BIG NEWS FOR THIEF FANS!

[MrLemonyFresh]

what a downer. lol

 

[Gerix]

Well that is it then, we'll never see the code officially released. I have no faith in Square-Enix ever releasing anything but I wouldn't put it past an old school company to sue the pants off of anyone they can. This sucks.

I read your comment and thought "How bad can it be?" It's bad. And slightly ironic. Anyway, I've heard about a business norm that you need to defend your IP or it might become public domain, but this is a little ridiculous in my opinion.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

This legal bullshit is like a devolution of creativity. f***ing ass holes

 

[Prometheus]

This legal bullshit is like a devolution of creativity. f***ing ass holes

How?

 

[Tokiopop]

How?

Because it's stopping someone from porting it?

 

[Prometheus]

^ But the statement was that legal stuff was like a devolution of creativity. I'm not entirely sure what the relation between legalities and creativity is in this instance, and how legalities devolve from creativity, hence the question... I'm just curious, is all.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

Isn't it obvious? throughout history people have been inspired and based their work upon other people, even the greatest of artists and engineers.


In a way we have evolved in the way the people have created things more and more complex and unique and interesting.


All of a sudden as soon as you try anything like that in today world somebody will most likely jump down your throat.


And I'm talking aside from this being a port. I mean yeah, they'd be making a mistake in discouraging any kind of revival of the game


or interest on any other consoles, but there are a lot of people who have been waiting for the Thief 2 engine to be released because of the


potential behind it to create and develop upon it. In my opinion it's just sad, it discourages change and progression in game design.

 

[second exodous]

Well, it doesn't help that copyright lasts FOREVER now, you can keep renewing now until the end of time.


Anyway I was just saying that I don't think Square-Enix will ever do anything like release code, I wasn't even thinking about legal battles, but I knew there were some. Japanese culture doesn't lend much to OSS in general and Square-Enix is a Japanese company.

 

[bzar]

^ Yep, IIRC we won't see pac-man in public domain until something like 2090. How's that for fairness.

 

[WizardStan]

^ Yep, IIRC we won't see pac-man in public domain until something like 2090. How's that for fairness.

Don't worry. Major corporations (especially Disney) keep successfully petitioning to have copyright extended. By the time Pac-Man's copyright is coming due, it will have been extended again.


Because everyone knows that benefiting from the idea of someone who died over 100 years ago is entirely fair and the best way to stimulate creativity.

 

[Gerix]

I guess all you can do is buy games from companies you wish to support. I still need to buy the games from the Indie Bundle. But I buy most of my games used. I guess I'm keeping the resale value of the games up, but I don't think it's contributing too much to the companies' bottom lines. But I plan on buying a lot of Pandora compatible titles from GOG and Steam when I receive my unit. I just hope that id super pack goes on sale again. I also wouldn't mind getting Shadowgrounds Survivor for my Linux desktop, but that's a little off-topic.


I've heard the Carter Family (or some family) was able to gain copyrights on traditional music (the stuff that's generally public domain). And I think my mom said it is still under copyright (she researches this because she plays historical music).

 

[kuru]

Change the world today - be the first to put a copyright on copyrights!


Hearing about how Square now owns the rights indeed turns down the hopes. I know it happens in the PC world, but has there ever been a console game of which code was officially released? Seeing how Square are pure consoleros (except FF online maybe) this may be another factor preventing free sauce


All fans worldwide should contribute a dollar and buy the rights

 

[Grench]

Change the world today - be the first to put a copyright on copyrights!


Hearing about how Square now owns the rights indeed turns down the hopes. I know it happens in the PC world, but has there ever been a console game of which code was officially released? Seeing how Square are pure consoleros (except FF online maybe) this may be another factor preventing free sauce


All fans worldwide should contribute a dollar and buy the rights

Although purchasing the IP from the holding company is not a bad idea, it can be darn hard to do.


Just finding someone at the owning company who can:


A.) Put an honest price on the IP/code. You'll likely go into shock at the price tag.


B.) Legally sign those rights away (contract signing authority).


C.) Retain liability for other code that may or may not have worked it's way into the code base.


It's not like these companies are fast food joints. They don't post their IP on a board with prices for you to choose from.

 

[second exodous]

I really don't think the Thief source would be that useful anyway, the only thing that made if different was the A.I. and play style. A big Thief fan could just mod another open source engine to do the same thing, or any engine for that matter. Didn't someone make a mod of one of the unreal engines or the Doom III engine to play like Thief? Doom III might not be open source now but I'm sure it will be sometime after Rage is released.

 

[elwing]

Didn't someone make a mod of one of the unreal engines or the Doom III engine to play like Thief? Doom III might not be open source now but I'm sure it will be sometime after Rage is released.

you're thinking of http://www.thedarkmod.com/


the dark mod is as good as thief 1 and thief2 in my opinion, and without anydoubt MUCH better than the failed thief3... it is however not compatible with FM from thief1 and 2, and there's literally enough thief2 FM to play for years... that's the interest of theses sources... otherwise I'dd say thief1 and 2 are totally outdated by the dark mod...

 

[second exodous]

And The Dark Mod is Doom 3 so it will be open sourced and ported to everything in the future. Well, I hope Doom 3 is open sourced, the thing that put the brakes on Quake 3 more than anything was it was still licensed to companies but only a few commercial titles are based on Doom 3 so lets hope it isn't the case this time.

 

[elwing]

Thief2 contains too much good FM as you can see there: the keep of metal and gold, and a whole extension that was the work of many people during many years: T2X

 

[second exodous]

Reminds me of the first Half Life, I lived for those mods, but as I don't use Windows anymore and Half Life looks dated itself I stopped playing it. I wish some of these older games were open sourced so we could play them on the Pandora.

 

[Grench]

Reminds me of the first Half Life, I lived for those mods, but as I don't use Windows anymore and Half Life looks dated itself I stopped playing it. I wish some of these older games were open sourced so we could play them on the Pandora.

Flip that around and consider it.


If Valve compiled an ARM-Linux version would you pony up $50 for a licensed copy?


If Bioware/Atari were to make an ARM-Linux version of Neverwinter Nights that played on the Pandora, I'd pay $50 for it without even blinking - and I don't have a Pandora yet.


Don't ask these private companies to give away their IP for free - that isn't a good business model. However, compiling something they already own into a version that they can sell a bunch more of at full retail - that might get their attention. Unfortunately for us, we don't have 'a bunch' of people who would/could buy/play it on our platform - yet.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

Reminds me of the first Half Life, I lived for those mods, but as I don't use Windows anymore and Half Life looks dated itself I stopped playing it. I wish some of these older games were open sourced so we could play them on the Pandora.

Have you seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YA9km4aHjzI?feature=oembed

There are actually people out there working on packing half-life into quake so that it can be widely ported. Obviously it'd never be as good as the original (most likely) but it's still kinda cool. And as for your mods.. probably safe to say that there's not much chance of that, unless maybe they document all changes they've had to make to the half-life files and create an automated process which does most of the pre set work. I reckon It's something somebody might want to do for mods like 'they hunger'.


And I dunno, maybe the dreamcast port will emulate successfully on the pandora at some point.