Should Armageddon Mud be Open Sourced?

[jalden]

[Removed by User]

[Jihelu]

In the state it is in?
Fuck no.
Sure most people might stick to the 2-3 servers but I already have trouble finding people in non 'muh major city' areas and I don't need more trouble.
Unless I can be a mul sorcerer then sign me up

[Malken]

Yeah, how about no.

[John]

I don't know of anything in the DIKU code that allows it to be released under an open source license. Furthermore the lore and the world of Armageddon is one of the key ingredients in making Armageddon as great as it is. I see no benefit in giving that away to anyone who wants to run their own private version of Armageddon.

[Maziel]

Yeah, how about no.

This is why people avoid using the gdb.

[Maziel]

I don't know of anything in the DIKU code that allows it to be released under an open source license. Furthermore the lore and the world of Armageddon is one of the key ingredients in making Armageddon as great as it is. I see no benefit in giving that away to anyone who wants to run their own private version of Armageddon.

It'd presumably be the engine and not the databases, I.e. rooms, mobs, items.

You're right about Diku, but open source is often used loosely; there are other Diku derived codebases which call themselves open source

[BadSkeelz]

Yeah, sorry, don't see much of a benefit.

As I understand it, DIKU might be the source code, but Arm's its own beast after 20 years of modifications.

[Majikal]

Yeah, how about no.

This is why people avoid using the gdb.

Thread posed a question, dude gave answer. That's why you avoid using the gdb?


As to the OP:
Armageddon is the blood sweat and tears of it's staff, coders, and players. If you like it, play the game as it was created to be played by the people who put their effort into making it a game to be enjoyed. Requesting it's code is like asking to skip the 20 years of code evolution and development that went into the game and just capitalize off their work.

[John]

It'd presumably be the engine and not the databases, I.e. rooms, mobs, items:

Normally I'd expect your assumption to be true. But the point

Players could pick a server that is strict or lax on roleplay.

puzzled me.

You're right about Diku, but open source is often used loosely; there are other Diku derived codebases which call themselves open source

Fair enough.

If an interested party actually approached the Armageddon staff in good faith about using the codebase, and assuming it could be removed of all "setting specific" code (I honestly don't think that's possible) then who knows what staff would do. However I don't know of anyone whose actually approached staff in good faith. And with all of the freely available codebases out there, I don't see the benefit. Armageddon's code is by no means the best code. But we use it because it is the mostly distinctly Armageddon codebase. I don't know what purpose it would serve someone wanting to make their own MUD that had no ties to Armageddon to use code that's evolved naturally through use over time vs one that was custom built and designed to be plug and play and customisable.

[Malken]

Good luck approaching the Staff in good faith about using their codebase after they've just had it stolen from them 

[Maziel]

Yeah, how about no.

This is why people avoid using the gdb.

Thread posed a question, dude gave answer. That's why you avoid using the gdb?


As to the OP:
Armageddon is the blood sweat and tears of it's staff, coders, and players. If you like it, play the game as it was created to be played by the people who put their effort into making it a game to be enjoyed. Requesting it's code is like asking to skip the 20 years of code evolution and development that went into the game and just capitalize off their work.

That's what the yes/no option is for. The GDB gets a bad rep when it comes to unknown players putting out their feelers and giving suggestions and receiving negative feedback by elitists without receiving constructive criticism.

I think you misunderstand the suggestion. Jalden can correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't think it's "I want to make an Arm clone." Capitalizing off the work wouldn't be possible given that it has to include the Diku license, not to mention whatever licenses Arm staff would append. Secondly, wanting to volunteer and make something better - being a positive force in a niche group - matches a community driven game.

[Maziel]

Good luck approaching the Staff in good faith about using their codebase after they've just had it stolen from them  

The author of God Wars II had his code stolen from him at some point. Not for that game, but another. His solution was releasing a more updated version.

[picklehead]

Good luck approaching the Staff in good faith about using their codebase after they've just had it stolen from them 

It wasn't -just- stolen, it was stolen over 15 years ago by a couple guys from Israel. And it shut down the game for quite some time. Dark times. That being said, I don't see the code being offered up as open source.

[Malken]

Good luck approaching the Staff in good faith about using their codebase after they've just had it stolen from them 

The author of God Wars II had his code stolen from him at some point. Not for that game, but another. His solution was releasing it.

His solution to having his code stolen was to release it? How does that even make sense?

If all jalden wants is a barebone sort of code to make his own game from there's plenty of options already available out there, but it seems like he's wanting a clone of Armageddon, from his Pros section -

"If the code were released, we would probably see lots of servers pop up overnight" <-

But yeah, if all he wants is to have a pretty good base to create his own mud from, there's already other options out there (FutureMUD, maybe?)

[John]

The author of God Wars II had his code stolen from him at some point. Not for that game, but another. His solution was releasing a more updated version.

Does the author of Gods War II strive to create an ongoing community of gamers around his MUD that he, along with other staff, spends countless manhours (roughly 10-30 hours per staff member per week) pouring their energy into?

If the answer is no, then it's not really comparing apples to apples and is more akin to comparing apples to oranges. But apple and oranged are food, but they have very different purposes.

If people want an open source MUD codebase, I'd definitely recommend looking at something like CoffeeMUD. Many (although not all, and sometimes less and less with the amount of changes Armageddon is getting in recent times) of the core features in Armageddon are replicated in CoffeeMUD along with a whole suite of features not available in Armageddon. And it's free for anyone to download, modify and redistribute.

[Maziel]

Good luck approaching the Staff in good faith about using their codebase after they've just had it stolen from them 

The author of God Wars II had his code stolen from him at some point. Not for that game, but another. His solution was releasing it.

His solution to having his code stolen was to release it? How does that even make sense?

If all jalden wants is a barebone sort of code to make his own game from there's plenty of options already available out there, but it seems like he's wanting a clone of Armageddon, from his Pros section -

But yeah, if all he wants is to have a pretty good base to create his own mud from, there's already other options out there (FutureMUD, maybe?)

KaViR (God Wars II) is known for being brilliant on topmudsites and elsewhere. The man is amazing. That's all I'll say about how it makes sense; the why is out there if you want to know.

I've tried running a RPI before just for kicks. Nothing public. If you're willing to do everything from scratch, you have plenty of options. Evennia is a great one. Otherwise, you have one bad one. OpenRPI or whatever the newest iteration is called

[Maziel]

The author of God Wars II had his code stolen from him at some point. Not for that game, but another. His solution was releasing a more updated version.

Does the author of Gods War II strive to create an ongoing community of gamers around his MUD that he, along with other staff, spends countless manhours (roughly 10-30 hours per staff member per week) pouring their energy into?

If the answer is no, then it's not really comparing apples to apples and is more akin to comparing apples to oranges. But apple and oranged are food, but they have very different purposes.

Nearly all of this work is put into the world and storytelling elements and note the codebase itself. Nobody can steal the stories and the world that has been created. Why would anyone want to anyways?

Even if all of this time was being put in the codebase itself, I don't see that it'd change my stance though. I'm not sure if the point would be that it can't be improved anymore, isn't worthy of someone who is passionate in this scene improving it, or other.

[John]

Nearly all of this work is put into the world and storytelling elements and note the codebase itself. Nobody can steal the stories and world that has been created. Why would anyone want to anyways?

Even if all of this time was being put in the codebase itself, I don't see that it'd change my stance though. I'm not sure if the point would be that it can't be improved anymore, isn't worthy of someone who is passionate in this scene improving it, or other.

Point is: The leak of God Wars II codebase vs the leak of Armageddon's code (17 years ago?) and internal wiki are not comparable situations and so comparing the reactions to these two events does not serve to benefit the current discussion.

It'd be the same as discussing the code philosophy of Linux vs Armageddon. They are simply not comparable situations.

Unless I'm missing something really obvious here?

[Malken]

Okay, I just gave this Gods' War II code a quick glance and from what I'm reading, the guy created the game in 1995, it was stolen in 1996 and he then released the code publicly in 1996 as well.

"GodWars is a family of MUD engines derived from Merc,created in 1995 by Richard Woolcock, also known as "KaVir". GodWars' setting is influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness.

In 1996 the code was illegally released and advertised on a website for free download. After fighting extensively to stop the illegal use of his codebase, Woolcock later released the code publicly."

KaVir: Although I was pretty angry about it at the time, the code was leaked after I'd already shut the MUD down, and I had no plans to ever reopen it. So in some ways it's nice that the MUD at least left some sort of legacy behind, rather than vanishing completely, like many other MUDs have done.

You can't possibly compare this to Armageddon's 20+ years of work? Unless I'm missing something about GodWars? It says that the guy had given up on the game and had already shut it down before it was leaked.

[Maziel]

Okay, I just gave this Gods' War II code a quick glance and from what I'm reading, the guy created the game in 1995, it was stolen in 1996 and he then released the code publicly in 1996 as well.

"GodWars is a family of MUD engines derived from Merc,created in 1995 by Richard Woolcock, also known as "KaVir". GodWars' setting is influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness.

In 1996 the code was illegally released and advertised on a website for free download. After fighting extensively to stop the illegal use of his codebase, Woolcock later released the code publicly."

KaVir: Although I was pretty angry about it at the time, the code was leaked after I'd already shut the MUD down, and I had no plans to ever reopen it. So in some ways it's nice that the MUD at least left some sort of legacy behind, rather than vanishing completely, like many other MUDs have done.

You can't possibly compare this to Armageddon's 20+ years of work? Unless I'm missing something about GodWars? It says that the guy had given up on the game and had already shut it down before it was leaked.

I'll tell you the part of the story I know. I wonder if there were multiple incidents. Clones kept popping up from a MUD that he had. Said MUDs would not recognize that they were taking his work without giving him credit. He was pretty sure that one of his staff members was leaking it. He added in a backdoor, and then waited a few months for his update to hit others. Then he jumped in various MUDs, demanded satisfaction, and then proceeded to promote himself to immortal and demote everyone else when it wasn't given. Somewhere down the road he decided to release it because having control over a leak is better than not. I couldn't tell you who told me this, if it's complete, or where this fits in with the incident that you described.

TLDR: The comparable lesson is that the war on drugs doesn't work, and legalizing it grants government control instead of dealing with organized crime. Legal alcohol = bored mafia.  There's another comparable situation John.

[Gunnerblaster]

My answer is no, largely because - Despite wishing I could trust the community here, there are a few players who would take this opportunity to effectively dissect the code to the metagame maxing potential, all while unmonitored, to then rejoin the "main" game server and abuse the knowledge they've accumulated.

[Maziel]

My answer is no, largely because - Despite wishing I could trust the community here, there are a few players who would take this opportunity to effectively dissect the code to the metagame maxing potential, all while unmonitored, to then rejoin the "main" game server and abuse the knowledge they've accumulated.

That's a good argument.

The staff here have admitted that some of the combat mechanics are embarrassingly simple. My counter-argument is that making these mechanics known so that they could be improved - so that nobody could abuse them - would be better than obscuring an embarrassing detail on the painting (via effects or shadow/noise) so to speak. Not to mention that, with the hacked version out there, these simple mechanics are likely already known.

[John]

TLDR: The comparable lesson is that the war on drugs doesn't work, and legalizing it grants government control instead of dealing with organized crime. Legal alcohol = bored mafia.  There's another comparable situation John.

Again, not seeing them as comparable situations. 2 or 3 instances of Armageddon getting posted online over the span of 17 years isn't comparable to someone on staff continually leaking the code to several clones being hosted with active staff and active playerbases. Your obviously looking at God Wars II and Armageddon at a very high level whereas I'm drilling down to a much more detailed viewpoint. At a high level view of "These are MUDs" and "these muds had one or more clones posted online" then yes the situations are comparable. But I don't think that level of analysis isn't really helpful.

Finally, if we did want to look at the lesson that  God Wars II teaches. Couldn't we argue that the lesson taught here is that sometime after God Wars II's code was stolen, disseminated to other users and eventually released to the community at large that the creator of the codebase lost all motivation to actively develop it and instead abandoned the project? Could not the same thing happen if Armageddon's code was released to the wider community? If we're going to act as if the two situations are comparable (I don't think they are).

Here's a question: Was Armageddon Reborn's codebase ever released publicly? If yes, has anyone done anything with it?

Finally: Who wants to do something with the codebase and what do they want to do? We're talking hypotheticals here. Is anyone actually interested in starting a new MUD using the Armageddon code base? If yes, why?

[Malken]

TLDR: The comparable lesson is that the war on drugs doesn't work, and legalizing it grants government control instead of dealing with organized crime. Legal alcohol = bored mafia.  There's another comparable situation John.

I would argue that one incident in 1999 (?) and the re-surfacing of the mud's code 16 years later for a couple of days kinda shows that it seems to work, and now that it happened, Staff probably have much better ways to protect their assets.

The guy who ran the old mud's code for a couple of days suddenly took down the game, deleted his account and wasn't heard from again - It looks like running copies of Armageddon isn't the easiest or smartest hobby one could pick with their free time.

I want to hear from OP though because we don't know if he wants to have access to the game's -up to date- codebase so that he can run copies of Armageddon or simply would like a barebone codebase that is RPI friendly to start his own game with.

[Case]

No it shouldn't is my short answer.

No real reason to is my long answer.