Infogrames' latest strategy statement. - Page 6

Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

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Teutooni
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Joined: 01 Dec 2007, 17:21

Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Teutooni »

AF wrote:Well I would be trolled if I put forward the outright action of booting TA content entirely from the official lobby server and from the forums, which is what it may come to. People will not accept a TA ban in the community at the moment. But this could be done. TA players would persist and find a way of continuing after complaining for a while and this project would be safe from Atari as a result.
Oh boy, if you only hinted you'd be willing to do such a blasphemy, you'd get a lot of flak.

If it comes down to C&D, spring will simply ditch TA and the TA community will go underground. There is absolutely no need for preventive measures imo. This talk is just a non-TA mod conspiracy to overthrow the rightful rule of *A! :P
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Anarchid
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Anarchid »

I wonder if what they did to Dracula would work. I mean, move from Transylvania to Germany, rename Vampire to Nosferatu... you get the idea, yes? CORE becomes like ROOT, ARM like HAND, and AK changes to Kalashnikov. :P

Also, pretty much the same case was "warcraft in space", where space marines became terran marines, and teh 'nids became the zergs. ^^
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KDR_11k
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by KDR_11k »

Don't you mean Warhammer -> WarCraft?
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Anarchid
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Anarchid »

Nonono, the "warhammercraft" -> StarCraft.

It's no secret that Blizzard intended to make their "warcraft in space" game in WH40K universe, but - were denied copyright. So, Tyranids became Zerg, Space Marines became Terran Marines, the plot got maed from scratch with Blizzard-specific thoroughness, and "warhammercraft" became Starcraft, probably the most influential RTS ever.

The bottom line: the concept, and even many tyranid units simply became Zerg, and that sufficed to avoid any copyright issues. Same as with Dracula.
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adin_panther
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by adin_panther »

KDR_11k wrote:
adin_panther wrote:... they want to relaunch Alone in the Dark. Sure.
They did, where have you been?
Yeah, but not the orininal DOS-Based game. It would be kind of pointless.
SpikedHelmet
MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by SpikedHelmet »

they mean relaunching franchises, ie they sound like they're planning at some point on making a Total Annihilation 2 or something continuing with that IP, in which case they'll come down on Spring like a hammer.
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KDR_11k
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by KDR_11k »

Anarchid wrote:Nonono, the "warhammercraft" -> StarCraft.

It's no secret that Blizzard intended to make their "warcraft in space" game in WH40K universe, but - were denied copyright. So, Tyranids became Zerg, Space Marines became Terran Marines, the plot got maed from scratch with Blizzard-specific thoroughness, and "warhammercraft" became Starcraft, probably the most influential RTS ever.

The bottom line: the concept, and even many tyranid units simply became Zerg, and that sufficed to avoid any copyright issues. Same as with Dracula.
No, Blizzard couldn't get the Warhammer Fantasy license for Warcraft. I don't think they even tried to get the WH40k one after circumventing the WHF one already and instead went straight for their own universe (while taking a few things from WH40k though I think their terrans are more like the ones found in Aliens or Starship Troopers which supposedly was the inspiration for the Tyranids too, could just as well say that Starcraft is Alien vs Predator: The RTS).
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zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by zwzsg »

So, is WH40K Alien vs Predator vs Terminator vs Terran Federation, or just space Lotr?
SpikedHelmet
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by SpikedHelmet »

Rogue Trader (the very first version of WH40K, released 1987) had very little similarity with Aliens, with various aliens like techno-punk monkeys, space frogs and star dwarves. When Tyranids came out they obviously were atleast physically inspired by Aliens... with termagaunts' elongated egg-shaped heads n stuff.
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Argh
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Argh »

The original 40K had Genestealers, which were totally different in visual design.

Tyranids, including the somewhat Alien-inspired visual design, were in the original 40K, see pages 200-201.
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smoth
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by smoth »

genestealers were part of space hulk. then there was rogue trader where the genestealer CULT... etc

genestealers are still part of the nids.
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Argh
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Argh »

Here, this actually tells the history of the development of the Genestealer / Tyranid idea better than I could. I don't have the old White Dwarf copies anymore, so I was glad somebody took the time to put this together:

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Genestealer

Of course... this 'site follows Games Workshop's canon guidelines... so there is NO MENTION OF THE SQUATS. GRRRRRR.
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Spawn_Retard
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Spawn_Retard »

I feel its pretty sad that spring will lose the ability to have *A mods without fear of a lawsuit

And what i hate about this situation is that CA will survive not by popularity but default of content. I hope Noize can find it in him to make a new model for each unit and of course change the unit name ect. before everything goes tits up.

What about the OTA maps? are they under fire also? or does this only apply to mod related content.
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BlackLiger
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by BlackLiger »

OTA maps are somewhat more ... fluidly conceptual. Yes, it looks like your old map, I liked the layout, so I made an equivalent. It's essentially fan-art.
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Spawn_Retard
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Spawn_Retard »

BlackLiger wrote:OTA maps are somewhat more ... fluidly conceptual. Yes, it looks like your old map, I liked the layout, so I made an equivalent. It's essentially fan-art.
couldn't you say that about the Units? that they are fan art that someone might have used in a mod.
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Anarchid
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Anarchid »

couldn't you say that about the Units? that they are fan art that someone might have used in a mod.
That's kinda precisely what i'm aiming at. Unless t3h TA mod in question actually uses the OTA datafiles, it can all be declared "fanart and stuff, and anyway all similarities with real persons are accidental" with minimal renamings. And besides, have they copyrighted the names of units and factions too, like GW have it with WH40K? Is it actually AK(c)(tm), or you can use the two letters for the assault rifle and not the kbot?
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Spawn_Retard
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Spawn_Retard »

So why doesn't Noize just make like 3 textures, colour all his units in those, release until you have some proper textures and avoir BA is kept alive at the cost of every unit looking grey or green ;P
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Peet
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Peet »

Spawn_Retard wrote:I feel its pretty sad that spring will lose the ability to have *A mods without fear of a lawsuit
It never had it in the first place...
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Spawn_Retard
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Spawn_Retard »

I guess your right peet, but what i mean is the idea that *A were free to do. You know that most of the people who change stuff with OTA based mods have no idea that it's illegal. These people have been living on a ticking time bomb that they have not noticed before. I mentioned some stuff in #main and most people gave negative comments and thought it was a lie that any lawsuit could come down on spring. I think if this was made more known to the spring community that spring could be underfire, i think we'd get a whole lot more interest in saving this engine
Tobi
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Re: Infogrames' latest strategy statement.

Post by Tobi »

TBFH I don't think Spring itself should have much fear of a lawsuit atm.
  • We renamed from TA Spring to Spring to make clear Spring != OTA remake long ago
  • We do not ship OTA content (SpringDownloader != Spring, and besides that we (I, at least) did not even know about the automatic download until zwzsg made the thread about it. I'm sure Licho will fix this bug now many OTA mods include OTA content.)
  • We do not promote playing OTA based mods over other mods.
  • Spring itself can be used and is used for playing entirely legal games (there are a number of complete, legal, and playable games around)
So at worst Spring is now in the category of P2P programs: you CAN use it for less legal stuff like playing OTA based mods (compare downloading mp3s / movies), like many probably do, but it's not MENT to play illegal games, and it CAN be used (and is used) to play legal games (compare downloading linux distros).

Therefore I think it would be silly to implement a CD check or a tool to create OTA datafiles from the OTA CD. This would just acknowlegde that Spring is ment to be played with OTA based mods only. Besides that, all non-OTA based mods would suffer from this, because it would be silly to implement a CD check that can simply be turned off by the mod.

For the same reason I think separating the forums into OTA based mods and non-OTA based mods is not a good idea: again this would give the OTA based mods a special position that could be explained as the Spring project supporting OTA based mods specifically. Which we don't, Spring is a mod/game agnostic project: Spring is a general purpose Real Time Strategy engine, and not yet another OTA clone.
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