YL1 open source after Yl2 release?

darksteelhorse

Hey, I was wondering if you guys would be interested in open sourcing the code for YL1? I personally would love the chance to tinker with the code and make some mods XD

odes

Unlikely.

Horsie

As Odes didn't give a reason for his "unlikely", I'll share why I think open sourcing YL1 would be a bad idea: shameless stealing and even selling the game and/or derivatives.
I mean, just look for 5 minutes on Patreon or Indiegogo and you'll find at least a couple of projects that are using stolen pieces of software when not almost unmodified complete versions of open source projects.

Ninjamuai

If YL2 is done well enough, I'm sure we won't really need an open source YL1, let alone even want it. Of course it would be nice, but as Horsie said, it's kind of a risk to just open the game up like that to anyone & everyone.

darksteelhorse

First, let me say that despite the argument below I also respect Odes right to do w/e the hell they want with their software.

Personally, I feel what Horsie said is counter intuitive to the gaming scene in particular. In traditional software development, stealing works in the manner that they mentioned is one of the many cons that comes with open source development. But in contrast, it is also a part of the good side of it.

In the example of YL, the team is only so big, and can only do so much within a time frame. If YL was to be open source(or have some sort of modding functionality) where community members could make content for other community members, you could in theory not only increase the amount of content within YL without commitment from the original dev team but also allow other games to follow in its footsteps, much like League of Legends spawned from the DOTA mod of Warcraft 3

Also on a side note, if you are a part of the open software/source community, you should also act as a watch dog for the types of things  Horsie mentioned. it's not cool to watch such shameless behavior  

jei3

while open sourcing an app like this sounds like a good idea from the perspective of mods, doing so would probably require more work than its worth.

as much as i would love to more easily modify YL, i can see a number of issues with opening it up

* there's a server component, you wouldn't want to enable people to abuse your server (which costs money to keep running)
* there's a key/authentication component to the app, opening this would mean you'd have to change how YL2 does it
* interactions are intended to be shared online, allowing people to change whatever they want would break this
* unlike a single release project, YL evolved over time, not all components are consistent, this inconsistency would require documenting (i.e. time)
* no offense to Odes, but projects like this tend to have a lot of spaghetti code, and code stubs that don't do anything, ideally you would want to clean up the project before open-sourcing it, this again would take a lot of time
* if you don't clean up the code before sharing, a lot of time is going to be spent explaining or troubleshooting issues, this would detract from YL2 dev work

sadly, as YL is such a large project developed that evolved and changed over a long period of time, i feel like the cons outweigh the pros here.

ratrei-ganart

Aye, those who steal source texts ain't gonna make anything worthy, it's not just the methods good people tend to use.
Then, why not just strip the sources of the server logic and auth service? It's not much use since YL would be free anyway, huh?
And no-one really forces odes to document and explain the code - may it be thrown to public "as is" and no problems will caused.

darksteelhorse

@ratrei-ganart ;
Thats not quite the full story. One that kinda depends on Odes making 100% Object oriented code, with very loose coupling. I personally don't  do that as much as I should, and my programs work just fine. @jei3  statement makes sense for anyone who takes some pride in their code, you could just toss it out as is, but that's for people who like kicking puppies XP

ratrei-ganart

Doesn't mean the community isn't going to document the code by itself. And we don't really know the quality of Odes' code so it should not be an issue just right now. Still, if there's no further use for YL code, it actually can be licensed and given/sold away, the latter may be done as a patreon reward or something like that. Don't make up the difficulties right now - a simple answer "yes" or "no" from our beloved devs is all this cause needs. (and Odes said it's unlikely so time to wrap up the thread)