thought here.

The first one has allready mentioned above. New maps, new balance patches and bugfixes or in short support for the game may bring people back. There are also, every now and then, new people according to Jarls list, that take a look for the first time. A game that has active support and new content creation is more likely to keep and attract people.
With more people and active support we would also get better matches and when people are happy they play the game and have a tendancy to drop a coin every now and then.

The other thought is that PGI just renewed the license. I have a strong feeling that Microsoft didn't do that without some form of payment. So takeing at least a chance to make get that money back they have just spend for the license should be in their interest.

Not paying for the development or very little, because its done by the community, should be a reasonable concideration.

Even if they don't go as far as releasing the source code, makeing the map maker aviable, that exists along with the assets and stuff, could be a source of new contend.

Gagis, on 25 July 2020 - 09:06 AM, said:

Obstacle #3. They probably use a lot of third party code under licence they are not legally allowed to release.

Haven't thought about that but I agree that could be a problem. It depends on where and how these are implemented. For example if they use, like some older games, Flash to create the HUD it is questionable if they can make that accessable to the public or if that would have to be taken out.
On the other hand I don't think the HUD would be THE thing that makes or breakes the game but a lot of other things that are more importend like new maps, balanceing and optimization.

jjm1, on 25 July 2020 - 11:13 AM, said:

Yeah Crytek, the desperately cash strapped company that already tried to sue Cloud Imperium Games. Part of the lawsuit was for having screenshots of some Cryengine code open on a screen in a dev diary video that literally nobody would ever care about or be able to use if they did. I think they dropped it at least, but that's who we are dealing with here for the same engine.

I think there should be less of a problem with MWO and Crytech. First of all MWO uses an old version of Cryengine, think it was 3 and it is heavly modified too. Currently we are at Cryengine 5 or 6 I think.

Then there is MWO not beeing the most publicly interesting game and PGI also not a company that has a big budget that you could sue from them.

On a sidenote. I think the CIG case had Crytech loose more face and money then it was worth it.
They are even digging up the old Crysis and port it to the new engine to get any kind of attention....also I admit I loved the old Crysis and will take a look. Also from the screens I saw so far it didn't impress me.

They should have been sticking to CIG and support the heck out of that project so they could stick their Logo onto everything CIG does.

Heck the best promotion would have been to ask CIG if they could introduce Crytech or something similar sounding as a company, best a ship manufacturer, into the game.
Damn I mean imagne there would be a Crytech brand in SC with a "Crysis - Fast respons fighter" in the game. The sheer publicity and brand recognition would bring Crytech back into the spotlight in no time.

Edited by Nesutizale, 25 July 2020 - 03:28 PM.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

Gagis, on 25 July 2020 - 09:06 AM, said:

Obstacle #3. They probably use a lot of third party code under licence they are not legally allowed to release.

That's probably true. Even then, devs throwing out their IP and making it effectively public domain, is quite rare to happen.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Nesutizale said:

I think there should be less of a problem with MWO and Crytech.

It would be exactly the same problem or rather even worse:

Nesutizale said:

First of all MWO uses an old version of Cryengine, think it was 3 and it is heavly modified too.

CIG's Star Citizen is on technical level based on CryEngine 3 as well and more than just heavily modified. By now CIG has formally transitioned to Amazon's Lumberyard (but ofc. retained the modifications and the actual transition on technical level is one of the points of contention within the still not fully resolved law suit) which also happens to be a CryEngine 3 fork.

But there likely are serious differences in terms of the original licensing agreements between CIG and Crytek vs. the one PGI has with Crytek because I quite frankly doubt that PGI got themselves one of the highest tier licenses with full source code access to CryEngine and direct developer support as CGI originally did.

=> The licensing for their CryEngine version most definitely is something that heavily influences PGI's ability of handing out the source code of MWO ... and that's under the assumption that they'd actually be willing to do something like that in the first place.

Nesutizale said:

Currently we are at Cryengine 5 or 6 I think.

The current version number of CryEngine is irrelevant ... what matters is whether or not the license under which the game was created is still in effect and I'm fairly certain that the original license agreement is indeed still intact.

Nesutizale said:

Then there is MWO not beeing the most publicly interesting game and PGI also not a company that has a big budget that you could sue from them.

• Suing a company for contract breaches is neiter a question of whether or not the sued entities product has a broader interest within the public nor is it really a matter of how big the budget of the sued company is. It's always about the necesseity of enforcing individual rights (in order not to lose them) and a cost to benefit calculation.
  
• Particularly Crytek is regularly in such a financial tight spot that they are quite literally willing to sue anyone over the most absurd things in the hopes of getting some money.

Nesutizale said:

On a sidenote. I think the CIG case had Crytech loose more face and money then it was worth it.
They are even digging up the old Crysis and port it to the new engine to get any kind of attention....also I admit I loved the old Crysis and will take a look. Also from the screens I saw so far it didn't impress me.

They should have been sticking to CIG and support the heck out of that project so they could stick their Logo onto everything CIG does.

How could they have stuck to providing support? Due to financial turmoil within Crytek CIG managed to poach many if not most of the original development staff of CryEngine from Crytek and thus pretty much removed the necessity for support by Crytek itself because that critical personnell is now working for CIG directly. Later on CIG formally transistioned to Amazon Lumberyard (still just a fork to the exact same CryEngine version that CIG initially started from)
=> CIG threw Crytek out of the picture and they in turn just tried to financially salvage as much as possible ... even if that meant that they have to come up with outlandish / absurd legal claims.

[Nesutizale]

Tier5 Kerensky, on 25 July 2020 - 09:19 PM, said:

That's probably true. Even then, devs throwing out their IP and making it effectively public domain, is quite rare to happen.

They wouldn't give away the IP. The idea is just to open up the client side. Without the server side to complete it you can only work on stuff and test it on your own system. For a server sided test you would still need permission from PGI. That way PGI can stay in full controll over what is done, keep their IP but it leave room enough for the community to work on stuff.
For example you might fix bugs on the client side. Experiment with a rear view or build maps. All of that could then be presented to PGI. If they like it they can pretty much imidiatly implement it with the least effort in money and time.

[Nesutizale]

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 July 2020 - 03:07 AM, said:

...Stuff...

I wasn't aware that SC is also based on Cryengine 3....gosh is the development that old allready? When did I backed that thing?
Damn you know that the development is to long when you start to forget this

Back to topic. Yes licencing will most likely be the biggest issue. I wonder if its also something that prevents PGI from doing deeper modifications to the game themself or if its "just" a money/time or knowledge thing. Most likely we will never know.

For the "public interest" part, that wasn't meant about someone beeing in the right or wrong or haveing the right/obligation to sue someone but more in the marketing sense.
I think Crytek has hurt its public image with trying to sue CIG. If they had the right to do so....well that is up for lawyers and judges to work out.

Speaking of Lumberyard....I wonder how difficulte it would be to transition MWO to Lumberyard too (technical and licence concerns). IIRC Amazon also supports servers worldwide when you use Lumberyard. That could mean better performance for some people. I think australian people still have some quite bad connections to MWO.
I don't know how up to date Lumberyard is but I think it would also allow to implement some better tech like maybe Vulcan or new DX support? Not sure about that.


Anyway, yes the legal part of a MW-Open idea is most likely a nightmare. On the one hand such laws are good to protect someones work. On the other hand it can hinder progress and experimentation for small stuff like the idea here that the community might help more directly with MWO.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Nesutizale said:

I think Crytek has hurt its public image with trying to sue CIG. If they had the right to do so....well that is up for lawyers and judges to work out.

Crytek's public image hasn't been a good one since way before they filed that law suit against CIG. There simply isn't much of a (positive) public image left to be damaged there to begin with. Crytek has been on the brink of insolvency regularly since 2014 and they have been negatively in the press for not properly paying their employees regularly ever since.

=> It's desperate people doing desperate (and thus absurd) things in attempts of salvaging what they themselves sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

... and it's quite certain that these desperate people would drag PGI down with them if PGI were supid enough to test their resolve. Given that PGI's track record isn't the best either I don't think that too many people would actually shed a tear there.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 26 July 2020 - 07:50 AM.

[Jack Booted Thug]

Has been suggested, along with community made maps, etc... for free to PGI to release to community. Answer has always been the same from PGI..... NO

[Nesutizale]

About Crytechs image....well beeing on the ground dosn't mean that you should punch yourself in the face because you can't fall lower

Anyway a step like createing MW-Open definitly needs to be spoken about and agreements need to be made between both partys. I concider that a given in the professional field. We here can only give a spark to the idea and should it realy happen, then we can give our support to this by createing stuff.

[Horseman]

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 July 2020 - 07:49 AM, said:

... and it's quite certain that these desperate people would drag PGI down with them if PGI were supid enough to test their resolve. Given that PGI's track record isn't the best either I don't think that too many people would actually shed a tear there.

Except for the fact it would drag down the game along with PGI. The license would go away, the game would get shuttered and while someone would probably buy out the rights to the code and assets during the company's liquidation, they'd be more likely to sit on them doing nothing than reacquire the license and relaunch the game.

The two exceptions could be if the acquiring party was Microsoft itself or Paradox/HBS, but even they are unlikely to actually use it - the entire REASON Piranha was able to lease the license from MS was that they had (and still don't have) no interest in doing anything worthwhile with it in the foreseeable future and Paradox caters to a fairly specialized market niche that does not, so far, include MMO shooters (better hope they're planning to diversify).

Edited by Horseman, 26 July 2020 - 02:38 PM.

[Haipyng]

Nesutizale, on 20 July 2020 - 02:16 AM, said:

There was this idea burried in another topic so I am seperating this a bit to maybe get a bit more attention to the idea that I find quite interesting.

The basic idea is that if PGI would release the client side source code of the game, some people here could pick that up to create new features, optimize the code and similar stuff in a seperate test envoirment that has nothing to do with the currently running game.

When they have worked on that part and got it running, they could then pitch their idea to the rest of the community and PGI.
When PGI likes what they see, they can incooperate it into the official release.

The reason for doing this would be and I think many here will agree, I have high doubts that we will see much progress, let alone the implementation of new features, content and optimization of MWO in the future.

The main reason for that will most likely be that MWO dosn't make much money for PGI anymore. From an economical standpoint putting people to work on it is hard to justify when you need to run a company that has to pay bills. Problem is that this creates a viciouse circle of where, when you don't work on MWO you will loose more players but because you allready lost so many you can't put people to work on it loosing more players....etc.

So the idea was brought up what if the community builds stuff in a test envoirment to build new features, smashes bugs, etc. and PGI only has to take things over.
That would reduce costs greatly. We could have new features beeing worked on and maybe, just maybe we can get MWO back on the track.


There are two big points stopping that.

First and most importend, PGI needs to release the code. Without it nothing can happen. So how to reach out to them?
Forums I guess will hardly work, twitter maybe but I have the feeling they only listen to a very few people. Sending support emails about?
Maybe Sean, Barradul and some other youtubers/twitch people could pick that topic up?

Secondly....are there people in this community that would support this? A released source code without anyone working on it won't help either.

So if you have any ideas on how to get PGI to release the code or if you are willing to work on a MWO Open project leave a comment.

It's a nice idea, but a total non-starter. The MechWarrior Intellectual Property owner is never going to weaken their claim to it by allowing any part to be licensed to Open Source. PGI likewise has zero reason to undercut their own development investment in the programming for MWO by licensing it to Open Source. Further the way they monetized the game requires central control (and brought us such lovely things like the grind for modules, the skill tree, MechCredits, etc).

Your thought is awesome for fans of MW and those of us that love the IP. PGI is not really one of those. With MWO there is no real story being told. It's all been Mech pack, after Mech pack. Look at the planned Steam release for MW5 that left so many jilted and super jaded as to PGIs intentions. First and foremost PGI is business oriented and they will not damage their product for the sake of fans of the IP or the players. It would be easier to abandon the MW IP all together and create some new open source game IP to base your own big stompy robot FPS on, but of course, then you lose the fans of MW along the way.