Questions

[Richardo]

Originally Posted by LordRathgil

well yeah but thats really far down the road ya know, as it is now its not that popular but i think atleast it should be available by request atleast for server ops even if its not a public release.

As long as someone makes a good server and promotes it properly, it doesn't really matter.

[sesmar]

I am all for releasing the source code, albeit mostly for personal and probably selfish reasons; although, I can see both sides here. I agree that releasing the source will most likely increase interest in SimpleClient and open many possibilities previously unavailable to custom servers. I can also see the disadvantage to releasing the source in that it would make it easier to cheat on a server; however, other games have open source clients and servers and that does not seem to stop them from becoming successful, take Planshift for instance. I think it just requires the developer to get more creative such as Richardo's idea and many other things that can be done in order to prevent people from compiling their own version of the client and connecting to your server.

If my vote counts for anything I vote for releasing the source.

Hell, it is written in Delphi and who the hell uses that anymore (j/k WC).

[LordRathgil]

worldforge and torque also are available in source format and that doesnt teter them heck minions of mirth which uses the torque mmo kit is opensource and apparently very popular and people dont cheat just because the source is open. To not release the source to the client because of the fear people will cheat doesnt make any real sense.

Infact one of the simplest means of preventing people from using a client other then your own would be the expansions variable in the database if the value doesnt match what the client sends then they are automaticly banned from the world server that solves the problem right there

I still say release it, source or no source people who are determined to find a way to cheat the system will do it reguardless of having the source to do it and they dont need the source to do it either ( Again look at MQ) Planeshift MOM Worldforge are all completely opensource and they dont seem to have a problem with it

[LordRathgil]

oh and another benefit of opensourcing is that server devs wont have to wait for someone else to make a fix and post a release they could fix them themselves.

A project like SC just wont work with only a few developers atleast not in a timely fashoin they wont be able to work on it 8 hours a day every day ya know? Opensourcing will allow it to get developed much much faster people will post bug fixes, new features and ideas upgrades ( such as upgrading the graphics engine) and so forth.

the only way to allow truly unique games to be made with it is to opensource it, short of that the devs would have to make it so generic and editable that it would be just about the same risk of cheating either way.

So why not just release it and let the community do what its done for all these years and help build it make new flavors of it, make it grow into a good unique pice of software. I guarentee that if the source is released in a short time you will see its popularity grow and see the community chipping in with it contributing their code and additions to this great software.

Well WC so far its a 5 to 1 vote on opensourcing it some good dialog reguarding opening the source has gone on so what do you say, afterall its your project and as far as i can tell the only one of your great programs youve given the community which doesnt include the source.

[LordRathgil]

btw whatever happened to openeq?

[LordRathgil]

Ive gotten the client to work properly with 0.5.6 perl enabled it required reverting the structs to the 0.5.5 structs (crashed with the included 5.6 structs file)

[Richardo]

*begs for opensource*

Look, cheating via self compiled client is not an issue.

If you want people to be able to use the eq client, then do it this way... If client connects to server using Simple Client, he/she is required to use a certain version and it must be verified by the server according to the users specifications in the compiled binaries. If the client is connecting from eq, then you really don't have much to worry about considering hacked client binaries.