Making the Games: Source Code? (December 6, 2008)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Last, but not least, we present from Johnny's CD a pile of Wing Commander Shadow Force 'source code', which is likely taken from various elements of Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops. There are several hundred tiny files .h and .cpp, most of which are completely incomprehnsible to non-technical sorts such as myself -- but I imagine that many in the community will be interested in seeing exactly how the bits and pieces of the games fit together.

Rather than try to examine each piece, we've put the entire directlry structure online, exactly as it appeared on the original CD. Begin the journey here. Be sure and let us know if you discover any amazing secrets of meanings behind any of this.



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Original update published on December 6, 2008
 
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That's great news, looks like C++ Source Code. But i have one question, which in my opinion is important. Is this source code bind to any license and if to what license? I had some other small software developments and even for some code parts i saw at the internet the license was ever a big question. So i think for people who want to use this source code it is important and good to know what license is used for this source code. In the best case there is no license used.

Just my two cents
Panzergrenadier
 
Like almosteverything else archived at this site, it's owned by Electronic Arts - we're presenting it for historical reference only. The open source folks should write their own code.
 
Panzergrenadier: The source code has a 1996 copyright with Origin Systems. So if we just wait until 2116, it'll be in the public domain :)

Bandit LOAF: If you want to let people play with this, it might be better to release a ZIP or other archive file for download with the directory structure intact.
 
My bad...

Actually, the code seems to have a variety of copyright dates. I only looked at two files, so I'm not sure of the range.
 
I fully agree with Aradayn, it'll take awhile to sort through all this even without reorganizing the files properly... an archive would be nice.

It'll be awhile before I'm ready to get half of this, but I fully intend on diving into this when I have both the skills and the time to do so properly. Should be interesting... now, if only we had all the models, textures and the like... would be interesting to see a halfway finished version of this.
 
I echo those above.

Any way we could get an ISO or even a Zip/RAR file of all of these goodies? We all know the CIC will have giga-quads of bandwidth left over at the end of the month anyway. ;)

NuAngel
 
hehe.

Without a license to use it or even view it (with caveats). No professional coder will touch it with a 50 foot pole. Any programmer who views that code and writes a 3d or flight game is instantly liable to be sued. Also anyone thinking this code will ever get in public domain? don't get your hopes up. Disney keeps lobbying congress for copyright term extensions every 25 years. Used to be 14 years after you made it. Then it was 50 years then 75. Now it's 90 years after the original author's death. I expect we'll see it grow again within 15-20 years. Sucks but until people care about the issue pirates will pirate and companies will rip people off against the original intent of the law (grant a time limited monopoly to encourage innovation and the creation of new works. Why are you going to make new works when you can sit on your ass and get sweet sweet royalties from existing works? and why make anything when you can get free money from what grandpa made?)
 
Ha... legal ramifications... you're talking to the guy who released the 3dfx driver source code. I just want to tinker.

I tried using HTTrack to crawl the site and download a bunch of data, but I only ended up with 3MB of info, so I don't think it did a thorough job. ;) Still, I would love to poke around in these files, once I get some free time.

NuAngel
 
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