Planet Explorers goes free as Pathea Games lose the multiplayer code

Even when there are no harmful intentions, proprietary software always finds a way to bite you in the ass.

I do really hope Pathea releases the source code, and I really hope some competent people get their hands on it because, honestly, I always liked the idea of Planet Explorers. The game itself always felt jankie, but maybe someone/group can get this game to where it could have been.

They used something called U-Link:

QuoteWe used a software called U-link for PE, and that software is now defunct. Even if we had the original U-link code, we still don't have the configurations and additional code we wrote back in 2013.

If they coded against this platform, then their code would be useless even if they had it. That can easily happen to anyone relying too much on proprietary cloud service.


Last edited by Linas on 3 July 2019 at 11:19 am UTC

Wrong link Linas. From their wording, U-link wasn't the issue. The issue is how they lose their own code, as they said it themselves, they don't have their config and code they wrote for the server.

I can't get through a week without a really solid act of irreversible Stupidity, so I'm inclined to give them a pass. I've made several attempts to get into the game but the build system is just so klunky, and the control schema seems unnecessarily complicated---I'll try again, to be sure, but multiplayer play won't be missed at my house.

Their decision to release the game for free strikes me as sincere mea culpa and is appreciated. I'd absolutely love to see them release the source code as I can imagine the Community transforming this game into something quite spectacular.


Last edited by Nanobang on 3 July 2019 at 11:56 am UTC

Quoting: PsychojauIt's always complicated nowadays when you are a small indie : free storage is nice but... is anything free ? Versioning systems for closed sources have a cost and there is always the bandwidth problem : game projects are HUGE. Not only you have all the game content and it's sources, but you also have a lot of garb** *erm* a lot of things that won't always be useful in the near future lol.

In this case we're talking about server code, so it's probably a 100% text files. You don't need such huge amount of disc space for that, not to mention that if you use a version control system like git (with a remote in a local server of your own) you will have your repository replicated on the computer of each developer for no cost.

I can accept that a game code from the 90s is lost for ever due to "reasons", but something developed in the last 10 years cannot be excused unless I think that this devs are a bunch of novices/inepts.

Quoting: Guestzede05 [developer] 26 Jun @ 3:58am
@The sap is rising! We have all of our available code backed up on our SVN server. But the programmer that wrote the lobby code back in 2014 wrote some of the code directly to the lobby server. So we don't have these, and since this programmer isn't here anymore, and probably wouldn't remember what he wrote even if he were, the entire thing doesn't work unless we rewrite.

The old trick of writing code in production... nice! Still, they should have something at least. Either case, hope they finally move to git for their next project.

Quoting: GuestJust going to copy & paste from a developer replying to the issue. Basically this is less a backup issue, more a development process enforcement issue (if they'd forced proper development processes on all developers, then the code would have gone into the backups properly).
But I can see how this could have happened, and it's a good example of why rigid code submission structures exist in some organisations, even if they can be annoying sometimes.

Bear in mind that lobby server itself was taken out. Quote is:

zede05 [developer] 26 Jun @ 3:58am
@The sap is rising! We have all of our available code backed up on our SVN server. But the programmer that wrote the lobby code back in 2014 wrote some of the code directly to the lobby server. So we don't have these, and since this programmer isn't here anymore, and probably wouldn't remember what he wrote even if he were, the entire thing doesn't work unless we rewrite.

Well, to counter-argue here. That's still a backup issue, they clearly do not have all their available code backed up. If someone writes code directly and you don't have a copy of it, you don't have a backup.

Quoting: g000hEven if their source control server went down, it is usual for developer workstations to retain much of the working code. (True of git, perforce, subversion anyway.)

Exactly this. Where I work all the developers have each a complete copy of all our source code (myself I do a "svn up *" every morning) on our work computers, many of us have it on our home computers as well. Then the subversion server is backed up to a remote server in a different country. And we are a small 8-person company.

After the numerous reports of studios using Windows-only middleware for games that were supposed/promised to launch on Linux, this just confirms what we already knew. Platforms like Steam have made market access very easy, so it's not surprising to see a number of complete non-professionals trying to publish games when they don't seem to understand even the basics of proper software development.