I understood Xsera, but I have two questions...

1. Whose Rudy?
2. I second OpenAresX, or some variation of Ares in a forward like direction.

1. A code monkey from Hector's lair.

@pallas-athene, on Oct 30 2008, 07:34 PM, said in ARES X:

Guys, a quick note about copyright and the Ares Data files–

I talked briefly with Nathan about the copyright status of the data files, since as was stated earlier, they are not slated to be open-sourced, and there are some legal issues with what I've been doing extracting assets from them. There are a couple of points from that conversation that need to be brought up:

• Right now, we do not have the right to redistribute anything derived from the data files. I am assuming that the sprites and music are excepted from this, since they were produced with his permission, but we should not be trading anything else around. It's alright to use my scripts to extract stuff on your own, but don't ask me to send you the results, and don't send them around yourself; legally, we can't.

• Many of the sounds (excluding the music) were purchased from elsewhere and Nathan doesn't hold the copyright over them. Even if he were to give us freer reign over the data files, he would not be in a position to let us extract and redistribute the sounds.

• The Ares universe itself is sort of a personal matter for Nathan (if you play Starbase Defender, you'll see the Grolk and the Zerbilites make an appearance). He would prefer if a project did not use the "Ares" name per se, but something more like "OpenAres". He was definitely not amenable to people trying to make "Ares 2".

This changes things. My understanding was that the goal of the project was to create a version of Ares which plays on OS X. But now Nathan Lamont says we can't use the game's original content. And if the original ideas of Ares he wants to keep for himself, that precludes us from creating new replacement content.... So there's really no way to make a game that would still be Ares. All that's left would be making a new game using the Ares engine, that's not Ares. I don't think that's what anyone has in mind.

As for a name, I would've suggested Formido or Metus for a non-Ares game (the logic follows Deimos Rising being the sequel to Mars Rising), but Xsera sounds good.

@captain-bob, on Nov 1 2008, 12:21 AM, said in ARES X:

This changes things. My understanding was that the goal of the project was to create a version of Ares which plays on OS X. But now Nathan Lamont says we can't use the game's original content. And if the original ideas of Ares he wants to keep for himself, that precludes us from creating new replacement content.... So there's really no way to make a game that would still be Ares. All that's left would be making a new game using the Ares engine, that's not Ares. I don't think that's what anyone has in mind.

Not the case. We can't redistribute the results of modifying data files, but we can work with the originals (alternately, we can distribute a program to modify them locally). I also don't see why we would be precluded from doing anything we could have done with Hera.

Pallas - good to see you again, always nice to hear from our veterans around here - and especially on such a cool topic. I genuinely wish I had the coding skills to contribute to this project, I've been missing out on Ares since my old 8600 had a logic board failure years ago. It's always encouraging to see people working in unison to keep the classics alive.

I also wish to use this opportunity to thank redsteven and Nathan Lamont for rejuvenating this topic!

OpenAres X team, let me know when you need beta testers.

I thought I'd drop in a possible here: "Apollo" for the name? "OpenAres X" seems a bit wordy, and the craft in the game was renamed from Apollo to Ares...

I don't know how many hits google gets for "Ares" each month, but we should keep it somewhere in the title. I'm sure there are some with an interest in the original version that might be searching for nostalgic purposes, in which case a result containing some combination of "Ares" and "X" would likely get their attention.

@kgb, on Nov 1 2008, 10:32 PM, said in ARES X:

I don't know how many hits google gets for "Ares" each month, but we should keep it somewhere in the title. I'm sure there are some with an interest in the original version that might be searching for nostalgic purposes, in which case a result containing some combination of "Ares" and "X" would likely get their attention.

Considering that this game's free, it doesn't really need any marketing, if you know what I mean

Really, the decision's up to NL - it's his game, he decides what becomes of the source code he releases. I'll be fine if he says that we can's use the word "Ares" in the title, but until then, it's Ares X. I think "OpenAres X" sounds too much like a library or framework or something, not a game. I guess the real answer is "wait and see what NL wants".

@pallas-athene, on Oct 31 2008, 10:32 PM, said in ARES X:

Not the case. We can't redistribute the results of modifying data files, but we can work with the originals (alternately, we can distribute a program to modify them locally). I also don't see why we would be precluded from doing anything we could have done with Hera.

Ah, I think I misread part of your post. I think there's still a potential problem, though. If we make an open source program which can read and interpret all the Ares data files, and everyone can freely download those data files like they can now as part of the shareware package, then that's effectively equivalent to freely releasing those files. Right now, you're supposed to buy Ares to access a lot of the game's content. Take those sounds for which NL doesn't hold the copyright, for example. Whoever does own the copyright may not be happy if now anyone can download and use them free of charge, if you see what I'm saying. I realize you can already extract the sounds using ResEdit, but making a program to specifically reverse engineer the data formats might catch the eye of someone's legal department.

The second potential problem would arise from doing graphical or other enhancements to the game's content. If I had crafted my own game universe, and felt that my universe was a "personal matter" as you described it, I would probably not want other people to tinker with my vision by creating updated copies of my designs and adding their personal interpretations in the process. Whether I had the legal basis to disallow such derivative works or not, doing so would be going against the preferences of the original author. So I'm still trying to understand exactly what Mr. Lamont does and doesn't want to come out of this.

http://biggerplanet.com/ares

Quote

Ares was a computer game written by Nathan Lamont and originally published by Changeling Software, which went out of business while launching Ares in 1998. Ares was modified by Lamont and re-released by Ambrosia Software in 1999.

In 2008, Nathan Lamont released the original source code to Ares under the GNU GPL 2.0.

The Ares Source Code

The media (text, images, sounds, and music) are not part of this distribution and are not covered by the GPL license. Therefore, it is not currently legal to redistribute the media files.

If you are a developer looking to port the original game, Lamont recommends programmatically extracting the data at runtime, and storing the results locally in a more convenient format.

Also, there is a README that contains a fairly precise description of his feelings about Ares/OpenAres/Ares 2:

Quote

About the Code
You may use the code any way you like, so long as you make the source available under the GPL. See: http://creativecommo...censes/GPL/2.0/ for a summary ;the complete text is in the file titled "License for Ares Source Code."

The code was written in spurts over a long period of time and should be looked at as more of a creative work than an engineering project. Please don't ask me about it, and especially don't ask Ambrosia.

Good luck.

A Request
Please use "OpenAres" or some other alternative instead of just "Ares" in the title of any derivative works. If I decide to create a new game based on Ares, I'd rather not have it confused with derivatives of my prior work. Therefore I wish to strongly discourage the release of additional games called "Ares" which may be interpreted as my own.

For example, it would make me unhappy to have someone else release something called "Ares 2."

The Media
The media files, including all images, sounds, and music, are not covered by this license. I retain the copyright to the media, and the license to the source code does not grant you a right to redistribute the media files in any form.

This does not preclude you from programmatically making use of existing legal distributions of the media, e.g. extracting data from the original data files at runtime and storing them locally.

Incredible. Now if only I can find out how to compile it

Well done Pallas, well done

@redsteven, on Nov 3 2008, 04:23 PM, said in ARES X:

Well done Pallas, well done

Well done to you too, for getting this started - and for contacting Pallas.

On another note, look for a new topic soon that will become a progress log and a cumulative source for everything Xsera!

It makes me happy to see this.

So, is there anything the average board member can do to help at this time?

@two-jacks, on Nov 4 2008, 05:34 PM, said in ARES X:

So, is there anything the average board member can do to help at this time?

1. Lobby for future things that you want to see (i.e. better graphics and sound effects plugs, although this may have to happen anyways).
2. If you have a lot of skill in graphics or sound, contact me on #xsera.

Hello everybody, I'm new to the ambrosia forum board, but i've been with ambrosia for a while. Anyway, I don't know if it will work with ares, but I can get sheepshaver (mac os 9 for intels) working if you need it.

Anyway, I'm going to be doing the same thing for harry the handsome executive, exept I'm going to get it working on flash. Its basically my first project, and I'm not the master on actionscript but still, I'm going to try. If anyone wants to help me there welcome, if people actually do then I'll start my own thread

Quote

Many of the sounds (excluding the music) were purchased from elsewhere and Nathan doesn't hold the copyright over them. Even if he were to give us freer reign over the data files, he would not be in a position to let us extract and redistribute the sounds.

Okay, double checking, so we can't use sounds from the data files? Even if were making a Nova plug-in?

http://sfiera.net/ares-x/sprites/ does not seem to work anymore on FireFox.

This post has been edited by IT 000 : 05 November 2008 - 09:01 PM

If you have access to an OS 9 machine, then it would be helpful to have a bunch of screenshots as reference material. In particular, I would find it useful to have screenshots of various things in Hera, as reference material for when I've decoded things correctly. Screenshots of Ares itself might also be useful.

As for getting the sounds/sprites from Ares and using them for other purposes, no, you can't do that.

The sprites page is down because I made some changes to my server. I don't see any pressing need to put it back up.

I have a working OS 9 computer.
I know how to take screenshots.
I know how to somewhat work resedit.

I don't have a registered version of Ares. The reason for this is: my computer running OS 9.1 is somewhat buggy, and out of fear of losing all my work on my Ferazel's Wand level set I have put off registering Ares and Harry untill I complete my level set. I could probally remedy all of my computer's problems by simply upgrading to OS 9.2 but I lack the means to backup my data at the moment.

Though I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to compose a sprite log through using resedit.

This post has been edited by Two Jacks : 05 November 2008 - 11:06 PM