The developer of Terraria promised to open source the canceled sequel if a petition could get enough signatures but then it did and he didn't release the code
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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Plenty of devs think it's easier than it is. A ton of games are built on proprietary tools, and then you get into legal hot water on whether you can even give away things like the soundtrack or assets you bought like stock sound effects.
I wouldn't be surprised if they looked at it after the petition and thought "wait, I actually can't open source this"
Winamp dumping a bunch or proprietary information on GitHub is a good example of this.
I totally get that, but if that was the reason maybe he could have explained it? Maybe he did? I don't know.
I haven't heard of this. Surely Red is just finishing terraria first .-.
Thanks! That's lame!
The history of city of heroes might interest you.
Thank you!
Came here to point out CoH!
Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.
Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.
Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.
Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.
Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape. In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.
I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.
Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.
Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.
If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.
I loved Sacred 2! I remember save scumming to preserve my 0 deaths streak. I'd hit the power button on the Xbox before it could save, risking corrupting my character every time.
Awesome achievement, thanks for telling the story!
I tried looking into this and I'm having trouble setting it up, although I'm on linux so that might be my doing.
I followed the guide on Darkmatters
I'm also on Linux. Ensure you have docker and docker-compose installed. IIRC you also need the windows server files# . I'll get back to you with my server compose file.
Sorry - I wasn't clear. I can't seem to join any servers. Some comments mention changing the default server to "hex41.de" so I changed that but I can't connect.
Maybe it's since been taken down or something.
Ah I see. Did you change the lobby URL in the config file? There's a config file with a lobby URL, you need to change it to point to the correct lobby where servers will show. Or is that what you with the changing the default server?
Edit: Just checking, are you running at least version 2.65? Also, I mentioned changing the config file, I've just been reminded the file is downloaded separately and then just replaced, no need to change it. I'll DM the unofficial "official" guide from the forums.
While not open source, OldUnreal has taken over Unreal and Unreal Tournament with access to the source code and they release patches. The OldUnreal team has an agreement with Epic to do this.
Does rewriting the game count? https://2009scape.org/
The server is a rewrite from scratch and the client is a decompiled and deobfuscated binary from January 2009
oh wow, uh, my IP is blocked from accessing that website
Must be in the UK
Yeah, but... why?
Legal reasons, Jagex being a UK company
Ah.
Thanks! Not quite. The idea I have in mind is to avoid having to rewrite it, if possible. Besides, I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to do it.
Early Dooms and Quakes https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM but they aren't open source for the reasons you wanted.
No problem, thanks!
Star Wars Galaxies.
Thank you!
!principia@sopuli.xyz was developed as a commercial title a few years back. I believe, @ROllerozxa@sopuli.xyz contacted the devs to get it open-sourced.
Yes. :) Well, the source code was actually supposed to be released under the BSD-3 license even back in 2016, after the game was abandoned in its commercial form in late 2014. But the plans fell through and when the official community site (with discussion forums, wiki as well as sharing levels for the game) then shut down in 2018 without a word from the original author, it was assumed that the open source release would never happen anymore.
I had played the game when it originally released in 2013 (and I had also played the prequel from 2011), so my time with the game goes back for a long time. When I came back to the game after a year or two of inactivity in late 2019 I discovered the sorry state that the game was in, and decided to begin reverse engineering the game to create a new unofficial community site for it (I have a longer blog post that goes over it in some more detail, up to and including after the source release). During this time, the original author was more or less impossible to get into contact with, but one day in August of 2022 he just stumbled into the unofficial Discord server we had for the game and got to see the stuff I had done. He was very happy to see what I had accomplished to try to revive the game on my own, and after he had reintroduced himself to what remained of the community and we had talked for a while, the topic of releasing the source code was brought up. Which of course he was very enthusiastic about.
In the end I didn't end up actually being the one who published the source code to the Internet and such, but I was definitively the one who got the ball rolling again and at least I got to be the first one to build it natively for Linux, among other things. And when the original author had to leave again for personal reasons I was given the maintainer hat in his absence to keep the open source project running in the hands of the community. Apart from the fact that there did not end up being a lot of momentum for the development of the game afterwards (whether it be due to the release happening so many years late that people moved on, the unfortunate state that the game's source code ended up being in, or personal incompetence on my part), Principia has probably been among the best success stories of an abandoned commercial game in modern times being open sourced and officially picked up by the community, and it also likely had the best circumstances to make it happen.