White Daimon said:
I think so aswell. As Johan refers to them as expansions and boosterpacks. If a guy get his hands on the sourcecode then he still lack all the game files.. He can only build the executable.
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I think so aswell. As Johan refers to them as expansions and boosterpacks. If a guy get his hands on the sourcecode then he still lack all the game files.. He can only build the executable.
And then download a mod or two.cool-toxic said:I think so aswell. As Johan refers to them as expansions and boosterpacks. If a guy get his hands on the sourcecode then he still lack all the game files.. He can only build the executable.
White Daimon said:
You can make the executable, you'd still need the game files. (graphics and database files)
Perfect idea. Beautiful. When you don't have time, or the nerve to copy and paste one more thing!! (and more, much more) we can do it for you, plus also, create the "'perfect" game. These definetely (sorry I skimmed your first post) would be live only on gamersgate. Wouldn't look good for Paradox selling fan made games at the store. In all honesty I wouldn't be doing any at all of this myself, but trust me there will be tons of people that will Paradox Paradox rah rah rah... Paradox Paradox rah rah.....
Paradox Paradox rah rah rah... Paradox Paradox rah rah.....
A most wonderful idea ! Can't wait to put my programming skills to work on something else besides ERP's !
Vladek said:
Well I hope JOhan will have the time to answer that one :
1) what will be the licence: GNU? or something more like outsourcing + NDA (I mean Paradox keep the right on the code, I can not divulgue or use for another purpose, but I can modify as much as I want as long as copy of modification are transmitted to Paradox)? Or will it be a fee to pay and the licence is fully (?) transmitted to me?
2) It say addon and booste pack, what about more important modif such as more related to the core programming ( forgot most of HOI 1 , but I do remenber it was various problem with brigades and tech tree)? Will it be up our talents or will be up to some specifications?
3) Who must I contact for that? (my computer for professional reasons is online 24 hours a day, but for the same reasons I come here rarely). Shall I pm someone of the team?
Anyway, for the very same reasons as explain in point 3 I would be glad is the answer is given by PM.
Thanks in advance
I imagine we'd see a lot more quality mods a lot quicker if the source and result were free. I'm pretty skeptical of charging for fan packs. I suppose that's not really an option if you've got any proprietary stuff in your code though.
I'd also be a little concerned about who gets paid what when it comes to the mod group. There's a lot of potential for DRAMA. If twelve fans work on a mod, but two do the vast majority of the work do they all split the mod profits equally? Who decides? I doubt Paradox can or would want to police this. As soon as you introduce money you introduce the potential for a lot of anger, in-fighting, and weirdness. Particularly, introducing money to a internationally distributed, ever changing group of fans who aren't, in any sense, a legal company or organization.
Also, if it's a free fan pack, people don't have much room to complain about bugs and problems. But, if you're selling a product on your webpage there are certain (reasonable) expectations of technical support and bug fixing, which Paradox couldn't supply and the fan group might not be able to keep up with (assuming they don't dissolve after release).
If it were up to me, I'd say, yeah, only give the code to organized groups who sign the NDAs, but don't pay them and don't charge for them on Gamer's Gate. Anything else strikes me as a bad idea with a lot of potential for angry fans and frustrated consumers.
Not to rain on the parade, but it seems to me fan mods should remain a labor of love, not a for-profit endeavor, for a lot of reasons.
I'd also be a little concerned about who gets paid what when it comes to the mod group. There's a lot of potential for DRAMA. If twelve fans work on a mod, but two do the vast majority of the work do they all split the mod profits equally? Who decides? I doubt Paradox can or would want to police this. As soon as you introduce money you introduce the potential for a lot of anger, in-fighting, and weirdness. Particularly, introducing money to a internationally distributed, ever changing group of fans who aren't, in any sense, a legal company or organization.
Also, if it's a free fan pack, people don't have much room to complain about bugs and problems. But, if you're selling a product on your webpage there are certain (reasonable) expectations of technical support and bug fixing, which Paradox couldn't supply and the fan group might not be able to keep up with (assuming they don't dissolve after release).
If it were up to me, I'd say, yeah, only give the code to organized groups who sign the NDAs, but don't pay them and don't charge for them on Gamer's Gate. Anything else strikes me as a bad idea with a lot of potential for angry fans and frustrated consumers.
Not to rain on the parade, but it seems to me fan mods should remain a labor of love, not a for-profit endeavor, for a lot of reasons.
Fintilgin said:
They can always make a deal with well organized teams from one country.
Ahhh, I think you're making more it than you need to. Push-comes-to-shove, the group could form a quick LLC. Members sign the NDA with Paradox both indiviually and as the LLC. Payments go to the LLC from Paradox and the LLC deals with it.
No, this is a pretty simple thing and a good idea. Couple of other companies have opened up the source code for old games. This is the first time I've heard about formalizing the released products though. Nice step forward.
No, this is a pretty simple thing and a good idea. Couple of other companies have opened up the source code for old games. This is the first time I've heard about formalizing the released products though. Nice step forward.
What Fintilgin says touches on some concerns I have too, that would have to be addressed. Any team would all have have to sign a contract which would define the renumeration, obligations, etc. This would have to be carefully designed.
My concern is for Paradox in administering this situation across the world through the faceless internet. For a start, how does the legal side work? PI is in it's country and people reside in their own countries. Which set of laws apply? And any team is likely to be scattered across several countries.
What if something goes wrong? Is there potential for PI to have a lot of problems? Legal action is expensive. What if a selected team breaks their NDA and the contract? Paradox must consider these possibilities and crunch some numbers on the potential costs and liabilities. How would they pursue the contract breakers?
I think this scenario is unlikely given the devoted fanbase the Paradox games seem to have. But I also think any screening process Paradox creates for this idea must be very vigorous to minimise the chance of it happening.
I think the best approach is to use established mod teams who have a strong proven track record and who develop a serious and potentially successful proposal.
Moving on, I'm personally mainly interested in the HOI2 game engine for science fiction work. If I still have energy and time for it after the Fallout mod is done...
The other possible game idea I find interesting would be a fantasy world. I'm unsure what PI game engine would be best for that.
One last thing, in mods people can at times use material that is under copyright in a non profit fan mod way. Naturally, the copyright holder could ask for it to be removed, no question. In developing a game under this proposal, this would not be possible and everyone would have to be very careful in this regard. So in that sense, this would be a much harder project than working on a game mod. At least that's true if your idea contains graphics or multimedia content. You would need an artist in the team to create new content.
An alternative could be PI to offer it's own art staff for an increase in the share of profits, perhaps? What do you think of that idea, Johan?
Cheers,
Sword
My concern is for Paradox in administering this situation across the world through the faceless internet. For a start, how does the legal side work? PI is in it's country and people reside in their own countries. Which set of laws apply? And any team is likely to be scattered across several countries.
What if something goes wrong? Is there potential for PI to have a lot of problems? Legal action is expensive. What if a selected team breaks their NDA and the contract? Paradox must consider these possibilities and crunch some numbers on the potential costs and liabilities. How would they pursue the contract breakers?
I think this scenario is unlikely given the devoted fanbase the Paradox games seem to have. But I also think any screening process Paradox creates for this idea must be very vigorous to minimise the chance of it happening.
I think the best approach is to use established mod teams who have a strong proven track record and who develop a serious and potentially successful proposal.
Moving on, I'm personally mainly interested in the HOI2 game engine for science fiction work. If I still have energy and time for it after the Fallout mod is done...
The other possible game idea I find interesting would be a fantasy world. I'm unsure what PI game engine would be best for that.
One last thing, in mods people can at times use material that is under copyright in a non profit fan mod way. Naturally, the copyright holder could ask for it to be removed, no question. In developing a game under this proposal, this would not be possible and everyone would have to be very careful in this regard. So in that sense, this would be a much harder project than working on a game mod. At least that's true if your idea contains graphics or multimedia content. You would need an artist in the team to create new content.
An alternative could be PI to offer it's own art staff for an increase in the share of profits, perhaps? What do you think of that idea, Johan?
Cheers,
Sword
Fintilgin said:
And that's how it will continue to be, whether the products are being sold on Gamersgate or not.If you don't have your heart in it, you'll never be able to create anything that will go for a commercial product imo.
And at any rate, this isn't something you'll get rich doing - so you shuold still only do it if you have fun doing it and have spare time for it.
Getting your hands on the source code will open up a wide range of possibilities modders have dreamt about for years. If you have the will, you can make this work. I'm certain.
I think releasing HoI1 source code but not HoI2 one would be a bad move. 95% of the HoI1 community already switched to HoI2/DD/Armageddon. And currently active modders might not wish to go back to the older game, having to re-learn and/or remod their most recent work. HoI2 was released three years ago, the last title using the old 2D engine.
P3D said:
At the opposite, I think that would be a good thing, allow me to explain why :
1) HOI 1 was a promissing game, one of the possible development became HOI 2, but still there is possible to develop it in somethingelse.
2) Only the techtree was byitself a fine piece of work (or a fine piece of sh*** depending how you mastered it) and can allow us to make fancy things
3) what do you forgot (but not I) is the core prog is the same for EU1, EU 2, HOI 1 .... it mean as soon as you will have the hands on the core prog (legally I mean, not with assembler hacking) you will be able to better understand all those problem that bother us in HOI 2(exemple) and eventually propose a patch (such as NTL) that can modify the HOI2.exe.
4) The idea is to increase the life of old games (HOI 1 is an old game, release in 2003), HOI 2 is still alive (DD, Arma ...). Paradox have also to make money, they will not (noone will) give away for free the source of recent games.
5) By that move, I believe we can see what we saw 10 years ago when Paradox (Johan) and the inventor of EU (Philippe) created the concept of those kind of games : a game opem enought to allow a strong community to create mods easilly. That move is a back to basic, basics that made a small and local firm becoming a major player in the industry. The last 3 years I complained heavily Paradox to becoming only another money maker, by that move I feel strongly Paradox restoring what was its major force : allow tons of fans to modify what they did to make it even better . It's called SYNERGY.
ericB said:
Don't know, I personally do not want to return to HoI1. A magnitude more work would have to be done to get it to the same level as HoI2. I prefer 'Movement is Attack' of HoI2 myself.
Also keep in mind that releasing the sourcecode would not hold people from buying the base Armageddon/DD program. As I understand Johann's proposal, the most probable way of he implementation would be like Armageddon. You'd still need the original program/registry to install the modded version, so it won't decrease HoI2 purchases at all.
I myself played HOI 1 a lot, but I really didn't get into the 'Movement is Attack' system of HOI 2. That was the major reason I didn't like the game. I started 5 - 6 games, played a few years, but never finished a game. Trading resources also was quite annoying, because it seemed that once you accepted a deal the partner might cease it in a few days.
A thing that I found to be too much of micromanagement in both games was naval and aerial management. Perhaps that can be abstracted a bit or something.
HOI 1 tech tree was awesome, and the idea of blueprints in HOI 2 was good improvement. Maybe these can be combined together in one game.
I also would like a more detailed production system in a WW2 game. Just like the one is used in Victoria. I think pops wouldn't be needed in this kind of game though.
A thing that I found to be too much of micromanagement in both games was naval and aerial management. Perhaps that can be abstracted a bit or something.
HOI 1 tech tree was awesome, and the idea of blueprints in HOI 2 was good improvement. Maybe these can be combined together in one game.
I also would like a more detailed production system in a WW2 game. Just like the one is used in Victoria. I think pops wouldn't be needed in this kind of game though.
Hive said:
Personally I think all the will in the world can't save something if you don't look to your foundation. If the framework this is introduced makes it too difficult, no matter how much the modders want to mod, they will do other things more rewarding to them.
Not that I'm saying this will happen, it's more that I think we shouldn't get carried away with the enthusiasm here.
fasquardon
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