Would there be any interest in this?

Although my programming skills are quite limited, I would love to see this go through and also have many suggestions to improve the games (and possibly expand Paradox games into new eras and focuses).

Wow, this sounds AWESOME!!!

I´d definitively be intrested in a project like this. What language is the source code written in? My memory says something about C++, correct?

White Daimon said:

Wow, this sounds AWESOME!!!

I´d definitively be intrested in a project like this. What language is the source code written in? My memory says something about C++, correct?

Click to expand...

thats properly a good guess

Edit: two people have no oppinion, and two who don't like it. What the hell is up with people

olorin42 said:

And also, does paradox expect a cut of any revenue (presumably not but need to be sure)?

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From what I understand from Johan's post anything produced is to be sold through Gamersgate and I'd assume Paradox always gets a share from Gamersgate purchases.

Grosshaus said:

From what I understand from Johan's post anything produced is to be sold through Gamersgate and I'd assume Paradox always gets a share from Gamersgate purchases.

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I guess few of the modders willing to try this out does it for the money anyway. And why not let Paradox get a share? It's their game in the beginning.

I know fans have been wanting this for a long time. The creative door is flung open. Good luck.

I'm completely incapable at programming, but need to applaude this anyway. Sounds like a great idea.

Dietmar1982 said:

thats properly a good guess

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hmm... then thats one more reason to learn that language. Ohh well, I know severel other program related languages, so it shouldn´t take too long

Any idea on which games the source code will be released to? Everything before EU2 i guess, and possibly vicky as well. Yay, gonna be fun tinkering with those

I love this idea, go paradox

Since there's not been clarifications in some questions raised in here I take this basically means we won't get any small hotfixes from some rogue programmers and random persons as in increased diplo point capacity, immigration to Europe, better interface in POP handling or running extremist country without whack-a-mole? There is going to be project which is bundled with VIP and all hardcode changes are made on its historical and restricted playability terms, for a small fee naturally, I mean no one ever could possibly do it for FREE! And we're on the starting spot again, same hardcoded restrictions and annoyances just by different people (as in the horror scenarios already brought up in here - more emphasis on military at the expense of economic game and more provinces. *yay*). And Paradox games get praised for what fans have done. Plus bonus points for interacting with the community.

Too bad I hurried and voted on 'no opinion', since obviously me voting not liking this would have crashed this idea.
Why don't you just concentrate on making new games so the community can mod them playable, like always? Shameless leeching. I bet your PR department has already wrote announcement and "mentioned" few magazines/sites on future happenings. You suck Paradox. You just won't give the codes for the goodness sake.

(dramatic pause)

Suck up with the better than nothing.

I wouldn't be suprised if the source codes are from some unheard 8-bit NES games.

Johan said:

We're thinking about an releasing the sourcecode of a few older games to people with programming knowledge, and an interest in the games. You would get the opportunity to make your own expansion/boosterpack of our games, which you could then sell through gamersgate and earn money on your work. We would provide a forum for those involved, where you can communicate and get support.

We see this as an excellent opportunity to increase the life of the products and for our fans who improve the games to earn some extra money. Of course you would have to sign NDA's and a contract for it.

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Fan-made content + Paradox editorial control, hosted on gamersgate, and money for everyone? Hell yes.

If you do this and good mods start appearing on gamersgate, not only will I buy them, I'll buy more of Paradox's new games as well - if the new mods are really amazing I may even buy Diplomacy

As long as the quality of the user-made stuff is high, this can only improve Paradox's reputation, and it'll be a big draw for gamers in future who want games with a long shelf life. The only danger I see is that of people leaking sensitive info, but that's a matter for Pdox's legal team.

(Incidentally, the uber mod I'm hoping for would not be a spiced-up VIP, AGCEEP or CORE per se. It would be some kind of meta-mod that increases the moddability of the game for the end-user by making the game take more parameters from text files - for instance, compare how much you can do with Victoria events compared to EUII ones, and you can see the potential for someone to massively extend what is possible for EUII text-based mods at least.)

eräjorma said:

Since there's not been clarifications in some questions raised in here I take this basically means we won't get any small hotfixes from some rogue programmers and random persons as in increased diplo point capacity, immigration to Europe, better interface in POP handling or running extremist country without whack-a-mole? There is going to be project which is bundled with VIP and all hardcode changes are made on its historical and restricted playability terms, for a small fee naturally, I mean no one ever could possibly do it for FREE! And we're on the starting spot again, same hardcoded restrictions and annoyances just by different people (as in the horror scenarios already brought up in here - more emphasis on military at the expense of economic game and more provinces. *yay*). And Paradox games get praised for what fans have done. Plus bonus points for interacting with the community.

Too bad I hurried and voted on 'no opinion', since obviously me voting not liking this would have crashed this idea.
Why don't you just concentrate on making new games so the community can mod them playable, like always? Shameless leeching. I bet your PR department has already wrote announcement and "mentioned" few magazines/sites on future happenings. You suck Paradox. You just won't give the codes for the goodness sake.

(dramatic pause)

Suck up with the better than nothing.

I wouldn't be suprised if the source codes are from some unheard 8-bit NES games.

Click to expand...

I think you are being a little to dramatic here, (you even had the pause... )


Anyway you are properly right in the assumption that not just anyone will be allowed to alter, or even just see the code.

I would have preferred if we were given the source code with "no strings attached".
But it's not like I expected something like that to happen.
So this is the next best thing.
The main reason why I would have preferred, a "no strings attached" approach to the one chosen. Is not because I don't want to pay paradox 5 or 10 €, I would happily pay double that, just to get the source code. It's mostly because I fear that they will demand results, and a finished product.

I would prefer if we could have a development cycle like the one used on most (if not all), of the mods for paradox games.
Here the work is never done, but just a continuing development, where there's a milestone release every odd couple of months.
But how would you do that on a project like this. When should the buyers pay?
When the project is first released, or sometime down the line?


All that said and done, I’m very eager for this to work.

I'm under no illusion, that I can simply walk in here, raise my hand and get the source code presented, especially since I'm a fairly new "active" participant on these forums.
Hopefully we can get one or more groups of skilled people together, which will be able to lift the big task of creating something like this.
If so, I believe that they / we can create some wonderful additions to the games we all love.

Edit: And if you don't love them, what the hell are you doing here then.

Heck, just for the ability to see what, exactly, is breaking when an already-published game crashes, and pinpoint the fix for Johan to implement in a patch, this would be worth while.

olorin42 said:

The question is what would be the price to get a copy of the source? And also, does paradox expect a cut of any revenue (presumably not but need to be sure)?

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Of course there has to be money in it for Paradox. That's both reasonable and understandable. Exactly how it will happen will be interesting to see... perhaps they'll take on Valve's approach, where Valve contacted the owner of a successfull Half-Life 2 mod and offered him the source code and sale through Steam, in exchange for sharing the profits (don't know the exact share, not that it matters).

I'm very excited at any rate, and will definately follow development in this thread. The possibility alone to remove hardcoded limits from EU2 (like max tech level, number of tags, number of provinces, trade goods, religions, changing sliders, etc) is really exciting.

I'm hugely interested. I hope HoI2 might be included in the list of available games, though I kind of doubt it. Still...

Would we be limited to producing boosters/expansions for existing games, or could we make entirely new games (i.e. the MDS mod for HoI2 could make a Modern Day game, or someone makes an RPG using Victoria or something?)

Would we have any support from Paradox to answer technical questions?

Is there going to be a review process for these products when they're presented for release?

I'm curious how this turns out. Looks promissing though.

King of Men said:

Heck, just for the ability to see what, exactly, is breaking when an already-published game crashes, and pinpoint the fix for Johan to implement in a patch, this would be worth while.

Click to expand...

Yes. I'm too lazy to write lots of new code but I'm very good at modifying and debugging.

eräjorma said:

Since there's not been clarifications in some questions raised in here I take this basically means we won't get any small hotfixes from some rogue programmers and random persons as in increased diplo point capacity, immigration to Europe, better interface in POP handling or running extremist country without whack-a-mole? There is going to be project which is bundled with VIP and all hardcode changes are made on its historical and restricted playability terms, for a small fee naturally, I mean no one ever could possibly do it for FREE! And we're on the starting spot again, same hardcoded restrictions and annoyances just by different people (as in the horror scenarios already brought up in here - more emphasis on military at the expense of economic game and more provinces. *yay*). And Paradox games get praised for what fans have done. Plus bonus points for interacting with the community.

Too bad I hurried and voted on 'no opinion', since obviously me voting not liking this would have crashed this idea.
Why don't you just concentrate on making new games so the community can mod them playable, like always? Shameless leeching. I bet your PR department has already wrote announcement and "mentioned" few magazines/sites on future happenings. You suck Paradox. You just won't give the codes for the goodness sake.

(dramatic pause)

Suck up with the better than nothing.

I wouldn't be suprised if the source codes are from some unheard 8-bit NES games.

Click to expand...

with one important difference if I understand things correctly, once a team develops a new mod with this code, those modders will be able to produce updates themselves that would be able to include fixes to the internal game code as part of the patch released, rather than waiting for Paradox to have the extra resources available to devote to improving/fixing issues on games that have diminishing returns compared to the investment in time and wages that would be needed to create a Paradox-produced patch.

In the end Paradox has every right to preserve its intellectual property. IF the alternative is to simply declare a title "complete" because there are simply not the resources to devote to contining to improve years-old games, and no more patches will be produced in any case, then this is indeed a major contribution to allowing the older Paradox titles which do retain active fan bases the ability to continue to improved without distracting Paradox from the most important focuses of their business - developing the next title and continued support for those titles whose fanbases are large enough to make investment of limited resources viable for the company.

We forget I think that Paradox has a very small number of full time employees, and that the labor cost of those employees is high. Paradox in the end must focus on the bottom line to the company, and investing many hours of labor to support a 3, 4 or 5 year old title while newer games also demand attention is not, in the viewpoint of business, the most rational use of resources for the company. However, forming partnerships with modders dedicated to making the older games even better, and even be willing to share whatever profits might come from the work of these "independent contractors" if you will, is very much an exciting prospect in terms of the relationship between modders and a company.

I'll be honest, as much as I love modding, the amount of time I can put in is currently directly related to time I have free when not trying to earn a living. If I could make a few kronor on the side, I'd be able to put more time into modding for the benefit of the entire community as a whole. Personally I congratulate Paradox for developing a very clever market-based solution that will allow old games to continue to be improved by modders who are willing to do the work so that the limited resources of Paradox can indeed be focused on improving current and developing new titles.

Voted "Yes, I'd like to join, and code my own game." The key words here are "I'd like to"; I don't know if I would have enough time to do much of anything. It partially depends on how much it would cost me, since I wouldn't want to pay a lot for something I might not do anything with.

Would each game be a separate purchase, or is it a "join the program and get all you want" sort of thing?

EDIT: And what is the official position on utilities using some of the code? I know it would make both of my projects a lot easier, but I don't know all of the licensing issues involved. I always release my source, but I'm guessing that wouldn't be permitted (or only the source that I created personally).

Looks like I may have to let my Java studies suffer and go out and buy some C++ books.

Great idea. I just wish my comp skills were a little better.

Will vote, join though.

Ayeshteni