What about game modding? (Indie Game Developer License, yes, another one of those)

kwizatz

So, I cave in and got the Indie Game Dev license, at the current promo price its a steal, plus I do have a lot of content bought with the purpose of using it for game development if only as inspiration (until now).

I looked at all the posts regarding use and the constant questions on what is covered and what not (seems pretty clear to me), and well, my question is in regards of the "3d asset protection clause". It isn't still really clear to me if the scenario I have planed is valid or not, so I'll elaborate further on it so I can get a simple yes or no question, preferably from staff, so here goes:

I am writing my own game engine, and one of my goals is to allow heavy modification by the end users, IE: to allow player content, on that note, I intend to publish file format specifications, tutorials and guides for users to mod the engine, I have already developed my own skeleton, mesh and animation file formats, and I use Blender as the main asset creation tool, a Blender importer for my engine may be one of the tools I provide my users so they can easily make modifications or design items, armor, clothing etc using the assets provided by the game.

I obviously intent to prohibit redistribution of modified assets (I am thinking a patch system or morph system to be in place so first party modified meshes do not have to be redistributed), but no restrictions on original content, whatever mods the user creates should still require a legal copy of the game to be purchased.

TL;DR: Meshes, Skeletons, Textures and Animations will be readily available to the end user for game experience modification purposes ONLY, but these will be using a custom file format, likely with a lower poly count than the original.

Would this be legally possible under the game license? Is using a custom file format and decimation a valid enough protection under the license?

Thanks!

jestmart

You need to contact DAZ directly to answer that, but I would guess the answer would be absolutely not. If you are allowing people to freely mod the meshes you clearly are not protecting them. As a Blender user you should look at MakeHuman for your character mesh and make the rest yourself.

http://www.makehuman.org/content/download_alpha_7.html

Dream Cutter

If you could prohibit download of the discrete object mesh or textures you should be ok. Couldn't you keep the assets within the engine and not exportable?

kwizatz

Seen it, tried to use it, but being artistically impaired, couldn't get much done with it, last I tried it rigging was not existent or just not properly exported into Blender, and If I have to write my own tools, I much rather use the stability provided by the DAZ SDK than hack the moving target that MakeHuman is.

That aside, as stated on some other post, protecting the assets 100% is impossible, requiring encryption, I see as something you could impose if you were to use the assets "as-is", but that is not my intention.

Anyway, I do have the license, and I intend to use it, but I'd like to know if I would have to either proceed as planned or change my plans to make it harder for my audience to get to the DAZ based assets distributed with a game. I know licenses are written to cover every possible loophole, in practice there is usually some leeway, and I hope this is the case here.

kwizatz

Dream Cutter said:

If you could prohibit download of the discrete object mesh or textures you should be ok.

That's the idea, it would be prohibited from a license perspective, but we all know there is always other methods for people to get stuff, illegally of course.

Couldn't you keep the assets within the engine and not exportable?

I'll be using my own package file format, similar to id Sofware's pak files which are essentially zip files to hold all assets, shaders and logic scripts included. My idea is to encourage modding the way Valve does it, you can extract the assets from the game and use them as long as you do not redistribute them.

Richard Haseltine

You would, I'm afraid, need to encrypt the assets derived from DAZ content.

kwizatz

Oh ok then, its good to know so I can plan for it. I can always add a note and direct people to where to get the originals legally.

Thanks!

Dream Cutter

kwizatz said:

Dream Cutter said:

If you could prohibit download of the discrete object mesh or textures you should be ok.

That's the idea, it would be prohibited from a license perspective, but we all know there is always other methods for people to get stuff, illegally of course.

Couldn't you keep the assets within the engine and not exportable?

I'll be using my own package file format, similar to id Sofware's pak files which are essentially zip files to hold all assets, shaders and logic scripts included. My idea is to encourage modding the way Valve does it, you can extract the assets from the game and use them as long as you do not redistribute them.

I was "Thinking In The Box" as in keeping assets within the runtime "sandbox" rather than written to disk. Your idea to pack assets written to disk does limit things a bit. I moved to cloud streaming 3d games online via flash 11 and webgl and/or encrypted app. Where its remotely possible to share and distribute discrete assets I would use my own creation and limit exposure to copyright infringement risks. That said, I am wrestling with the 3dskydome.com concept where it allows users to upload and publish thier own models. I too rely on the EULA/TOS adherence and active monitoring of the instant 3d webgl publishing gallery to ensure upload thier creations and that any questionable pages is promptly removed.

What would be real cool if DAZ and other 3d content stores that sell royalty free licenses provide a certificate server to validate the authenticity of the license via web-service. That would open the door for a whole host of cool publishing and 3d printing services. Heck, the content creators could even provision license to sold as blocks of published "instances" if desired. That would make more sense and scale better than having an "indy" and "corporate" type of licensing scheme.

kwizatz

Yes, I am afraid my engine is kind of old fashioned in that way, while it does support Windows, Linux and Android, cloud support is not something I have even considered, for distribution maybe, but not for asset streaming.

While I am against DRM in general and not being able to tinker with what's legitimately yours (In reference to game consoles), I am sure adding the option to encrypt resources will at least be a good learning experience, plus, who knows, if my engine ever sees the light as a commercial product on its own (think Unity3d), it may be something potential customers want.

Thanks Cutter, I'll check your SkyDome, best of luck!