Why not a complete open-source game ?

[SquireNed]

I am not a lawyer, but this is what I was told(here), when I wanted to use the Quake Mission Pack 2 --Dissolution of Eternity-- high-quality texture remakes for a level of mine in the dark mod.

Depends on whether you made them based off of the original textures, or if they were entirely original. Copyright law protects original works, so an original work meant to replace a copyrighted work is not automatically a derivative of that work. I'm not a lawyer, either, but I did take a class on copyright law with Dennis Karjala at Sandra Day O'Connor, and I can tell you that it is very difficult for someone to sue you for using your own work (and likely to backfire). Note, however, that if you simply tried to convert the original textures to high resolution, or if your textures are essentially repainted-by-hand from the original textures, they're still going to be under copyright of the original artist.

Basically:

Are they original textures that can be used in the place of the originals, but are not necessarily based on the originals?

Or are they just updated versions of their textures, even if drawn by scratch using the earlier textures as a reference?

The former is an original work, while the latter is a derivative work.

[MrSiuol]

Thank you for all your answers !

[anahuj]

Ok, lore, story, baddies, goodies, etc; models, textures, animations, sounds, etc; all needs to be your own design and make. We cannot have Morrowind looking game at all.

Then all scripts, visual effects, character attributes, skills, formulas, etc. must be our own. Or do you think we may use OpenMW/OpenCS provided gamesystem for totally free game? It could be a good idea to include an ability to define the attributes, skills, formulas, etc. in the OpenCS. I have wondered how Bethesda made Oblivion to Fallout 3 transition; and I have seen their data formats as I decoded them both on my own. Bethesda may have an extended version of Construction Set where they can define the attributes and the like. Perhaps that is the reason it takes time to ship the editor after the game has been released: they have to clean the feature away.

[Chris]

I have wondered how Bethesda made Oblivion to Fallout 3 transition; and I have seen their data formats as I decoded them both on my own. Bethesda may have an extended version of Construction Set where they can define the attributes and the like.

Those things are defined in the engine, not the Construction Set. The CS just edits esm/esp files, so if the attributes and stuff themselves aren't defined in the esm/esp, the CS isn't editing them.

Skyrim, on the other hand, does move more stuff out of the engine. Consequently. the Creation Kit does allow editing those things that have been moved into the esm/esp (such as what actions contribute to a given skill increase, and how much, or detailed technical behavior of spells and spell projectiles).

[ezze]

Ok, lore, story, baddies, goodies, etc; models, textures, animations, sounds, etc; all needs to be your own design and make. We cannot have Morrowind looking game at all.

Then all scripts, visual effects, character attributes, skills, formulas, etc. must be our own. .

Check Thief VS The Dark Mod. You can do a world that feels similar, but that under the hood as little in common.

[Freelancer2034]

Ok, lore, story, baddies, goodies, etc; models, textures, animations, sounds, etc; all needs to be your own design and make. We cannot have Morrowind looking game at all.

As long as the game doesn't directly violate Bethesda's copyrights by being nearly indistinguishable from the source material or using the source material directly, it still may come pretty damn close to being a Morrowind-like game. It's especially true if the game decides to go beyond its decade-old limitations and start expanding Morrowind's core gameplay concepts into something greater after it hits 1.0. In 30 years of game clone court battles, there's only been a handful of court decisions that ruled against the alleged cloners, so while replacing and redoing all the assets from nothing will still be an enormous effort, it is definitely no less doable than it was to write OpenMW from scratch.

Which leads me to the reason I'm here. I'm actually a pretty competent 3D artist with some experience in commercial game development, and if the team is interested in eventually making the project fully copyright free, I'm seriously thinking about contributing to the project in my spare time and releasing some of my personal art assets for this purpose.

One of the biggest problems I see so far, though, is using Gamebryo's NIF and Bethesda's ESM file formats. Both seem proprietary and I'm not sure how easy it would be to convert NIF models and ESM world data into formats different enough to be copyright free. Any knowledgeable programmers can weight in on this?

[SquireNed]

Proprietary formats shouldn't be an issue. There are very, very, very few cases in which you can get in trouble, and that would be if they were patented or you stole code from someone whose code wasn't open.

AFAIK, .nif and .esm aren't patented (I'm not even sure if they have anything distinct enough to warrant a patent), and OpenMW doesn't include any source code from Bethesda's .nif/.esm (.esm is actually an apparently rather "simple" format as far as those things go) handlers.

[Freelancer2034]

I am not a lawyer, but this is what I was told(here), when I wanted to use the Quake Mission Pack 2 --Dissolution of Eternity-- high-quality texture remakes for a level of mine in the dark mod.

Speaking very generally (there are obviously some nuances), as long as your texture isn't a direct modification of the texture you "take inspiration" from, you're not violating any copyrights.



Both these googled grass textures may look similar (especially if you edit the hue of right one to look more green and less yellow), but they were made by different authors from two separate photo sources. Unless there's a some unknown backstory there, there's no way one of the authors can claim copyright violation by the other.

[ezze]

However a complete open source would be great for attract players. Even if a single quest.

[Tinker]

However a complete open source would be great for attract players. Even if a single quest.

Which brings us back to the example suite which is waiting for the content editor which looks like it may possibly be post 1.0.

As 1.0 seems very close and the editor may catch up and be usable in a couple of months maybe the example suite should be looking at the story line, maps and assets needed in preparation.