8 ms·
Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says: > Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Ed
by willvarfar 9y ago
Its very questionable to include the assets. The bottom of the readme says:
> Includes assets and graphics extracted from the original SimCity 2000 Special Edition CD. These assets are NOT covered by the GNU General Public License used by this project and are copyright EA / Maxis. I'm including these assets in the hope that because the game has been made freely available at various points in time by EA, and because it's 24 years old as of publishing this project that no action will be taken. Long story short, please don't sue me! Long term, I plan to add functionality to extract assets from the original game files within this project.
The normal way for these open-source engines work is to insist that the users get the artwork from another source.
- chungy 9y agoEA is actively selling SimCity 2000 at least on GOG.com. With that in mind, I think there can be no real gesture of goodfaith on the author's part. It's lazy, maybe just the "easy way" to do it in the beginning, but when the game is being actively sold, it's also slimy.
- colechristensen 9y agoI don't think "bad faith" and "slimy" should really apply to 24 year old game assets. I value useful creation much higher than dated intellectual property. Or in other words, I do not support long-tail profit and control of any creative work.
- meddlepal 9y agoThat's fine, but when you get sued into oblivion don't come complaining that you didn't know it wasn't OK. Lobby for law changes if you don't like the law.
- chongli 9y agoI don't think anyone here is claiming that the author is legally in the right. This is a moral question and labels like "slimy" and "bad faith" are moral labels, not legal ones.
- Analemma_ 9y ago"bad faith" actually is a legal label, and the author of this almost certainly qualifies.
- Y_Y 9y ago> Lobby for law changes if you don't like the law. Then you'll have two problems!
- epicide 9y agoYou already have those problems. You'll be trying to fix two problems instead of just one.
- Y_Y 9y agoI think it's absurd for a private citizen to try to change a law by lobbying.
- epicide 9y agoI meant more trying to reduce/remove lobbying.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoI agree. I think we should hang all lobbyists and then shoot them while they're hanging just to be sure. It is absolutely anti-republican that entrenched special interests and corporations get more say and have larger influence in politics than the constituents of the state/district. Hang all the lobbyists, close the flow of donations from anyone other than individuals, and cut off the hands (metaphorically) of any representative that takes any money under suspicious circumstances. If powerful corporations or special interests want to influence legislation, make them convince the people that something is a good idea and have the people contact their representatives.
- thephyber 9y ago> If powerful corporations or special interests want to influence legislation, make them convince the people that something is a good idea and have the people contact their representatives. (1) A "special interest" is any strict subset of the population. There is no necessity that it be nefarious, as you imply. (2) A republic, by definition, doesn't require the constant approval of the population for each action. That would be a democracy, which we in the USA don't have and never did. In fact, our founding fathers explicitly ruled out the idea of governance by "the mob". (3) The problem with "powerful corporations and special interests" is that they have receive concentrated benefits with diffuse costs. The solution is for every elected representative to always vote "no" to every change to the status quo unless it meets a very high bar for diffuse benefits. That kind of government would get even less accomplished than the "Do Nothing Congress". (4) It's simply unwieldily for elected representatives to talk to their entire constituency on any regular basis. The only time this does happen is when we have some sort of panic. Those with means figured this out and hired people that specialized in getting the attention of legislators, executives, and regulators. (5) I'm all for rooting out corruption and eliminating it. I'm not for hanging people for doing something that is perfectly legal under current US law.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- epicide 9y agoI agree with you in sentiment, but this is not a form of protest -- just laziness. Even if it were some sort of protest against copyright laws, it would be a pretty terrible one.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago> should I suspect virtually all of us here agree that copyright terms are too long, but this still looks like wilful copyright infringement. Not that it would make any difference if EA stopped selling it on GOG. The idea of 'abandonware' has absolutely zero legal standing, as far as I'm aware. Other games companies have been very unaccommodating about this kind of thing before, even when game assets weren't used - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection
- ovao 9y agoThe intellectual property in this case does not stand in the way of useful creation.
- Feniks 9y agoYeah there's still copyright on Simcity 2000 for 50 years and Simcity itself is trademarked.
- ryandrake 9y agoDoesn’t it seem ridiculous to anyone else that the copyright on most software will outlast the existence of any computer the software was designed to run on? Part of the intellectual property “bargain” is that the right will one day return to the public, who can finally benefit. The extreme length of time appears to circumvent that end of the bargain.
- indescions_2018 9y agoThanks for the link to gog.com - drm free classics ;)
- NKCSS 9y agoIt's available online if you add 'abandonware' into the search. Not sure what the legal status is though.
- icebraining 9y agoUnless the copyright holders donated it into the public domain (fat chance), it's still under copyright for at least another 70 years.
- Spoom 9y agoAbandonware is nearly always technically illegal (after all, if it wasn't, and was formally released by the copyright holder, it would be freeware). As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the game is still sold, so I'm not sure it even qualifies as "abandoned".
- djsumdog 9y agoMost of these sites depend on the copyright owner no longer caring or being hosted in countries that may have shorter copyrights or aren't subject to the DMCA.
- alex_duf 9y agoThat's what openttd.org has been doing. When they grew in popularity they gathered to completely redraw new assets from scratch. It's a good way to kick start an MVP. Also the technology choice doesn't really matter, there's a sweet spot where the new features outbalance the nostalgia of running the original game. At least that's what I think when I play OpenTTD
- stuaxo 9y agoOpenTTD didn't actually include the assets, you had to use ones from the real game (until their project to draw their own had enough).
- jordanwallwork 9y agoThat's what the dude just said
- bringtheaction 9y agoPhrasing made it seem like OpenTTD bundled the original assets. stuaxo was pointing out that they did not.
- fyfy18 9y agoOn the other hand, OpenTTD was originally decompiled from a binary of TTD, where as this is being written from scratch.
- jl6 9y agoHow do these types of projects get around the fact that the new source code is clearly a derived work of the old game? I’m not saying they copied code, but they must be copying the design or the game would be a different game.
- klez 9y agoI'm not sure the design of the game is covered by copyright, otherwise you couldn't have clones of neither games nor applications. Also, code that replicates the functionality of other code is not the definition of derivative work.
- ChrisSD 9y agoIt can get dicey if you end up copying actual machine code, even if you translate it in to something higher level. One way round this is clean room design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
- dr_zoidberg 9y agoMany EULAs state that there will be no attempt by the user to reverse engineering the workings of the program. How would that fit with clean room implementations?
- ClassyJacket 9y agoEULAs are just EULAs, not laws.
- pizza234 9y agoAlthough this clone is clearly not the case, and I'm not aware any (high profile) cases, it is actually possible to patent the design of a game. There is a very interesting read about a video game patent: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/tapper_videogame_patent.html http://www.kmjn.org/notes/tapper_videogame_patent.html titled (drum roll) "Video game in which a host image repels ravenous images by serving filled vessels".
- titanix2 9y agoOpenRA is reimplementation of the Red Alert game engine that support multiples games. They have their way to deal with the assets issue but I forgot what exact solution it is. At least RA is available for download for free for EA so its help too. Edit: « OpenRA is 100% free, and comes bundled with three distinct mods. When you run a mod for the first time the game can automatically download the original game assets, or you can use the original game disks. »
- amyjess 9y agoReminds me of Forge, which is a fanmade computer implementation of Magic: The Gathering. It doesn't come with any card art, but after you start it up there's a menu item that'll let you download all the card art from a server. (honestly, that probably isn't totally legal either, though)
- yincrash 9y agoThe full games were released for free back in 2010. The assets are probably being downloaded under that freeware.
- matte_black 9y agoI once wrote a building generator that could create SC2k pixel art buildings based off a simple floor plan and some settings. It could be used to generate a lot of assets in a hurry.
- bringtheaction 9y agoCool, got a link for it?
- matte_black 9y agoUnfortunately it was quite a long time ago when I was into game development as a hobby, two MacBooks ago. I’d have to see if I still have the hard drive it was on. I never thought it would be useful for anything. In any case I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is inspired to write a similar tool, it’s really just laying down pixels and shapes in an isometric perspective, and a few other decorative touches.
- jagger27 9y agoYou've got my wheels spinning. Go's image processing libraries are calling to me.
- VikingCoder 9y agoYes, we'd love to see it!
- door2 9y agowho cares? intellectual property law in the united states is irrational and immoral. i strongly support evading the law or fully exploiting gray areas / unenforced copyrights.
- sgift 9y agoThat's easy to say if you are not the one who gets hit with a C&D plus some claim for x billion damages or whatever the going rate is these days. Life's too short to sit in courts and fight for something which is a hobby.
- arcticfox 9y agoWhich part of a law against for giving away someone else's art for free immoral?
- door2 9y agosimcity's IP is owned by EA, which is a multibillion-dollar publicly-traded company. this isn't just "someone's art". the only ones who benefit from strict enforcement of 25-year-old IP are EA's shareholders, not the artist, and certainly not the public.
- paulie_a 9y agoThis is why copyright laws are terrible in the US. It is a game that came out in the 90s, copyright protection for it should be over at this point. Personally I pretty much just ignore copyright. I don't have a bootleg factory, but at the same time I am not concerned about downloading a file like this
- viperscape 9y agoCopyright is pretty straight forward in the US. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html This game is still under copyright and including the assets for public consumption is considered illegal, unless otherwise specified by the rights holder
- jamesgeck0 9y agoSimCity 2000 even has a demo that includes most of the graphics assets. It wouldn't put much of a burden on the user.
- belorn 9y agoThey could do what many propiratary software developers do and simply write a wrapper that download and extract the assets on the users side during installation and have the user do the "compiling". If that work to avoid creating a derivative gpl program, or simply put the legal responsibility on the user, then surely it will work here too.
- rage8885 9y agoThat's the plan here. Short term, it will include the ability to select and parse out the original assets - long term I'd like to do something similar to the approach that OpenRA has taken (in game asset downloader that makes it seemless to the user).
- rage8885 9y agoI agree, but wanted to get something working out there first. I'm finishing up some code over the next day or two that will import the original assets from the game files without needing to include the assets within the repository.