We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Starbound Could Be Open Source In Future

By - | Views: 16,884
tagline-image
The head of Starbound developers Chucklefish "Tiy" has said openly on twitter to all of his followers he wants to open source Starbound, and all their other games.

I think we're going to open source Starbound one day, I'd like all of our games to be OS from now on

Tiy (@Tiyuri) September 15, 2014


It's interesting to see more developers say things like this, and it can only help other interested users find and fix issues. We all know the benefits of games being open sourced by now, and I hope the Chucklefish crew deliver on this one day.

Personally I just hope the big Starbound update comes soon, as I am getting a little impatient waiting for it.

What do you make to this? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
0 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
18 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

edo Sep 16, 2014
OP software is great, but we could just download the game from the repositories instead of pay for it (like we can for lugaru)
DrMcCoy Sep 16, 2014
Well, they didn't specify if that's only for the code or also for the assets. If the former, you still need to buy the game to play it.
seven Sep 16, 2014
i bought it when it came out on steam and there are still no rebindable keys in the game. witch makes it pretty unplayable on a non english keyboard.
lave Sep 16, 2014
dont know what to think about starbound and chucklefish. sure the game is very fun at first but it gets repetitive rather quick. there have been dozens of promises and discriptions of a bright future to the game like shipfights and space pirates and whatnot but every update i witnessed was merely fixing minor stuff or balancing things or adding useless cosmetic gadgets like valintines day costumes. in the timespan i was interested in this game i got the impression that chucklefish tries to fuel the hypetrain of a "forever early access" to milk the enthusiastic early supporter cow as much as possible.

maybe i am wrong, maybe im injust and they are all cool, but i was disappointed by the rate and quality of their updates and hoped for a way more complex game that would emerge in the end. so when i read this article all i read is actually this:
"as soon as a 1+ year long early access beta with cosmetic changes is no longer tolerated by people we will just open source the thing, hand over developement to them and start pushing our next early access game to earn $ with"
Alzarath Sep 16, 2014
Quoting: lavedont know what to think about starbound and chucklefish. sure the game is very fun at first but it gets repetitive rather quick. there have been dozens of promises and discriptions of a bright future to the game like shipfights and space pirates and whatnot but every update i witnessed was merely fixing minor stuff or balancing things or adding useless cosmetic gadgets like valintines day costumes. in the timespan i was interested in this game i got the impression that chucklefish tries to fuel the hypetrain of a "forever early access" to milk the enthusiastic early supporter cow as much as possible.

maybe i am wrong, maybe im injust and they are all cool, but i was disappointed by the rate and quality of their updates and hoped for a way more complex game that would emerge in the end. so when i read this article all i read is actually this:
"as soon as a 1+ year long early access beta with cosmetic changes is no longer tolerated by people we will just open source the thing, hand over developement to them and start pushing our next early access game to earn $ with"

Starbound has received plenty of updates in their nightly/experimental betas. It seems Chucklefish decided to move all the updates over there and leave the stable version as some sort of playground so people don't get upset over things like resets. It makes sense to me, but as I've witnessed, a lot of end-users that don't follow development don't realize what they're doing and assume they're leaving the game for dead. Try subscribing to the nightly build. It's looking great so far. I just took a peek, but I'll be avoiding it to avoid spoilers for myself until the game is closer to being finished.

At one point they had daily development updates on their website. It's slowed down a bit, since it'd be mostly repeating what they're doing and they don't want too many spoilers. Feel free to check that out if you're having doubts.
marcelomendes Sep 16, 2014
Just like Minecraft will... oh wait! =|
TheRealJeff Sep 16, 2014
I am with @stan here, unless a game starts open source and the community is responsible for creating it, I don't see a lot of benefit in going OS. Of course if it had some sort of ground-breaking feature or code that could be leveraged for the benefit of other games (e.g. 3D engine, AI) then it would warrant opening up the code. OTH, if the developer is tired of working on the game, open sourcing the game would be a way it could live on after they quit.

Quoting: GuestI don’t care much about games being open-source, although in some cases it could be useful to make fixes the original developers were too lazy to make themselves (for example proper keyboard support, as seven mentionned above). But with the huge amount of average indie games there is at the moment, it’s simpler to just play something else.

Only for great games (Doom…) does open-sourcing really bring something (porting to other platforms, learning from the source code).
Hyeron Sep 16, 2014
Quoting: seveni bought it when it came out on steam and there are still no rebindable keys in the game. witch makes it pretty unplayable on a non english keyboard.
erm...
setxkbmap us ?
vim ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Starbound/starbound.config ?
annoying != unplayable. :|
Hyeron Sep 16, 2014
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Hyeronsetxkbmap us ?
vim ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Starbound/starbound.config ?
annoying != unplayable. :|
I don’t know about Starbound, but the reason I’ve hardly touched Metro: Last Light is because it is hardcoded to qwerty. Yes I can setxkbmap us, but it doesn’t help much when the game tells you to press a key and you have no idea where it is.
I agree, but not in this case, when you can pretty much start kate or mousepad or whatever the thing is called in the Gnome environment these days, THEN setxkbmap, THEN edit the keys and oh, suprise: you don't have to look for them when you need them. Or just edit the darn thing right away and see if your config works on AZERTY or whatever you're using.
Is it inconvenient? Yup.
Could it be better? Yup.
Are Chucklefish right to prioritize features over options? Yup. ;)
Can't have it all. This is one tradeoff I'm happy to make as long as the game isn't reaching 1.0 or whatever version it reaches when it reaches beta.

EDIT - Plus, Starbound doesn't use THAT many keys, it doesn't take ages before you find them all. :)
zimplex1 Sep 16, 2014
Quoting: GuestThe thing you need to understand is that open source does NOT equal free of cost, It means liberty not price. Open source software is software that respects the users rights and is software I will gladly pay for. Also there is user privacy to consider. Closed source software is untrustworthy software. There are many proven ways to make decent money from open source (Freedom) software such as the humble bundle business model. As far as someone else giving the software free of cost or selling it that should be considered second hand distribution. The developer has already made their money on the first sale. Someone who gets the first game free of cost may like the game and buy the next game. MYTH BUSTED

Sadly the image of opensource software is seen by many people (not all) as free software and many people will treat opensource as free software. Sure many people will gladly pay to support the developer/s even if paying is optional (given that you like said software), but there are many more people who will just want to get it for free. I hope I'm wrong on that but to me that's the way it seems.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.