Raze officially revealed!

[Kinsie]

You're probably not going to get your door kicked in over it but the licensing situation between the GPL and Build license is muddy enough without making things muddier.

If this bit weren't true, you can be sure the rights holders would've gone after BuildGDX a long time ago already.

The author of BuildGDX is based in Russia, which likely makes it prohibitively difficult for whoever owns Capstone's corpse to go after him.

[sinisterseed]

Nah, even so, I'm fairly sure the same could apply to NBlood as well, especially since it isn't solely maintained by nuke anymore.

If Atari or WB had a REAL problem with these reverse-engineered project, they would have knocked at the door a very long time ago. They only care for this stuff if you're making a profit out of it in some way, and no one is, and likely never will.

[Rachael]

They only care for this stuff if you're making a profit out of it in some way, and no one is, and likely never will.

I feel I should correct you here: They only care if you actually have money, they don't give a flying rat's whether you are making a profit. If you have money then it's a worthwhile endeavor to go after you. Suing a broke person simply nets you a lot of legal fees and them owing you something you're likely never going to get.

[Blzut3]

and likely never will.

Given Hedon (GZDoom) and Ion Fury (EDuke32) are you sure about that? Granted in the case of Build there is the advantage in that the unclear code is its own game module so unless someone is silly enough to base their game code off of one of the reverse engineered or Capstone game codes they should be in the clear (after licensing the Build engine appropriately of course).

The other option is to wait for a company like NightDive (possibly even them, themselves) to obtain the rights for said properties and then just license it from them anyhow, or hope they release the source under a permissive license.

Isn't their track record on source releases just Strife? Open source isn't exactly in their business model.

[Kinsie]

If Atari or WB had a REAL problem with these reverse-engineered project, they would have knocked at the door a very long time ago. They only care for this stuff if you're making a profit out of it in some way, and no one is, and likely never will.

Atari knocked on the door of one reverse-engineerer... and that's where Blood Fresh Supply came from.

There are other similar stories abound. As one random example, the recent re-release of the Sega Genesis version of Aladdin included an old leaked prototype build and a modified "Final Cut" based on a copy of the original source code to fix bugs and complete/re-enable unfinished content as official bonus content. In a Disney product!

While there are obvious exceptions here and there, my general observation is that big publishers tend to avoid messing with people screwing around with the innards of their games unless it's like, online cheating or an MMO or something. Sometimes they get coaxed into officially encouraging it...

Isn't their track record on source releases just Strife? Open source isn't exactly in their business model.

They also released the source for (the PowerPC Mac version of) System Shock 1. Hopefully that's not the end of it.

[Graf Zahl]

Usual caveats aside, I'm not entirely sure the license for the Blood, Redneck Rampage, or Exhumed reverse engineering efforts is anymore clear. Same could be said about Strife I guess.

Even if they did pursue it, who can they come after? Those who took code that was licensed under the GPL and assumed it was all legit or those who actually did the reverse engineering?
To be clear: I never did any reverse engineering here so they cannot sue me for that. I also didn't use code under a non-disclosure license. I used code released under the GPL by forking a publicly visible repo on Github.

But ultimately Rachael is right, nobody has anything to gain from stopping these ports - on the contrary: They are more likely to sell more copies thanks to their existence. and going after their games' fans would be a dick move the gaming community would not accept.

Strife should be in the clear after SVE's release, though. The code was released under the GPL by the copyright holders, that should eliminate all gray areas.

They only care for this stuff if you're making a profit out of it in some way, and no one is, and likely never will.

I feel I should correct you here: They only care if you actually have money, they don't give a flying rat's whether you are making a profit. If you have money then it's a worthwhile endeavor to go after you. Suing a broke person simply nets you a lot of legal fees and them owing you something you're likely never going to get.

It's not that easy. If they do not come after the little guy they'll have a hard time coming after the big guy later using the little guy's work to make a profit.
If they let this run for an extended period of time one may assume that they are ok with the reverse engineered product and its licensing conditions which would make it VERY hard to come after secondary users of such code who took its license at face value.

And who talks about suing? If they want it stopped they first send a C&D. Remember Ion Maiden? The shit only hit the fan when 3D Realms did not comply.

[Rachael]

It's not that easy. If they do not come after the little guy they'll have a hard time coming after the big guy later using the little guy's work to make a profit.
If they let this run for an extended period of time one may assume that they are ok with the reverse engineered product and its licensing conditions which would make it VERY hard to come after secondary users of such code who took its license at face value.

And who talks about suing? If they want it stopped they first send a C&D. Remember Ion Maiden? The shit only hit the fan when 3D Realms did not comply.

This only applies to trademarks, though, not copyright - and while they tread similar ground in the legal battlefield they are two completely separate things, even as much to the point having their own law specializations.

If you don't go after a copyright infringer for years, and suddenly you go after one, you still have a viable case. Trademark law cares a lot more about the uniqueness and identity of a trademark which does indeed diminish with invalid use, and that is why it has to be protected so vigorously because not protecting your trademark has the long-term repercussions you mentioned.

[Blzut3]

Even if they did pursue it, who can they come after? Those who took code that was licensed under the GPL and assumed it was all legit or those who actually did the reverse engineering?
To be clear: I never did any reverse engineering here so they cannot sue me for that. I also didn't use code under a non-disclosure license. I used code released under the GPL by forking a publicly visible repo on Github.

But ultimately Rachael is right, nobody has anything to gain from stopping these ports - on the contrary: They are more likely to sell more copies thanks to their existence. and going after their games' fans would be a dick move the gaming community would not accept.

Strife should be in the clear after SVE's release, though. The code was released under the GPL by the copyright holders, that should eliminate all gray areas.

This wasn't my point. I was merely stating that everyone throwing around "but the copyright is unclear on the Capstone games" is ignoring that the license is also unclear on the reverse engineered games. There are plenty of other reasons you may not want to support the Capstone games up to and including "I just don't want to," but the double standard everyone seems to have was worth pointing out.

[Graf Zahl]

And who talks about suing? If they want it stopped they first send a C&D. Remember Ion Maiden? The shit only hit the fan when 3D Realms did not comply.

This only applies to trademarks, though, not copyright - and while they tread similar ground in the legal battlefield they are two completely separate things, even as much to the point having their own law specializations.[/quote]

Well, I took code that was (c) Nuke.YKT etc., not (C) Atari. Who am I to know that the copyright was bogus if Atari never went after it for over a year? They surely must have known, considering they made their own Blood port around the same time.
I'm not sure what the legal ramifications are, but essentially these companies allow others to claim copyright over their code and don't act. That surely won't strengthen their legal position if they later may need it, assuming that somebody a few years down the line makes a commercial game based on NBlood's source.

[enderandrew]

Would anyone actually come after you for it?

Agreed. And you're not making money off this. Assuming that someone believed they owned the rights to one of the obscure titles being discussed (and no one really is claiming to own any of these currently) they can come after you with a C&D to which point you drop the offending code and at best you wasted some time.

But since you didn't make money off this, it would be near impossible to try and take you to court for money.

If anything, if I held the rights to a game like Witchhaven, Legend of the 7 Paladins, etc. I would be happy that someone already went to the effort to make a modern port, enabling me to sell the game's data again to players in a format they can play today.

Really? NAM and WW2GI are still missing and those are a lot less obscure than this.

Doesn't EDuke32 support them?

EDuke32 supports them but BuildGDX does not. The comment is that it is weird that BuildGDX is chasing obscure build games and not them, but it also makes sense for them to distinguish themselves from EDuke32.

That is part of the reason I'd like to see Raze support more games overall in the end.

[Dzierzan]

EDuke32 supports them but BuildGDX does not. The comment is that it is weird that BuildGDX is chasing obscure build games and not them, but it also makes sense for them to distinguish themselves from EDuke32.

That is part of the reason I'd like to see Raze support more games overall in the end.

BuildGDX does support NAM, you can load NAM as a Duke3D addon, it runs fine.

[Korell]

Is there a list of the data files needed for each game? I've copied various files over from different games into folders alongside the raze.exe and have managed to get them to start, but I am wondering if I have files that are surplus to requirements.

[Rachael]

What is usually easier is to copy the entire folder as-is as a folder in Raze, i.e. c:\Games\Raze\Duke3D

This works for all of Raze's games and will also avoid filename collisions for loose files like Route 66 and Cryptic Passage.

[Graf Zahl]

In general, just edit the INI and add paths to your games to the GameSearch.Directories section. No need to copy stuff around.
For Duke, Redneck Rampage and Shadow Warrior, having the GRP files is sufficient, but all other games require a few more files.

[Nash]

Yeah, what I ended up doing is just pointing Raze (via INI editing) to the various, already-existing installs of the GOG versions of Duke 3D and Blood that I have, and also the Steam install of my Shadow Warrior classic folder.

At some point it might be worth looking into adding a GUI where the user can specify base game file paths, rather than user-unfriendly INI editing.