Reverse-engineering of games should in particular be allowed on software that has reached its End of Life, in my view, games that no longer are supported by the original creator of the game in question. As a nice gesture, all code that they are legally allowed themselves to open up to the world, they should distribute for interested developers to pick up.
Look at what happened to Decent, for instance. The game company released all the code they legally could for that game as open source and so got more popularity and re-created a demand for the game again. You still have to have the original data files in order to play the game, though.
I myself had really wanted <a href="http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/cyber-corporation/list-games/" title="mobygames.com"> Cyber Corporation</a mobygames.com> to release their code for <a href="http://www.abandonia.com/games/105/PizzaTycoon" title="abandonia.com">Pizza Tycoon</a abandonia.com>, since I myself was a big fan of that and eventually founded a successful project (in terms of vast interest shown) where the goal always was to give the open source community something similar to that game.
The reverse-engineering of an old DOS game was way too complex for me, so I didn't even try. Now, reading this article I somehow am lucky I stayed away from reverse-engineering...
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Re-implementing abandoned games
Posted by: Tony G on October 17, 2005 09:53 PMLook at what happened to Decent, for instance. The game company released all the code they legally could for that game as open source and so got more popularity and re-created a demand for the game again. You still have to have the original data files in order to play the game, though.
I myself had really wanted <a href="http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/cyber-corporation/list-games/" title="mobygames.com"> Cyber Corporation</a mobygames.com> to release their code for <a href="http://www.abandonia.com/games/105/PizzaTycoon" title="abandonia.com">Pizza Tycoon</a abandonia.com>, since I myself was a big fan of that and eventually founded a successful project (in terms of vast interest shown) where the goal always was to give the open source community something similar to that game.
The reverse-engineering of an old DOS game was way too complex for me, so I didn't even try. Now, reading this article I somehow am lucky I stayed away from reverse-engineering...
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