[HN Gopher] VVVVVV's source code is now public, 10 year annivers...
___________________________________________________________________
VVVVVV's source code is now public, 10 year anniversary jam
happening now
Author : ciroduran
Score : 549 points
Date : 2020-01-10 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (distractionware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (distractionware.com)
| ginko wrote:
| Quite cool, although the license is quite strict:
|
| https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/LICENSE....
| ciroduran wrote:
| Terry is open to propositions
| https://twitter.com/terrycavanagh/status/1215679119666688001
| teddyh wrote:
| No kidding. I sincerely doubt this actually qualifies as Open
| Source. It certainly can't be distributed by, e.g., Debian.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| This probably could go in the Debian nonfree repo
| cjbprime wrote:
| It looks similar to e.g. Quake 3's license, source is open but
| assets aren't.
| simias wrote:
| Not at all, Quake 3's source code is GPL[1]. You can totally
| sell a game made with Quake 3's source, you just have to
| redistribute the source as mandated by the GPL. v{6}'s
| license is more restrictive.
|
| The assets are a different problem. You can use the code
| without the assets and vice-versa.
|
| [1] https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-
| Arena/blob/master/C...
| cjbprime wrote:
| Oops, I missed that extra clause, thanks.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Prohibiting commercial use would make it non-open. But it's not
| that surprising given that VVVVVV is still sold today. I'd
| rather have the source with limits over not having the source
| at all.
| [deleted]
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Not much more strict than CC-BY-NC, unless I'm missing
| something? The "you may not represent your fork as my product"
| is a good abuse prevention that I'm not sure the equivalent CC
| contains, good call including that.
| teddyh wrote:
| " _You may not alter or redistribute this software in any
| manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward
| commercial advantage or private monetary compensation._ "
|
| This kind of stuff is generally regarded as non-Open Source.
| tudelo wrote:
| Why? The source is open to the public?
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| it's a "look but don't touch" situation. open-source
| means giving freedom to the users.
|
| there's nothing wrong with source-available, but source-
| available and open-source are not equivalent.
| teddyh wrote:
| The term "Open Source" has a precise definition,
| determined by the Open Source Initiative, who invented
| the term and started promoting it. Nobody used this term
| in software contexts before they did. They get to define
| it.
| xorcist wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted. One of the criteria when
| the term "open source" was decided on by the people who
| went to form the OSI was that it must not have (much)
| documented earlier use in order to become eligible for
| trademark protection.
|
| It was always meant to be a trademark, even if they ended
| up losing that particular battle. It was deemed to
| descriptive and generic to be trademarkable, IIRC. The
| OSI published their criteria anyway, enforced it as much
| as they could, and really publicized the term over the
| years. Of course they get to define it.
| yarrel wrote:
| The source is being shown to the public.
|
| It's not open for them to use.
|
| To argue otherwise is to confuse a window with a door.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| The analogy doesn't really hold. Is a bathroom door at a
| grocery store called a "window" rather than a "door" if
| they prohibit you from bringing unpaid groceries through
| it?
| Gracana wrote:
| I have no idea what you're going for here. I feel like
| Programmer Analogies always rely on the reader agreeing
| with the author... :|
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Terry is no longer calling this open source after someone
| pointed this out. The title of the original article now
| reads "VVVVVV's Source Code Is Now Public".
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| "Don't make VVVVV 2 with my code" seems to be what they're
| going for. I don't know if I agree with the sentiment, but
| it's nice to have this source available, so if this is the
| price we have to pay...
| caconym_ wrote:
| This is a great game, by the way. If you haven't played it, you
| should.
| rusk wrote:
| Yes it is very enjoyable.
| xioxox wrote:
| It's really good. Had a real 80s vibe and nice gameplay.
| diegoperini wrote:
| I've spent days speedrunning this game. Highly recommend it!
|
| I also suggest "Don't Look Back" from the same developer. It is a
| short but touching platformer that fills more like a book than a
| game without even telling a single word.
| JakeWesorick wrote:
| I appreciate big successes revealing the jank-ness going on
| behind the scenes. It helps me fight imposter syndrome knowing
| that everyone is always learning.
| ranger207 wrote:
| The Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon [0] ran this
| game this morning. I didn't get a chance to see it, but I wonder
| if they mentioned anything about its tenth anniversary? Watch for
| the video here [1] after today's stream is archived.
|
| [0] gamesdonequick.com [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/ek9zmz/agdq_vod_t...
| KapKap55 wrote:
| This source code release was actually announced at AGDQ on a
| custom end-game screen once the runner completed it, which is
| why you're hearing about it now.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Whoops, I missed that. Have to watch it when I get home then!
| degenerate wrote:
| Here is the direct link to watch (the run is 21 minutes total):
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/videos/533706108?t=05h29m30s
| t_akosuke wrote:
| Terry, the creator of the game, sends a $1k donation before the
| beginning of the run as well
| bscphil wrote:
| Awesome, thank you for posting this! 100% glitchless is what I
| do myself when I want to have a little fun, but I can't compete
| with speedrunners, my best time is 28 minutes and change.
| ddevault wrote:
| This is really great! I wish they wouldn't call it "open source",
| though. It looks like a source-available license:
|
| https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/LICENSE....
|
| If Terry is reading this, please correct your article. The
| correct terminology is important! Open source is defined by the
| OSD, which this license doesn't qualify for:
|
| https://opensource.org/osd
|
| Kudos for releasing your game's source, though!
|
| Edit: I sent Terry an email and he agreed to change it <3 Thank
| you!
|
| Edit 2: Ethan Lee worked on this! Ethan Lee is an awesome person.
| Ethan is probably the single biggest contributor to gaming on
| Linux, and he's always worked in the background. Thanks Ethan,
| you rock, and deserve more credit.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Open source is defined by the OSD
|
| To be a bit pedantic, your statement is a slightly ambiguous.
|
| They have a good/accurate definition of open source. They don't
| "define it" in that they can change the definition to mean "and
| the packaging must be blue" and that becomes part of what open
| source means.
| jordigh wrote:
| Yes, OSI is responsible for the OSD, but the term has gotten
| somewhat "genericised". It's like saying that the Kimberly-
| Clark company doesn't define what "kleenex" is anymore.
|
| Whenever this debates comes up everyone always says, "wait,
| the term existed before OSI", but no, it really did not.
| Essentially nobody was saying "open source" before 1998 when
| OSI and Tim O'Reilly started pushing "open source".
|
| https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler
|
| "Open source" wasn't our idea, and the greatest marketing
| trick that OSI ever did was convince so many of us that it
| was.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Not kleenex, no, but open source as a term exists in the
| same way that escalator does. If the OSI was to change
| their definition, they would be wrong. The definition has
| transcended them. I honestly have a hard time understanding
| how people don't agree with that.
| jordigh wrote:
| OSI got bad legal advice and quickly abandoned the
| trademark of the term "open source" itself.
|
| https://trademark.trademarkia.com/open-
| source-75439502.html
|
| Bruce Perens regrets this[1]. But they could have. The
| term was not generic when they coined it. It really is
| like "kleenex".
|
| ----
|
| [1] private communication
| codetrotter wrote:
| But due to how trademarks work, they would have had to
| then aggressively protect that trademark with lawyers and
| stuff and I have a hard time imagining that working out
| all that well with a lot of us open source software
| enthusiasts and companies.
|
| Simply put, I think if the name "open source" was a
| trademark, the open source community would still exist,
| and businesses would produce open source software as they
| do today too, but a lot of us would be using some other
| name for this instead of referring to it as "open
| source", so that we'd avoid any potential problems with
| the trademark of open source.
| jordigh wrote:
| It wouldn't be such a big deal. As the current situation
| with VVVVV shows, we already kind of have our own little
| informal community-driven "trademark enforcement", and it
| works.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I used escalator specifically because a lot of people
| don't realize it originated as a trademarked term for the
| Otis Elevator Company's moving staircase. Kleenex is
| still well known as a brand name for tissues, even if it
| is used generically.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| > Open source is defined by the OSD, which this license doesn't
| qualify for
|
| The OSD isn't an arbiter of what is and isn't. Open-source is a
| flexible term, and insisting that projects must meet
| definitions A, B, and C is just going to fragment the community
| and exclude people.
| jordigh wrote:
| The point of insisting what "open source" means is that we
| want to ensure the freedoms that open source guarantees. If
| we don't insist on this definition people will start pushing
| licenses that forbid commercial use and other things, as this
| license forbids, and we'll embrace it because we think "ah,
| open source!"
|
| And yes, when you coin a term, you also get to say what that
| term means. That's the whole point of coining it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012429
| SquareWheel wrote:
| The freedoms are guaranteed by the language of the license
| itself. That's what licenses are for.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You're arguing about linguistic prescriptivism vs.
| descriptivism. Is the definition of the term what the
| coiner says, or is it how it is commonly understood?
|
| A lot of people are going to disagree with you if you claim
| that prescriptivism is somehow more correct.
| jordigh wrote:
| It is different for technical terms. It's perfectly fine
| if I told a novice mathematician, "no, wait, that's
| wrong, a Riemannian manifold is..."
|
| We have a precise, technical definition of open source
| precisely so we can judge when a license satisfies the
| legal freedoms that open source demands.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Perhaps, but "open source" isn't a technical term, and
| anyway there are lots of vaguely technical terms that
| have a subtly different layman's definition anyway.
|
| Categorizing certain phrases as "technical terms" to
| which different rules apply is just another form of
| linguistic prescriptivism, after all.
| the_af wrote:
| "Open source" is _very much_ a technical term with a very
| precise definition.
|
| Microsoft knew this when they wanted to jump on the
| bandwagon and named their own license "Shared Source
| Initiative"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative).
| It wasn't open source, it was "Shared Source", because it
| didn't comply with the definition of open source.
| xorcist wrote:
| "Open Source" specifically was coined precisely because
| there was little or no documented previous use of the
| term. They wanted something that would mean roughly the
| same as "Free Software" but possible to protect with a
| trademark and owned by an industry association. (Not the
| FSF.)
| SquareWheel wrote:
| I'm very curious how many of those insisting on the
| strict definition also pronounce .gif as GIFF, despite
| the creator clearly insisting it's JIFF.
|
| Words change. The coiner has no more real authority over
| them than anyone else.
| alvarosevilla95 wrote:
| To be fair I see a fundamental difference between
| changing a words pronunciation and meaning.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| That's true enough.
|
| Related, the definition of gif has actually changed for
| some. Instead of a specific file format they use the term
| to mean "soundless looping video". Admittedly even I have
| a hard time swallowing that definition.
| djur wrote:
| Seems more like calling a JPEG a GIF.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Thank you for doing this.
|
| Could a mod please change the HN title to match the new article
| title?
| dang wrote:
| Sure!
|
| p.s. I asked Drew to post another version of his comment
| praising Ethan, so we could move the replies to that bit to
| another subthread which isn't so offtopic. He did:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22014064.
| jonahrd wrote:
| I just replayed this over the holidays! Time for more :)
| [deleted]
| joshu wrote:
| i was so hoping this was about vvvv.
| [deleted]
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It says a lot about vvvvv that, I don't like this TYPE of game,
| lots of jump puzzles. But I like this game! It is just really
| well done.
| pdpi wrote:
| Oh gods.
|
| VVVVVV's core mechanic is that you don't so much "jump" as you
| just flip gravity, and you only get to do so when your feet are
| firmly on the floor. This leads to some very interesting designs.
|
| The stage "Veni Vidi Vici (Doing Things The Hard Way)" is
| possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video game.
| Just a tiny little block, trivial to jump over, but the lack of a
| jump button means you have to... do things the hard way.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CtiY5D6HCs
| theon144 wrote:
| Hahaha, despite playing VVVVVV around the time of its release
| (it's really been 10 years, wow), I realized I could still feel
| my muscle memory firing up when I saw this level.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| that was the task where I put VVVVVV down. lol
| dan00 wrote:
| The first time not dying going up and down in 'Veni Vidi Vici',
| I was so exited, that I landed on the wrong side of the box ...
| umvi wrote:
| > is possibly the evilest level I've ever completed in a video
| game
|
| That was the case for me too, until I recently picked up the
| game _Celeste_. Some of the C-sides were so evil I just gave up
| and never beat them (I have a wife and kids, time is limited).
| This is coming from someone who generally likes hard games (big
| fan of Dark Souls series, for example, and yes, I know "hard"
| is relative).
|
| The Celeste Chapter 9 golden strawberry though... that has got
| to be the most evil collectible I've _ever_ seen included in a
| mainstream game. I would bet <.01% of Celeste players will
| ever earn the Chapter 9 golden strawberry.
|
| To put it in perspective - to earn a golden strawberry you must
| beat the level without dying once. If you die, you are sent all
| the way back to the beginning. This isn't too hard if the level
| only takes 10 minutes to beat like Chapter 1. However, Chapter
| 9 took me over 4 _hours_ to beat and I died over 1,000 times.
| And not only that, if you manage to beat Chapter 9 without
| dying, you are transported to a secret _extra_ level (that you
| 've never had a chance to practice). You have one chance to
| beat the secret extra level without dying - only then does the
| game award the golden strawberry.
|
| I can't even fathom the amount of time and practice required to
| accomplish this feat. It must be up there with some of those
| insane Mario Maker levels.
| mey wrote:
| You may be interested in the TAS (Tool assisted speedrun) of
| Celeste from AGDQ 2018.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEcv7BD1q9o
|
| ADGQ 2020 is currently going on.
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| I got sucked back into Celeste recently; as of last night,
| the only golden berries left for me are 5B-8B, Farewell, and
| the dashless winged berry for 1A. (I also haven't gotten the
| moon berry yet, I kind of forgot about it when I was
| polishing off the red berries earlier). At the same time,
| it's easy to believe that this is as far as I'll ever make
| it; part of what makes going for golden berries so addictive
| to me is that each new level has seemed pretty much
| impossible before I start practicing it, so I guess we'll
| see.
|
| The subreddit r/celestegame tries to keep track of everyone
| who's gotten the Farewell golden berry; the official list
| only has about 20 people on them. Of course, you have to
| record and post your gameplay to be eligible for this list,
| but there can't be many more people than that who've done it.
|
| But from the other side of things, there's actually a
| speedrunning category for collecting all 202 berries,
| including the Farewell berry. TGH just set the world record
| on Christmas Day, I believe, completing that chapter's golden
| berry on his first attempt, along with the other hard golden
| berries. I think this really puts into perspective how skill
| curves work in games; not only are there very few people who
| ever approach the top level of skill, but the individuals at
| the very top are separated by wider skill gaps than you can
| imagine. This is why matchmaking at the top of a ranked
| ladder is so hard!
| [deleted]
| SebastianKra wrote:
| only 4 hours? Im impressed. I took 8h to 12h with 5k deaths!
| umvi wrote:
| Oh, it took me over 4 hours (maybe even 5 or 6) but my
| memory is fuzzy enough that 4 was the lower bound I could
| confidently say. Same with my death count. 1000 is the
| lower bound, it could have been 2000-3000 range
| chapium wrote:
| I stopped playing celeste when it was no longer fun for me. I
| made it about half way through the b-sides before throwing in
| the towel.
| john-radio wrote:
| What I love about VVVVVV is that there's almost no way to
| describe it and make it sound fun; if you just watched that
| video and know nothing about the game it would not seem fun at
| all; and yet it's one of the most fun video games I have ever
| played.
| tills13 wrote:
| How those rooms are implemented:
| https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/desktop_...
| dkersten wrote:
| Oh wow that brings back memories! That section took what felt
| like ages to eventually successfully perform.
| pdpi wrote:
| 400ish attempts for me IIRC. But then I could do it on demand
| for a while (I've since lost the muscle memory of course)
| ehsankia wrote:
| I need to play through this again. So many great memories.
| It was one of the great early indie games that paved the
| way for thousands more, alongside World of Goo, Braid and
| Super Meat Boy.
| reificator wrote:
| I just completed that on switch the other day, took me about
| 100 deaths. In fairness it's not the first time I played the
| game, but it's been nearly a decade since the last time.
| klodolph wrote:
| It's always great to be able to study the source code for
| successful, released, real games.
|
| I will note that this is actually the source code of the C++
| rewrite! The original game was written in Flash, and this version
| was apparently written by Simon Roth.
|
| My impressions: The source code is a bit of a tangle here. There
| are magic numbers (https://wiki.c2.com/?MagicNumber) all over the
| place, plenty of god classes (https://wiki.c2.com/?GodClass), and
| in general you will have to do a bit too much archaeology to
| figure out what a particular class or member function is supposed
| to do (the function and class names don't give you enough, and
| there are no comments to help out). There are a few WTFs in here,
| like the "int i, j, j;" in Script.h.
|
| THAT SAID, This is not really out of the ordinary for successful,
| released, real games. It's not really different in style from the
| Celeste Player code.
|
| https://github.com/NoelFB/Celeste/blob/master/Source/Player/...
|
| But if you're writing a game of this size or complexity, I
| recommend doing some refactoring work along the way. In my
| experience, this will reduce the amount of insanity in the
| project towards the second half of the development cycle.
|
| But I am always more impressed by ugly code behind a good game
| than I am by clean code behind an unreleased, unfinished, or
| unfun game.
| dkersten wrote:
| > There are a few WTFs in here, like the "int i, j, j;" in
| Script.h.
|
| The blog post does explain this though.
| SamBam wrote:
| I figured OP was referring specifically to defining j twice,
| which would definitely have been a WTF, but it seems in the
| actual source it's i,j,k. So, still weird, but better.
|
| https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/desktop_.
| ..
| wingerlang wrote:
| Your impressions pretty much mirrors his own notes about the
| code, if you read through his actual post.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > The source code is a bit of a tangle here. There are magic
| numbers (https://wiki.c2.com/?MagicNumber) all over the place,
| plenty of god classes (https://wiki.c2.com/?GodClass), and in
| general you will have to do a bit too much archaeology to
| figure out what a particular class or member function is
| supposed to do (the function and class names don't give you
| enough, and there are no comments to help out). There are a few
| WTFs in here, like the "int i, j, j;" in Script.h.\
|
| > This is not really out of the ordinary for successful,
| released, real games.
|
| Maybe these supposed anti-patterns don't really matter as much
| as we think they do for successful software? Given that plenty
| of successful software has them.
| Seenso wrote:
| > Maybe these supposed anti-patterns don't really matter as
| much as we think they do for successful software? Given that
| plenty of successful software has them.
|
| There's more than one variable involved. You can write
| successful software full of anti-patterns, but you'll
| probably pay for it in some other way (like increased QA
| effort or a low bus-factor [1]).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This is a game that has gone through a few revisions by
| different authors. And whilst I doubt any of them were
| happy with the hand they were dealt it still shipped after
| their work. So maybe it had increased QA effort over the
| baseline version that doesn't exist but it certainly had no
| bus factor.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The motivations around those kinds of factors are different
| for games, though.
|
| e.g., bus factor has to be weighted a lot more highly on
| software that needs to be maintained indefinitely than it
| does on software that is going to be shipped on a fast-
| approaching deadline and then (probably) never touched
| again.
|
| Also, bus factor's importance depends on the size of the
| team. In the limit case - a 1-developer project like VVVVVV
| - it's meaningless.
| phoenix616 wrote:
| Game development mostly relies on getting creative stuff
| implemented fast, not good. And if it works then it works,
| why spend any more time on it if you can implement even more
| cool ideas (or release it).
|
| And Minecraft is one of the best examples for a game that is
| still paying for such a development style.
| ChickeNES wrote:
| > And Minecraft is one of the best examples for a game that
| is still paying for such a development style.
|
| But most games aren't in continuous development to the
| extent Minecraft is
| ChickeNES wrote:
| This is a classic, but I think it applies here:
| https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
| Avery3R wrote:
| Watch out, this gives a NSFW redirect
| ehsankia wrote:
| > This is not really out of the ordinary for successful,
| released, real games
|
| Well said. A lot of people will nitpick and talk big about how
| they would use proper abstraction and write very clean code,
| but probably none of those people have ever had a successful
| indie game out.
| klodolph wrote:
| To be fair, one of the most vocal advocates of higher code
| quality is Carmack, who has put out a few games.
|
| What I've seen is that it's hard for someone who's not
| released a game before and supported it post-release to know
| where and how you can sacrifice code quality for a faster
| development time.
| gcpwnd wrote:
| Yeah but carmack style quality isn't as SOLID as people
| want to. Game devs have always also factor in performance,
| that's what other dev communities have lost. Apart from
| embedded devs.
| klodolph wrote:
| I would caution people against taking SOLID as a measure
| of code quality. That's a trap. SOLID is just a set of
| object-oriented design principles, not laws. If you take
| the guidelines too seriously, you will end up with a
| damaged code base which is difficult to read or
| understand.
|
| Having spent quite some time in id Software code bases, I
| will defend them as being high quality, but whether or
| not they are SOLID is not something I really care about.
| The SOLID guidelines also regularly conflict with YAGNI.
| mstade wrote:
| Right, but at the same time what Carmack considers quality
| code may well be considered low quality by non-game devs
| because it's too complex, too magical, not documented
| enough or whatever. Context matters; some code is one game
| developers beauty; while it's some other developers
| nightmare.
|
| I'm not a game developer, but I've worked with enough game
| developers to realize they have a completely different
| mindset and point of view from mine. It doesn't make them
| wrong, and it doesn't make me wrong either, it's just that
| - different points of view, different contexts, different
| constraints. I have immense respect for game developers.
|
| I'll play Battlefield 1 or Horizon Zero Dawn and marvel
| that they can get a stable 60 or 30 FPS despite seemingly
| infinite complexity, all the while I'm struggling to filter
| a grid with 250 rows in a web browser...
|
| You're absolutely right - no one knows better where to
| sacrifice quality (whatever that means) for dev time or
| performance, than game devs.
| lojack wrote:
| From a pragmatic point of view I would actually expect it to
| be pretty common for games to sacrifice code quality. You
| build a game with a set end date, and do a small amount of
| maintenance on it moving forward. As opposed to an engine
| where it's a product you're building on and you want to grow
| over a much larger timeframe, and those unfamiliar with a
| piece of code are likely to maintain it down the road.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Exactly this! I was a mobile game developer for several
| years. The technical dept at the end never needs to get
| paid .
| protomikron wrote:
| > The original game was written in Flash, and this version was
| apparently written by Simon Roth
|
| Thanks, I did not know that at all - I know VVVVVV (Linux
| version) and Roth rang a bell - it's the same guy that wrote
| (writes? the game has a very long development story) Maia - a
| space colony simulation/game.
| buryat wrote:
| I remember getting this game from the first humble bundle and
| enjoying it, it had very simple gameplay, little to no time to
| get into and very enjoyable. Going to play it again!
| ddevault wrote:
| Ethan Lee worked on this! Ethan Lee is an awesome person. Ethan
| is probably the single biggest contributor to gaming on Linux,
| and he's always worked in the background. Thanks Ethan, you rock,
| and deserve more credit.
| nurbel wrote:
| indeed, Ethan Lee's portfolio is impressive !
| http://www.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?page=Portfolio/Ports
|
| I wouldn't have thought linux games were such a small thing,
| for a single person to have worked on so many of them
| jandrese wrote:
| That's an impressive collection of Indie games. This looks
| like the classic example of a consultant gig. You have some
| specialized knowledge of how to solve a problem that's easy
| when you know what you're doing. Indie devs can hire you for
| a day and check off that "Linux support" box so they can show
| up in a Humble Bundle and make a little more than you spent
| on the consultant with those 5% or so Linux gamers.
|
| > Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
|
| WTF???
| MattRix wrote:
| It was a very popular game!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Dating Dads is probably the least risque thing in that
| genre.
| cookiecaper wrote:
| Maybe I've just been out of the scene too long, but can't let
| mention of Linux gaming luminaries go without Ryan C. Gordon of
| Loki Games/icculus.org. For many years, if there was a big
| project coming to Linux, Ryan Gordon was likely to be the
| wizard behind it.
|
| His homepage: http://icculus.org/
|
| Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon
|
| Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/icculus
| FreezerburnV wrote:
| Ryan is currently working on on a new cross-platform game
| engine where you write entirely Ruby:
| https://dragonruby.itch.io/dragonruby-gtk
| superpie wrote:
| It's fantastic that he provided a place to host code for game
| modders / developers as well, I definitely spent years of my
| life playing http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/
| alexghr wrote:
| Gosh, this brings back sooo many good memories. If you haven't
| played it yet, you must! It is an excellent game, with superbly
| simple gameplay and excellent music!
| newnewpdro wrote:
| It's helpful/inspiring to see you don't have to be the greatest
| programmer to create successful video games.
|
| Just skimming the code a bit reminded me I probably spend way too
| much time on elegant interfaces, clean implementations, and good
| naming, in my own games.
| danschumann wrote:
| It's easier to distract people than to give them traction. I
| think budgeting software would be the best way for a developer to
| write software which gives traction.
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| Did they use a transpiler or something for the mobile version?
| Lot of magic numbers and odd code like this if
| (t == 0) t = 0; if (t == 1) t = 20; if (t == 2) t
| = 14; if (t == 3) t = 15; if (t == 4) t = 13;
| if (t == 5) t = 16;
|
| or case 17: blocks[k].prompt =
| "Press ENTER to activate terminal"; if(mobilemenus)
| blocks[k].prompt = "Activate terminal";
| blocks[k].script = "terminal_warp_1";
| setblockcolour(k, "orange"); trig=0;
| break; case 18: blocks[k].prompt = "Press
| ENTER to activate terminal"; if(mobilemenus)
| blocks[k].prompt = "Activate terminal";
| blocks[k].script = "terminal_warp_2";
| setblockcolour(k, "orange"); trig=0;
| break; case 19: blocks[k].prompt = "Press
| ENTER to activate terminal"; if(mobilemenus)
| blocks[k].prompt = "Activate terminal";
| blocks[k].script = "terminal_lab_1";
| setblockcolour(k, "orange"); trig=0;
| break;
|
| from
| https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/mobile_v...
| spiralganglion wrote:
| This just looks like typical game dev code to me. You treat the
| code like a scratchpad, exploring the space and looking for
| things that work well. Lots of things written once and never
| touched again, lots of things written with magic numbers
| because that makes it easier to delete.
| tudelo wrote:
| Whenever I look at game source code, I start to realize how
| all of the crazy speedrun glitches exist
| exikyut wrote:
| Especially on limited platforms of old, where crazy hacks
| were necessary to get the game to _fit_ in the cartridge
| /RAM/CPU speed.
| tombert wrote:
| You know, people like to crap on Flash (and there are valid
| reasons to do so), but I really miss how _quick_ you could get a
| game built with it, while it still felt like "real" programming.
|
| With Flash, I felt like a nice "one-stop-shop" in a lot of ways;
| you could draw your graphics, animate them, and code them, and
| you could get a simple game made in an hour or two.
|
| I haven't tried Unity or really any other dedicated game engine,
| so maybe you get that feeling with those, but I will always be
| nostalgic for Flash; it really helped make programming "fun" for
| me.
| bbmario wrote:
| Flash left a huge void in the indie community that has yet to
| be filled by something. Remember Newgrounds.
| tombert wrote:
| Newgrounds is still around, and there are probably some great
| HTML5 games out there; I don't really play games anymore so I
| don't go on there much now.
|
| A friend of mine recommended just Scirra Construct if I want
| something similar to Flash that exports to HTML5.
| the_af wrote:
| Also remember Kongregate (in its early days at least, before
| every game was a MMORPG clone or tried to sell you
| something).
|
| Flash was a huge boon for indie games.
| chasing wrote:
| Flash was awesome and it's can't be overstated how much it
| empowered the indie game community in the aughts.
|
| Seems like people crap on it not because of the tool itself but
| because Adobe dropped the ball and let it become a crashy,
| resource-hogging mess, aligning powerful people (like Steve
| Jobs) against it.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I feel like Google simply didn't like users having such
| control over extending their browsers' functionality in ways
| that are harder to track, so they started the anti-flash
| bandwagon by abusing their browser's market share to kill it
| along with all other add-ons (a continuation of their death
| grip on what extensions are allowed and making unapproved
| extensions not available to the average user either), leaving
| a vast graveyard of significant, great content unavailable to
| the average web user. The golden age of web functionality was
| the period of HTML5 and Flash both being supported at the
| same time and Firefox having full support for NPAPI and the
| old extension system including allowing unsigned extensions.
| Now we're stuck suffocating in sterilized walled gardens
| almost everywhere we go. Android still lets you install third
| party apps for now at least but I bet the days of that are
| numbered too. Sad state of affairs for users all around.
| panopticon wrote:
| I think Steve Jobs was more responsible for Flash's death
| than Google. YouTube only stopped serving Flash as the
| default less than 5 years ago while hubs like Newgrounds
| were seeing significant declines well before then.
|
| Maybe I'm misremembering, but the golden age of Flash
| _content_ was certainly over before HTML5 hit in a big way.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People crap on Flash because of the sites made on it. It
| wasn't for games nor videos.
|
| Adobe had a site building tool that was more productive than
| ASP, but only barely so, and created sites that would break
| on about every computer. The few times they were working,
| they would have completely non-standard UI elements,
| including buttons and links, and break nearly all interaction
| modes.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I worked in Flash animation around 2000-2005 and it was
| _always_ a crashy resource hog.
| azhenley wrote:
| Flash was great and I haven't found a direct replacement yet
| (GameMaker Studio 2 is the closest I have found). I pumped out
| 8 Flash games about a decade ago that generated enough ad
| revenue to cover all my bills for a few years! I miss how easy
| it was. Another _huge_ win is how effortless it was to
| distribute Flash games (they spread like wildfire after I
| uploaded it to one or two sites).
| Quenty wrote:
| Have you tried Roblox?
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I thought Roblox was a game... is it also a game making
| platform?
| jandrese wrote:
| Most of the Roblox games are user created. It ships with
| Roblox studio.
|
| Just remember that the average age of a Roblox player is
| like 8, so in-depth RPGs or complex sim games probably
| won't get a lot of traction.
| asdasdasdasdwd wrote:
| There was an interesting podcast about Roblox in
| Hanselminutes a few weeks ago:
| https://hanselminutes.com/709/robloxs-kelly-mayes-on-
| communi...
| BinaryIdiot wrote:
| Unfortunately most of Roblox games are just attempts to
| siphon your money by buying Robux. Their target market,
| kids around 8, beg their parents for Robux so they can
| buy some stuff in one person's game.
|
| It's incredible how much money they make through tactics
| that make many of their games not really enjoyable unless
| you spend a lot of money in them.
| tombert wrote:
| A friend just messaged me telling me that i need to check out
| Scirra Construct; apparently that gives a very Flash-style
| interface to build games. I'll have to play with that.
| Marazan wrote:
| It's not the loss of Flash per se (as there are plenty of
| rapid game making tools targetting HTML5 about) it's the
| complete collapse of the supporting infrastructure.
|
| Mochi Media closing was huge. I went from getting a steady
| trickle of money for games I wrote to nothing.
|
| As far as I can see there is no Mochi for HTML5 games. Every
| portal is its own closed environment.
| [deleted]
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| And Adobe let it rot.
| MattRix wrote:
| This is the saddest part. Even with the Flash Player being
| killed Adobe could have done so much more with the authoring
| tool. Instead they did little incremental updated and
| basically let it (and the vibrant community around it) die
| off.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Flash was my first programming language from way back when I
| Was 12-13 in a game programming club when I got to high school.
| It was a fun, creative way to get introduced to programming.
| Which I have done non-stop ever since, and now do
| professionally.
|
| It will always be a cherished toolset to me.
| Willamin wrote:
| Would it be ridiculous to write a Flash game then package it
| with Electron bundled with a Flash Player?
|
| I feel like the issues most people have with Flash are one of
| two things. It isn't a great choice for rich interfaces
| (especially things that aren't games) when considering
| accessibility and different screen sizes. It also presents
| security vulnerabilities when it was intended to be sandboxed.
|
| By moving it from web browsers to standalone applications, you
| lose any expectation of sandboxing. When only using it for
| games, it ceases to have the same accessibility constraints.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Dude just export to Flash Player. Electron is such a
| ridiculous resource hog
| exikyut wrote:
| There are many interesting potential outcomes that could
| emerge from such an idea.
|
| Here is one that would be a tad awkward:
|
| - The concept goes appreciably (if not crazily) viral, people
| start distributing "SWF-lectron" containers, and much fun is
| had by all.
|
| - Flash is officially deprecated (incidentally 20 days from
| now, the 11th of January 2020). It dies; the bitrot process
| is exponentially accelerated because of the huge installed
| base yet abrupt and utter lack of updates. Many, _many_ ,
| MANY vulnerabilities are found in the platform. How much
| impact do they have? Theoretically little to none. But you
| never know.
|
| - The Electron containers used in this idea probably never
| get updated. It proves surprisingly easy to just wait for
| Chrome 0days to float to the top of the pond, scoop them up,
| and rework them.
|
| Practically speaking I know the above will never really
| eventuate. But it's what I envisage; more generally, that
| _anything_ that leverages Flash will fall victim to a _very_
| mature ecosystem of hackers (the cracker kind) who 've been
| studying the platform for years, and have a once-in-a-
| lifetime moment to attack while the platform remains
| installed.
|
| Flash will have a half-life of years, but it's going to
| become a VERY big target, I think.
|
| I think.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong/being overdramatic/freaking out/am wearing
| too many security hats at once/none of the above?
| true_religion wrote:
| I am not really seeing how any of the hacking discussion
| relates to a self distributed game, using a packaged
| version of Flash.
|
| It's not the browser, so it'd be easier for hacker to just
| distribute their malware directly than go to the trouble of
| making malware that hacks an unrelated game, then does
| something else.
| hjhhftgy wrote:
| Dude, just wow.
|
| There are many flash games in Steam and elsewhere. Your
| whole rant is clueless.
| tomku wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something that Electron adds to the
| equation, that's already possible (and common!) via
| standalone Flash player packages or Adobe AIR. There's a fair
| number of smaller indie games on Steam distributed that way,
| for example.
| billfruit wrote:
| I think you can do that pretty much with 'defold'[0]
|
| [0] https://defold.com/
| tombert wrote:
| This looks really neat; I will have to play with this
| tonight...thanks!
| exlurker wrote:
| Pico8 for you, if you're OK with a retro look. Very quick and
| satisfying. :)
| tombert wrote:
| I absolutely love Pico-8, and actually teach that to
| teenagers at the library on Saturday, and I will agree that
| it does somewhat satisfy some similar niche as Flash.
|
| That said, Pico-8 is (purposefully) very limited, and if you
| want to do something a bit more advanced than C64-era gaming,
| the limitations show. Flash is limited too, but not as much.
|
| It's obscenely fun to play with, definitely agree with you
| there.
| toper-centage wrote:
| There are also great Javascript platforms for all kinds of
| purposes these days. As a former flash developer (hobbyist
| level) I do not miss Flash at all.
| dwild wrote:
| > There are also great Javascript platforms for all kinds of
| purposes these days.
|
| Except nothing replace it in a one-stop do it all like Flash
| was able to do. You open it, you had a timeline that could
| contains both graphics and code, you could easily reference
| them on the IDE directly, and then when exported, it was a
| single binary file that could be shared everywhere and could
| easily be made quite secure. That meant that there was
| platforms like Mochimedia that allowed you to import a SWF,
| that added the ads and it was shared on multiple thousands
| website for people to play on.
|
| Nowadays you have to use a bunch of different tools, which
| sure is more flexible in a way but it's a barrier big enough
| to remove any desire to do a quick prototype for fun. There's
| software like Unity which is amazing (and a proof that a one-
| stop software is highly preferred by people), but it's made
| for bitmap or 3D graphics, which both are made over an other
| platform and are more complex to handle than vectors that
| just works great in any context.
|
| That's while considering that everything can be done, which
| isn't really true because even in term of performance, it
| took a decade for JS to reach a performance similar to what
| Flash was able to do at the time. The vector editor was so
| good that I knew many people that preferred it over
| Illustrator. I was able to do some nice graphics easily on
| it, I tried to do the same with Illustrator nowadays and I
| just can't.
|
| > As a former flash developer (hobbyist level) I do not miss
| Flash at all.
|
| Lucky you.
| MattRix wrote:
| I don't really have anything to add... But as a former
| professional Flash developed, and now nearly 10 years doing
| game dev (with Unity), I agree 100% with what you said.
|
| It's not really about the language or about the Flash
| player itself. There was something special about the direct
| integration of the code and the visual design/animation
| tool with Flash. Nothing else really comes close these
| days. Nothing else allows such rapid development.
| tombert wrote:
| That's probably fair; I think part of my rose-colored viewing
| of this is in no small part because I largely don't do any
| kind of games programming anymore, and as a result am largely
| ignorant to the newer alternatives to Flash.
| cartoonworld wrote:
| You can still do with haxe: https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/
|
| Haxe is somewhat a flash clone.
| https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe/
| phreack wrote:
| If you happen to know, how does haxe compare to Godot? Would
| you say it's simpler to draw and get a very basic
| game/prototype up and running?
| Drakim wrote:
| Haxe is more like a traditional programming language, not
| an "engine" or whatever is the right term for Godot.
| umvi wrote:
| I would call Godot/Unity/GameMaker an engine-IDE.
|
| You can have an engine like Love or pygame where the
| engine is literally just a shared object or dll and you
| need to basically supply your own tools for level design,
| programming, etc.
|
| Engine-IDEs are one-stop-shops with nearly everything you
| could need built in (level editor, code editor, particle
| effect sandbox, etc.).
| rishav_sharan wrote:
| Super easy. Haxe's Flixel is probably one of the most full
| featured and easy to use 2d engines around.
| tombert wrote:
| Does Haxe have drawing tools too? I thought it was just a
| programming environment (very possible I'm wrong though).
| KapKap55 wrote:
| Haxe is just a language. However, there are several
| graphical frameworks that allow for that. Dicey Dungeons
| (his newest game) is specifically built off the OpenFL
| framework which tries to replicate the Flash API.
| azhenley wrote:
| I always used the Flash WYSISWYG editor for the canvas
| and graphics, so OpenFL isn't a replacement at all in
| that respect.
| justsayinghi wrote:
| Same here. I remember implememting the game loop using
| one or two timeline frames.
| joshtynjala wrote:
| OpenFL, a library for Haxe that implements the Flash API,
| includes a mechanism to import graphics drawn with Flash's
| original tooling.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Notably, Terry built his most recent game, Dicey Dungeons,
| using haxe.
| cambalache wrote:
| I bought this game for 1 dollar (in the first Humble bundle) and
| I still consider it as of the most fun games ever. Simple
| controls, catchy music, interesting mechanics (for its time),
| nice difficulty, without being "unfair". It has everything. If
| you like platformers and simple games you should check it out.
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm giving a side-eye to that 'without being "unfair"' comment.
| I remember a few levels with some real bullshit.
| tibbon wrote:
| Oh this is really cool! I've been thinking how interesting this
| could be to backport to NES or C64. I'm guessing there isn't too
| much in the game happening that couldn't probably happen on those
| systems with minor modifications.
| royjacobs wrote:
| An interesting quote from the build instructions: " In
| particular, the Windows version absolutely positively must be
| compiled in Debug mode, with /RTC enabled. If you build in
| Release mode, or have /RTC disabled, the game behaves
| dramatically different in ways that were never fully documented
| (bizarre softlocks, out-of-bounds issues that don't show up in
| tools like Valgrind, stuff like that)."
|
| I wonder if people will spend the time to actually debug this
| properly now that the source is available.
| rob74 wrote:
| Considering other quotes, like this one: "For example, maybe my
| worst programming habit is declaring temporary variables like
| i, j and k as members of each class, so that I didn't have to
| declare them inside functions (which is annoying to do in flash
| for boring reasons). This led to some nasty and difficult to
| track down bugs, to say the least." I wish those people the
| best of luck :)
| Jare wrote:
| Cunning way to never have uninitialized variables!
| [deleted]
| VonGuard wrote:
| Terry Cavanagh is one of the greatest game designers of our time.
| His simple mechanics and designs often remind me of something
| like Chess or Go, where a simple ruleset covers a massively deep
| game, or is used to communicate a story in a very minimalist
| fashion. Don't Look Back is one of my favorites:
| https://terrycavanaghgames.com/dontlookback/
|
| A few years back, he did a beta of a game called Four Letter
| Word... Though that's not the real title:
| http://distractionware.com/blog/2011/11/the-four-letter-word...
| The real title is a set of cryptic non-alphabet characters.
|
| It was like an Atari 2600 cartridge from a space alien. It
| featured 2600-style graphics, a hidden hard-as-nails FPS game,
| and a buncha hidden 2d content that seems simple at first, but
| was super intriguing. So crazy non-traditional, and with some
| obscure mechanics, it was one of my favorite things I've ever
| played, and he never finished it, sadly. I love cryptic games,
| and I love simple mechanics taken to extreme conclusions. That's
| why I adore Terry.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I always love when something closed source goes open.
|
| While I never played this game in particular (looks like I've
| missed something!), I love to study code. It's always interesting
| to see how other devs tackled a problem or just structured their
| code.
|
| Thanks a lot!
| yarrel wrote:
| This isn't open.
|
| Studying this code then making anything too much like it might
| be a problem.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Indeed. Someone open sourcing their previously closed project
| will always get my upvote. :)
|
| In this case the code is likely pretty messy. The repo explains
| that it was ported from a Flash game and a lot of the bad hacks
| used to make it work in Flash were ported to C++ more or less
| verbatim.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > For example, maybe my worst programming habit is declaring
| temporary variables like i, j and k as members of each class,
| so that I didn't have to declare them inside functions (which
| is annoying to do in flash for boring reasons). This led to
| some nasty and difficult to track down bugs, to say the
| least. In entity collision in particular, several functions
| will share the same i variable. Infinite loops are possible.
| lukebitts wrote:
| > which is annoying to do in flash for boring reasons
|
| Does anyone know what are these boring reasons? I've used
| AS2 and AS3 extensively and don't remember this ever being
| an issue
| uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
| Same here. The only thing I can think of is variable
| hoisting, but I don't think that's annoying enough to
| prefer this other approach.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Ah yes, fond memories of spending hours trying to navigate my
| little dude through several screens of Godzilla's Spiky Asshole.
| jdlyga wrote:
| It's such a good game, I highly recommend it. The level design,
| the music, and the creative names of all the rooms you visit.
| jadar wrote:
| This is one of my favorite games and one of my favorite game
| soundtracks!
| scotth wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a really great game, you should check
| out Terry's latest, Dicey Dungeons. Incredible variation. Each
| episode and character has you discovering new strategies and play
| styles.
|
| 30% off on Steam right now:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/861540/Dicey_Dungeons/
| bscphil wrote:
| VVVVVV is probably my favorite game of all time. I've gotten so
| many great hours out of it, it's very relaxing. Thanks Terry for
| everything and now for releasing the code as well!
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(page generated 2020-01-10 23:00 UTC)