I''m such a zealot XD and I couldn''t really find a better forum to put this in. But these ideas come into my head and they need to be expressed somewhere dammit. Anyway, my point. Open-source games, when they actually get somewhere, are almost always clones of existing games: Frozen Bubble, Stepmania, Vega Strike, and Rogue-likes...all successes in their own way. This is so, because when building a clone, it''s easy to understand the purpose of it. The community emerges naturally to assist in its development. So then, why not do it for a sports game? Everyone knows about them, after all. I imagine that under sound management, such a project could develop from a basic management sim of one game(probably soccer to start, being the most popular) into a project of titanic proportions, something letting you build athletes from scratch while managing a team, playing each game out in full 3d, and then transferring them all into an entirely different sport. By definition, the game would be going through continuous development, just as commerical developers do with their yearly releases, only in this case it would have an entire community contributing - the community of virtual sports fans, which is quite a large one. It just seems a bit odd that such a project doesn''t yet exist. Maybe open-source types are too geeky to want to do sports

Its mainly because open source is not just "rampage blindy throught the woods." Open source, like any other project, always has a clear goal and doesn''t bother to make little piddly releases that don''t give you some idea of what the final project should be.


New and improved! Yet still under construction.

Simulating games that have been around for hundreds of years is an unclear goal?

quote: Original post by RTF
Simulating games that have been around for hundreds of years is an unclear goal?

No, you''re just throwing in the concept of not having a clear goal by having no finishing point. Its the programming equivalent of running a marathon and not being told when you''re finished.


New and improved! Yet still under construction.

But no programming project is ever truly finished, no? It can always get better...more featureful. That''s how you get a Nethack or a Vegastrike or a Stepmania, by going one small increment at a time...

There is no end in sight, but that''s not the point. That doesn''t mean there is "no plan" as such; it means that there is only a roadmap to the next few steps, which gets revised as needs change. You can follow the roadmap, and do useful work, and then leave afterwards. It''s a relay race, not a marathon.

I pointed out the historical precedents here and you just went and ignored them in coming up with that view. Gee, thanks...

quote: Original post by RTF
But no programming project is ever truly finished, no? It can always get better...more featureful. That''s how you get a Nethack or a Vegastrike or a Stepmania, by going one small increment at a time...

There is no end in sight, but that''s not the point. That doesn''t mean there is "no plan" as such; it means that there is only a roadmap to the next few steps, which gets revised as needs change. You can follow the roadmap, and do useful work, and then leave afterwards. It''s a relay race, not a marathon.

I pointed out the historical precedents here and you just went and ignored them in coming up with that view. Gee, thanks...

Do you ever wonder why Id didn''t just keep expanding on the Doom engine to make Quake? Or Valve expanding on the Half-Life engine to make HL2? Simple, because after a certain point, its just impractical to keep the old code, and makes more sense to stop and rebuild.

Programming isn''t evolution, its creationism.


New and improved! Yet still under construction.

Well, the problem would be the source to all of your ratings systems. The only comparative advantage you have in the sports world is your ability to simulate player ratings vs. everyone else''s (assuming graphics, interface, and playstyle are the same). Giving this source away, in my opinion, takes away this advantage vs. everyone that doesn''t sell off their version.

But maybe I''m just thinking wrong. I''m a huge sports guy though, and I''ve played a _lot_ of sports games of all types. They all play differently and the ones I play most are the more realistic ones, not always the ones with flashy graphics.

APC: Now you're talking about engines. Engines do get rebuilt. But games do not, unless a change of engine requires it; in those cases change may result, but you still avoid my point. There is nothing to particularly tie the engine to the gameplay code in the case of a sports game. The same underlying simulation can be used regardless of the external elements thrown on. And in that case, why will the code need to be thrown out?

ShadowWolf: The success of such a project really depends on whether it can get itself started, because once that happens the simulation improves continuously. Team statistics, player faces and team logos, etc., would have to be entirely fan made, and that would also slow it down quite a bit over the commercial ones, which can buy licenses and people to punch in numbers, do mo-cap work etc.. Unless it were designed *really* well, it wouldn't take over every corner of the market because as you said different sports games offer different takes on the same concept, and you can only stretch one implementation so far. I'd assume that it would aim for 100% realism; otherwise there would be a lot of arguing among the creators as to how to tweak the balance.