Regarding the use of Legacy of Rust assets — UPDATE

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

Sep. 15 update: After some further discussion with Xaser and internally, I'm amending this to something much less restrictive (hopefully, to everyone satisfaction).

Hey, everyone. This announcement is about our position on the use of Legacy of Rust assets in personal projects.

Here's what you need to know

• Xaser himself doesn't mind if ANY assets that come with Legacy of Rust (sprites, textures, sounds, midis, etc.) are used by modders in their personal projects for non-commercial purposes. That means that at least the authors of those assets are fine with you using them. (Obviously, you should always give credit.)

• This is still technically not legal (yes, even in a free mod). But then again, neither is it technically legal to rip assets from vanilla Doom, or from other old games, even though the community does it all the time. So, nobody can actually guarantee that Bethesda won't come after you. Realistically, the chances of that actually happening are probably not very high, but we can not offer any guarantees in that regard. If at any point Bethesda does decide to issue some kind of a takedown notice, we will take down/remove whatever is requested. So, even if legal repercussions are not likely (we don't actually know), you still should keep in mind that you're always ripping assets at your own risk.

Why adding Legacy of Rust assets to your project may not always be necessary

Many of the assets — specifically, monster sprites and sounds — are neatly contained inside the file called id24res.wad. Thus, if you want to make something like a monster pack that uses LoR sprites, you can just make the code, and then request that users add id24res.wad from their own copy of Doom rerelease into their load order. What's more, a new PR has already been merged that will automatically load id24res.wad if Doom rerelease is installed in your system; this is already available in the current GZDoom 4.13pre dev builds, and will be a part of the next stable release.

In addition, the Freedoom team is already working on creating their own free version of the LoR assets.

However, since that file doesn't contain all the assets (notably, textures or midi files), this approach, naturally, won't cover all cases.

[axredneck]

Everyone who legally owns Doom on Steam will also legally own Legacy of Rust

But what about BFG Edition?
(I have BFG Edition in Steam, and i can't buy "regular" Doom because it's "not available in my country")

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

Everyone who legally owns Doom on Steam will also legally own Legacy of Rust

But what about BFG Edition?
(I have BFG Edition in Steam, and i can't buy "regular" Doom because it's "not available in my country")

It's true that the upgrade to rerelease was only provided to those who bought the original Doom 1/2, and it doesn't affect the copy of Doom that came with Doom 3: BFG Edition (as far as I know, anyway). Unfortunately, BFG edition owners will have to either buy the rerelease or, if they only want the Legacy of Rust assets, wait for the Freedoom version. As for country-specific availability, alas, I don't know anything about that. If this is a legit region lock, then the only option might be buying a key from a 3rd-party storefront; some Steam games can also be gifted between regions provided it's not being gifted from a region with lower regional prices. But I don't know how this works for the Doom rerelease.

[Gez]

Personally, I would recommend moving to a country that isn't under international sanctions.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

Personally, I would recommend moving to a country that isn't under international sanctions.

Let's not start a discussion about that in this thread. Suffice to say, if you can't legally buy Legacy of Rust, this is not something we have control over, and it doesn't make it legal to distribute its assets for free.

[SiFi270]

I doubt I'll make any kind of anything in the foreseeable future, but I'm still curious. If I just wanted to use a midi from id1.wad, would that be acceptable?

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

I doubt I'll make any kind of anything in the foreseeable future, but I'm still curious. If I just wanted to use a midi from id1.wad, would that be acceptable?

It still falls under the same restrictions. Unless you get a permission from the original authors, you should not do that. You can, however, reference that music file in MAPINFO — if id24res.wad is loaded, it'll play properly. You could probably make it optional through ZScript and only play it if the lump with a relevant name is found.

[Gez]

It still falls under the same restrictions. Unless you get a permission from the original authors, you should not do that.

Xaser has ambiguously said on Doomworld that he was okay with the MIDI being reused.

Rust's midis aren't "special" in any way here -- same as any other IWAD midi. Use your best judgment.

It's long been community practice to use songs from other IWADs, or even entirely other games like Heretic or Blood.

You can, however, reference that music file in MAPINFO — if id24res.wad is loaded, it'll play properly.

No, and this is where things get a bit confusing, but id24res.wad does not contain any of the Legacy of Rust assets. No music or texture or flat.

Instead, it contains the ID24 assets, which are the new things. Props, monsters and weapons. So it contains sprites, sounds, and a status bar change (SBARDEFS lump plus STAMMO24, STARM24) and the carousel icons for the new weapons (SMFLAM0, SMFLAM1, SMHEAT0, SMHEAT1). The carousel icons for the old weapons are in extras.wad instead.

Meanwhile, id1-res.wad contains nearly all the Legacy of Rust assets (missing soundtrack and the intermission graphics), plus the DEHACKED definitions in MBF21/DSDHacked format of the new monsters and props; and id1-weap.wad contains the MBF21/DSDHacked definitions of the new weapons, and status bar graphics that replace the cell label on the status bar with fuel instead. But not the sprites and sounds, those are in id1-res.wad instead. Final note: the ammo pickup for fuel can and fuel tank in id1.wad, and id1-res.wad, are replacement for the cell ammo pickups, so they use the cell ammo sprite names. In ID24, they use their own separate names because they are meant to be an additional fifth ammo type, not a replacement for the fourth ammo type like they are in Legacy of Rust.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

No, and this is where things get a bit confusing, but id24res.wad does not contain any of the Legacy of Rust assets. No music or texture or flat.

Instead, it contains the ID24 assets, which are the new things. Props, monsters and weapons. So it contains sprites, sounds, and a status bar change (SBARDEFS lump plus STAMMO24, STARM24) and the carousel icons for the new weapons (SMFLAM0, SMFLAM1, SMHEAT0, SMHEAT1). The carousel icons for the old weapons are in extras.wad instead.

Meanwhile, id1-res.wad contains nearly all the Legacy of Rust assets (missing soundtrack and the intermission graphics), plus the DEHACKED definitions in MBF21/DSDHacked format of the new monsters and props; and id1-weap.wad contains the MBF21/DSDHacked definitions of the new weapons, and status bar graphics that replace the cell label on the status bar with fuel instead. But not the sprites and sounds, those are in id1-res.wad instead. Final note: the ammo pickup for fuel can and fuel tank in id1.wad, and id1-res.wad, are replacement for the cell ammo pickups, so they use the cell ammo sprite names. In ID24, they use their own separate names because they are meant to be an additional fifth ammo type, not a replacement for the fourth ammo type like they are in Legacy of Rust.

This is actually entirely valid, and I don't have a clear solution for this. I'll see if I can get Xaser's input on this.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

After some further discussion with Xaser and internally, I'm amending the original announcement to something much less restrictive (hopefully, to everyone satisfaction), so the earlier discussion in the thread can be disregarded (it was about the original announcement).

[painedanomaly]

Now, does this mean that we'd have to write our own DEHACKED, DECORATE, or ZSCRIPT file for the resources contained in id24res.wad? Because all that file contains is the sprite lumps and sounds for the monsters, weapons, and decorations. id1-weap.wad contains only 5 lumps, one being the DEHACKED file giving all the resources in id24res.wad functionality. So if you wanted to use any of those things, you'd have to tell users to load id24res.wad and id1-weap.wad for the new things to actually work.

[Gez]

Now, does this mean that we'd have to write our own DEHACKED, DECORATE, or ZSCRIPT file for the resources contained in id24res.wad?

Yes, they're just raw resource and ID24-compliant ports are supposed to have their own actor code directly.

[scalliano]

Now, does this mean that we'd have to write our own DEHACKED, DECORATE, or ZSCRIPT file for the resources contained in id24res.wad?

Already done, check local press for details