Porting Games

Hello!
I’m sure most of u r porting masters.
I wanna port a game “Sven Bomwollen” to linux. Is it legal to port the
game? I will include Phenomedia (creator of the original game) logos and
so on. But I think my port will be open source.

Thank U.

I forgot to add:
I have no sources of the game and trying to write them myself. I know
it’s hard, but i’m so much interesting in.

Depends on the license of the original game. It is highly unlikely that
you could ‘port’ it legally, and it would also be illegal to re-use the
original game’s artwork (I assume it has artwork :^) ).

Of course, if you received permission from them (e.g., in the form of a
license granting you permissions to port or clone the game), then you’ll
be alright. As for whether that code would be allowed to be Open Source
would be up to them. (Doubtful, unless they’re ‘into’ the Open Source
scene, and feel their game’s lifespan has ended, and it’s okay to
’open it up’ now…)

Unfortunately, not really a question for this list, so don’t expect too
much response! (Or, if you get it, others will yell to move it to another
list ;^) )

Good luck!

-bill!On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 08:07:07PM +1100, E$h wrote:

Hello!
I’m sure most of u r porting masters.
I wanna port a game “Sven Bomwollen” to linux. Is it legal to port the
game? I will include Phenomedia (creator of the original game) logos and
so on. But I think my port will be open source.

I have done this in a number of cases. See:

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/

I have received a few comments in the past… “Bug Squish” was an
homage to “Blood Suckers” on the Mac (though I hadn’t played it in a few
years when I wrote my version). The folks who wrote it just said
"I guess it’s flattering", and didn’t really mind I had cloned it. :slight_smile:

And I wrote a Tetris-style game for the Atari 8-bit back in 1993.
In 1998 I got a cease-and-desist letter. (Morons :wink: )

-bill!On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 08:13:14PM +1100, E$h wrote:

I forgot to add:
I have no sources of the game and trying to write them myself. I know
it’s hard, but i’m so much interesting in.

— E$h wrote:

Hello!

Yo.

I’m sure most of u r porting masters.

Is that a fact…? News to me…

I wanna port a game “Sven Bomwollen” to linux.

Ok…

Is it legal to port the game?

If you don’t know, the answer is probably no.

I will include Phenomedia (creator of the
original game) logos and
so on.

Which means it’ll be infringing on their intellectual
properties, so again, probably no to the legality of
the port.

But I think my port will be open source.

You’re…not sure?

Thank U.

Uhh… yeah…

I forgot to add:
I have no sources of the game and trying
to write them myself.

You dont have the source code to work with… what you
are trying to do is known as a “clone” rather than a
"port" which works with the ORIGINAL source code.

I know it’s hard, but i’m so much interesting in.

Alas, nobody has unlimited amounts of time, and there
are many projects that people want to be completed
that they too are interested in. You are asking for a
full blown clone of a game that may run with Wine or
WineX, or may at some future point.

A game I might add I am having difficulty finding
ENGLISH information on that I can read.

I highly doubt anyone here is interested, but I could
be mistaken. I’d suggest trying @ Gamedev.net but,
well, you’re more likely to just get laughed at (since
there are TONS of this kind of thing – virtually no
information about the game, wanting help, etc…) plus
from what I gather there’s a high chance of it being
illegal to create this port (especially since I did
read in one english snippet from someone who had
played the game something about using a demo
version??)

Most people who play games dual boot their machines
anyways. IMHO, any time working on this project would
be better spent working on Wine, or other
windows-program-running-on-linux projects, if you must
have it for Linux.

Especially since there are allready people working on
it, so you can have some help.

-Mike__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

Hello!

I’m sure most of u r porting masters.
I wanna port a game “Sven Bomwollen” to linux. Is it legal to port the
game?

It should be okay (there are ports of quite a lot of games, after all),
as long as you don’t

…include Phenomedia (creator of the original game) logos and
so on.

Um, yeah, that. You can’t do that, without their permission. Copying the
game concepts (“cloning” the game) should be okay, but you can’t use
their artwork! Or names, or level designs… anything they have
copyright on. Note that most Linux clones have their own artwork, names
etc. (Forzen Bubble, for example). If you’re thinking of commercial
ports, like Loki did, they were exactly that: commercial.

But I think my port will be open source.

That’s great, but respect people’s copyrights! Neither being gratis nor
libre will allow you to circumvent that.

Bye,

Ben

Depends on the license of the original game. It is highly unlikely >that
you could ‘port’ it legally, and it would also be illegal to re-use the
original game’s artwork (I assume it has artwork :^) ).

Sven will be ready this summer (hope in June). I’m working in
cooperation with Phenomedia. But Linux version will not be open source.
I’m sorry but this because all rights for the game belong to Phenomedia
and they decided not to open the source code.

Evgeny Bronnikov (2004-05-20 05:11):

Depends on the license of the original game. It is highly unlikely >that
you could ‘port’ it legally, and it would also be illegal to re-use the
original game’s artwork (I assume it has artwork :^) ).

Sven will be ready this summer (hope in June). I’m working in
cooperation with Phenomedia. But Linux version will not be open source.
I’m sorry but this because all rights for the game belong to Phenomedia
and they decided not to open the source code.

split the game engine from the game logic and game content
make the game engine (based on sdl?) os but not the rest.–
best regards
ionas