I've been thinking about this recently -- there's a healthy mod community around the tactics game Battletech (Roguetech being the most expansive mod, but there are many others) and the modders all seem to agree that the base game is quite janky under the covers; it's not a deep simulation nor is it graphically advanced, yet it suffers from poor performance, and it's also awkward to mod in some places, since there are some things that you just can't change with mods.
I do wonder how far we are from having the default "community driven game" be implemented from the ground up in open source instead of being implemented as a mod on top of a closed-source commercial game.
One issue is that most OSS games I've seen build an engine from scratch, which is fun but a massive time sink; I wonder how much of this is due to professional engines having OSS-incompatible licenses? I noticed that Unreal Engine 4 was made open-source (royalty-based licensing, not FOSS) which might be compatible with an OSS free game?
Another aspect is that it's just a lot of work to build an A-tier game (not even considering AAA) but with a good engine this floor is being reduced over time; Battletech for example was I believe on the order of 100 developer-years of effort, which is huge for an open source project. But could you get 80% of the way there in 10 developer-years if you strip out some of the features the mods eschew like story content? Plus, with Patreon, these days it seems viable for a small number of developers to work full-time on niche content like this.
In summary, I'm surprised at how few OSS games there are considering how much effort goes into modding. Does anyone in the industry (or otherwise) have insight into what's holding us back here?
> In summary, I'm surprised at how few OSS games there are considering how much effort goes into modding. Does anyone in the industry (or otherwise) have insight into what's holding us back here?
I'm not in the industry, but I'm a programmer who's tried and abandoned various game projects.
For me, it always comes down to the fact that game design is a deep and totally different skill set that I don't possess. You can't really wing it, or you can but you're unlikely to end up with a game that's fun and balanced.
Same thing can be said for why so few OSS projects have solid documentation or excellent graphic/UI design.
EDIT: I'd also guess that's why the few OSS games you see are usually clones of more popular ones, as is the case with Widelands. By cloning and iterating on a proven game, you don't have to playtest, refine mechanics, etc.
I can heartily recommend BattleTech Advanced if you don't want to go as far as Roguetech. It's definitely tougher, but not as impenetrable as Roguetech is. (Plus there's lots of difficulty sliders so you can probably tweak it to be about as forgiving as vanilla).
I really enjoy the MWO-style mech customization that both of these add (the https://github.com/BattletechModders/MechEngineer mod); one critique I have of vanilla Battletech is that they simplified the mech construction mechanics a lot, and stripped out some of the tradeoffs that make mech design interesting in the canon. In vanilla, you just optimize for free tonnage, and can put jump jets on everything, so there are just a few chassis in each weight class that are strictly optimal for most roles; this makes it quite boring as there's little reason to pick other chassis. In BTA/Roguetech you can take an XL engine to shave off a lot of weight, but that means your mech will die if you lose your side torso. Lots of meaningful trade-offs, with no "best solution".
I will admit that my eyes glossed over when I first started the game and looked at all the new part types I had to learn though...
I do wonder how far we are from having the default "community driven game" be implemented from the ground up in open source instead of being implemented as a mod on top of a closed-source commercial game.
One issue is that most OSS games I've seen build an engine from scratch, which is fun but a massive time sink; I wonder how much of this is due to professional engines having OSS-incompatible licenses? I noticed that Unreal Engine 4 was made open-source (royalty-based licensing, not FOSS) which might be compatible with an OSS free game?
Another aspect is that it's just a lot of work to build an A-tier game (not even considering AAA) but with a good engine this floor is being reduced over time; Battletech for example was I believe on the order of 100 developer-years of effort, which is huge for an open source project. But could you get 80% of the way there in 10 developer-years if you strip out some of the features the mods eschew like story content? Plus, with Patreon, these days it seems viable for a small number of developers to work full-time on niche content like this.
In summary, I'm surprised at how few OSS games there are considering how much effort goes into modding. Does anyone in the industry (or otherwise) have insight into what's holding us back here?