Hey Ludo,

I think it makes sense to add it, but have it be the responsibility of
the user to provide the assets, since these files can never be bundled
in Guix. Maybe it should explicitly mention that.

Note that Guix already has a similar situation with an accepted package,
OpenMW. OpenMW also does nothing without the original game's assets.
Since that got accepted I figured it made sense to add this package. 

OpenMW seems to have been accepted in Debian too:
https://packages.debian.org/sid/openmw. 

For reference, here's the list of required assets for OpenRCT2:
https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/wiki/Required-RCT2-files. 

Personally I think it makes sense to provide libre engine replacements
for games, to motivate users to use those instead of running proprietary
code. The FSF directory even explicitly mentions OpenMW for example:
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/OpenMW. 

On 2017-10-13 08:50, ludo@gnu.org wrote:

> Hi Rutger,
> 
> Rutger Helling <rhelling@mykolab.com> skribis:
> 
>> From 12255f73d23a078fc2da099f22564e20cf3c69cc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
>> From: Rutger Helling <rhelling@mykolab.com>
>> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 10:22:27 +0200
>> Subject: [PATCH] gnu: games: Add openrct2.
>> 
>> * gnu/packages/games.scm (openrct2): New variable.
> 
> The patch LGTM.  However, when starting the program, it says that it
> needs files (supposedly artwork) from the original RollerCoaster
> Tycoon 2 and exits immediately.
> 
> That makes the package useless in the absence of these presumably
> non-free files.
> 
> Looking at
> <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#non-functional-data>,
> I think we cannot really consider these files to be non-functional data
> because the software doesn't do anything if they are missing.  So I
> wonder whether it makes sense to include it in Guix as-is.
> 
> WDYT?  Do you know what Debian or other free distros do?
> 
> Thank you,
> Ludo'.