Brent Patterson announced that Beyond Beyaan is now open source and that the C# code is now available on Google Code. The chosen license was GPL3. But, it’s code-only, lacking the media content, so it’s not complete.
Brent explained that family problems, namely involving his recently born baby, detracted him from progressing with the game and were the major reason behind his decision to open source the game. He also states that coming back to the game in a few months may be a possibility – “So hopefully in a month or so, our lives will be stabilized enough for me to resume work on Beyond Beyaan”. ~Brent Patterson (Zeraan nickname)
Beyond Beyaan is a turn-based space 4X game for the PC inspired in the Master of Orion series. Brent’s main goal was to create a game with the features he loved about the Master of Orion games, and other 4X games. “I was not happy with the new 4X games being released, that I find to be too complicated or in real-time. So, I decided to create my own game, picking up from the features I liked best from MOO1, and some other 4x games”.
BB has been on Desura for Alpha funding for about 5 months now. The money Brent raised with the game so far, and any other that he makes from this point forward, will be used to acquire more assets. “If you want to support this project, please don’t hesitate to buy it! The funds will go directly into adding new assets (new races, new technologies, etc).”.
Brent also opened the door to anyone interested in using the game’s source code in their commercial project, for which he said to be open to discuss licensing agreements. He said that at least one person has already showed interest in using his code to speedup their own game project. About the licensing Brent added “The truth is, I won’t be able to inspect all of the available 4X development projects to make sure they’re not ripping my code off. So I’m trusting you all to be honest :)”.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the game I invite you to read our Beyond Beyaan preview, which we wrote about 5 months ago when the game went to Desura for alpha pre-purchasing.
Beyond Beyaan’s +23K lines of code are filed on Google code. Read the details and the full announcement on Brent’s blog here.
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As an old guy, I’m sorry to hear that a turn-based MOOII clone has gone Open Source. I understand and greatly sympathize with Brent (his travails give me nightmares) and truly wish him and his the best. Nevertheless, Planetary Annihilation is not a game at which I would excel (time takes its toll on agility) while turn-based Beyond Beyaan was more my speed.
I hope whomever takes up the challenge of completing BB is worthy of the task, while I will reserve my prayers for Brent and his family.
Hey, Brent here. I appreciate your support!
I’ll still be the main developer of the game. The main reason why it’s going open source is that I’m hoping that others can pitch in and help get the game done faster. If not, I’ll still work on it myself. I’ll be the “manager”, making a list of bugs and features that needs to be done, and anyone can pitch in and do some of those, speeding development up. I’m not turning over this game to anyone else, I still have a vision for how it’ll play.
As an open source guy, I’m happy to hear that a turn-based MOOII clone has gone Open Source. Personally i would prefer that Brend coudl have made a living from it, but open sourcing the game can be a big opportunity if the project can attract skilled workers best under supervision (project management, architecture) of Brent himself. That he released only the source code can be a problem because the game lacks any media assets so it’s not usable.
Yes it’s true that the project may die but many projects thrive after going open source. And to be honest the best game so far this year is a open sourced game, Wing Commander Saga, based on the open source Freespace Engine and much work of volunteers. :)
I never intended to make a living from it. My hope was to recoup the financial costs of obtaining the assets at least, then if there’s extra, that’s a bonus. I have a very good day job that I intend to work at for a long time. This was a project to fix the lack of MoO 1/2-esque games out there.
As for the media, I said that I will update the demo and full versions on Desura after I’m done with the planet UI. At that point, you can download the demo, and use its assets to run the game. However, it will be limited to the four current races and some technologies/scripts. The goal is to raise funds to obtain more assets. If the licensing goes through with that guy, then I’ll have enough to complete all required assets!
One problem of open sourcing is that there’s many different art styles and such thrown together in one game. I’m avoiding this by making the assets not free (aside from demo), and I will be solely responsible for obtaining those assets.
As my above comment to Jeff, I’m not abandoning the game, I hope to speed its development up by not having it rely wholly on my contributions. I still have a vision for it, and I hope to achieve it, and more (such as ReMoO project).
My best wishes to you and your family and i hope you can complete both projects. Personally i find this ReMoO project more interesting. It ‘s the first time i read about it. I would like to help but c# is not on my skills list.
Thanks to open your source Brent, I can’t help myself since I have enough to do with FARC, but I hope some dev will help it to mature.
Best wishes for your familly.