Stargate: The Journey

[Darthman]

>But why would you need to?
Maybe it was my dream to make a game in this universe. And PGD2 if my little chance to do this.

>First, you can ask for permission.
And wait for ethernity...

igmac you speak a right words (for a perfect world) but how the God I broke IP when I do content by myself? My drawings are copyrighted by Sony or someone else? Nonsense.
About servers confiscation it is funny, but if following your thoughts they can do this just because there written Stargete (it is trademark and copyrighted isnt it?)

Web server admin do not responsible for content that users upload to it. So why the hell he will have problems? Are you all mad here?

[Ingemar]

>But why would you need to?
Maybe it was my dream to make a game in this universe. And PGD2 if my little chance to do this.

Don't give up just because of copyright discussions. Sure you can make a game, and PGD2 is a great opportunity. PGD1 was great fun and I learned several new tools when writing my game.

Just don't rip off others work. (Ideas not included. Ideas can not be patented. Artwork can, precise gameplay can to some extent, source code can.)

>First, you can ask for permission.
And wait for ethernity...

Likely. But if they do say yes, you can proceed using whatever they allowed you to do.

igmac you speak a right words (for a perfect world) but how the God I broke IP when I do content by myself? My drawings are copyrighted by Sony or someone else? Nonsense.

No, on the contrary, that's what makes it safe. When you copy images drawn by someone else, you can have problems. Keep drawing.

About servers confiscation it is funny, but if following your thoughts they can do this just because there written Stargete (it is trademark and copyrighted isnt it?)

Web server admin do not responsible for content that users upload to it. So why the hell he will have problems? Are you all mad here?

Theoretically everything is possible, but they will not grab a server because one person at the board mentions a game. They will grab it when someone makes a major infringement (like making a 100% clone of a significant game) and the admins don't mind. They will probably start by asking the admins to take the submission down, and continue with rougher actions if the admins don't do anything about it.

To be it sounds like you have little to worry about. But I would avoid the exact name of the original game. If you call it Stargoat, or Stargreat... There are plenty of people on AppStore making much worse things than that.

So start planning and coding, don't worry too much. We can tell you if there is a problem when you post the first screenshots.

[Darthman]

You overrated a lot. There is no need to noone to look at sites like that. It's too small for this kind of actions.

[Ingemar]

You overrated a lot. There is no need to noone to look at sites like that. It's too small for this kind of actions.

What are you replying to? Did I overrate something? What "sites like that"? I don't understand.

[igmac]

Ok, I found the DirectMusic test program I wrote.

Now, what I forgot, is that you can't save them as MIDI files, which is what I remembered wrong. So I can't "make you a few tracks". But, using the sample code I wrote, you can do your own stuff. Even better!

It uses data from DX90_DirectMusicProducer.exe from Microsoft's web site, but I somehow couldn't find it there. Maybe you have better luck tracking it down. If not, I'll package up the redistributables and upload it. You don't need them though, unless you want to compose your own styles.

Included is a file called uDirectMusic.pas which I got from who knows where, maybe Jedi, and also the DX9SDK header translations, these definitely from Project Jedi.

Keep in mind that this is a depreciated SDK from Microsoft. It doesn't have long term viability unfortunately.

I've stuck them on my dropbox in a few RAR files. The terms of the Microsoft licence is "These styles and chordmaps can be freely modified and redistributed with any Windows application.", so I've included the compiled version of my program with it :-)

Here are the links.
The MS redistributables - styles, bands, etc (1.11mb) - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69365850/PGD...le-Library.rar
The Jedi Headers for Delphi - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69365850/PGD/DX9SDK.rar
My sample program - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69365850/PGD/DMusic.rar
And the compiled version of my sample program - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69365850/PGD...executable.rar

... edit: (total download size 1.78mb) ...

Note that there are .EXE files in the first and last RAR files, so exercise the proper caution by scanning them before you run them.

If you run the StylePlayer.exe Microsoft program (first RAR file), you can browse all the styles and play away. Just off the top of my head, try the "Otherworld" style with the "modal interchange" chordmap and the "default" band. This might suit your theme.

Go knock yourself out with it!

You'll soon see why it's a pity MS went and depreciated it. Sodding heartless b*stards. Maybe DirectMusic Producer was too cerebral for us programmers. I know I had to dig deeply into my wife's grade 8 training to even begin to understand it :-)

Regards,

Ian.

[WILL]

Using the title Stargate or characters, symbolic props or creatures/characters from the TV show or movies would violate their IP. As such any game submission that included such a violation would not be acceptable in the PGD Challenge competition.

The rules on IP are very specific to prevent PGD (and myself) from violating other people hard earned brands and ideas. Should someone respect them or not, big or small it doesn't matter, it's legally theirs, just as if you created something unique and were using it to make your money, or not, the same would apply. In principle, because we are a community driven website we have to consider these things. I have always gone by this rule; if we can pick and choose any IP to violate or not, then how can our community members trust us to respect their IP should they come to cherish it?

So as far as PGD is concerned, there are no options here. We cannot and will not bend on this. The community's respect is worth more to us than that. That's the moral stand-point.

Should the legal aspects and moral obligations we try to uphold not persuade you, here is the practical stand-point.

PGD as an entity, when you break it down frankly is just me and a few of my online buddies who are running a community site that want to keep on good terms with everyone and thrive on the internet for a hobby that we and a good few hundred others come on here and like to program games as well. Do continue doing this we need to play nice legally and socially. Since both socially and legally, IP usage without the proper permissions goes against the public interest and key laws that could prevent us from operating the site, we must go along with this set of rules ourselves.

Lets say we got in a whole bunch of Star Trek and Star Wars fan-made games. Nothing sold, nothing battered, just made for the love of those IPs. Well this seems harmless and probably would be for the most part. Except to us. We could then have Gene Roddenberry Jr. and George Lucas' lawers knocking on our virtual doors telling us to remove the legally infringing content from our sites and anywhere else we may have used it.

Such content, which we would otherwise have used to help promote the PGD community and future events like the PGD Challenge, we can no longer use in things like video ads to promote future competitions, awards videos showing off top games of the year, magazine articles showing all the games, showcase of all past PGD Challenge games allowing them all for download. The content you put into the games must allow us to show it off and allow us to share it with others. Infringing materials, illegal materials (such as inappropriate things) we want no part of because of the problems they bring.

So practically, we can't show off your work and we can't let others see it either. What's the point of your submitting such a thing in the first place if it's going to have to be pulled off the sites anyhow? Sure you can hope that it goes unnoticed, but I don't like to let everything just flap in the wind, I like the assurances that the community is secure and that I'm not going to help things ripped out of my hands when I need it to help the community. I don't have time to play silly legal games with outside parties that have nothing better to do than to uphold these rules either. So to deal with violating IP stuff is just impractical.

So there you have it, both the high and low roads. Either way you want to approach it, we cannot accept violated IP. We have not in the past and we will not in the future. I hope knowing why helps.

[WILL]

All that said... it does not mean that you have to scrap your entire idea, just make it non-IP violating, that's all.

In fact should you remove all unauthorized IP, you can actually take your game and use it for something beyond this competition, even do something commercially viable with it. There is more benefit to keeping your game non-IP than there is to sticking to a false sense of taking a stand. Making a point is one thing, but to do so at the detriment of yourself is not a smart play. Besides, I've seen some of your original ideas, they turn out pretty darn good.

[Darthman]

Good Luck with your competitions but this rule not to made fan games is biggest stupidity I ever seen.
I'm Out.

[SilverWarior]

Web server admin do not responsible for content that users upload to it. So why the hell he will have problems? Are you all mad here?

Tell this to the owner of Megaupload. He got senteced to jail time becouse his serwers have ilegal content on them uploaded by other pepole. Tell this to various torrent sites owners etc.

As far as I know author of Stargate addon for Garry's mod got an official aproval from MGM about his mod (was once writen on addons website). MGM was the one who made contact in that case. And they alowed him to continue development on his addon ass far as it stays just an addon for other game and it is free. So contacting MGM won't hurt.