Splash screens

[SquireNed]

If you are giving advice that could potentially get you in trouble, why would you be giving it to begin with? Really, the simplest way way is to simply say that anyone who follows your advice is on their own blah blah blah.

I put in disclaimers everywhere I think problems could arise here, and there's a difference between academic discourse on a forum (i.e. what we do here) and actually saying "These are guidelines that we think will keep modders safe."; if I make a claim like that I'm much more likely to have people hunt me down looking for blood. I don't think we should provide any advice to modders that requires a disclaimer. I'd be more than happy to hunt down the legal precedent for prosecution of "modders" under copyright law, but I can tell you from the cases that pop into my head that it's a grim (and 20-or-so-year-old) picture that likely doesn't suit modern copyright culture.

[HiPhish]

I don't really see the point of this discussion. Modders are free to do whatever they want at their own responsibility and if they get into trouble, well that's their problem. OpenMW can't possibly babysit every mod project, and they shouldn't have to, mods should be stored somewhere else (like Mod Nexus) by their authors. The OpenMW team could host a small set of "standard mods" which are definitely clean, but that's it. Everything else would be at the modder's own responsibility.

[PeterBitt]

Oh thats actually more limits for mods than I expected.
So I have this texture mod wich I could upload completely free of vanilla textures when I change something. But reading the last posts I assume that even normal maps for the vanilla textures are not allowed?
Just as a reminder there are tons of mods distributing slightly edited vanilla assets, including all mesh/texture fixes (like in MPP), all smoothed meshes, many retextures like Darknut's, all bump map mods and many many others.

I think this all wont matter once OpenMW is done, I assume my mod is a bit problematic as its the first one and many people on the internet dont understand that it is a mod and doesnt has anything to do with OpenMW itself.

[SquireNed]

Oh thats actually more limits for mods than I expected.
So I have this texture mod wich I could upload completely free of vanilla textures when I change something. But reading the last posts I assume that even normal maps for the vanilla textures are not allowed?
Just as a reminder there are tons of mods distributing slightly edited vanilla assets, including all mesh/texture fixes (like in MPP), all smoothed meshes, many retextures like Darknut's, all bump map mods and many many others.

I think this all wont matter once OpenMW is done, I assume my mod is a bit problematic as its the first one and many people on the internet dont understand that it is a mod and doesnt has anything to do with OpenMW itself.

If you don't include any of the original files you're fine. I'm 99% confident that Bethesda won't ever care about or target OpenMW mods unless they infringe on other IP they own (i.e. back-porting textures from Oblivion into Morrowind). The key thing is the inclusion of copyrighted assets. So, for instance, if you write a script telling the game to do something using original content, you're not infringing copyright (except theoretically for VARA, which never exists for digital content).

If you're referring to the specularity mod you've made, I'm pretty sure (as in "don't sue me if I'm wrong but I think it's okay") that it's going to be just fine by everyone. If it doesn't include the original texture files, as I don't believe it does (correct me if I'm wrong), you're definitely fine.

[claudekennilol]

Basically I see it as this. You're fine to use vanilla assets if the mod works with the vanilla game (in addition to working with OpenMW, obviously, but if it works with vanilla mw then it will obviously work with OpenMW). On the other hand, if you use vanilla assets in a mod that only works with OpenMW and not vanilla MW, then Bethesda could have a problem with it.

What that means for you ("you" used generically and just meaning a mod author, in general) is completely up to you. The nexus does not knowingly host mods with content used from other games and has in the past (ever since morroblivion) taken mods down for such offense. While I consider OpenMW and vanilla MW to be the virtually the same, I don't consider them to be the same "game" as they're different engines developed separately. In this scenario, it's not different from an emulator. Emulators are freely available and not illegal (I'm sure there are exceptions) but it's the copyrighted stuff that emulators are used for that are not to be redistributed (and that's where the trouble comes in).

While I can't say officially, I doubt Bethesda or Nexus will have a problem with it, but it's better to err on the side of caution. If Bethesda does say there's a problem with this (this being using vanilla assets in OpenMW-only mods) then I can guarantee you the Nexus will take down the mods, also (not that there aren't other places to host mods..).

Lastly, where else would you have people discussing topics about OpenMW if not the OpenMW forums?

[SquireNed]

Basically I see it as this. You're fine to use vanilla assets if the mod works with the vanilla game (in addition to working with OpenMW, obviously, but if it works with vanilla mw then it will obviously work with OpenMW). On the other hand, if you use vanilla assets in a mod that only works with OpenMW and not vanilla MW, then Bethesda could have a problem with it.

What that means for you ("you" used generically and just meaning a mod author, in general) is completely up to you. The nexus does not knowingly host mods with content used from other games and has in the past (ever since morroblivion) taken mods down for such offense. While I consider OpenMW and vanilla MW to be the virtually the same, I don't consider them to be the same "game" as they're different engines developed separately. In this scenario, it's not different from an emulator. Emulators are freely available and not illegal (I'm sure there are exceptions) but it's the copyrighted stuff that emulators are used for that are not to be redistributed (and that's where the trouble comes in).

While I can't say officially, I doubt Bethesda or Nexus will have a problem with it, but it's better to err on the side of caution. If Bethesda does say there's a problem with this (this being using vanilla assets in OpenMW-only mods) then I can guarantee you the Nexus will take down the mods, also (not that there aren't other places to host mods..).

Lastly, where else would you have people discussing topics about OpenMW if not the OpenMW forums?

Yes to the former. However, there may be a little grey area, as the technical "game" of Morrowind is actually legally distinct from the executable running it, so it's entirely possible that mods that require Morrowind content but run through the OpenMW engine alone are fine, so long as they couldn't be used in a manner that allows vanilla content to be used in a potentially unrelated manner. For instance, if you uploaded a fixed mesh for a Dwemer artifact, you'd want to take steps to make sure that it's still dependent on vanilla Morrowind data, rather than uploading a mesh that is largely Bethesda's but could find its way into an unrelated game.

Under copyright law, OpenMW holds a very strange status. The actual execution of game code is not protected (Sega v. Accolade, for instance), but the game as a holistic experience is; so long as you aren't distributing the experience or significant parts of the experience (which even a single model can be construed as). OpenMW is in a sense actually legally indistinct from running Morrowind with the original .exe.