How to contact the Team in private?

[geyser]

Hi,
I'm new here, obviously.

I've recently sent a form-email to CIK and received no reply.
Is the form-email having problems, or does CIK hate me?

For the record, the question had to do with whether CIK (or anyone in the Team) could enlighten me on the details of the Team's current agreement with Take-Two.
I'd also be interested in not-too-outdated contacts (email, name, whatever) at Take-Two that either have dealt with the Team in the past or otherwise are reasonably familiar with the Myth/Oni franchise.

In case you wonder what it's all about: it's about Oni.

Thanks in advance for any information and support
_______
Sergey

[geyser]

Dear Sirs,


I tried a PM to CIK after registering here, and still have no reply so far.
Maybe it's just that CIK doesn't hang around here all that often?
While I have no reason to be impatient, or "demand attention", it would be nice if someone from the Team deigned to answer.

Basically, I represent a group of people who are to Oni what the team is to Myth. We're much less organized, but we are there.
Quite recently, we've unlocked some modding potential that qualifies as alarming (for file hosting and forum discussion).

In that context, we consider making Take 2 aware of the scale and scope of our activity, asking for acknowledgement.
The post-development of Myth is a notable precedent, so we naturally turned to you for advice and information.

If you think your contacts and agreement details are not relevant to our case, at least acknowledge us somehow.

Please.
_______
Sergey
oni.bungie.org
oni2.net

[Myrd]

I don't think we can help you, unfortunately.

I believe that those responsible for setting this all up back in the day are not in a position to do anything similar now, and we don't even have an active contact with Take2 at this time either.

[geyser]

Thanks for answering, Myrd.

Actually, as I said, we'd be happy to have any contact information at all. We always have the possibility to send a more or less open letter (snail mail) or newsletter (email) to Take-Two, but it would certainly help to directly reach people to whom we wouldn't have to explain what Oni is. Is your impression that there are no such people at Take-Two at the moment, at least no one you're aware of and could point us to?
(I'm asking every member of the team here, the more of an oldtimer, the better)

And the other thing is: it would be wise of us to have a viable agreement that we could propose upon contact. Empty claims are easy to ignore (why would they take the time and trouble to formulate the clauses of an NDA or similar?).
That's why we hoped to learn more about the nature of the agreement that legalised MythDev's status. If it was a written agreement, we'd like to take a peek at it. If it was informal (email exchange, whatever), we'd still appreciate any relevant tip.

Even though there are major differences (we had to work without any source code or dev tools), Myth's post-development is a precedent we'd like to use at our advantage if we can.

Additionally, we are aware of the current situation at Take-Two (legal scandals, new directors, search for a positive attitude with gamers). However, contacting them is still an uncertain move if it comes across as a first-time thing.

When and if we chance a contact, we will obviously have a digest showcase of our stuff, and a readable overview of the "story so far" (what Oni is and what they have on their hands, who we are and what we have done, what we'll do if they don't veto us and what we assume they could give us: acknowledgement, agreement, etc...)
When and if we do that, any argument or reference will help.

So, again, any formal or informal tip on dealing with Take-Two will be helpful at this point.
At the very least, it would be nice if we were fully aware of the way your project started.
How much of the source did you have? What else, apart from Fear & Loathing?
What was the tone of the exchange with Take-Two, and what was the nature of the agreement?

If anyone at all remembers anything at all, please let us know.

[iron]

IIRC, the only Take 2 guy who had any contact at all with the Myth community was Tim Beggs, as he was the guy responsible for getting permission from mapmakers to use their plugins in Myth II Worlds.

That was some years ago now though. I tried to contact him back when Myth 2 1.4 was released in order to send him (or whoever the appropriate Take 2 person was) the updated source code, however the email bounced.

Its possible that Mythdev had contact with someone else in the company, but personally I doubt it - perhaps Blades could tell you more.

There is no formal agreement in place between T2 and Projectmagma or Mythdev. T2 did sign some NDAs with 3 developers to allow them to update Myth 3 after its release, however those NDAs have long expired and the 3 guys in question are long gone - with the possible exception of Some Loser who occasionally visits here.

Have you tried contacting the Omni Group? They ported Oni to MacOSX, so they may know someone you can speak to.

I am a bit mystified as to why you want to speak to them though. Have you found a way of modding Oni & have thus made a new game that uses its executables? If so, that shouldn't be a problem - just release it as its only a mod. Modding games via reverse engineering is a long established practice. Many plugins were made for Myth TFL that way.

If, OTOH, you've gotten your hands on the sourcecode & have used it to make a standalone game ... well that's a different matter. I'd hazard a guess that T2 would come down on you like a ton of bricks if you released it. Furthermore, I'd say that it'd be very hard to get their attention otherwise - unless you can prove it'll make them a gazillion dollars, they'll totally ignore you (unless you release it of course).

[GodzFire]

Meh who cares, let him try I say!

TakeTwo can go to hell as far as I am concerned!

[Lugas]

Let's just hope Myth and Oni (yes, including M3) don't go with them!

Oh, and hi geyser!

[geyser]

Hi, Lugas. Say what, GodzFire?
And thanks a lot for the insight, iron (anyone else?)

Sorry for bothering you with unusually long posts. I think in this post I'll go ahead and outline our activity as clearly as you could possibly want to know, so that you get a chance of refining your advice.

So...

Tim Beggs: a guy from T2 asking fans permission to use their stuff? Now that's the kind of contact we'd like to have

"Someone else": if you indeed have no written agreement with T2, then contacts, if any, were ephemeral. Understood.

Blades & WIMC: the more info, the better, regardless of whether we eventually contact T2 or not.

NDAs with 3 developers: would FlyingFlip be one of those 3? He's apparently still active... sort of.

Omni Group:
We have contacted them, as well as Feral. In both cases, our contact happened to be an Oni fan
They obviously can't give away any of the source without T2's consent. Same goes for pre-beta content.
Put simply, they're legally bound, so contact information is the very most we can expect from them officially.
(however, Omni have been very helpful already, indirectly: their "patch" is basically a debug-build )

Thinking of it, it indeed makes sense to try and ask Omni for contact info and agreement details. Our first contact overlooked those issues.
Omni's agreement is, on one hand, probably written; on the other, possibly relevant to us. They might have more contacts, too.
I'll try that (but I'll have to be careful not to present their patch as the biggest leak to date )

Now for the boring part, modding and legalese:
The basic problem is that the license is non-existing, so it's all common sense and fingers-crossed.
As for the causes for concern (or perhaps, in our case, paranoia), here's what we have.

First, we've documented most of the game content formats and designed a few dev-tool equivalents. Those indeed produce content to be used with the original engine.
The only problem here is the format in which one would release modifications of original levels, so that is does not amount to redistribution of retail content for free. We have yet to design a system that would consistently patch and recombine existing resources to generate enhanced level content.
I'm curious about how that went for you guys. Did you ever release maps that were largely based on existing ones? When and if, how did you work around the redistribution issue?
We think that releasing whole levels rather than patches is only OK for completely new levels (and we're not there yet, so to speak ) or for content distributed with the demo.

Second, reverse-engineering has led us to massively patching the executable as well. Thanks to Omni's debug-build, we're able to identify all of the engine's functions and variables, which makes investigating and enhancing relatively easy, and quite powerful in the long run. I won't draw a list, but even multiplayer, while not exactly around the corner by lack of a real "team", is technically feasible with the current knowledge.
Currently, the engine modding on PC is set to be DLL-based. The original Oni happens to load a DLL at startup, which we can use to change or add anything we need.
Another aspect is that the DLL can be built with a coder-friendly, incremental SDK. The SDK integrates all of the reverse-engineered source so far, which (if we release that publicly) would be the most "legally challenged" aspect of our activity.
Besides, we'd probably distribute an English version of the engine along with the DLL/SDK (either that or we'll have trouble making the stuff compatible with every odd language version around)

Both issues don't really have our major hackers worried, and they spontaneously took position against contacting T2, and in favor of staying underground.
The people concerned are the ones who'd host the modded content, redistributed engine, public SDK. They're the ones who feel insecure, which is quite understandable.

So there has been a little debate in our little community, but advice from another team is of course valuable because it's less biased. Thanks again for your insight, iron

Gazillion dollars or standalone game:
The closest to either would be Oni Multiplayer (not to mention a number of unlocked features, and the issues with redistribution). Are you positive that we can regard whatever we'll add to Oni as "just a mod", and proceed without fearing the "Ton of Bricks of Damocles"?

Game content export:
There's another aspect neither I nor you addressed so far, namely (possibly massive) export of Oni's content (such as meshes and anims) for editing/reimport or, possibly, use in other engines...
As for the latter, there are a few more or less promising projects around. My feeling is that they will become less and less legit as more and more features and content is added to them. Right?
For instance, making Konoko a full-featured "skin" in a FPS is one thing, completely replicating Oni's environment and array of characters, animation and combat systems... that's a bit different.
Anyway, that's a completely different story and you don't have to comment.

Unanswered question:
How much of the source did you guys have to start with? Rumors diverge

Plugins:
I myself am not a Myth player. What part of Myth is affected by the "plugins" (I'm especially interested about the upgrades to the PC engine)?
If we are to stay underground, we could as well go for a reasonably "T2-safe" format for releasing our "mods".

Thanks again for your patience. Just a few more answers/comments/suggestions, and then I'll leave you alone

[Myrd]

I'm curious about how that went for you guys. Did you ever release maps that were largely based on existing ones? When and if, how did you work around the redistribution issue?

Myth II was made with mod-makers in mind. So the Fear & Loathing tools shipped with it, and making plugins was highly encouraged. Bungie required that any content made with their tools that is re-distributed have a note saying "Copyright in whole or in part Bungie Software. Made using Fear and Loathing." or something of the sort, which most mapmakers honored.

After Take2 bought Bungie, people either kept including that message, or changed Bungie to Take2, or both, or some just stopped using it.

I myself am not a Myth player. What part of Myth is affected by the "plugins" (I'm especially interested about the upgrades to the PC engine)?
If we are to stay underground, we could as well go for a reasonably "T2-safe" format for releasing our "mods".

Plugins are just data, not code. Basically, each chunk of content for Myth is a 'tag' file, and the full install includes 5 large foundation files, which are just archives of thousands of tag files. A plugin adds more tag files, which either replace the originals, or add to them. The Myth engine is very powerful and flexible, such that you can do a lot of things with different settings for each of the tags (tons of different flags and values to set etc).

[Myrd]

NDAs with 3 developers: would FlyingFlip be one of those 3? He's apparently still active... sort of.

FlyingFlip is a group that includes Blades and a few others. They were part of the original MythDev.

We have yet to design a system that would consistently patch and recombine existing resources to generate enhanced level content.

You should try OmniPatch:
http://tain.totalcodex.net/items/show/omnipatch-os-x

(Windows version exists too.)

Second, reverse-engineering has led us to massively patching the executable as well. Thanks to Omni's debug-build, we're able to identify all of the engine's functions and variables, which makes investigating and enhancing relatively easy, and quite powerful in the long run. I won't draw a list, but even multiplayer, while not exactly around the corner by lack of a real "team", is technically feasible with the current knowledge.
Currently, the engine modding on PC is set to be DLL-based. The original Oni happens to load a DLL at startup, which we can use to change or add anything we need.
Another aspect is that the DLL can be built with a coder-friendly, incremental SDK. The SDK integrates all of the reverse-engineered source so far, which (if we release that publicly) would be the most "legally challenged" aspect of our activity.
Besides, we'd probably distribute an English version of the engine along with the DLL/SDK (either that or we'll have trouble making the stuff compatible with every odd language version around)

Sounds like this approach will leave the Mac OS X version behind.

Are you positive that we can regard whatever we'll add to Oni as "just a mod", and proceed without fearing the "Ton of Bricks of Damocles"?

As long as you don't start charging money, Take2 will most likely not do anything to stop you.

How much of the source did you guys have to start with?

All of it. But since the code was for Myth II which targetted Windows 95 & Mac OS 8, it took quite a bit of effort to make use of it.

[Doobie]

fascinating stuff geyser. it's very interesting to see someone working on an old game much the way we do here at magma, but with an even more nebulous/perilous position.

Sounds like you have done some very cool stuff.

Perhaps you could link us to anything you have to share publicly? or if that's not feasible at least let us know how things progress.

Oh, just a quick side note for you, flyingflip is not a person despite the way they make it seem with the wording on their website. Flyingflip is the successor to mythdev, it is a (small) group of individuals working on m3. Primarily (exclusively?) Blades and Clem.

Some Loser was the one who negotiated permission to update the m3 source code and bring it to a playable state, he formed a team called mythdev to make this happen. Access to the myth 2 source code was requested and granted on the premise that it would help with the fixing of m3 bugs.

Some Loser has more or less gone awol, mythdev handed off the m2 code to magma to make improvements to m2, and mythdev changed their name to flyingflip and now work exclusively on m3 though it seems that kind of stalled out around a year or so ago.

[The Elfoid]

Flying Flip had started work again, they're active. New website launched recently, then they were gonna work on a bug-fix patch 1.3.2 followed by a more major patch. Go onto flyingflip.com and find Blades on there. Usually people contact him (or anyone related to playmyth) on accounts@playmyth.net or any other @playmyth.net e-mail but that's down right now. Flying Flip's work was stalled by issues on playmyth server, Blades' divorce, real life in general etc etc etc.

I believe SomeLoser contacted Take 2 at some point. In some comments he left on a playmyth news bulletin he suggested he'd talked to Take 2 or something. I barely remember the details, and the site's down now...but he's one to ask.

Lother asked SOMEONE for a figure on how much Myth's franchise would sell for. They took him seriously enough to offer him a straight figure. I can probably give people his e-mail though I doubt Lothar talked to anyone important. Just throwing up what I know.

[geyser]

Thanks everyone,

On a quick note, our public places are oni.bungie.org and oni2.net
More specifically http://oni.bungie.org/community/forum
and http://wiki.oni2.net
Both are a bit idle at the moment (the aforementioned concern/paranoia inhibited advertisement if anything...)
So excuse the mess and emptiness. We're not an organized team (yet?).

Keep the contacts coming (Lothar and Some Loser definitely sound worth talking to, same for Blades if he negotiated an NDA or suchlike)
I'll bring you up to date on our project ASAP (right now, it's more like a potential than an actual project, by lack of modders).

As for the "tags" and archives, it's almost certain that Oni's and Myth content have lots of code in common (e.g., the template manager from Vengeance allowed us to check some stuff).
So there's a chance I'll be shifting my annoying questions from T2 contacts and to the plugin-handling code

[Graydon]

The only problem here is the format in which one would release modifications of original levels, so that is does not amount to redistribution of retail content for free. We have yet to design a system that would consistently patch and recombine existing resources to generate enhanced level content.
I'm curious about how that went for you guys. Did you ever release maps that were largely based on existing ones? When and if, how did you work around the redistribution issue?

As Myrd states, plugin's are simply little packages of tags that the game's engine reads on startup. You can freely distribute the plugin files, and surely in the beginning, LOTS of plugs were just mods of various levels from Myth's campaign, or its included multimaps. Once these plugins are distributed though, one still requires the aforementioned foundation tags, as well as the executable file, and the various 'Patch' files that these fine folks have released. That means a copy of the game itself.

If you guys can figure out how to package up your work into a seperate unit, like a plugin, and have the original game executable read and run that file.... You can probably get away with whatever it is you plan to do.

Then again, if you can get legal permission to just go with it, that's obviously a far simpler solution. I wish you the best of luck in your contacting schemes

[The Elfoid]

http://tain.totalcodex.net/forum/profil ... file&u=273 - Lothar

I doubt very much Loth knows anything. I also doubt he cares. But hell, why not?

http://m2v.atomicgamer.com/

The other main regular Myth community forums right now, in the absence of PlayMyth, are there. If anyone knows Some Loser's details but aren't on here, it's there you would have to look.