Dune Legacy News

[stefanhendriks]

That would be excellent indeed! Also it will be interesting if they actually take enough notice and try out our clones. If they do get shitty, we can also just go fully legal using extractors.

Anyways, here is the next patch, this fixes two major bugs which could crash the game, and I beleive this version to be quite stable.

today i played your game (0.85b1 or something?) and i noticed that constantly my harvester was 'selected'. Atleast, graphicly it looked like i selected it, but i could not move it. Really strange at first.

I played my own map with 3 hard ai, and it was real fun. The problem was they are to slow with building their base. So, i actually had a large base and ready and only later they came with huge armies... which i could defeat easily.

I won, and i liked it. I play it a lot when not having to much time, and don't know what to do. I really hope you get a save function in... i often have to quit the game without saving.

[Gobalopper]

Only EA. ::)

I don't see any problems with Tony's setup as he requires you to extract the graphic files yourself first anyhow. And really its not like EA owns the Dune rights, they own Dune II, but we aren't providing that for download.

[stefanhendriks]

i understand, but even tony's setup could break a copyright law, since you 'extract' the data, which could be even going to far..

BUT, if EA claims that, they got themselves in a shitty corner, because there are TONS of programs extracting gfx (and legal, afaik) of DUNE, DUNE 2, C&C, RA, EMPEROR, etc...

:)

[vidiware]

it could be nice of you are using the same formats...

especially for units

[SpiceGuid]

Another minor bug report for 0.86b2

If an orni (but more likely with a group of 6+ ornis) is above an harvester then its caryall is freezed forever.

Seems like AI harkonnen is more dangerous than other houses, mainly because of quite accurate death-hands.

Would be great if AI could deploy MCV and build secondary bases.

[stefanhendriks]

i got a mail from the Dutch legal counsel concerning the Dune II source. They will not release it, never going to release it and Dune II is NOT abondonware. (and never will be). The counsel was a third party company speaking in behalf of them so concerning permission (legalizing) the creation of Dune II clones will require permission of EA.

So, i mailed EA once again with a final question about legalizing this matter. You will be updated asap.

[TonyD]

Dosen't sound promising :'(

Heres a new patch which should fix those issues talked about before.[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[XTF]

i understand, but even tony's setup could break a copyright law, since you 'extract' the data, which could be even going to far..

BUT, if EA claims that, they got themselves in a shitty corner, because there are TONS of programs extracting gfx (and legal, afaik) of DUNE, DUNE 2, C&C, RA, EMPEROR, etc...

:)

What rule would extracting the data violate?

If it's really a problem, separate the extractor and the game and don't attach your name to the extractor ;->

[stefanhendriks]

A little quote:

The Dune II software is a copyrighted work. This includes the software in

source code format. EA holds all intellectual property rights, including all

copyrights, in and to the Dune II software. As a consequence, EA is

exclusively entitled to publish and reproduce the software, wholly or

partially. Reproducing also includes the creation of (partial) adaptions of

the software. This is called a derivative work. Anyone wishing to publish or

reproduce the Dune II-software requires the permission of EA.

This is about creating a clone, and about the copyrights of Dune II.

I have been told that reading the dune 2 data would not do harm, but using it for your own intentions (extracting, playing a game, etc) will cause problems.

Olaf, you are right, its the only way to make it 'legal'.. erm, that would be, some anominous person writes a program and it is not included in the package of any dune 2 clone and such.

I still find it pretty strange, because reading and extracting ww data is done A LOT of times, look at C&C (the editors) and MIXMAN; even Olaf's utility would be violating a copyright law in this case, which is imo insane.

[Gobalopper]

If extracting data is suddenly bad then a lot of mods are going to be illegal. Tony if asked I would just say you are making a mod of Dune II, if thats illegal well then WW/EA is setting a very stupid example.

[SpiceGuid]

DUNE is a trademark of Dino De Laurentis Corporation.

So I fair your efforts for legal DuneII clones will be endless.

Unfortunately, may be having just sand and worms is enough to be illegal.

However no current DuneII clone makes money.

Being illegal does not entail proceedings.

And we live in a world where making money or not is a more relevant question than being legal or not.

[stefanhendriks]

Dosen't sound promising :'(

Heres a new patch which should fix those issues talked about before.

downloaded.

No, it does not sound promising, but at the end; did you hear anything from EA? I don't think they will go into any real trouble or hassle to remove your project from the web. At the end, i will put it down from the current server...

... but it will be on another website :D

[Cyborg]

I agree.

EA won't make trouble over such small things. I am sure they are just happy that someone uses that old game nowadays.

They wouldn't win much in taking action against you because you make a dune clone. They could loose popularity.

[TonyD]

No, it does not sound promising, but at the end; did you hear anything from EA? I don't think they will go into any real trouble or hassle to remove your project from the web. At the end, i will put it down from the current server...

... but it will be on another website :D

You guys are right, none of our projects have heard anything from them in regards to complaints and whatnots, so it seems to be ok for us to continue with what we are doing, and even release with all data included. At least for now anyway. Once we get a page up and running and more people know about it perhaps they will whine then.

[stefanhendriks]

right, the only thing i do not feel comfortable about is this:

Be advised that your actions thusfar, as well as your further intentions,

are illegal under Dutch copyright law

This was attended to me, so i am not sure what to do in my case.

[TonyD]

There is one last, final and LEGAL solution: use the original data files unmodified, and unextracted.

[Cyborg]

Well, if EA started to whine very much about you making a duneII clone, maybe a few headlines would pop up in some newspapers.

Who would be the biggest looser do you think? ::)

(You because you had to remove your game or EA who got hung out in the newspaper/internet because they whined over about a decade old game?)

[stefanhendriks]

even though Dune II is a decade old game, there are copyrights on it, and if EA does not act it actually has them for nothing.

I have been thinking about reading the gfx directly from the original files, but hence, why go into all that trouble?

Dune 2 clones will still exist whatever EA will do i think. Its nothing big, its not about money. All this investigation stuff for EA will cost money to them, and nothing to us. So what do they want to do?

[Frodo]

I seriously think that this is stupid. but copyright laws are copyright laws. I agree, continue to make your clone, they would not make a big deal over something so small, if they did, then they are as stupid as I think they are ;D.

[stefanhendriks]

on one side, they have to react. But on the other hand, they have to be very carefull because they can damage the mod community enormous.

Thats why i probably did not recieve a mail back yet, maybe they do not want my mails anymore...

... ever heared of 'no answer means yes'? :) I don't know the exact translation from Dutch, but in dutch we say "Zwijgen is toestemmen". Perhaps Olaf knows the exact correct english translation...

[XTF]

A little quote:

The Dune II software is a copyrighted work. This includes the software in

source code format. EA holds all intellectual property rights, including all

copyrights, in and to the Dune II software. As a consequence, EA is

exclusively entitled to publish and reproduce the software, wholly or

partially. Reproducing also includes the creation of (partial) adaptions of

the software. This is called a derivative work. Anyone wishing to publish or

reproduce the Dune II-software requires the permission of EA.

This is about creating a clone, and about the copyrights of Dune II.

I have been told that reading the dune 2 data would not do harm, but using it for your own intentions (extracting, playing a game, etc) will cause problems.

Olaf, you are right, its the only way to make it 'legal'.. erm, that would be, some anominous person writes a program and it is not included in the package of any dune 2 clone and such.

I still find it pretty strange, because reading and extracting ww data is done A LOT of times, look at C&C (the editors) and MIXMAN; even Olaf's utility would be violating a copyright law in this case, which is imo insane.

I don't think so. The exporter itself wouldn't be illegal, but redistributing the extracted data would be. So just distribute the exporter itself.

[SpiceGuid]

Back to topic:

It seems to me (but I have not extensively tested) that the last patch Dune Legacy 0.87 is quite stable in single player. It is mature and fun to play with. Which is already a milestone for a fan creation.

What is your own review?

[stefanhendriks]

to me, Dune Legacy is a great game to play with when i am at school and whenever i have my laptop with me.

Its fun, the AI is quite good although i found a bug in the pathfinding... (you can see it on the map i distributed on this topic)

In overall i say Tony did a good job, i hope the networking will be fixed asap, i tried it but i could not find any created games :(

[TonyD]

Thanks for your kind comments guys. :)

Stefen: The units tend to get stuck in certain sections because I have limited the power of the path searching algorithm. Every unit individualy calculates its own path, so if i turn it up any more it is likely to slow down on even the fastest of computers. The best, but difficult way to fix this is make units find a path as a group kinda like how age of empires and that do it. Perhaps I should make it as an option so the user can turn up the maximum path searching complexity or something.

[stefanhendriks]

In my clone, every unit also creates the entire path individualy. When selecting a group of units and ordering them to move the exact same location you could try grouping, but you should be aware that you can have multiple 'groups' around the map. E.g., like in C&C you can have Group 1 at top left, Group 2 at top right and Group 3 at bottom right. Ordering them to move to the middle will require to create atleast 3 different paths. And how do you know if Group 1 is not close to Group 3 and so forth.

When ordering multiple units to move to a certain location, you should check if units are close to each other, and how to 'link' (copy) paths to save cpu time. Or, you could let the path finder run in time mode instead of fps mode. So, you actually 'think' of the paths every cycle , and you do not use an own WHILE loop ... sounds complicated , i think its also pretty hard to do, but at the end possible , and even no extra cpu consumption.

(hence, you could send ALL units to a location, and the units will think of their paths in time mode , so that would not even be a slow down on the slowest possible machines). The only drawback on this is that units might react/act a little slow after an order to move over a big distance.