Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

JJ2 Source Code Letter

Introduction

For those in the know, this is not needed. For others, you’ll have to wait a bit longer until someone gets around to writing what this is all about.

PLANS

The plan is to prepare two “letters”; one addressed to whoever owns the rights to the JJ2 engine (from here on called “Epic”), another one with the goal of rallying support for this. It will have the form of an “open letter”, aimed at Whoever Supports Us®, and will be accompanied by a website explaning our plans, showing who we are and who is supporting the cause, links to J2O and the like. A possibility would be using this website as a general means of attracting new people to JJ2, though that is beyond the scope of this plan and more of something for the future.

It has yet to be decided what the course of action will be. Will we send a letter to (presumably) Epic, and then launch this campaign to get support for what we did, or do the latter first and thus have more back-up before we send the letter? There are pros and cons to both approaches; rallying support first might make Epic consider the proposal more seriously, but on the other hand people will be more inclined to express interest in our proposal when we already did something substantial like actually contacting those who own the engine.

What needs to be considered

What exactly do we want

The JJ2 engine. Nothing more, nothing less. It is unreasonable to ask for more than the engine; it is probably not realistic to expect Epic to also release the artwork and sprites and the like. However, with just the engine it should be possible to recompile jazz2.exe (this is written from a limited-experience-programmer point of view; correct me if I’m wrong!) and thus people who own the original game can still benefit from possible improvements, as the game logic is handled by jazz2.exe while the sprites etc are stored in seperate files which are already owned by them.

So, more precise; what we ask for is the source code of the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 engine, as used for the game Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles (as that is the latest version of the engine compatible with JJ2’s .j2* files).

Why do we want it

To be completed!

Who has it

Epic has to endorse open-sourcing the game, but chances are they don’t actually have the source code anymore. People who possibly have it are:

• Epic
• Burger/Becky (ported it to Mac)
• LK Avalon (Polish publisher)
• Project 2/3/whatever’s left of it (Dutch publisher)
• Whatever is left of GODGames (USA publisher)
• Guerilla (The Company Formerly Known As The Company Formerly Known As Orange Games)

Why would it be reasonable for them to give it to us

To be completed!

What have we done so far to acquire it

Probably something about Frank’s talk with Arjan, years ago, about how the source code would be released “when things blew off”, which never happened in the end, Bobby’s letter to CliffyB, various other things I am not aware of…

Under what terms should it be given to us

We can’t just say “hey send us the .c and .h files”. Of course in the end Epic decides under what terms the engine is released (if it is released), but we could at least propose something. The Quake 3 Engine, for example, has been released under the GNU Public License. Personally I’d go for the WTFPL, but the GPL would be a more reasonable proposal which has already been used before as a license for a previously-non-free game engine.

MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Just a letter isn’t gonna cut it. We need to generate buzz; the more support we have, the better.

• The public letter/website should be translated to other languages, at least Dutch and Polish and maybe some more. This way it will have maximum reach.
• For a start, spread the word around Your Local Tech News site. Most have a “submit news” option; write a reasoned proposal, submit, and hope it ends up on that site. Perhaps suggestions for this could be given on the website. Submissions should be done all at one time, rather than over the course of a few months, so the impact is maximized.
• Try to interest (preferably prominent) game developers or otherwise notable people in this. This may of course be a hard task given the relative obscurity of this game (it’s been forgotten about by most of the world by now probably), but would really make our proposal gain more attention and probably goodwill. The only game developer I know of who is enthusiastic about open source is John Carmack (who GPL’ed the Quake 3 Engine), but there are undoubtedly more.
• Come up with a name for this “movement”. Hopefully, we’re gonna be mentioned in those articles we submit to news sites, and “Lapin Liberation Front” (just an example :P) is a lot easier to remember than “a group of video game enthusiasts from the site jazz2online.com”.
• Epic has done similar before – they did a limited release of the source code for Unreal Tournament to a group called UTPG. ~BoggyB
• It would be a good idea to make other gaming communities aware of our effort to get the source code. In particular, the Sonic the Hedgehog and Unreal communities have been sympathetic of us in the past. A good place to start might be sites such as BeyondUnreal.
• Profit!
• ???