Posting and selling source code to old games

camperjohn · Post by **camperjohn** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 11:41 am

In 1994 I made a DOS game called Outer Ridge. It sold in stores, and even had a sequel. I still have the complete source code to it, and would love to share it with the gaming community. I am thinking $35 for the entire source code, and build tools. Is there a good place to post it? A good place to sell the source?

Thoughts?

I cant post links to Youtube, but I do have a Youtube video of the game running in a DosBox:

"Outer Ridge DOS Video Game Shareware 1994"

watch?v=12HXapm7mdY

John Mccarthy

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:56 pm

This game I guess: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/outer-ridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12HXapm7mdY

Btw, Mobygames are missing the box covers, if there were any? (hint-hint)

(No idea of the source stuff...maybe GoG are interested, but I have no experience with these things?)

camperjohn · Post by **camperjohn** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:54 pm

I actually do have the box cover art...

I can't upload an image though...I'm too new a user..

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:58 pm

Oh, mobygames.com is a different site, you need to register there to upload stuff. (They don't host any games, only scans of covers, screenshots & release info of games)

Post by **MrFlibble** » Fri Jun 19, 2020 3:25 pm

camperjohn wrote: ↑ In 1994 I made a DOS game called Outer Ridge. It sold in stores, and even had a sequel. I still have the complete source code to it, and would love to share it with the gaming community. I am thinking $35 for the entire source code, and build tools. Is there a good place to post it? A good place to sell the source?

Hello Mr John McCarthy, and welcome to the forums! I played the shareware version of your game a bit a while ago.

I think that currently, a good platform what you intend to do would be itch.io -- I believe (but don't take my word for it) that unlike the big online stores like GOG and Steam, at itch.io there is much less paperwork to actually sell something. You can also set the downloads to "Name your own price" (so optionally free), or a minimum price instead of a fixed price.

The only thing I should note that I can't remember any developer of a game from the 90s actually trying to sell the source code. Usually the code is made open source under a license of the author's choice, which theoretically should facilitate better preservation of the game. But you don't have to make the game data free, so you could make a native Windows/Mac/Linux version of Outer Ridge and still sell it, via itch.io or otherwise.

camperjohn wrote: ↑ I actually do have the box cover art...

I can't upload an image though...I'm too new a user..

Imgur is a free hosting service, but please note that if you are uploading an image as an unregistered user, it will compress anything above 1 MiB in size to JPEG, with certain loss of image quality.