1480 réponses à ce sujet

[rjshae]

If you put together a formal news notice once it's available, we could post that around to a number of gaming sites. (For example, RPGNews, ENWorld, RPGPlanet, &c.)

[laxmanstretch]

That baldur's gate website did actually have me very exited about baldur's gate remake in NWN2 (and a little worried that the £-signs might be flashing up for the license holder) .

As can be seen from the website stunt, a recognized symbol and the theme tune (very little info to go on) very quickly stirred up a storm in a tea cup.

Is there something similarly mysterious that can be done to advertise your mod?

I like the idea of hitting the big forums with info.

[steelfire_dragon]

not to speak for the bgr team.... but I doubt that would be legal....

[BartjeD]

Why not? As long as the team isn't making money from it it's perfectly legal. They haven't been told to stop making the mod and advertising it or word of mouth entheusiams shouldn't be a problem at all.

Can't wait for this one!

[steelfire_dragon]

ummm not sure on that, but mind you a while back there was this company that made fierarie( heck I cant spell it, high end sports car) kits that were so close to the original, the orginal company sued them out of buisness for it....

thing is, Bethseda was sueing and may still be sueing the scrolls people over copyright infridgments siting that it could be confusing or some such.

*IF* WOTC plans on and or allows a company to rerelease BG than they could give a cease and descease notice and well I'm sure you get the point.

and one more thing, I'm no lawyer so....

CW: thats a good question......


could wager they signed an NDA if they were....

[PJ156]

I do not think any issue lies within remaking the game. No money will change hands and I think that might prove sufficient for the owners to not intervene. It is simply a fan mod of a game which is unlikely to make the developer any money in the future.

Where I see potential issue is in the resources that the team might have used. Images, music and voice sound files all have owners and copyright associated with them. Using these may well stir someone to action but I doubt it personally.

I wonder if Danny Kleinman's legs might come looking for me

PJ

[slowdive.fan]

He's done nothin' to you....ant music...

[Arkalezth]

PJ156 wrote...

Where I see potential issue is in the resources that the team might have used. Images, music and voice sound files all have owners and copyright associated with them. Using these may well stir someone to action but I doubt it personally.

Well, no idea if there's any law preventing it (I guess it would depend on the country too, I've seen some crazy laws about music here), but it's been done for years in modules. Just from the top of my head, A Hunt Through the Dark uses BG's music, and Perchance to Dream (NWN1 module) uses a track from Pirates of the Caribbean (cool combat music, BTW). So, there's been some precedents.

[drechner]

Chaos Wielder wrote...

Question: Has the team *ever* been contacted by an official corporate individual? Curious, mostly.

No.

To be very clear, Baldur's Gate: Reloaded is a an entirely free mod for NWN2 that celebrates Baldur's Gate though a remake of the campaign; we are doing this for our awesome NWN2 community, for the devs that made Baldur's Gate, and lastly, ourselves. 

Anyway, as most of you have guessed, the website is in no way related to BGR, though it definitely does peak my interest quite a bit. I loved and continue to love both Baldur's Gate I and II--the more people exposed to these great games (or a third?), the better!

Seeing that website though does remind me that having a website for a project is a very good idea. Perhaps we'll make one...

[jonathanoomen]

Regarding legality and being sued over BGR. BG games are still being sold on websites like gog.com and others, even recently there was a compilation of (A)D&D being released. My point is that original company is still making money from original releases and this remake can 'divert' people from buying BG and playing BGR mod instead.
Financial losses, let's go to court!

I sort of doubt it (and hope it will not happen!) but stranger things happened.

Also using contents like music etc. can be problematic. Whoever owns rights to this music could sue. It would be interesting who owns these rights. In some cases an artist who composed it may have something to say about it's usage and this *may* be another way of obtaining a consent to use it.
I guess it would be ok to use nwn2 music as this was embedded in a game and toolkit. Also there is a lot of quality 'game' music available on websites like Jamendo etc. Artists there may be wiling to allow you to use their music for this project. Scott Buckley mentioned on this forum some time ago has quite a few really nice songs ready to be 'soundtracked', maybe he would allow for them to be used?
Having said that, I rally, really want to hear original music in BGR. This is just an idea for 'what if...' scenario.

[TheBalzan]

If you know how maybe a register check could determine if the player has Baldur's Gate installed on their system. Thus any potential claims of limiting the rights owners is minimised. The team working on Baldur's Gate Redux plans on having something similar in their mod.

[jonathanoomen]

@TheBalzan: Good idea, but may not be enough, as you are redistributing a content from BG. The registry check is ok, but may not solve all the problems. Only thing I can think of is an installer that would find a BG installation and convert music files to bmu's and put them in the right folder, without including them in the final release. This will ensure that original music is only available to the people that do have BG copy anyway.
This might solve issues with copyrighted content (at least music). But this would still leave the issue of 'financial losses' due to people not buying original game that is still available to buy and playing BGR instead.

[The Fred]

BartjeD wrote...
Why not? As long as the team isn't making money from it it's perfectly legal.

PJ156 wrote...
I do not think any issue lies within remaking the game. No money will change hands and I think that might prove sufficient for the owners to not intervene.

 
Technically, I think that since you're effectively distributing the game for free to people who haven't necessarily bought it, it's something akin to piracy (at least if you are using text and so forth word-for-word as it is in BG, and so forth). However, I sincerely doubt anyone will actually pull anyone up for it.

The new BG website is certainly interesting. Certainly rumours are abounding, but they're nothing more than that at the moment. It could just as easily be nothing. I'm not sure where they would go with a BG3 (though I believe one was originally planned), though I hope that if they do make one, they at least use the Infinity Engine instead of these sucky "modern" systems. They don't make 'em like they used to.

[Squire]

I think that, considering this is on the forum hosted by the company responsible for the original game, and given that Bioware generally take an active role in forum posting anyway, it's very unlikely that Bioware will have no knowledge whatsoever about this project, and I therefore believe that if there was a potential legal issue with it, someone would have said something by now.

Besides, Bioware should be flattered that their game is a) considered worthy of so much time and effort devoted to a remake and so many people are so excited about it. Immitation is the highest form of flattery, after all. 8)

[kamal_]

The Fred wrote...

BartjeD wrote...
Why not? As long as the team isn't making money from it it's perfectly legal.

PJ156 wrote...
I do not think any issue lies within remaking the game. No money will change hands and I think that might prove sufficient for the owners to not intervene.

 
Technically, I think that since you're effectively distributing the game for free to people who haven't necessarily bought it, it's something akin to piracy (at least if you are using text and so forth word-for-word as it is in BG, and so forth). However, I sincerely doubt anyone will actually pull anyone up for it.

The new BG website is certainly interesting. Certainly rumours are abounding, but they're nothing more than that at the moment. It could just as easily be nothing. I'm not sure where they would go with a BG3 (though I believe one was originally planned), though I hope that if they do make one, they at least use the Infinity Engine instead of these sucky "modern" systems. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Considering in the source of the page is says "Raise Dead: Infinity Engine", you don't have much to worry about.

It'll be a HD remake of BG, supporting modern resolutions, maybe better animations. So sayeth the wise Alaundo....

[Squire]

Just been looking at the screenshots. Looking good!

I have one suggestion, however: in Baldur's Gate itself, there are several pavilion tents. However, they appear to be set up on what looks like cobblestones. I've stayed in, and helped to erect, pavilion tents before - they are pegged out with wooden pegs. They can't stand up on their own, without being pegged out, and you can't hammer wooden pegs into cobblestones. So my suggestion is: change that part of the area, where the pavilions are set up, to be grass/mud (mud is more likely as people would have trampled the grass by now). Everything else is looking awesome - it's just that things like that stand out a mile to people like me. :-)

The new BG website is certainly interesting. Certainly rumours are abounding, but they're nothing more than that at the moment. It could just as easily be nothing. I'm not sure where they would go with a BG3 (though I believe one was originally planned), though I hope that if they do make one, they at least use the Infinity Engine instead of these sucky "modern" systems. They don't make 'em like they used to.

They won't do that. A dated two-dimensional sprite based game won't stand up in today's market. Even if a hundred people here say "I'd buy it!", that isn't enough to justify the investment. Besides, I don't think I'd want a BG3 now, because any future D&D based games will have to be made with 4th edition rules... *shudder*

[moodymage]

I suspect it will be a mobile platform release. If it is I'll be massively disappointed.

I know you can play BG2 through some Android phones already...

[cliff_g]

So there is an update on the Baldurs Gate Website. Apparently they are re-releasing an "Enhanced" version but there is no word on the platform. Hopefully they will not try to interfere with this release.

[The Fred]

moodymage wrote...
I know you can play BG2 through some Android phones already...

GemRB.

This "Baldur's Gate Enhanced" looks pretty cool, but I feel as though they are storming in and looking to do more or less what GemRB have been doing for a while. I just hope they don't step on any toes (see here).

Squire wrote...
They won't do that. A dated two-dimensional sprite based game won't stand up in today's market.

Perhaps, but if you ask me, I'd rather have a high-quality parallax game than a shoddy 3D game. It's way harder to make 3D actually look good.

Squire wrote... 
...any future D&D based games will have to be made with 4th edition rules... *shudder*

Any new Baldur's Gate game will have to be made with 2nd edition rules, obviously. 

[The Fred]

moodymage wrote...
I suspect it will be a mobile platform release. If it is I'll be massively disappointed.

It's a remake of IE, so probably not. Besides, apparently  "a PC release [is] almost certain"

Remaking BG and then not letting people play it on PCs would be like... it would just be incredibly stupid.

[ZeshinX]

With the announced Enhanced Editions (BG1 & BG2), I'm hoping they leave this wonderful project alone. The last thing I was to see is a horde of lawyers come in and ruin this mod that I am super eager to play (I plan to buy the EE's as well as download and play this).

[The Fred]

I imagine that it's unlikely to interfere with this - beyond perhaps the fact that the potential for making more money from the game might mean they care more about distributing its content for free. Remakes like this are a bit of a grey area since as I said, I believe technically it's a bit dodgy but in reality, nobody cares enough or is mean enough to enforce that. It's far more likely to impinge upon GemRB (which by contrast is perfectly legal since it's an emulator which uses pre-existing files, but may suffer from competition) - what they should probably do is team up - but as far as a remake in a different platform (i.e. Aurora engine, 3rd Ed rules) goes, I wouldn't have thought there'd be sufficient overlap for it to matter.

In fact, this remake is raising publicity of the "Enhanced Edition" since we're now all discussing it.

[steelfire_dragon]

wotc would get their money out of this module regardless.


money spent on nwn2 and its expasions.....

[Squire]

ZeshinX wrote...

With the announced Enhanced Editions (BG1 & BG2), I'm hoping they leave this wonderful project alone. The last thing I was to see is a horde of lawyers come in and ruin this mod that I am super eager to play (I plan to buy the EE's as well as download and play this).

Actually, I'd have thought that with the announced enhanced editions, lawyers are MORE likely to come in and ruin this mod, because it means there's more potential for revenue to be lost. Perhaps someone from the team should find out where they stand with this before they go any further, as it might also be possible for Atari to wait until the mod's release, then sue the team for an estimate of the revenue that they can claim this project has cost them.

Maybe someone should also post links to this on Atari's forums too...that way, Atari won't be able to claim that they had no knowledge of this project, and (I think) will be required to give the team enough warning if they plan to take legal action.

But then, I'm no lawyer, so I can't know what action they're able/likely to take.