Martin Turner said:

Did it actually change all the landing pics and the Spob pics?

Yes. The graphics were simplistic, even by the standards of 1997, but that was intentional since it was trying to replicate an old game.

UE_Research & Development, on Apr 15 2005, 07:59 PM, said:

The way I see it, intellectual property is just that: intellectual property. If someone makes a plug-in and decides to charge X amount of money, that's his business and his jurisdiction. At the same time, it is the business of the prospective consumer to decide whether X amount of money is worth the plug-in. I don't feel that it's anyone's business to tell anyone else 'you can't charge for this': it's not their business that the developer decided to create the plug-in to begin with, and it's not their business that the developer decided to release the plug-in publically. However, it is their business to demonstrate with their actions (i.e. buying it or not) whether they agree or disagree with a paid scheme.
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Agree totally.

David Arthur, on Apr 15 2005, 08:26 PM, said:

Martin Turner said:

Did it actually change all the landing pics and the Spob pics?

Yes. The graphics were simplistic, even by the standards of 1997, but that was intentional since it was trying to replicate an old game.
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I do remember it now.

It's an interesting question, because, as you say, it was a remake of an earlier game. Are EVO and EVC for Nova TCs? In a certain sense they are, but I don't think they are what most people mean when they say TC. I would see them more as 'ports'. Again, there's an implication in the way TC is used that the graphics and general stuff is at least as good as the game it's replacing -- which is one of the causes about the numerous threads about the way that Nova has lifted the bar and it's now harder to complete a major plugin.

I don't really recall when the term 'TC' came in. It was several months after FH was released that people started posting on the board 'I'm going to make a TC' (I also have emails sent to me directly which began 'I'm making a TC and it will be better than yours because...)
I don't think the term was ever defined. Some people treat it as 'total replacement' -- ie, every mod must be changed, but it doesn't matter if the new universe is consistent. Other people used it to mean 'a whole new game', which is the way I've always seen it myself. EVO and EVC for Nova, and Elite for EVC, are definitely Total Replacements in that sense.

Perhaps from the point of view of 'would you buy it' it's better to focus on the 'whole new game' idea rather than the (now much discussed) term TC.

I would definitely pay for a whole new game running under any of the EVx engines. I wouldn't pay for EVO or EVC for Nova (and I'm glad that they were released for free) because I already paid for them originally, and I wouldn't pay for a previous game which had been ported -- I'd be more inclined to scour VersionTracker for other ports that might be more interesting (and free).

Martin Turner said:

It's an interesting question, because, as you say, it was a remake of an earlier game. Are EVO and EVC for Nova TCs?

I don't think Elite Frontiers is really comparable to the PortAuthority plug-ins; they're largely direct mechanical conversions of the previous games, whereas Elite Frontiers was a new creation simply inspired by the original Elite. The original game actually took place in 3D, though in many ways it resembles Escape Velocity (as I understand it, apart from the field-of-play differentiation, Escape Velocity could almost be linked to Elite the way Maelstrom is to Asteroids).

I'd be inclined to give Elite's creator a fair bit of credit. The plug-in was rather innovative in a number of ways. It gave every ship only one jump of fuel (and made it work), something that ATMOS apparently considered for EV Nova. Money was always scant, and had to be managed carefully, and map outfits were invaluable, whereas I've always found them basically useless in every other EV scenario I've seen. Considered in terms of size, its galaxy tested the limits of the original Escape Velocity's engine, and it gave planets local governments even when they were also part of one of the major governments.

More than any other plug-in I've seen, it managed to make the game much harder in ways completely unrelated to making the enemy ships bigger and stronger.

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I don't really recall when the term 'TC' came in....I don't think the term was ever defined.

I must admit, though, that I'm not really the person with whom to debate what counts as a 'total conversion', since I've always viewed the term as a counter-productive buzzword since it found its way into the Escape Velocity sometime between when I left and when I came back.

David Arthur, on Apr 15 2005, 10:30 PM, said:

I must admit, though, that I'm not really the person with whom to debate what counts as a 'total conversion', since I've always viewed the term as a counter-productive buzzword since it found its way into the Escape Velocity sometime between when I left and when I came back.
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I never liked the term much either. I'm much more interested in gameplay. Hence, my heroes are still the authors of Eye of Orion and Angels of Vengeance, which will for always be to me the pinnacle of plugin making.

Martin Turner, on Apr 15 2005, 10:46 PM, said:

I never liked the term much either. I'm much more interested in gameplay. Hence, my heroes are still the authors of Eye of Orion and Angels of Vengeance, which will for always be to me the pinnacle of plugin making.
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Had another look at Elite Frontiers. It does change a lot of stuff, but by no means everything. The most obvious is the game panel with radar etc. Also, many of the outf pictures are actually the EV outfit pictures, legal status isn't changed, only the final level of pilot status is changed, it's still ISN in the bar not some rival broadcaster, the buttons aren't changed, escape pod text isn't changed. This might seem trivial, but other plugins of the EV era did change these things, and they are things that you spot straight away while playing the game. For a TC, I would suggest that it's the user experience that counts, and that everywhere you click, you should be seeing stuff that surprises you.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Star Wars ANA was watching the way my pilot status moved up from 'Bantha fodder'. I really believed I was in a totally different game (until I started on the missions).

I have to admit, though, that when I originally saw it I took the cheap and cheerful 2d graphics to be the marks of low quality, rather than a pretty cool piece of retro.

On the term "TC":

If memory serves, people used to call them "Complete Replacement" or "CR" plugins. I suppose this was redundant, since the FPS mod scene already had the term "Total Conversion", which we eventually borrowed. Wikipedia's entry on the topic opens with the phrase:

'A total conversion, in the computer gaming sense, is a mod (short for "modification") of an existing game where the end result bears little resemblance to the original on which the conversion was based.'

Which is as good a definition as any. I think the only purpose of the term is to divide expansion projects (EVGE, Final Battle, Pale, etc.) which draw and expand upon the background of the original games from games taking place in an entirely different universe. When you load up a "TC", you know you'll be playing something entirely different from the three EV games. Whether it relies on (un)licensed materials from other realms of Sci Fi is immaterial.

And as for charging for your product, most of us here work on our projects for the simple pleasure of sharing them with the few of us who are actually fond of these types of games, so we naturally find mercenary aspirations to be a little distasteful. However, as long as it's all yours I don't see an ethical problem. I just wouldn't expect anybody to pay for it.

-reg

So the mental contract thing is moot? Darn, I mentally contracted you to turn over all rights to all of your ideas to me, and with your silence you agreed...

UE_Research & Development, on Apr 15 2005, 02:59 PM, said:

The way I see it, intellectual property is just that: intellectual property. If someone makes a plug-in and decides to charge X amount of money, that's his business and his jurisdiction. At the same time, it is the business of the prospective consumer to decide whether X amount of money is worth the plug-in. I don't feel that it's anyone's business to tell anyone else 'you can't charge for this': it's not their business that the developer decided to create the plug-in to begin with, and it's not their business that the developer decided to release the plug-in publically. However, it is their business to demonstrate with their actions (i.e. buying it or not) whether they agree or disagree with a paid scheme.

I feel that the current primary obstacles towards charging for a plug-in involve ambigious interpretation of rights granted by Ambrosia Software regarding usage of their engine, as well as a lack of any reliable copy-protection system and perhaps apprehension towards setting a precedent. If someone can overcome these obstacles and wants compensation, good for him or her. For me the donationware concept (as I have mentioned before) I believe is the most sound for personal use, but if I were to force a donationware payment paradigm on anyone else I would be making a mockery of the very beliefs that motivated me to suggest donationware in the first place.
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I agree with the "It's my intellectual property, I will charge what I want," to a point. An analogy would be music. People can sell music (printed or recorded) for what they would like. There are certain limitations, though. Such is the case with arranging and sampling of music, both of which require permission from the original composer/musician beforehand. It would appear that any plugin using material from Nova would require the permission of the owners of the rights (which seems to have been granted by marketing the user expandability via plugin, though not necessarily for profit). I do not believe that a plugin is the same as a song that samples from a prior copyrighted work that can played on any CD player because it requires a specific piece of digital media itself to run. However, keeping in mind the nature of operating systems (also specific pieces of digital media), there are countless software developers that sell their wares (Ambrosia included) designed to only be used by a certain system. My question is this: Do these software developers have to get permission to develop for a certain OS? If not, then I don't see why a TC that has no relation to the original EV, EVO, or Nova at all could not be sold, as long as it only referred to the Nova engine as a means of playing it. If they do, then I would think that permission from Matt and/or Ambrosia would be necessary to sell a TC. I would not personally charge for a TC, but that is up to the individual, just as a composer can choose to charge for copies of his/her music. Either way, I am fairly certain that both TCs and plugins do fall under copyrighted material, property of their developers, just as original compositions and arrangements of other compositions do.

This post has been edited by erikthered : 19 April 2005 - 12:41 AM

Martin Turner, on Apr 15 2005, 04:41 PM, said:

It's an interesting question, because, as you say, it was a remake of an earlier game. Are EVO and EVC for Nova TCs? In a certain sense they are, but I don't think they are what most people mean when they say TC. I would see them more as 'ports'.
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Would the new plugin "rEVisited", which is a total graphics modification (as well as adding some new outfits, like crew-boosting ones), when used with the EV classic port, count as a TC?

But, no, EVC/EVO ports on their own are certainly not TCs.

I doubt that anyone who uses any sort of resource (for example, a sound effect or a landing picture) out of EVN has any right to charge anything for their plug-in without explicit permission. In that case, they'd be infringing upon ATMOS' intellectual property.

erikthered said:

So the mental contract thing is moot?

To paraphrase Sam Goldwyn, a mental contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

erikthered said:

Do these software developers have to get permission to develop for a certain OS? If not, then I don't see why a TC that has no relation to the original EV, EVO, or Nova at all could not be sold, as long as it only referred to the Nova engine as a means of playing it. If they do, then I would think that permission from Matt and/or Ambrosia would be necessary to sell a TC.

No, no one has to pay Apple for the right to develop Macintosh software, and the same would apply to Escape Velocity plug-ins.

If you include resources or anything else that belongs to Ambrosia, of course, you're using their intellectual property, and so need their permission for whatever you're doing. The same thing goes for if your plug-in is based on a movie, book, or television show; modifying someone else's ideas doesn't make their work your own.

On the other hand, if your plug-in is completely original, there's nothing anyone can do copyright-wise to stop you from distributing it whatever way you wish.

David Arthur, on Apr 19 2005, 03:15 PM, said:

If you include resources or anything else that belongs to Ambrosia, of course, you're using their intellectual property, and so need their permission for whatever you're doing. The same thing goes for if your plug-in is based on a movie, book, or television show; modifying someone else's ideas doesn't make their work your own.

On the other hand, if your plug-in is completely original, there's nothing anyone can do copyright-wise to stop you from distributing it whatever way you wish.
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Bit of clarification...

A. Do we need permission to do ship variants based on Nova ships? Like an upgraded heavy shuttle?

B. Who would control those rights, Ambrosia or ATMOS?

nfreader, on Apr 19 2005, 08:35 PM, said:

Bit of clarification...

A. Do we need permission to do ship variants based on Nova ships? Like an upgraded heavy shuttle?

B. Who would control those rights, Ambrosia or ATMOS?
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Copyright law is not affected by whether or not your charge for something. International copyright law has basically two aspects:
i) You have a copyright on every original work you create
ii) To establish this right, you will need to prove that your work was created before a rival claim to the copyright.

If you do not include any of the Nova code, graphics or text in the plugin you release, you are not infringing copyright. The fact that your plugin only changed one ship would not change this -- you would own copyright on what you released, and could charge what you wanted. If, for some bizarre reason, you decided to include one of the Nova graphics in your plugin, you would be infringing their copyright. Chances are they wouldn't hammer you for it though.

In terms of code, it is implicit in the nature of an extensible architecture that you will release new code. This gets you off the hook nicely in terms of charging for your own plugin, but it makes your position very weak in terms of enforcing your own copyright -- you would have to show that someone copied your heavily upgraded shuttle, rather than arriving at it by their own means some time earlier. For a single ship, that would be hard to make. On the other hand, if you altered every ship in the game, and released your plugin, your copyright would be fairly easy to establish. Still, even quite a clever piece of coding might be arguably within the overall creation of EVx, and you might struggle to establish your copyright over Matt Burch.

Text and graphics are something very different. Providing you can demonstrate that you made them before a rival claimant (for example, by publishing them on Ambrosia's site), your copyright is complete.

I have -- just a couple of times -- had to ask people to withdraw their plugins because they borrowed graphics from mine. On both occasions the people complied immediately. On the other hand, when people release 'cheat' plugins for my games, I can't do anything about it as long as they aren't actually reissuing my resources. I really hate the cheat plugins, but they are within their rights to issue them.

nfreader said:

Do we need permission to do ship variants based on Nova ships? Like an upgraded heavy shuttle?

If you take a resource from Nova and modify it, then the rights in the altered resource are divided between you and Ambrosia, so yes, you would be subject to Ambrosia's wishes in this case.

For most plug-in developers, this isn't an issue, since Ambrosia has chosen to allow a wide range of modifications to the game (and they'd have precious little chance of winning a lawsuit over a plug-in they themselves distributed over their add-ons page). The reason we're talking about it is that it's far from certain that Ambrosia would feel the same way about a plug-in you were selling, so it would be a very bad idea to use any of their property in a commercial plug-in without their prior permission.

nfreader said:

Who would control those rights, Ambrosia or ATMOS?

Their contracts aren't publicly available, but my understanding is that Ambrosia administers the rights to the full contents of the games as published.

Ragashingo, on Apr 12 2005, 05:52 AM, said:

I think you're jumping the gun a bit here. As far as I know no plugin teams have yet declared that they plan to charge for their work. Maybe someday one will, and I think it will be interesting to see how the community reacts.
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The long-lost mamajama, jumping in where angels fear to tread.....

I would personally pay for Frozen Heart 2. I think Martin Turner has spent hundreds of hours over several years working on it. It's the "gold standard" for TCs. It's pioneered plenty of tech for other developers, according to other posts on this thread.

If this opens up too many cans of nasty, squiggly, legal worms, why not let it be shareware? Duh. You download it for free, and if your conscience pricks you, pay Martin $10 or so to "register" it. Perhaps he could add some more features for the registered version.

And then let the market, i.e., the players, decide. That's what free enterprise is supposed to be about. If the other TCs are worth paying a little change for, to get the "rest of the story", then let them try the same schtick.

This is how it works with "ebooks" and "estories", by the way. Readers read a chapter or so, and if they like it, they pay a nominal (like $3 charge) through Paypal to get the download of the rest.

mj

(quote name='David Arthur' date='Apr 15 2005, 03:07 PM')
(quote=Martin Turner)Just out of curiosity, how many people here would have been willing to pay for Nova had it been released as an EV Override plug-in with a free demo, as was planned at one point?
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(/quote)
It is hard to say. I think I would have paid perhaps 5-10 dollars. But to pay the full $30 would require that I get a new game with anew game engine.
As for TCs being paid for, I don't think I would pay for a TC unless it was so complete that I could see myself in a new game. But even then, because there was nothing done that I could not do, I would not pay anything over $10. What I mean by that is that I can write a storyline, I can create the needed resources, I could even do some ships. So to me, those are barely worth paying for. But what I cannot do is to make a full game engine. That is far beyond me, and so I am willing to pay a higher price for it, partly due to some sense of awe.
But I might donate money to a plug-in developer if it was made easy. If on the plug-in site there was a little thing linked to PayPal, I might drop a few bucks to help the maker of a particularly good plug-in. But if I were forced to pay, I would not. Nor do I think I would pirate the TC, that just sounds pitiful and not really worth the effort.

I think our entire economy would die if none of us paid for things we could do ourselves. I mean I could learn how to program an OS myself, and I could do the entire GUI myself and so on, but I just paid Apple another $70 for 10.4 Its not just what you could do, its what you actually do. Me personally, if there was a plugin that was good enough I would pay for it, even though like you, I probably could make an entire TC myself.

My favorite form of non-mandatory shareware (and friendly for the poor/lazy college student) is T-shirtware. If you like the product, send one X-Large t-shirt to the dude that made it. It's a great way to get clothing!

Okay, here's a new question for you all, especially for developers:

If I were to start the donationware idea in Arpia 2 (it is most probably the nearest big plug to completion), what would happen? Would it start a trend towards shareware (which is, in my view, not good at all) or would developers stay away from the shareware idea, and just keep it donationware in a non-annoying way (without pop-ups telling the player to pay, )?

(Since some people have expressed the fact they might like to support by donations, but would never do anything if forced to, I would like to reinforce that trend by saying a big "No To Shareware Plug-ins!" )

If it leads to generalised shareware in the near future, then no plug-in should even support the donationware system right now.

PS: Shareware is not inevitable.

I think that once we pay for one, we'll pay for them all. lots of people have put lots of work into the TCs now in progress and we'd all like to see some compensation for it. But it would crush the spirit of things I think- charging money for an expansion of a shareware game that many people don't have.