Tremulous 2

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aaagames/tremulous-2-0/

Looks like it was not a joke and them are really trying to make the game and sell it.

What you guys think, if a open source game is "abandoned" by its devs, can someone else use the name/ideas/gameplay/etc to make a close source game and sell it?

Them are not using the code, was them changed to Unreal Engine 3, and are "remaking" the models (sounds, etc) from scratch, it will look like a updated version of old models.

I know some open source "alternative" to some games, do something like that, just put a "Open[something/name]", and "copy" near everything from the original, of course, "remaking everything from scratch" too, but this is the first time i see a real life example of the reverser of "open sourcing" a game, feels so strange...

What you guys think?

quote: The whole design is made for motives of fighting humans against aliens. Humans are represented by blue color and aliens are represented by red. Look at our website and you will see this motive everywhere. For example on the website background image, or even on the „Tremulous 2“ logo, where is not just a color transition from blue to red, but also there are bullet holes in the blue side and on the contrary, red side contains cracks and scratches from aliens.

I'm glad they pointed out how artsy they are. I would never have been able to see and appreciate their motif without them pointing it out.

quote: Our target is to create one of the best games ever. We have big ambitions, because we want to achieve great things. We've chosen Kickstarter because we would like to begin with the full development as soon as possible and along our ideas.

These guys are doomed.

luckywaldo7
Nexuiz is a different case, all them are going to use is the name. Models, sound, etc, will all be very different, and it was Nexuiz dev that did "sell" the game to a "commercial enterprise".

In Tremulous case it was not the devs that did "sell" the game, i even hear them were against it...

Anarchid
Never played Natural Selection (2), but i did hear them have different gameplay, NS (2) is more about land control, and Tremulous is more of a "normal" fast placed FPS, where land control do not have importance.

But that not really the point i want to discuss, what i want to discuss is that i normally find ok to people try to remake a game in a open source way, was this is not for profit, and with time most try to differentiate/avoid infringement to the original IP, but in this case seem the contrary (thought in future the may differentiate more using custom skin, models, that them plan users to make/sell).

Saw the kickstarter page and was like "I've seen this before! Cubehamster played that game! Yeah, there was a battlesuit... and a jetpack... the buildings also look that way... Hm, was cube playing that game pre-beta?"
Now i read that this game is not related to Natural Selection and i'm like "what? they look exactly the same!".
Although thanks for reminding me of that name anarchid.

It looks right time for donation to http://unvanquished.net/ which are FLOSS and playable already.


Unvanquished is the Tremulous Fork from Tremulous community, and supposed to have several members making Tremulous 1.2 previously.


The game business model I want to have is that I can legally shared with friends without access fees - on this model, if fund come from donation, it may not look viable right now.
ToME4 used unequal way to archive donation income: its donation is more like purchase for treasures...
Looks like supporting FLOSS/Freeware(!) is the only way - for me.

@[1uP]archl
Yeah, i did try the alphas of Unvanquished, there some differences (acid tube is so big now, etc..), but still nice game.

Skasi
Did not know Allegiance existed, thx, will try it later.


No one did discuss the point i wanted to talk :P

hmm. it isn't special... market volume

Did you play Kobo Deluxe? The Kobo 2 is a commercial game with some open source code.
http://olofson.net/kobodl/

Kobo Deluxe is a popular handhold game if you don't know it.

And any successful project could be copied into business model and you saw a few Open Source games because there isn't many big names like tremulous, nexuiz.

Most Open Source games don't have large player base.

Other possible title: Wesnoth? I played lots of FLOSS games but not many are original or have player base / fame greater than the original.

You may find a zero-k commercial clone after zero-k players excess 20000.

quote: Creating same game would be nonsense.

Nah, Blizzard and many many other companies make a lot of money that way.

quote: You may find a zero-k commercial clone after zero-k players excess 20000.

Possibly, assuming you hire a composer to redo the music, or come to an agreement with Denny Schneidemesser for commercial use of what there is now. There may be other CC-NC content that Zero-K uses presently that would also have to be replaced or commercially licensed.

Of course, with a commercial remake comes some amount of production budget, so these likely wouldn't be major issues.

> Possibly, assuming you hire a composer to redo the music, or come to an agreement with Denny Schneidemesser for commercial use of what there is now.

Hire Denny to redo the music specifically for Zero-K. :)