AGS Is Going Open-Source!

[grim107]

http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=42572.0

You read correctly. What are the chances of ScummVm supporting AGS when it makes the transition?

[MusicallyInspired]

It's not going entirely open source. Only portions of it.

[fingolfin]

Impossible to say with that little details. So "portions" will go open source. It doesn't even say under which license.
Nah, come back once they have completely open sourced, and once you know the license is GPL compatible, then we can talk about it .

[monsieurouxx]

It's very likely that it goes entirely open source (at the moment only the Editor has been open-sourced, but the open-sourcing of the Run-time Engine seems to be imminent).

As for the license... Wait and see!

[grim107]

I agree with monsieurouxx. The post made it seem likely that it will eventually all go open source. I'm sorry, but it's very hard to contain my excitement!

[dreammaster]

I agree with monsieurouxx. The post made it seem likely that it will eventually all go open source. I'm sorry, but it's very hard to contain my excitement!

Just remember even if the runtime engine goes completely open source, there have been a *lot* of versions of the AGS runtime over the years, and each version has been incompatible with the others. You can see the amount of trouble the team working on the Sierra engine has had trying to add support for all the various implementations of SCI over time. It would be a similar major effort to try and support for the older AGS versions, even if we were given all the source for each and every older version.

Not that it won't be cool if AGS is completely made open source, it's just that likely the best we could hope for is for future AGS games to run under ScummVM, and not all the older ones.

[grim107]

I agree with monsieurouxx. The post made it seem likely that it will eventually all go open source. I'm sorry, but it's very hard to contain my excitement!

Just remember even if the runtime engine goes completely open source, there have been a *lot* of versions of the AGS runtime over the years, and each version has been incompatible with the others. You can see the amount of trouble the team working on the Sierra engine has had trying to add support for all the various implementations of SCI over time. It would be a similar major effort to try and support for the older AGS versions, even if we were given all the source for each and every older version.

Not that it won't be cool if AGS is completely made open source, it's just that likely the best we could hope for is for future AGS games to run under ScummVM, and not all the older ones.

I'm sure that if AGS becomes open source, and if ScummVm supports it, the developers will first add the newer AGS versions and work backwards. To be honest, I've never really played any AGS games before. I've been following the various Indiana Jones games for years, and have played those demos, but aside from those, just a few minutes of a few seperate games. If AGS were playable on the Dreamcast, I'd have a new reason to discover hundreds of gems!

[monsieurouxx]

Just remember even if the runtime engine goes completely open source, there have been a *lot* of versions of the AGS runtime over the years, and each version has been incompatible with the others.

I agree with you.
But :
- The 2 "major" versions (that have been used for most amazing games) are 2.7x and 3.x
- The community of AGS is incredibly dynamic

So, then again, wait and see. Excitement!

[fingolfin]

Just remember even if the runtime engine goes completely open source, there have been a *lot* of versions of the AGS runtime over the years, and each version has been incompatible with the others.

I agree with you.
But :
- The 2 "major" versions (that have been used for most amazing games) are 2.7x and 3.x

Are you sure every 2.7.x version is compatible with each other? And that every 3.x.y is compatible with every other? To me it seems more like every x and y in there will add to the number of variants, albeit in smaller ways... Anyway, I don't know, and I am pretty sure most of the people here don't know either, they are just guessing. So, really, folks: Nothing to see here (yet), just move along and don't block the traffic .

- The community of AGS is incredibly dynamic

So, then again, wait and see. Excitement!

Exactly: please wait and see and stop bothering us with this as long as it's still only an announcement (which are cheap to make), and as long as no details are clear. Like, what license will be used, what parts will be released, which versions (only the latest or older), etc. etc.

[MusicallyInspired]

And then there's all the AGS plugins that many games use. And it would probably never be able to be added to certain handheld and other limited ports of ScummVM. AGS games would never run on a DS, for instance. MAYBE the Wii.

[eriktorbjorn]

Are you sure every 2.7.x version is compatible with each other?

Pretty much the only AGS games I've played are the "Chzo Mythos" ones (5 Days a Stranger, etc.) and I do know that two of them have minor glitches if you try to run them with 2.7.x instead of the 2.6.x they were (probably) developed for.

(Another one of them swapped the red and blue colour component whatever version I tried, giving the game a rather strange mood, but that may be a bug with the Linux version of AGS rather than with any particular version of it. I eventually had to use a custom Allegro library to get around it.)

So there are at least some minor backwards incompatibilities.

[SSH]

Just an FYI in case any scummvm developers are interested:

AGS's runtime engine is now Opened up under the Artistic Licence, too:

http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=43383

As for the backward compatibility, while its certainly true that the latest engine may not run old games easily, it is not difficult to import older games that one has the source for into the latest editor and update them to work on the latest engine. Admittedly, most of the games are closed-source, but many of the developers are still active and would consider doing this on their own games if there was a killer feature (like ScummVM compatibility) to get from it.

[timofonic]

Hello.

Great news for alternative operating system users, foss supporters and adventure game fans!

What about the license they use? I have no time to check it right now, so not sure what version of Artistic License they use (2.0 is GPL compatible). I hope developers start hacking the code and Chris Jones (Pumaman) think about using GitHub instead of a dedicated Subversion server.

I think trying to convince each developer to upgrade the games to support "OpenAGS" isn't pragmatic. The downside to backwards compatibility is the big effort of investigating eac difference between all AGS versions and tons of manual testing, but maybe the original developer could collaborate to make this effort easier by releasing the source code of all published versions.

Regards.

[maximus]

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized you weren't ASKING if the licenses were compatible, but stating that they were I'll leave the post here though since it has a link that others may find useful. My apologies.

What about the license they use? I have no time to check it right now, so not sure what version of Artistic License they use (2.0 is GPL compatible). I hope developers start hacking the code and Chris Jones (Pumaman) think about using GitHub instead of a dedicated Subversion server.

if you checkout the license compatibility page on gnu.org, you'll see the following:

Artistic License 2.0
This license is a free software license, compatible with the GPL thanks to the relicensing option in section 4(c)(ii).

so it looks like the licenses are at least compatible

[Strangerke]

Indeed, the license is not a problem.
The main issues currently are 'who' and 'when'