FOSS & game preservation

More than a year ago I started getting interested in reading doom's source code. That experience made me think about our current vision of game preservation. If you think about it, doom is literally one of the best preserved games of all time because the source is available for us to modify. One of the first thing programmers do when a new computer/architecture/system is released is to port doom to it. Also after the decompilation of SM64, it now is kind of getting the same treatment as doom (native port to pc, phones, switch...). Seeing that makes me think that our approach to game preservation is, at least in part, wrong. We are now too focused on writing emulators when, for example, most NES games have their disassembled code up on github, and we are not making any effort into porting them to some easily portable language like c (Hell I thought of porting the original SMB to c myself). I know that for preserving modern games it is easier to write emulators because reverse engineering their code is technically near impossible, so the decompilation of these games are out of scope. But reverse engineering their code would make games 100% preserved. Also Their source could be used to learn how to code or their engines could be use to make new games. So that was my little rant, what are your thoughts on this?

>>6355 I think the reason older games get this treatment is not only that they should be easier to reverse engineer, but also because it's less likely to raise any complaints from the suits in the game industry. I don't know what the state of porting disassembled NES games is, but consider the number of people that have the necessary skill, and interest, in porting these - it's probably not that large. Compared to the sheer amount of time and effort required to do it, they are just better served contributing to projects with better returns, probably. And anyway, the core of the issue is the game development ``community'' anyway; majority of its participants are vehemently opposed to any of the FOSS ideas (unless it's to leech from the projects, of course), their mentality is: what is yours is mine, but what is mine is mine. Bunch of sweatshop workers herded by sociopaths that want to squeeze money out of stones, are trained to accept their masters' dogma, and pursue wealth at any cost. This ninny: https://lazyfoo.net/faq.php is a good example of that. I find it very ironic that he's using hacker lingo in his brand. tl;dr: Too much work, too little people to do the work, better served to spend their time on pursuits that give more yields. The game development industry is responsible for both the situation, and keeping the status quo, as the suits will try to figuratively rape you in every hole they can, if they feel as if you are responsible for ``loss of profit'', however ridiculous these claims might be in reality.

>>6355 my take on this is that all source code should be free, to be adapted, ported and extended by anyone. not only that, but free and open source software encourages collaboration, people will be more inclined to work on projects they're familiar with, whether it's because of nostalgia or something else. and also, as you already mentioned, preservation. it is nearly guaranteed if it is popular enough (since everyone interested will have a copy) and will be playable for many years to come on many platforms. >>6356 >I know there's a lot of cool projects that are open source, but what do you actually have to gain by releasing the source? Odds are your project won't be the Linux kernel of open source gaming and if it was super popular, would you really like to give up your rights in case your game becomes the next Flappy Bird (which at one point was making $50,000 a day)? i really hate this attitude, all source code should be free.

>>6357 You can make source code of a game publicly available without releasing it under a permissive license. You can also keep assets like textures, and name, proprietary. Just ignore anyone who distributes the game for an actual good reason, like modding and archiving.