A solution to the copyright problem

by Phantom on 04/01/2006 15:29, 23 messages, last message: 04/06/2006 13:58, 4420 views, last view: 05/04/2024 15:02

It is my reccomendation that we sift through Cube, and find all files which are not freely modifiable/redistributable, and either remove completely or replace them with freely modifable/redistributable content, creating a new project something like OpenCUBE or something along those lines.

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#4: ..

by makkE on 04/02/2006 02:14

Passa, if all content was free, there´d be no stealing, that´s his point.

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#5: Re: ..

by Passa on 04/02/2006 02:30, refers to #4

oops, now i get it..

well.. thats giving in though...

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#6: Re: Cube, and Sauerbraten are GAMES, not "engines"

by Aardappel_ on 04/02/2006 02:57, refers to #2

thanks kurt.

the problem is that there is almost NO truely public domain or creative commons material out there that is any good. For a while there used to be this project to replace all media for Quake with "Free" media, and that never got anywhere. Infact, the only textures they ever had besides their own were mine, and they aren't particularly good (except the grass texture, which everyone loves).

The current textures are very high quality, and one of the reasons why sauer maps can look professional. Good luck finding replacements worth anything.

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#7: ..

by Phantom on 04/02/2006 09:54

Try the Golgotha texture package. It's professional made, and in the public domain. The game was shut down before release.

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=1978

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#8: ..

by makkE on 04/02/2006 13:34

Those textures were made for an rts, and thus aren´t too suitable for an fps.
Plus their quality isn´t really professional.

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#9: Re: ..

by Passa on 04/02/2006 13:41, refers to #8

i have a better idea, whenever you visit the site, or download sauerbraten, it comes up with a website that says if you wanna make your own FPS game visit http://www.fpscreator.com/ ;-)

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#10: ..

by Grogan on 04/02/2006 22:13

Kurtis said:

"Maybe I'm an asshole for thinking this way, but with all the shit thats been stirred about this issue with these GAMES, if they were mine, I would stop distributing them with source code...too many people just abuse this act of kindness from Aard."

I sure wouldn't want to see that happen. I like games to have the source available so that I can compile my own clients and/or change their behaviour for my own personal enjoyment. I am neither a programmer nor an artist, I'm just someone that likes to have things my own way and to have the ability to compile something to work on my system, instead of having to keep old libraries around to accomodate binaries.

I have no intention of ever connecting to the online game servers with my clients (and have changed protocol version #define to make it not even possible)

I respect and appreciate the work and the spirit behind it and I understand that the source code for the "fpsgame" and the game data are treated separately from the engine and I have no intention of distributing anything. Only enjoying it. I also do not complain about how our coders and mappers choose to do things.

I don't see why people should be surprised by this, as many games that have been open sourced require a license for the game data which is not even distributed. Surely there are only a relative few who cannot grasp these concepts.

For those who choose to ignore licenses and steal code... online communities are a pretty good equalizer. When something like this happens in the open source world (e.g. someone violates the GPL) the objectors generally make trouble for the perpetrators and they either comply or stop.

Would not some nags in simple terms before getting to the sourceforge link on the web pages and some text at the top of readmes suffice to get this message across? It seems it does need to be spelled out for some individuals.

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#11: looking for good textures?

by MitaMAN in the cave on 04/02/2006 22:35

Check these out.

http://fichiers.unreal.fr/unrealengine/g-pack_tex_utx.zip

It's about a 115mb zipped download. Most are hi-rez 512x512 or 1024x1024 and most tile perfect. From the enclosed readme they are free to use/modify/anything you want. Read the enclosed readme, it lists all sources for base textures (they are license free). This texture pack (IMHO) fits VERY well with the existing textures in CUBE/SAUER.

Download and judge for yourself. I have arthurused them and am presently using them for new maps.

Please visit the Author's (Guilhem 'Gui' Bedos) website:

http://perso.numericable.fr/~physalys/physalys/ozone/menu.htm

Yes, this is for real - MitaMAN

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#12: ..

by absinth on 04/02/2006 23:15

i respect that the creators of cube/sauerbraten are very strikt about "intellectual-property"-related issues, but perhaps they should start eating their own dogfood and adhere to the sourceforge.net terms of use.

about the use of non-"free"-data-files in CVS and file-releases:

"Open Source Licensure: The project, and all content hosted on SourceForge.net for the project, must be licensed under an OSI-approved Open Source License or a license that SourceForge.net deems meeting the OSI Open Source Definition. Content that cannot meet the OSI Open Source Definition, due to not being source code, must meet the spirit of the Open Source Definition."

"Use, reproduction, modification, and other intellectual property rights to data stored in CVS or as a file release and posted by any user on SourceForge.net ("Source Code") shall be subject to the OSI-approved license applicable to such Source Code, or to such other licensing arrangements that may be approved by OSTG as applicable to such Source Code."

http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=31766&group_id=1
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6048&group_id=1

about the technique of not releasing the source of the official cube binaries:

"SourceForge.net requires that source code releases be made via our File Release System for any binary releases made via our File Release System or any other project resource. The presence of matching source code within CVS does not meet our source availability requirements."

http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=31761&group_id=1#source_availability

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#13: Re: looking for good textures?

by absinth on 04/02/2006 23:37, refers to #11

>From the enclosed readme they are free to use/modify/anything you want.

actually it's quite different:

"You're free to modify and use them for non-commercial use only, as long as you give credit and you provide this .txt file or a download link for the original .zip file in the project's readme file."

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#14: Re: looking for good textures?

by MitaMAN in the cave on 04/03/2006 00:01, refers to #13

The bottom line is that you can use these for non-commercial use in games like CUBE/SAUER. Sorry I used my own words in the beginning of my post to describe the basic "license" instead of copy / paste the readme. I did post the direct link after all.

There are many fine hi-rez texture packs out there "free for non-commercial use".

It has been my experience that most texture/model artists (and I have personnaly contacted many) are very happy to see their work represented in game maps. That's why they make their art in the first place.

I create very little original content (textures / models /sounds), I am a map maker. I have no problem using the works of other talented artists in my maps (for this game or others I work on). I always ask permission / give credit.

I will stop posting links to available game content (trying to be helpful) on this forum. The scrutiny that every word comes under on this forum is not worth it.

MitaMAN

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#15: Re: looking for good textures?

by absinth on 04/03/2006 05:42

sorry i didn't want to turn you down, i just wanted to clarify the license.

i DID download the whole 140MB to just delete it after having a peek at the readme...i just wanted to save others the trouble by beeing more precise

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#16: Re: looking for good textures?

by Passa on 04/03/2006 08:02, refers to #14

no! those links are useful! :P

why dosent someone write a LONG TECHNICAL tutorial on how to make mods for sauerbraten, so then most modders would be so confused by it they will simply give up.

or another good idea, is to spare sauerbraten and sacrafice cube to these people.. in other words, adopt that OPENCube idea.. get a load of textures and models they can use.. instead we will see hundreds of dumb mods for cube, and sauerbraten will be ignored for those purposes.

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#17: also...

by metlslime on 04/04/2006 01:30

I think it would help to make the game a bit more cleanly moddable. I don't know all the details, but for example, I think that to add a new crosshair you need either 1. a new binary that can't connect to official servers, 2. release a new game which is a full sauer distro with one asset replaced or 3. write a launcher that patches/unpatches sauer every time you play, or 4. overwrite files and forget about ever uninstalling.

Ideally all assets would be in a folder structure that allows adding new folders that can contain a replacement for any asset, and a for a player to specify what mod folder he wants to load.

The burden of mods is either going to rest on the developer to make it easy to mod, the modder to make it easier to install/uninstall, or the player to wrangle various mods and sauer installations. I don't think we want the burden to be on the player, and if the burden is on the modder, the decision of how to shoulder that burden will result in a lot of selfish choices (like redistributing content, since it's easier for the modder.)

I understand that the project is relatively young. Expecting it to be moddable while the base game is still incomplete is a bit unreasonable. But I think it's a good goal to keep in mind. The gamecode and the engine are currently being pulled apart, and that might have the side effect of making the assets more modular.

And finally, the modability of Sauer by third parties has to rank somewhat lower than other goals that Aard and the Sauer team have. So whether it happens pretty much depends on those priorities.

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#18: Re: also...

by spentron on 04/05/2006 02:55, refers to #17

It would nice if it was easier to mod. But if the rules are clearly stated and the modder plans from the beginning it shouldn't be too difficult to do whatever. I can't find much on what is allowed in the current releases. Most of the liscense info relates to the open source code, while the big fuss is about everything else, so far.

"4. overwrite files and forget about ever uninstalling." ... actually you can always re-unzip the game back on top of your install.

Re: keeping compatible with changes, I have yet to see any media deleted except the Pingpong soundtrack when it was replaced. I see Cube versions back to 10/02 are still available. I've seen more issues keeping up with the code regarding lighting and gameplay.

One possible issue Re:Makke on the Fusion thread, OK you do a proper mod and only include a new skin for the pistol model, can you show screenshots?

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#19: Re: also...

by Aardappel_ on 04/05/2006 06:28, refers to #17

err...

even if 50% of the code was in some wonderfull scripting language, there will ALWAYS be things that someone wishes they could mod and were not planned to be modded. You can not make a perfect modding system, I am sure as a programmer you can see that. I believe in the original quake the crosshair was not "moddable" thru gameplay code, only by asset replacement, and the same happens to be the case in cube/sauer. Moddable crosshairs hasn't exactly been high on the list while we are still dealing with rather fundamental engine and gameplay issues, and trust me, it won't be afterwards either.

If someone wanted to make a mod that requires engine changes, (s)he should simply make a new exe that is installable onto a particular sauerbraten distro in parallel to the original files "sauerbraten_crosshair_mod.exe", and can refer to files in a packages/ subdir (this folder was made from the start to supports map packs & mods, the engine even loads seperate cfg files from them). What is so hard there? Why would you need patching/overwriting etc?

If you expect some amazing point & click interface for mods, or some smart load on the fly engine interface, that is not what I had planned. I made mods possible in a sensible way just to help people, but I want to be making games, not fps creator toolkits.

As to protocol incompatability, I thought it was clear this was a compromise against cheating in cube, and we already know its limited. Sauer doesn't use this trick, and you can happily connect with your super crosshair mod to standard gameservers. I personally ask noone to connect with modifications of any kind, simply because its hard to draw the line between a nice enhancement and a cheat, but I can't stop people, cheating in sauer is purely under social control, not technological.

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#20: modding?

by Passa on 04/05/2006 08:18

modding should be fine if you know SOME c++.. it is easy to redifine all the necessary files, including the base folder etc

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#21: So...

by metlslime on 04/06/2006 04:02

I didn't know that released sauer source was compatible with released sauer binaries. That makes it more reasonable to do simple code changes for asset replacement.

However, if you consider it a problem that modders continue to do as they've been doing, then how can it be a solution to continue to do as you've been doing? Surely, some change in documentation, packaging, distribution, code, or community relations would have to happen in order for a change in modder behavior to happen.

Either making it easier to do modding the right way, or harder to do modding the wrong way seem like the most effective ways to change it. But I don't really know. It sort of depends on how receptive people are to the wishes of the the original creators. I mean, do they do what they do out of ignorance, or out of an active disregard for copyright?

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#22: Re: So...

by Aardappel_ on 04/06/2006 05:26, refers to #21

I would say ignorance. The most problems are by "modders" that have clearly not read the docs at all. So I am not sure making a friendlier modding system would solve things at all.

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#23: Re: So...

by spentron on 04/06/2006 13:58, refers to #22

They must have read some filenames or something or their stuff wouldn't work.

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