OFPEC Forum

Missions Depot => Mission Discussion => Topic started by: haroon1992 on 09 Aug 2010, 15:26:07

Title: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: haroon1992 on 09 Aug 2010, 15:26:07
Guys , I think most of you knows the mission by DevilChaser

Operation FireLord

which is a very interesting mission.
But due to some scripting problems , you can't play it without modifying the pbo.

I felt unhappy to see such a great mission failing to run smoothly everytime.
There are many errors in the mission, the most obvious one is when you have been ordered to board a vehicle.
Where you need to wait away from that vehicle before the two guys enter,otherwise, it means that you'ev screwed up everything and you need a restart (to see the ultra long cutscene again!)

That's why my brother gave up playing the mission.

I thought about fixing the mission, so i searched for DevilChaser in the members list and found no one with the name.

So I decided to ask the permission here...
It's not that I wanted to my name in the credits list of a mission scoring 9/10....
Its just that I want the community to have the opportunity to play such a great mission without any annoying disturbances.

Well, to say the truth, I've already been fixing the mission.
(I will not release it if i don't get permission)

And I think I should not put my name in the fixed version (if you allowed me to release it).

What I've done to the mission :

Custom dialogs
Mission Start scene with custom color big texts and credits.
More environmental objects.
Better camera angles at the mission start cutscene.

Just that...

My own mission will also be released to the community soon....

(Sorry for the long text)

Regards,
Haroon1992
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: Walter_E_Kurtz on 10 Aug 2010, 02:03:36
I am replying in a private capacity and not as a member of staff. I would also like to point out that I am quite a junior member of staff and will have little say in the final decision :whistle: (Furthermore, this is probably mostly gibberish until I give it a re-write. And even then I'm not promising a substantial improvement).

As I see it, it boils down to two things: copyright and what is in the readme.


The Readme
First off, this might be a good time to consider what you put in your own readmes - people may still be reading them in five or even ten years time. Do you want to allow people to convert your mission for other games by BIS? Or maybe just move it to another island, eg. Desert Everon or Winter Kolgujev?

Clearly you cannot gauge what the future holds and hence you cannot forbid everything that may become possible with what you create for this game. This may be less true now that BIS have released three games in the genre, but you may see that it holds when you look back to the years after OFP appeared.


Copyright
I am sure there are people who could argue over what is covered by the concept of copyright - is it the specific sequence of 1s and 0s that describe the pbo in binary or is the mission in its entirety as a work of art. Ultimately it doesn't matter, as it is considered to belong to the author for the copyright period. Which is how long? I don't think that has been established. Books and musical compositions have long durations, typically 50 - 70 years. But these are electronic trifles that people aren't even charging money for...

In short, unless you have permission from the author, don't mess with it.


Broadly speaking, the conventions of the community are as follows:

Approved
:yes: providing advice to help members to run old missions - finding addons or suggesting how to correct the addons list.

Tolerated
:confused: taking apart of missions and addons to learn how they were created.

Frowned upon
:no: making available someone else's work that you have edited without permission - eg. new textures on an addon.

What you are proposing is mostly :confused: with some bits of :no:. Since OFPEC aspires to pure :yes:, I don't think your edit of the mission would be hosted here.
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: bedges on 10 Aug 2010, 08:45:01
^ What he said.

The short answer is get permission from the author. If that doesn't happen in a timeframe you find acceptable, make an homage, a tribute mission with your own scripts, your own ideas, your own work.

The other point is that if you were just fixing bugs and leaving the rest of the mission as the original author intended this would be a much more reaonable proposal but, judging by your post, you're not simply fixing bugs - you're adding new content and making the mission "better". In that case why not just make your own mission?  :dunno:

I can't claim to speak for OFPEC either any more, but I'd say without the author's consent you should leave the original as it is. If you want to edit your own copy to make it more playable, that's up to you.
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: Wolfrug on 10 Aug 2010, 09:53:27
I do think, however, that it might be permissable to create a 'fixed', Resistance-compatible version of the mission which would only fix the compatibility issues and nothing else - in all other respects (cameras, cutscenes etc) it'd be identical. Basically what Walter did over here [Linky] (http://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?topic=35107), except that it would already contain the fixes and such so that it'd just be plug and play.

DevilChaser has been gone from the community for many, many, many years, but he wasn't an unreasonable chap as far as I remember. I believe he'd be very pleased and flattered by the attention his old work is still getting, and I doubt he'd mind the minor fixes needed to upgrade it to Resistance compatibility. On the other hand I doubt he'd like it very much if someone went around and 'fixed his camera angles' or added custom dialogs and stuff where none were before - at least not for nonpersonal use!

Just my IMHO, obviously. I personally think - with regards to copyright - that fixing it up to working for Resistance is a bit akin to a user-made mouse fix to an old game to make it work in newer systems - it might need to replace an .exe or modify a file here and there, but that hardly means the game has been cracked and re-released as their own production.

Wolfrug out.
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: haroon1992 on 10 Aug 2010, 14:27:02
Ur... Wolfrug, can you explain me in a more simpler way?

I have no idea what you are saying in your third paragraph (starting with : Just my IMHO)

But this is mainly due to my limited skills in English.

I also didn't understand what Walter meant.but bedges explained me that.

I've got an email adress of DVC from someone in the community, I've already sent a request.

I've just to wait for the reply....
If nothing returned within a month, I will be dropping this idea.. and this thread should be deleted then.

Regards,
Haroon1992
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: Wolfrug on 10 Aug 2010, 20:08:26
Yeah, um, my English is becoming sloppier as I get older too, so I don't blame ya.  :no:

All I meant was, that sometimes the community for a game can come up with their own fixes to a problem. For instance, I had to download a mouse fix for Masters of Orion II to make it work in Windows XP. Although the fix replaced the .exe file, I don't consider this a "hack" of any kind, since it doesn't do anything with the core game.

Likewise, if someone would 'fix' the OperationFirelord.pbo so that it would work directly with Resistance, WITHOUT changing anything in the mission itself (e.g. leaving all the camerawork, cutscenes etc untouched, only fixed where it would otherwise be broken), I don't think I would consider that a 'hack' or somehow defiling the mission.

But this is just IMHO, of course, mostly coming from my wish that more people would be able to experience DevilChaser's mission (I personally played it back in 1.46 times. Hell, I might even have reviewed it at some point!)

Wolfrug out.
Title: Re: Requesting permission to make a mission compatible with Resistance
Post by: h- on 11 Aug 2010, 16:09:30
Nothing worthwhile to add, just moving this to mission discussion -> ..

Carry on.  :P