A Potentially Controversial Thought

[Delance]

Originally posted by TC
I didn't say anything about releasing things to the public.

I didn't say you did.

 

[TC]

Originally posted by Delance
And I didn't said you did.

Then what the heck did your response have to do with what you quoted?

 

[Delance]

Originally posted by TC
Then what the heck did your response have to do with what you quoted?

It's obvious the contract to make GBA version of WCP would include several the license of trademark and copyright properties. This fact simply has nothing to do with the topic, which is the eventual release of the source code for the vision engine.

BTW, what exactly was you questioning?

 

[TC]

I was making a sarcastic reference to the fact that EA hasn't been particularly co-operative at releasing any of the material it has from Prophecy to Raylight for use in the Gameboy port.

 

[Delance]

Originally posted by TC
I was making a sarcastic reference to the fact that EA hasn't been particularly co-operative at releasing any of the material it has from Prophecy to Raylight for use in the Gameboy port.

Really? I didn't know that. How absurd!

There’s a small distinction… One thing is to give the license to use certain stuff, another is to actually obtain the stuff. But it makes no sense to not cooperate in this case.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Originally posted by Delance
Well, to "give away" the source of prophecy would mean transfer the full rights. It's a totally different thing from releasing a version that fans could work to enhance the game for non-commercial purposes. In this case, they would still own the engine and could still license it to make the GBA Prophecy. Since the "free" engine source code could not be used for a commercial product like the WCP:GBA, it would not be relevant, at all.

It doesn't *prevent* them from producing ports... but it makes anyone interested in doing a port uninterested in licensing the rights. If your average person can make a version of Prophecy, why should anyone pay to do it professionally?

 

[Delance]

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
It doesn't *prevent* them from producing ports... but it makes anyone interested in doing a port uninterested in licensing the rights. If your average person can make a version of Prophecy, why should anyone pay to do it professionally?

Good question. Allow me to answer:

The average person can't. Even free release has a license – you only allow people to do things you are not commercially interested in. While it cannot phisically prevent people from doing ports, it can make such unauthorized ports illegal. And it can certainlty prevent such ports from being commercialy released.

A game port for the GBA and its commercial release requires a lot more than the mere right to use the vision engine.

Take the example of the NOLF source code. The game community can use it, but they can't make a NOLF for the GBA. Even if they could, they would not be able to launch it commercially, using the music, the story, the logo, and the trademarked name.

Besides, I thought they are not using the Vision engine on GBA, but instead a completely different game engine.