Doom3world

I've been told that since materials don't fall under GPL, I'd have to create materials from scratch. That goes for lights.mtr and I am wondering if there is documentation on how to create such materials. Besides regular lights, I need a sun light for outdoors.

Also, is there a scratch material pack that can be used in standalone projects?

Thanks.

Its safe to use any id materials and just swap your actual image files for theirs. There is no way you can claim copyright on 5 lines of recycled syntax, which is what most materials are.

Scripts are a bit more borderline, but even then I don't think id is gonna give much of a shit provided its a basic script and you make rudimentary modifications.

I think people are forgetting that id wants us to use the engine. If they didn't, JC wouldn't have open sourced it. I think the script thing needs to be clarified though. We need to contact him and just say "look, can you officially bless the use of scripts cos its making our life unnecessarily hard."

Anyone got twitter?

Well, ARB shaders should be GPLed too in that case

@ID_AA_Carmack << his twitter, but I highly doubt he would respond :/

He does respond sometimes. Just make it clear that we don't want to reclaim id art assets, just generic game mechanics stuff and hence scripting.

I e-mailed ttimo a day after the code was release but no response. Then I found out he left, so he might not of cared.

Carmack might respond. It's worth a shot.

Carmack might say "yeah, go ahead" and then later, presumably after the game is released and remotely successful, Bethesda will say "JC isn't a lawyer, so welcome to court for infringing on our IP"

The PR backlash they would receive from such bully tactics against a small indie dev for infringing any copyrights they have on the scripts and defs would not be worth it. I mean, would you support a dev/publisher that would do something like that by buying any future games of theirs?

Bethesda sued Notch for Scrolls, lost, got everyone angry, and yet sold Skyrim outstandingly well. Good thing Notch has become billionaire in time to cover the cost of the lawsuit.

Bethesda had to sue or risk loosing control of their trademark. The way the system works is if you don't fight everything that is remotely close, you can risk loosing your hold on it at any time.

Also Bethesda did not loose. They came to an agreement that Bethesda would take ownership of the name 'Scrolls' and allow Mojang to use it for it's digital card game and add on material but no further sequels.

If someone outright stole something then I wouldn't punish the publisher/original developer at all. If they were shady then yes. HOWEVER... the term "foxed" came about because of a specific mod for a specific game and we have a mod being promoted right now on this site for the company that the term "foxed" was derived from.

JC can't give away that permission so he's consult with legal before he replies anyway.

Whatever the case was, wouldn't they do the same with ARB shaders and lights.mtr used?

The shaders are pure math and use standard ARB syntax and can't be copyrighted, as far as I know. And the same with materials. They use a standard syntax that the engine was written to parse and use, so materials made from scratch will end up written exactly the same as id's. It would be nice to get something official from id regarding this but I honestly can't see them really being able to do anything even if they wanted to, and really, why would they do anything? What would they gain exactly?

It's possible id didn't even make the ARB shaders, that they were stock ones that are included with an OGL release. Anyone ever check?