Clones

Clones

Postby Wuzzy » 15 Jun 2018, 13:42

This topic is all about clones of other known proprietary games.
I define “clone” as a faithful re-implementation of an existing game with the goal to come very close or even near-identical to the original game, especially in terms of gameplay and the general theme. As the media can rarely be legally duplicated, they can of course be different. The main difference will be that the clone is a free software and/or community project.

It is undeniable that a number of free software games are clones. Not all of them, mind you, but they do exist.

What is your opinion on clones? Do clones matter? If a game is cloned, does it need to be faithful or are deviations OK? Are they even acceptable? Are there games which deserve to be clones more than other games? Or are clones just a waste of time? What are your other thoughs on clones?

In my opinion, clones of existing proprietary games are first, and foremost, not a bad thing per se. If you understand free software as part of a movement (which it undenyably is), then a clone is simply the attempt “free” a game by giving it to the community. The goal of the free software movement is not primarily to produce original software, but to make sure that the software which does exists is free.

Of course, that is not to say original games have no place in the free software world, but I want to make a case that clones do matter.

Another question is how religiously a game should be cloned. Well, it depends. Most games have flaws, even serious flaws. Other games have pointless and frustrating technical restrictions, like the fact that a Minecraft world has only a height of 256 blocks.
In my opinion, a good clone should recognize when the original game does something really stupid, and simply refuse to clone that. :)
In short, clone the good things, ignore the bad things. And even a faithful clone should not replicate obvious flaws and technical restrictions.

Another big topic is perhaps compability with the original. I am very split on this issue and it probably depends a lot on the game. But for complex games, savegame compability, or compability with other files can make you totally crazy, and its a crazy amount of work. By throwing out compability as a goal from the start, it can save a good amount of work.

When a clone is “finished”, you have the opportunity to build additional features (even gameplay) on top of that (if you still have time and motivation), and could even push the original game into irrelevance.
This is exactly what has happened with OpenTTD and is now one of the most successful FOSS games.

One very important thing which every free clone should have is that it must be able to completely stand on its own, it must not contain proprietary files itself (obviously), but also must not depend on the original game in any way. The help and game texts should always be written in a way so they could be understood by someone who never even heard of the original game. The name should also be unique and not make it seem that it is in any way connected to the original game.

I am obviously very biased here, as I have worked on a Minecraft clone for quite a bit of my time so far. :)

There are many other things about clones to say, but I stop at this point. So what do you think?
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Re: Clones

Postby SecureUvula » 15 Jun 2018, 17:21

I don't really mind what other people work on, since I'm not paying them to do what I ask.

There's a few games I want to clone but haven't found or allocated the energy to do so:

- Lego Rock Raiders
- Streets of SimCity (The original was such crap that it should be easy to make a better clone)
- Need For Speed Underground 2 (difficult)
- F-Zero GX (Made a prototype, got bored of it)

I've started about 4 times on cloning Rock Raiders, and never got past an initial prototype. Since it's not fun for me to dig into the original game logic, I would probably ignore the bugs and just try to match the spirit and feel of the game. LRR has a well-known "Lazy Raider" bug where the Rock Raiders just quit listening to commands after a while. They also run into lava pools easily.

With Need For Speed, the game world is very hand-crafted, so you'd have to load the original game data to make it fun at first. Matching the feel of the cars would be difficult.

F-Zero GX I would only follow the spirit of it. I'm pretty bad at the original, and I don't like the characters much.

My friend wants me to pass on this directory of clones: https://osgameclones.com/
https://activated-onion.itch.io/ "Not only does she do it for free, she doesn't do it at all."
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Re: Clones

Postby c_xong » 16 Jun 2018, 05:49

In short, clone the good things, ignore the bad things. And even a faithful clone should not replicate obvious flaws and technical restrictions.

I mostly agree with this, but flaws are subjective. I recently came across an excellent analysis of Wolfenstein 3D's E4M5 (http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2012/05/ad ... stein.html), calling what I though of as a rubbish Tom Hall level as a "masterpiece". I would have thought that nonsensical map layouts, backtracking and hiding the key required to complete the level inside a secret area to be clear design sins, but the author argues that these elements highlight the cruelty of Nazi Germany.

So I can appreciate, despite disagreement, when people wish to preserve games in their entirety, flaws and all, because for them, they are all inextricable parts of the experience.
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Re: Clones

Postby Lyberta » 16 Jun 2018, 10:53

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Last edited by Lyberta on 01 Oct 2021, 06:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Clones

Postby Wuzzy » 18 Jun 2018, 19:45

Well, that other thread is more about why there are clones, this thread is more open-ended.

Preserving history is a very good point. Then yes, it's essential to come close to the original.

On the flip-side, you are basically re-inventing the wheel because the wheel was patented. Of course, the best way would be if you could convince the game makers of the original to go free software, but this simply doesn't always work. Thus, clones. So a clone of a game of “historic interest” needs to come very close indeed, but in the choice of technical background it can and should be relatively free (theoretically). I'd say obvious bugs should be generally be fixed, but one should be careful, there are also “bugs-turned-into-a-feature”. But those are relatively rare.
Another good reason for clone could be done for technical reasons, to add cross-platform support and the like.

But I also think that clones that make minor changes here and there are also perfectly fine. I think both approaches are valid.
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