DRD Team

I read this over at the Doomworld forum's blog section. I'm very sad to hear this, but don't give up hope! I'd say fuck 'em and do exactly what you have planned to, and finish this amazing project.

You had so better not stop this project. I have been waiting for it for what seems like years.

No, i do not plan on stopping this project, but i do need clarfication from which pieces of the lisenses i am required to obey (which is probabily all of them). Currently the raven lisense is presenting the biggest problem because it restricts me to having their content first before mine can be built. While i am not using any of ravens content as a basis, i am curious to see how zdoom handles this problem. The term zdoom-hexen is what trroubles me because i am using hexens ACC and that means i am bound to their terms of use. Since i want foreverhood to be available to everyone (hence a standalone game), i would clearly be in violation of that under hexens lisense:

New Game Materials may be created only if such New Game Materials can be used exclusively in combination with the retail version of the Program. New Game Materials may not be designed to be used as a stand-alone product.

However, Most people that use zdoom use it in cunjunction with doom, not heretic/hexen. Do we then have to own those games inorder to be using those features? I'm pretty confused about this.

Skadoomer wrote:i am using hexens ACC

Why not use Randy's ACC? It's much newer.

Also. If you arent going out for that IGF thing, releasing this should be fine. An innumerable amount of maps in zdoom-hexen format have already been released without any problems.

BioHazard wrote:

Skadoomer wrote:i am using hexens ACC

Why not use Randy's ACC? It's much newer.

Also. If you arent going out for that IGF thing, releasing this should be fine. An innumerable amount of maps in zdoom-hexen format have already been released without any problems.

But are they standalone wads? (not needing the parent wad to run them) This seems to be a tight spot. And the ACC i'm using is randys version, but its still part of ravens tools and subject to their lisensing.

Doesn't the GNU GPL say anything that derives from a GNU GPL has to be licsenced under the GUN GPL as well?

depends at what point the GPL came into the code. For doom, it was several years after its initial release under the persistence of ling. By that point, zdoom had already acquired its hexen map format and couldn't be renewed under gpl because of raven's terms of use for its code. (and why these guys remain silent on the issue is simply beyond me)

i don't know about ZDooM, but Sonic Robo Blast II (http://www.srb2.org) uses Legacy and doesn't require you to have any additional WADs (srb2.srb is actually an IWAD file)....
But they do have the source code in the archive in the installation directory...
There's also Chex Quest 1 and 2 for Windows (http://www.tucows.com/preview/319445) that seems to violate all kinds of things, but nobody seems to care!

ASh wrote:but nobody seems to care!

Unfortunately, in the case of Foreverhood, the IGF seem to care.

I meant the distribution, not the competitions...
Yes, it's sad that such a game will not be featured in IGF, but I say it's quite possible to distribute Foreverhood without requiring people to have original DooM WADs as Sonic Robo Blast II does (Excellent WAD I tell you!).

If I recall FreeDoom is a full Doom 2 IWAD and with that people can play PWADs for Doom 2 without ever buying the game.

In any case, What I heard is that Ska can distribute the game (perhaps making money from the IWAD, but I'm not TOO sure on that) but can't make money off the engine. Also I offered donation which would be more or less payment for services rather than engine or other goods, but it was declined for the most part. I fully support this project and am still waiting hardcore on it.

Perhaps i should clarify a few things:

Concerning the raven lisense paranoia:
Raven releases its code under a standard EULA which prohibits "New games" from being made from their resources (read the lisense sometime, and keep in mind this is the LEGAL document that states what we are allowed to use the code for. It is very misleading). I panic because we (the community) use portions of ravens code (zdom-hexen map format and a modified ACC) and begin to think that this lisense is prohibiting me from making foreverhood as a "new game". It turns out that this was all a paranoid confusion that set in after i was disqualified from the igf and was reading through all of zdooms lisenses to make sure i wasn't missing anything else. Raven has even released this blurb concerning their views on thie lisense issue. Crisis averted.

The disqualification from this IGF.
Yes, i was booted. It sucks, but life goes on. There isn't really anything i can do to enter back into it because you need commercial rights inorder to WIN the money. Its right there in the rules which i neglected to read because i was more concerned about making a great game, not the legality of what i was doing.

Now here is what i have learned:
Zdoom will NEVER be a GPL engine. This is because it allows randy to easily pull code from other locations as well as use 3rd party libraries like fmod. The portions of non-gpl code is too large to consider cutting (namely heretic and hexen support, the build code which includes the new polymost renderer by ken silverman as well as the entire fmod sound library) Furthermore, Ken silverman turned me onto this document sighting the dangers he sees in the GPL lisense. (some of which i agree with, but don't see it applicable to doom basted on the community ethics we have).

So where does this leave me?
Working on foreverhood. Thats it, nothing has really changed except the fact that i almost got somewhere in a big gaming competition where i was a clear underdog the whole time. It tickles the ego and makes it weep all at the same time, but makes me proud to be committed to such a unique project.

Furthermore:
In two weeks i'll be moving from my hometown on long island NY into Lancaster city PA. I got an opportunity to be part of an artist community where i will be surrounded by creative talent in a place i, as a recent colledge grad, can afford on a low budget income. Hopefully the projects pace will speed up, as i will be moving closer to some of my other members of the foreverhood project who are excited to be more active in the project. The downside is i'm losing my internet connection for a while (which is a good thing really) so hopefully this will explain things if i'm not around for extended periods of time.

hope this sheds some light on recent and future events.

Well, what can I say? Good luck, man!
Competitions are not all that important - great games on the other side are important (there are not many of them now)!
Surround yourself with creative people - it will benefit Foreverhood for sure!
There's nothing to do on the Island anyway!
And loosing internet connection for a while is a good thing - you will have more time to work on Foreverhood!
We all will be waiting to see some progress in future!

Good to see that you have come to a very level-headed conclusion over this issue. Good luck with the continued work on the project and your move.

Skadoomer wrote: Furthermore, Ken silverman turned me onto this document sighting the dangers he sees in the GPL lisense. (some of which i agree with, but don't see it applicable to doom basted on the community ethics we have).

Interesting article. It shows most of the problems I have with the GPL but goes a little too far IMO.

One example where the GPL is bad:

Imagine someone develops a library and wants to offer it free of charge to developers of free software but doesn't want others to use it in products they charge money for. Due to the broad outlines of the GPL such a library cannot be written! It is completely impossible to do it GPL compatible but prevent exploitation of it. GPL requires commercial rights so our poor programmer is completely screwed.

But thanks to the community sticking to this retarded license there is no hope of change. As the author states it is a fundamentally communist piece of work with strong vampiric attitudes.

But the bottom line is that the GPL is *not* a free license.