Making a project "standalone"? Configuriung it as well?

[maseter]

That's right, bundling gzdoom or freedoom makes no difference...
A standalone release would be as good, or bad, as just releasing the mod.

Half the mods on this forum and on idgames have 3rd party assets in them, and how many cease and desist request have they received over the years, or the moddb, they even host doom music packs with original scores, and it's all still up...

Tormentor667: How many take down notices have you received on realm667, where you host many original assets?

[maseter]

Speaking of standalone, is there any easier way to create an .exe from a .bat than with AutoHotkey?

That's how i currently do it for: start gzdoom.exe -file test.pk3 -config test.ini

First i create an .ahk file with the following script:
run, %comspec% /c start gzdoom.exe -file "test.pk3" -config "test.ini"

Then i convert this with Ahk2Exe, which is bundled with AHK and even allows custom icons!

[Tormentor667]

Legally it makes no difference if this is a mod or a standalone game. Of course as a standalone game the exposure will inevitably be higher, and with it the risk of someone taking action against you.

Yes, that's something that came to my mind. On the one hand the exposure is wanted, on the other hand it isn't...

Another legal issue that hasn't been mentioned yet is the special German laws about Nazi symbolism. That may get you into an entirely different kind of legal trouble, if you host this on your own server.

This is something I didn't think about yet, but you are definitely right with it - but that counts also towards the mod version, not only the standalone.

That's right, bundling gzdoom or freedoom makes no difference...
A standalone release would be as good, or bad, as just releasing the mod.

This is something I thought about as well: Simply bundling Freedoom with it. What are the rules towards this?

Tormentor667: How many take down notices have you received on realm667, where you host many original assets?

Not a single one.

[Graf Zahl]

That's right, bundling gzdoom or freedoom makes no difference...
A standalone release would be as good, or bad, as just releasing the mod.

This is something I thought about as well: Simply bundling Freedoom with it. What are the rules towards this?

It really makes no difference if you have a real standalone project or a standalone distribution containing Freedoom. In both cases it can be played out of the box.

[TheBadHustlex]

Honestly, I would not make it standalone. If your mod uses assets from other games and stuff, it's just gonna look odd when someone downloads it and expects a new game and finds textures, sounds, music... from other games. While if it is "just" a mod, people do not expect 100% original work. That's something I learned over the last few years.

[Tormentor667]

@Graf Zahl - I ask this towards "what kind of credit must be included", not that I dont want it, I just need to know what.

@TheBadHustlex - This is something I can live with

[Nevander]

Of course as a standalone game the exposure will inevitably be higher, and with it the risk of someone taking action against you.

Asking this question is the biggest risk of anyone doing anything in the first place.

[maseter]

@Graf Zahl - I ask this towards "what kind of credit must be included", not that I dont want it, I just need to know what.

Here is a custom, updated licenses zip just for you, it includes all licenses from gzdooms licenses.zip, i added freedoom.txt with freedooms COPYING+CREDITS text, a mame.txt, a gzdoom.txt with text from http://zdoom.org/wiki/license, and every license it mentions, so here i present the total license package, it should cover everything, what do you say Graf?

[Tormentor667]

Thanks Maseter

Concerni ng the configuration does anybody know how to take care of that?

[Kinsie]

Another legal issue that hasn't been mentioned yet is the special German laws about Nazi symbolism. That may get you into an entirely different kind of legal trouble, if you host this on your own server.

He's already pretty buggered on this part: The subsite for his mod has such iconography all over the front page, including the front-and-center image carousel. I'd say this isn't very smart, but he's asking about making a Doom 2 mod full of copyrighted materials standalone so that he can host it on a website that loudly hits you up for money when you visit it instead of IdGames, so, you know...

Although if Pateron and comic conventions are any indication it's apparently cool and good to charge for and profit off of fanart of other people's work now, so maybe I'm the dinosaur here.

[Tormentor667]

Although if Pateron and comic conventions are any indication it's apparently cool and good to charge for and profit off of fanart of other people's work now, so maybe I'm the dinosaur here.

That's why it is called a donation. Did you ever run a webpage of that scale? It's not like hosting the page or paying for component subscriptions is for free.

Anyway, you are doing a good point with your considerations towards making it standalone.

[maseter]

Concerning the configuration does anybody know how to take care of that?

The simplest way is to have a custom "gzdoom_portable.ini" with your settings.

[Graf Zahl]

Note that this WILL NOT WORK if the whole thing ever gets installed into Program Files! Providing a portable .ini requires running the game from a non-write-protected directory.

[maseter]

Note that this WILL NOT WORK if the whole thing ever gets installed into Program Files!

Care to elaborate? I don't know what you mean, isn't the folder where gzdoom.exe and gzdoom_portable.ini are irrelevant, as long as they are together? I also already use gzdoom_portable.ini exclusively, on my thumb-drive and PC, no problems whatsoever.

Providing a portable .ini requires running the game from a non-write-protected directory.

Only CD-ROMS force write protection, but who uses those anymore?

Although it would still be good to have a "don't save changes on exit" cvar...

Which, if enabled, would not attempt to update the ini on exit, and prevent "The config file c:\doom\GZDoom_portable.ini could not be written: Access is denied" dialogue box to show when exiting gzdoom, if the .ini is "write protected".

[Graf Zahl]

Note that this WILL NOT WORK if the whole thing ever gets installed into Program Files!

Care to elaborate? I don't know what you mean, isn't the folder where gzdoom.exe and gzdoom_portable.ini are irrelevant, as long as they are together? I also already use gzdoom_portable.ini exclusively, on my thumb-drive and PC, no problems whatsoever.

If the directory is write protected the game will be unable to write the config back, because if it thinks it's portable, it will always use the same filename.