I'm just curious, were there any plug-ins that required people to pay for them and what's the rule on that sort of thing? Someone was asking me this morning about what Plug-ins cost, but I had never heard of any that cost money to use. Anyone know anything about this?

-Darkness

I've never heard of any plugins that cost money.

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Kevin Ballard
(url="http://"mailto:kevin@sb.org")mailto:kevin@sb.org(/url)kevin@sb.org

Plugins don't cost anything; they are supposed to be free downloads to enhance EVN, and if you have to pay for them, you're being ripped off . However, you do have to pay for Nova (register it) to use plugs, maybe that's what that someone was referring to.

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What have I done?
(url="http://"mailto:ransom582@mac.com")mailto:ransom582@mac.com(/url)ransom582@mac.com

Ambrosia has historically frowned upon people charging money for plugins, although as an interesting piece of trivia ATMOS planned to do this for Nova back when it was an EVO plugin.

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Quote

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
Ambrosia has historically frowned upon people charging money for plugins...

However, if your plug-in doesn't use any Ambrosia-owned material, they can't stop you from charging for it.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in for the original Escape Velocity
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The Time Has Come For You To Visit.

Yeah, I thought my friend was kinda wacked out for asking if he had to pay for plug-ins. One thing I wanted to know is what would be the advantage of charging? Who would pay for it anyway?

Quote

However, if your plug-in doesn't use any Ambrosia-owned material, they can't stop you from charging for it.

Hmmm...that's a good point, but where do you draw the line? What if you have a plug that adds no new items, only adds a new mission thread? Could that person charge for that?

-Darkness

Quote

Originally posted by Darkness:
Hmmm...that's a good point, but where do you draw the line? What if you have a plug that adds no new items, only adds a new mission thread? Could that person charge for that?

Yes they could, But I doubt many would pay unless the plug was very good.

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/thorprime")NovaBurst Home(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
**However, if your plug-in doesn't use any Ambrosia-owned material, they can't stop you from charging for it.

**

True.
(I realise this isn't a very interesting reply, but I felt I should acknowledge somehow that I see your point.)

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Quote

Originally posted by Darkness:
Hmmm...that's a good point, but where do you draw the line? What if you have a plug that adds no new items, only adds a new mission thread? Could that person charge for that?

Yes, they could. As long as everything in the plug-in is either your creation/property or you have permission from the people who created/own other content that you use, you are quite within your rights to charge. Ambrosia has control only if your plug-in contains Ambrosia-owned material. Of course, whether anyone would be willing to pay for your plug-in is another matter entirely.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in for the original Escape Velocity
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The Time Has Come For You To Visit.

If I ever released my plugin it would cost a lot of money.

-Nat

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Lequis Design
lequis.netfirms.com
PhantoM_63ff@hotmail.com

I'm assuming that "If" is the key word here?

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Charging money would be difficult as well. First you would have to find out a way in which people could try out your play it with out playing the full thing, then find a way for them to pay, find a way of getting the plug to them, and making sure they don't send the plug to others for free. You could do some of this. First you could have a sampler plug for people to try and see if they like it. Then have them send a dollar or two to your adress, then eMail the plug to them. The only problems would be piracy ones. Whats stopping someone from giving it to everyone in the EV/O/N community? And if you were to release one as shareware, you would not only be frowned upon by ASW, but also by the EV/O/N community. Thats my two cents with lots of run on sentences, grammatical and spelling errors. Don't you love ttypos?

_wirehead

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He would, after all, be an ambassador; between the old and the new-between the creatures of carbon and the creatures of metal who must one day supersede them.
-a quote from Arthur C Clarke's short story, "A Meeting With Medusa"

And really Lequis, you'd have to make one kickass plugin. Because there will be plenty of completly free TCs/plugins that most would opt for over one that costs money.

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-Aubrey

Quote

Originally posted by wirehead:
First you could have a sampler plug for people to try and see if they like it. Then have them send a dollar or two to your adress, then eMail the plug to them.

I believe this is what ATMOS was planning to do with Nova.

Quote

Whats stopping someone from giving it to everyone in the EV/O/N community?

Apart from the law, very little, but if you think about it, the same is true of most software.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): Forums / Classifieds / Upcoming Plug-ins / More

You could just have a thing that says, "This plug doesn't cost anything, but I did work really hard on it, and if you really like it, you could find it in your heart to buy me a beer." or something a little more friendly. I was just illustrating my point. We have an extension on our iMac that has this sort of thing, but he phrased it much better then I did.

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"I've just had a brilliant stroke of genius! Oh now I've forgotten it." -Me

A whole load of Mac shareware isn't crippled. A shareware fee could just be placed on it, simple as that.

But I for one, as a matter of principle, would never download a plugin that costs money. You're already paying 30 dollars for the engine to run plugins, don't add more and more money to that.

Also, if one person starts charging money, more people will realize that they can charge and then there'll be a whole line of plugins by people who want to look professional by charging, when they really shouldn't charge for such a crappy plugin (hypothetical, of course).

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-Aubrey

Keep in mind that Martin Turner took over a year to write "The Frozen Heart", and he was kind enough not to ask for any money in return. His is the only plugin I've played that I would even consider paying money for. If you're going to charge for a plugin, you'd have to make it at least as good as Turner's.

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(url="http://"http://www.wheenit.com/monkey-robot/")www.wheenit.com/monkey-robot/(/url)

Since the plug-in only works in EV/EVO/EVN (whichever) and Ambrosia owns the rights to the games, wouldn't they have a legal control over whether or not developers could charge for plug-ins?

Also, of course, Ambrosia could forbid placing plug-ins on their download site if you want to charge for them, so the developer would have to find another site and get the word around.

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Quote

Originally posted by JohnnyAndrews:
Since the plug-in only works in EV/EVO/EVN (whichever) and Ambrosia owns the rights to the games, wouldn't they have a legal control over whether or not developers could charge for plug-ins?

Nope. Think about it: EV Nova only runs on the Mac OS, and Apple owns the rights to the Mac OS, but that doesn't give Apple any legal control over EV Nova. The exact same is true for plug-ins.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): Forums / Classifieds / Upcoming Plug-ins / More

Now, if they had put something in the license agreement about it...

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink