Should I release source code to this?

[cliffski]

Asteroid Miner is my first ever game. I now sell maybe 1 copy a month. I was thinking of releasing the source code to it. Its awful, horrid buggy code from years ago. Would this be a good move? or would it make me look bad?
what do people think?

www.positech.co.uk/starminer

[Ricardo C]

People just starting out will worship you for giving them access to the code behind a working game, veterans will understand why the code isn't as polished as it could, and gamers won't care one way or the other, since they have no use for it. I can't think of a downside to releasing the source :)

[Ryan Clark]

How could it possibly make you look bad? I think it would make you look like a generous guy.

[DavidRM]

Why bother? Is there a cult following that's been waiting anxiously for the chance to mod the game? If not, it just doesn't seem useful.

If there's a chunk of the code you think *would* be useful to the new up-and-coming indie developer, separate it out and write it up. That's useful, because it puts the source code alongside what you were thinking as you built it.

Here's a twist: Bundle the source code with the game and raise the price.

-David

[Ricardo C]

Why bother? Is there a cult following that's been waiting anxiously for the chance to mod the game? If not, it just doesn't seem useful.

Why not?

If there's a chunk of the code you think *would* be useful to the new up-and-coming indie developer, separate it out and write it up. That's useful, because it puts the source code alongside what you were thinking as you built it.

The entire code is useful to someone just learning how a full game works, it's not about nicking this or that piece of code, is about the chance to see the parts come together.

Here's a twist: Bundle the source code with the game and raise the price.

Oy vey.

[Ryan Clark]

Over at the game programming wiki, we would hail you as a champion if you allowed us to host the source! :)

There's nothing like a complete, functioning game to help newbies learn the ropes. Tutorials give them a whole lot of tidbits, but many still struggle to put it all together into a game.

[svero]

I don't think it would hurt. I don't think it would be super beneficial either though, but at least it opens you up to some new publicity of a kind.

[adamw]

Just to further the point, we released the source for our game RuneSword 2 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/runesword/). This in turn got mentioned on Slashdot which generated about 12,000 visitors in a single day.

Since then, the source has been downloaded 13,000 times and has generated many new visitors to our web site.

And it'll make you feel good. So give a little. It's a good thing to do.

Adam
CrossCut Games, Inc. (http://www.crosscutgames.com)

[cliffski]

I've uploaded it here:

http://www.positech.co.uk/starminer/AsteroidMinerSourceCode.zip

Feel free to mirror it on the wiki.

[lakibuk]

@cliffski: Tried to open the project in MSVC++. Got an error like "library.dsw/dsp not found." Could not open the source code files from within MSVC++. When i double-clicked on the .h and .cpp files i got "project file not there".

[cliffski]

I use an older version of visual C++, maybe its confused by that? In any case I often find the project/workspace for stuff is very localised, best of creaing a new project and just dumping all the source code in there instead.

[Ryan Clark]

Thanks for the permission to mirror the source on the wiki, cliffski :)

http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Files:AsteroidMinerSourceCode.zip

Feel free to modify the descriptive text, or re-upload any future updates, should you so desire!