Subject: Re: [bug#28794] [PATCH] gnu: games: Add openrct2.

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 09:40:24 +0200

Hi Adonay,

Adonay Felipe Nogueira <[email-masked]> skribis:

> One of the bigger problems I find with such projects that aim to provide
> an "engine" for running such games is that there doesn't seem to have an
> effort to make the other "data" replacement. Most projects start only
> with engine replacements and don't have a taskforce to provide
> free/libre "data" replacement.

Clearly the raison d’être of a project like this one is to provide a
free replacement of the software.  So we cannot blame people behind it
for not doing enough, even though I share your concern.

As for artwork, Rutger mentioned that people behind OpenRCT2 are willing
to provide free artwork eventually.  I can imagine that this is more
“difficult” in that it’s a completely different job.

> Now, it's true that if it's free/libre software, it might be possible to
> add it to some free/libre distro. But the challenge is that these
> projects seem to do little effort to not recommend non-free functional
> data or non-shareable non-functional data. Such that even the software
> itself directly tells something along the lines of "this is used to run
> Some Non Free Game", instead of using a message like "please specify a
> [insert data pack standard abbreviation here] file", so perhaps it must
> be patched to remove the first messages?

Sure.  Do you have any specific message in mind?

Thanks,
Ludo’.