Would you like to see the sourcecode for the original 'The Sims' released by EA? If so, please sign this petition. As you can see, it stems from a thread I already created on the offical forum for The Sims 3. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter beyond what's been said... post below!

After a decade, there is a chance the original source is no longer (easily) available. They might have archives of long-retired servers, but it seems unlikely. If they do exist, they are probably on tape in a storage closet and covered with dust.



Assuming they do exist and are available, I can see no compelling reason for the company to release it.

The only benefit is that a few geeks who don't know much about game programming would enjoy looking at it and learning from it. Most people who have experience enough to use it will already have enough skill and experience to implement the game as good or better than the source would expose. So there are very few people indeed who would benefit.

On the negative side, it opens the door even wider to competition and clones, exposes proprietary information and technology, reveals exploits, potentially reduces the IP value, and introduces some unnecessary legal work.



I can see no good reason for EA to listen to your petition when they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by releasing it.

Quote: On the negative side, it opens the door even wider to competition and clones, exposes proprietary information and technology, reveals exploits, potentially reduces the IP value, and introduces some unnecessary legal work.

Good points.
But... why has iD software, for one, released the sourcecode to pretty much all their games throughout the years seemingly without such drawbacks?

Quote: Original post by MatsVed
But... why has iD software, for one, released the sourcecode to pretty much all their games throughout the years seemingly without such drawbacks?

Because they wanted to.

EA could release the code if they wanted to. They apparently don't want to. The fact that iD released their code doesn't have any bearing on whether any other studio should or will release their own code, nor should it.

As interesting as it could be, I can see no real and tangible merit to it.

Carmack released the source code for Quake II (IIRC) and Quake III. I saw it and it was honestly hideous - piss-poor variable names; loaded with gotos; a real dearth of comments at best; if I remember rightly some of the files were very poorly name and I can remember, although I don't have it now, that there was a strange mix of C and C++ in places. It was truly terrible and really hits home the argument that you can't and shouldn't learn from other peoples' code when it's out of context like that. Carmack did once say something about possibly releasing Doom 3's source code but it's Carmack; he's a classic die hard and I can't see him changing his style drastically over the years.

Also, Activision released the source code for the original Civilization: Call To Power. It was much better than Carmack's stuff; it was far better structured, organised and had fewer obvious WTFs in it. However, you couldn't compile it because it had the third-party libraries (e.g. MILES for audio) stripped out because that was covered by separate bits of copyright legislation etc. so it made it kind of pointless. It's also worth mentioning that the comments were deliberately stripped out as well.

My thought is that the original Sims code is so dated that there's no benefit or point in releasing it, and especially given EA's track record with regards to basically everything I wouldn't want to see it because there'd be more gotchas than Noel Edmonds and more strings than an episode of Thunderbirds.

heh. Why? It's just the sims. Also did you want the source for the Sims 1 or Sims 3 because you said:

Quote: please release the source for The Sims 3

They would never do that in a million years. The company doesn't do that.

The Sims source code doesn't hit me as something someone would want to mod or use. It's kind of specialized unlike say an FPS engine.

Quote: please release the source for The Sims 3

Yes that was in the original forum topic.
I kind of realized (this is EA, after all) that that was taking water over my head.

If they feel like releasing the source code, they should go right ahead.
I for one am not particularly interested in it.

Ask yourself this : What benefit would the developer and publisher of the game Sims (or any game for that matter) *gain* from releasing it?

I'm certainly not interested. Sorry.