'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' and 'A Machine For Pigs' Are Now Open Source

Legendary horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs is now open source, meaning that modders can dig in and see what lies underneath the hood of both games. Polygon reports: The full source code for The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs has been released on Github for folks who want to take a crack at modifying the game. It's relatively rare for developers to post their game codes themselves, though sometimes proprietary code can make its way online via leaks. "This doesn't mean that the game is suddenly free," Amnesia developer Frictional Games said in a blog post. "It just means that people are free to use the source however they want as long as they adhere to the GPL3 licence. The game and all of its content is still owned by Frictional Games. Just like before."

Seeing how these classic games are built will also mean seeing things like flaws, and inefficiencies Frictional Games warned -- but it's all still functional and potentially useful to anyone learning game development. "I also hope this release can be of help to anyone wanting to create their own engine or just wanting to learn more about game programming," Frictional Games said. "While the code is not the greatest in places and the tech used is not the latest, it is a fully contained game engine in a fairly easy-to-understand package. It is also a testament that it is possible to do this sort of thing, even with a very limited team."

Legendary?

[Darinbob]

Sure, maybe it's a good game, but it's only 10 years old so it really shouldn't be called "legendary".

Re:

[Twisted64]

Fair enough, I suppose, but there was a fair amount of excitement when it came out.

I don't think they promoted it all that much, since the developers had only founded their company three years prior.

For genuine excitement, you probably couldn't go past all the articles rockpapershotgun wrote describing the atmosphere and mechanics. I'll never play it, but it's interesting to hear of a player picking up a stone, dropping it into a well and listening for the splash to judge how deep it was, because he couldn

Re:

[ludux]

Are you kidding? 10 years old means it's now a retro game. Skyrim will be a retro game next year.

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[Myrdos]

I really enjoyed Amnesia, but I thought a Machine for Pigs was... lacking. For most of the game, there's just nothing to do. The few 'puzzles' were super simple, and there were maybe, what, five bad guys? So that was about 4% of your play time. The rest was just wandering through empty (though somewhat creepy) buildings. I didn't even get the sense of exploring, since there was only one way to go. It's like they forgot to add gameplay to most of the game.

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[b3e3]

The Amnesia games are ok, if you don't mind jump scares; what really rocketed them to success was releasing during the height of popularity for Youtube and Twitch streamers, who made a big performative show of screaming and over-reacting to anything potentially scary. Teens/tweens ate it up; some of those playthrough videos have millions of subscribers.

You don't need Unity or Unreal

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also a testament that it is possible to do this sort of thing, even with a very limited team.

Of course you can. ThinMatrix is a team of one and updates and rewrites his game engine for each new project. In Java, no less, and still deploys to Linux, macOS and Windows via Steam.