Petition CA for MTW source code?

[caravel]

They are still selling the game, and it is their responsibility to inform people of the issues with it on more modern PCs (and a majority of gamers are not going to come to places like here at the Org or other Total War sites, they've only bought the game to play it casually).

I'm not sure as to the legality of that, though you probably have a point. You never see "maximum system requirements" on games, though there are a lot of old games still sold that either won't run well or won't run at all on newer hardware/software. From an ethical standpoint, CA were still selling STW/MTW as parts of the eras pack, so the problems should have been resolved by way of a patch prior to it's release.

Mentioned before is the fact that anything done with the source code would still require that people have the original game. That means people will still be paying for the game. Sure, there will be people who pirate the game, nothing can stop that. But short of not producing and selling any games, only so much can be done to combat that. Punishing paying customers and those of us who are honest and only have good intentions is not the way to combat it.

Exactly, but this is the world of proprietary software. Proprietary software assumes us all to be no better than thieves. We must then prove our innocence by passing the DRM. If we pass the DRM we're no longer a thief, even if we're someone that bypassed it...

Nothing malicious will be done with the source code, and it only needs to be given to certain trusted people. CA and Sega both know that people can be trusted in this manner, too - look at Jack Lusted. He tried his darned best to fix Rome and Medieval 2, and eventually got hired by CA because of his contribution. They believed in him enough to allow him to become more intimately involved with the development of their games. They trusted him, that he was right about the flaws in the games. It would not be so different with providing someone with the source code. We swing it in our favour by suggesting we pay to have it - maybe to 'hire' it, even, rather than own it. Non-disclosure agreements are all that is required, only certain modders being allowed to have access to the code.

You're on the wrong track here. If the source code is released, it should be released in it's entirety and available for download. The source code would be the code to the Medieval/Shogun win32 .exe files and any accompanying .dll files. CA need not release any of the game content. To clarify "game content" this is what modders modify: Graphics, scripts, sounds etc (about 95% of what comes on the CD is the game content).

Modders != programmers. Medieval/Shogun was coded in C/C++ using MSVC++ if I recall correctly. Unless any of our modders here are highly experienced with this, then they haven't much hope of doing anything with the source code. Editing a few .txt files is a whole different ballgame to coding. Once released, the source code will find it's way to the right people. There is no need for teams of lawyers or non disclosure agreements between individuals/companies.

Medieval Total War is a timeless game. It is at a time when the Total War games were really only just starting. It is as classical as Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2, or Doom and Doom 2. Same goes for Shogun. Do they really want to let this game die?

Quite frankly: Yes they do - and I am surprised at some of the naivety here. This is not about the fans, Total War or CA, but the multi-billion dollar profits of SEGA. STW/MTW is an old game engine. It has been abandoned and it is obvious that CA want to invest no time or effort in it. Hopefully you will get sick of trying to get MTW to work and go off and buy CA's newer games instead.

Oh and I may be somewhat off the mark here, but it seems to me that CA representatives never post in the forums for the older games. This thread was started over a year ago and still not one CA reply to date. This is probably policy. In short gentlemen you and your little predicament don't exist in the eyes of CA.

It is definitely time for us to do something. Either we make a concerted effort to make a future for MTW, or we just decide to play it until we no longer can and let it fade into the darkness of the past.

I'm afraid it's the latter option. You haven't a hope in hell of making this company release source code to anyone unless it benefits them. And they're not unusual in that. There are plenty of other companies hanging on to the source code of 10 - 20 year old titles.

They have released source code to a company porting RTW to the Mac - so where there's money to be made code can and will be released. STW/MTW source code will not be released because there's simply no profit in it.

[edyzmedieval]

I'm afraid it's the latter option. You haven't a hope in hell of making this company release source code to anyone unless it benefits them. And they're not unusual in that. There are plenty of other companies hanging on to the source code of 10 - 20 year old titles.

They have released source code to a company porting RTW to the Mac - so where there's money to be made code can and will be released. STW/MTW source code will not be released because there's simply no profit in it.

My point being.

Either somebody BUYS it off them for a big amount of money or we all make a team effort and we actually start a petition for the MTW source code to be released to specially designed modders.

[caravel]

My point being.

Either somebody BUYS it off them for a big amount of money or we all make a team effort and we actually start a petition for the MTW source code to be released to specially designed modders.

1) It would take more investment that any individual or company would be prepared to stump up. You're talking about a major investment in time, money, lawyers and people and companies, that have this at their disposal already - like the one are porting RTW to the Mac - wouldn't be interested. The potential consumer base is too small.

2) Historically CA ignore petitions - they even ignored this thread.

As I said: In the eyes of CA this is not an issue, it's not even happening.

[Garnier]

Medieval/Shogun was coded in C/C++ using MSVC++ if I recall correctly. Unless any of our modders here are highly experienced with this, then they haven't much hope of doing anything with the source code. Editing a few .txt files is a whole different ballgame to coding.

I use C++ and have the source to another game most of which I can readily understand. Though there is a TON of code there, it's all broken down into parts, and you don't need to understand all of it to do anything with it. It's not like C++ is encrypted, unless of course the CA programmers were evil.

Still, of course, our chance of getting it any time in the forseeable future is ~0%.

[caravel]

The parts of the code that allow you to change that which directly relates to the gameplay is more simplistic, i.e. hard coded events etc. It's when it gets to the game engine itself and DirectX function calls that it gets quite a bit more advanced. One of the first steps to improving the game IMHO would be porting it to OpenGL - thus getting rid of DirectX and any further driver/DirectX version/OS version issues that would arise from it (remember that OpenGL has an inbuilt software render so if all else fails you could do that - I often wonder what the old software render in shogun was based on and what happened to it in MTW?). Also with a Win32/OSX/Linux multiplatform approach there will be enough people working on it and interested, to make the best possible job of it.

But anyway, they won't release the code so yes this is all hypothetical at best.

Anyway - what am I doing here? Another time perhaps.

[edyzmedieval]

1) It would take more investment that any individual or company would be prepared to stump up. You're talking about a major investment in time, money, lawyers and people and companies, that have this at their disposal already - like the one are porting RTW to the Mac - wouldn't be interested. The potential consumer base is too small.

2) Historically CA ignore petitions - they even ignored this thread.

As I said: In the eyes of CA this is not an issue, it's not even happening.

1) Major investment as in? You just need someone to buy it, one lawyer to sort the papers, a handful of dedicated guys to rework and then the lawyer again to strike a deal with CA. Simple as that.

2) That's very true. But I believe in the "There's a beginning for everything..."

[Axalon]

Hi people,

While I am totally sympathetic to your goal here Edyz, I believe that both Caravel and Garnier are right. And that pretty much sets "the seal of doom" for me on this, if that makes any sense here? If you want to peruse this I won’t stop you of course, but I won’t help much either since I just like the others don’t see how this will happen any time soon (if ever), sad but true….

Anyway, dont listen to boring 'ol gloomy me - keep on going if you believe in it strongly enough! It probably would have generated more money out of MTW, but CA obviously does not see things that way (yet, let’s hope that this will change, it did happen with the Myth 2-game so it’s not completely impossible)…

- Cheers