nfh

Yeah that’s basically why I didn’t pull it out as an option in the first place, it’s not always practical. A lot of your proprietary code is going to be external dependencies linked/built against, or your own IP reused from the last project. But not all of it, and I can definitely see that smaller chunk causing a lot of problems.

You need a team that does a lot of dependency management and similar things well while building it, that don’t actually help them get the game out faster, to keep the problem manageable. Or a team who specialize in open sourcing games like this, which could become a thing if this was more commonplace.

The one MMO I’ve meaningfully played, RuneScape, has open source replicas of its server from different points in time, that the community has made. I’m not gonna pretend it’s zero work, but a developer with the source code absolutely could do these things. It also doesn’t need to be perfectly compatible with the original one, you can replace a complex DB backend with something standard and less performant. Only runs on Linux, or MS Server 2k8? The community of people who care will figure it out.

Maybe a source code release would be preferable in this kind of option. EA just did this with a few Command and Conquer games.

If a multiplayer-only game turns down official servers, and you can’t self-host within the game, they should owe players a separate server binary they can run, or a partial refund for breaking the game. It should not be hard, especially if it’s a known constraint when they develop the game.

If it doesn’t work well without the Internet, it’s a bad investment. Features that require the Internet degrading a bit is one thing, but if a toilet or toaster can’t do its basic job offline, it was ewaste the second it rolled off the factory line.

The state of being old is a whole bunch of things that correlate with chronological age, but unless you know someone moving at relativistic speeds, chronological age is the only one we all move through at the same rate.

If you can hold on to the good bits of youth, like open-mindedness, and grow along dimensions like maturity, maybe youth doesn’t need to be wasted on the young.