Today I have some important news for the players and modders of Barotrauma. The full source code of the game is now publicly available on GitHub!
This doesn’t mean that Barotrauma is becoming an open source game in the “free and open-source software” sense. The intention is to give modders more freedom to modify and expand the game – the current xml configuration files are simply too limited for anything but the simplest of modifications. It doesn’t mean that we’re giving up working on the game either; now with the netcode update (mostly) out of the way, I’m as eager as ever to start working on new content again!
I know this is a risky move and something not many games have done, but I’m confident that it will open up whole new possibilities for the future of Barotrauma. In my opinion one of the things that made SCP – Containment Breach as successful as it is, was the openness of the development and how easy it was for the community to contribute, and I believe that going in a similar direction could be beneficial to Barotrauma as well. As with SCP-CB, people are of course welcome to contribute to the main game in addition to making mods. And I’d like to stress that I’m not expecting for the community to start doing our work for us for free. If someone ends up making substantial contributions to the development, I’m completely open to discussing some type of compensation.
So, if you’re a modder looking for more freedom than the configuration files offer or just want to take a look under the hood and see what makes Barotrauma tick, head to the following link:
Really looking forward to seeing where this goes and what kind of stuff you’ll come up with.