/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General★

Legally it's kind of questionable, but in practice it happens often and usually no one gets hurt. Since your remake requires original assets, there's no damage done and there's very little legal ground for a lawsuit. On the other hand, if devs can prove that their gameplay is some sort of unique original work that is protected by copyright laws, then they can cancel your project, but I've never heard about that EXCEPT that one case with Warhammer.

Remakes I can recall: GODS, Amiga Knights, God Of Thunder, Lost Vikings, OpenJazz (Jazz Jackrabbit), OpenMW (TES3: Morrowind), Widelands (Settlers 2). I'm pretty sure there are hundreds or thousands of those around.

>>26145

I actually already tried that, but they wouldn't budge. They'll sell the development rights for it, but nothing less by the sounds of it.

I tried to explain to them that it would be a bonus for them as they would get to sell their assets, while someone else basically does their port for free. I gave them Doom as an example of a game that does this. They never got back to me.

>Remind them that it's a shitty Windows 3.1 game and $20 is better than nothing.

I did try that, but they didn't care. They attempted to sell me on their non-existent "updated" version of the game, that after at least 12-15 years of development, has never come out.

Apparently at some point in the last 3/4 years, they trashed all their work, and started a rewrite for Android. Then they went on to mention they'll port it to other systems, but I'd be waiting nearly 10 years.

>And why not just create a completely original knock-off?

>>26144

The game play is no where near unique, so I'm covered there.

I think that's what I'll do. I'll just write a knock-off with original assets, and then I'll write a converter to copy the assets to a new format.

>What game is it, out of curiosity?

I would mention it, but since this company is piss poor with customer privacy I'm reluctant. The reason I know this was because yesterday they named dropped a customer who bought one of the incomplete versions of the game. Yeah.

Had I known that, I would have used a fake name, but I was trying to be professional with them.

>>26143 (OP)

>The reason I ask is I've been unsuccessful and convincing a company to release the source code of a shitty old Windows 3.1 game they no longer sell so that it could be ported.

Legally you could just make a clone with the same features but custom code and art assets. Then you own 100% of it and you can tell that company to fuck right off. Open source it if you really want to stick it to them.

I'd abandon the emulation angle, if I was you. It's an extra unnecessary step.

>>26145

>If they don't want to, remind them that it's a shitty Windows 3.1 game and $20 is better than nothing.

To be fair there might be costs associated. E.g. they might need to have someone go over the code and ensure it's not libeling anyone in the comments, doesn't contain shit they licensed from someone else and copied in there instead of keeping it segregated etc.

It's usually legal as long as it's clean-room.

By that, I mean you can't disassemble the original executable and recreate the logic and API calls. You have to either have somebody else do that and describe it to you so you can program it (which is how ReactOS is being developed), or just make it from scratch.

Using the game's data files is usually on the up-and-up, as long as you aren't distributing them yourself (ie. you require that either the user owns a legal copy of the original game, or uses free assets that you may make and distribute yourself, as with independent Doom games).

This is how OpenRC2, GemRB, Doom source ports, freeablo, TA-based Spring games, and OpenMW operate, among dozens of other engine reimplementations.

Oh, and for the record, it's not "emulation". It's what's known as an "engine reimplementation", since you aren't emulating anything. You are creating an engine that is supposed to behave the same way and is compatible with their data files.

Here's an incomplete list of engine reimplementations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreations

>>26157

>>26158

Ah, thanks! I fully understand now. That was the route I was planning on going.

I helped to reverse engineer a DOS game so that it could be ported to a modern OS. We put the source code on github.

Basically, no one cares.

>>26165

You cant always take that chance, especially for more recent more popular games. Just takes one overly zealous IP owner to bring down the ungodly lawsuit.

>>26157

IANAL, but maybe disassembling is even legal in the EU, to preserve compability:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#European_Union

I'd take them offering to sell the source-code as a hint that they probably won't care if you make something of similar nature to a game that could possibly be abandonware.

So just to give an update. I've managed to get them to agree to sell me a copy of the game.

Someone else responded to me saying that the files were compatible with the old version, and the incomplete updated version. I mentioned which version I had, and then was told that they were more than willing to sell me a copy of the game with the registered files since all I'd have to is use the registered files.

>>26193

That's my assessment too.

For now, I won't do a engine reimplementation, they said they'll release an Updated Updated version for sale, so I'll respect that for now. If it looks like the updated version will become vaporware like the last time they updated it, I'll do it then.

>>26200

Nice. Sounds like you're in luck! Keep us updated on how it goes.

>>26191

>It states that in general ... translation ... is unlawful

Does translation have a technical meaning here, or are fan translation patches literally against the law in the EU?

>>26143 (OP)

You cou just go the Hedgewars way.

Original Worms knock-off. Game is free and open source, so anyone autistic enought can just replace the graphic and sound assets with the ones from Worms' games if they want to.

>>26218

IANAL, but I guess that was about compiling/assembling/disassembling/etc

>>26143 (OP)

>The only offer they were willing to make was to sell me the source for a few thousand dollars.

Does the game have a lot of fans? You might be able to crowdfund that much.

>>26218

Yes. The text of a program is copywritten in the same way as the text of a book. Translating a book and distributing it without the original author's consent would be unlawful in the same way.

That's why you can clone a program, but you have to make sure that it is not derivative work (as in, it's built from the ground-up to function in the same way, but doesn't use any of the original code or violate any patents, and no video game would hold any important patents that would be violated with a clone).

>>26320

By "the text of a program" here, I mean the actual display text, not source code.