Project Magma on iPad

[capital]

Dear Mr. vinyl,

Plz accept the coupon to Myst apparel as well.

Kindest of regards,

cap.

P.S. Hey, I think every little bit helps. If we can't get an actual app going, then at least a chat client gives the myth community some presence in an otherwise unknown, vast darkness of teh padeddom. Otherwise, myth, like myst, will remain oh so 20th century. And it is kind of ironic that myst does have an ipad version, whilst myth does not.

[Melekor]

Bad news from the front lines, gentlemen. My contact at Take 2 says that reaching biz dev over there is like talking into a vacuum. Very few responses, and apparently there's some sort of legal entanglement that makes them not want to discuss Myth at all (I mentioned only that I wanted to speak about the franchise; no tipping of the hand, as it were).

Disappointing, but not too surprising, this matches what I've heard about T2. I'm curious what this legal entanglement might be though.

She says she's doing her best, and I'll definitely keep my ear to the ground in case she gets an answer, but right now things don't look so hot.

Sorry for the setback, all. I'll let you know if anything comes up. :(

Thanks for the effort, it's certainly appreciated :)

[vinylrake]

Plz accept the coupon to Myst apparel as well

awesome! I hope Bungie still has some of those 'I KIK J00!" hoodies for sale.

[Deqlyn]

I woulkd have to say that anyone who enters "Myth Chat" would be bored out of their mind or drive them away from Myth.

I can just see it

"bacon bacon bacon pork pork pork bacon bacon bacon"


Were not exactly the most "friendly" community. That is assuming were talking about NEW players not the old salty dogs that used to roam Myth.


PS If i am getting free apparell I want the shirt with the ~//~ on it. If ya know what I mean.

SOrry to hear that G' I was hoping for more but not surprised.

[king paris]

YOU GOT MY 2 THUMBS UP DO WORK

[cimota]

Hi folks,

Did this go anywhere?

I discovered the impenetrable layers of Take2 this time last year when I made an honest attempt to find out who was able to take responsibility for Myth II. I've since 'calmed down' and I'm considering helping put together a Kickstarter to fund the development of a "Gameloft-style" clone of a Myth-like game. But obviously I can't do it alone.

I understand Take2 may be waiting for a big offer of money for Myth but I think it's actually worse than that - I don't think anyone has clarity on the ownership of the game.

[vinylrake]

Legally it's quite clear, TakeTwo Interactive owns the rights to Myth. (all 3 games)

Finding someone at TakeTwo who will admit responsibility for a 13 year old game they no longer sell or support is a completely different issue, but that's an organizational problem at TakeTwo, and has nothing to do with the legal issue of who owns Myth and who has the right to use the code in a commercial product or publish content under the 'Myth' name.

[cimota]

Hi Vinylrake - oh I'm not disputing that. It's whomever you have to find WITHIN Take2 who will take responsibility for doing something with it. The impression I got from my speaking with them was that they varied from "Do we own that" to "Yes, we own that" and from the latter to "I'm not sure who deal with that."

So yes, Take2. But finding someone who won't pass the buck?

Also - lots of old properties get dusted off and developed by another company. Age is irrelevant.

What's even more ad is that of all the iPad games that are in the Strategy genre, we have a plethora of Tower Defense and standard RTS but none of the Real Time Tactics that Myth was adored for.

[capital]

My opinion on this is that while take 2 owns myth's artwork and programming content, I don't think they can claim foul if someone came along and used the idea real time tactical w/ unit trading on a new game. A number of people have made total conversions of the myth universe, these people are entirely entitled to apply their tagsets to a new game engine not based on myth. Jinn the game? Civil War the game? Pirates the game? Lego the Game? WWII the game? The seventh god the Game? The Battle for Urbarahz the game? Etc...

I think Lego is a potential partner for funding of the Lego game, esp. since the artwork has already been done and the original author can be tracked down.

[vinylrake]

cimota: sure old properties get dusted off and revamped/rebooted/etc, the problem is - as you said - finding someone at TakeTwo to even talk to about getting rights/permission to port any of the Myth games to the iPad platform.

capitol: For a plugin to be ported legally free and clear there couldn't be one single element used from Myth. Including scenery and models (visible and not). It's always been legally possible to reverse-engineer a game that functions like Myth and that reads Myth plugin files - the problem *legally* is that the people in this case who are most likely/capable of doing this are the Magma team who have access to the original Myth source code. TakeTwo could easily (if they cared - and I have a feeling if a Mythlike game port selling for $4.99 suddenly sold 100,000 copies) mount a legal challenge to determine whether *any* code or underlying logic in the 'new app' was 'borrowed' or 'ported' from the original TakeTwo m2 source code. Not saying it isn't possible, just that it's a large effort to replicate everything the Myth2 engine does without knowing the underlying code, and if you know the underlying code you are much more open to legal challenges as to your codes origins.

Personally, I would *love* to see a reverse-engineered Myth2-like game that could read both Bungie's original tag files AND 3rd party plugins.

[cimota]

@Capitol - you'd have to cleanly reverse-engineer everything. Not one shred of code could be used otherwise you'd be liable. You couldn't use the same story, images, sounds. Dwarves wouldn't be throwing molotovs, you wouldn't be able to have Scottish barbarians.

@vinylrake - I don't know how much IP and/or code is in the tag/plugin format but you'd likely run into issues with Apples daft rules on interpreted code.

I'd like to know if the OP has gotten anywhere. If not, I'd love to hear from some interested folk who can code and maybe I could help stir up some interest in a kick-starter or something. It's too good an idea to let lie and RTT is the only section of the Strategy genre that doesn't seem to have made it to iOS.

[capital]

you guys are missing my point, the ARTWORK/Sprites can be used for a new game, no need for reverse engineering.

[GodzFire]

cimota I saw you were quite active in an original iPad thread awhile back: http://tain.totalcodex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46944

Are you a developer or a coder or what exactly?


Some pretty interesting comments here: http://tain.totalcodex.net/forum/viewto ... 944#p46944

[vinylrake]

and you are missing my point - that the sprites are a relatively small part of the work involved in creating a new game.

[cimota]

@GodzFire - I'm a 'facilitator' or that's what my job description says which sounds awfully weaselly. I'm a part-time business advisor to the 'digital content' sector here in Northern Ireland which includes a lot of iOS and games cos. I own a couple of businesses and I've made a few decent contacts in games companies. One of my clients is currently working on iOS ports of Zork. I'm weighing up hiring a developer to do games development work (for an e-learning project I have in mind) and maybe devoting one or two days a week to a Myth clone green-field development.

I don't write code myself (and never seem to have time to learn it) though a developer friend sent me some stuff on Cocos2D which he thinks could be used to write this.

I do wonder if anyone has written a functional spec?

@capital - even if you could use the sprites, you still don't own the IP. You'd be safer licensing some of the civil war stuff, the cowboys plugins, the green berets stuff. Myth itself is simply too laden with IP traps (a bit like Skyrealms of Jorune).