tain.totalcodex.net

I like the sound of it. I hope you can recreate the randomness and micro-management that makes a game of myth fun.

Perhaps partitioning Bungie would be more fruitful, after all that hard work it'd be a shame if you got an order to stop, at least you would know the real story too. I'd be happy to help with that.

I would be grateful for any help, and using your already established contacts would certainly be helpful!

As for CaD letters, WARTBED is structured so that the game engine itself uses no proprietary code or data whatsoever, and all game support is done through modules, modules separate from the system core. Thus "Bright Portents" is the Warhammer: Dark Omen module, and "Saga" is the provisional code name for a hypothetical Myth module. These modules translate the original data into an universal (and open) WARTBED format.

qwarqwa wrote: Perhaps partitioning Bungie would be more fruitful, after all that hard work it'd be a shame if you got an order to stop, at least you would know the real story too. I'd be happy to help with that.

Did you mean petitioning Bungie? If it was up to Bungie, they would likely have already released the source code and have had the Myth TFL datafiles available for free download. But the rights to the Myth franchise were sold to Take 2 Interactive. Take 2 is a big corporate and I don't think talking to them would yield any benefit.

If you're interested in connecting the Myth/Saga module to the Mariusnet/Bungie metaserver, you may be able to reuse some of the networking code from Aleph One:
http://source.bungie.org/

Eddaweaver wrote: ...mean petitioning...

Yea that.
I don't have any 'established contacts' at all!

What I'd worry about is GW (Gamesworkshop) slapping a cease and desist order on this project (or whatever legal stuff their lawyers are famous for throwing at people left, right and centre).

Yeah, that is a very legitimate concern. That is why WARTBED has nothing at all to do with any trademarked games or franchises. The modules are separate from WARTBED and might perhaps be CaD:ed, but the legality of that would be questionable since the modules basically only convert original data owned by the user into another format.

Mikademus wrote:Yeah, that is a very legitimate concern. That is why WARTBED has nothing at all to do with any trademarked games or franchises. The modules are separate from WARTBED and might perhaps be CaD:ed, but the legality of that would be questionable since the modules basically only convert original data owned by the user into another format.

Given the past legal history of MAME (multi arcade _something_ emulator) - software which emulates the hardware of old arcade and console games, (the user loads ROM images of the games s.he wants to play into Mame and it's like playing an old arcade game. The legal issue is you have to have a ROM image, something no one would have except someone who owned a console game, except that people make images of the rom you can download and use) - you won't have any legal difficulties AS LONG as you don't distribute game levels YOURSELF. e.g. If you offered Myth levels as a downloadable zip you are breaking copyright laws concerning who has the right to distribute the M2 copyrightable content, but if you clearly state that anyone wanting to play WARTBED must have legally purchased the games the game levels they are using are from, you should be clear legally. It doesn't mean you won't get a cease and desist order, but as long your software doesn't incorporate copyrighted material or code, you are on the right side of the law. If other people choose to zip up levels from another game and offer it for dl on their site that's their business, you just can't condone it or link to it from your site (or let people in forums give links to levels from other games) if you want to keep your hands clean legally.

ps. I am not a lawyer. Don't take what I have said as definitive. I just read a lot and have some familiarity with US copyright laws and MAME.

I myself am not a lawyer, either But you about summed up what we're going by. We7ve been looking at other examples of the same, like Exult (the Ultima VII remake project, which uses the original data).

WARTBED is "only" a framework, and you need original game data. A module will have two purposes, on the one hand allowing remake-like playing, on the other hand converting to a common format allowing game data to be interchangeable for f.i. multiplaying.

So yeah, we should be covered by the decentralised architecture. No copyrighted material is in the code base or core data, but you won't be able to do much with it without such data. I'm rather certain, though, that anyone who really wants abandonware can find it somewhere on the 'net.

Maybe just explaining that you want to do clearly and asking nicely would work.
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/lin ... opers.html

Take 2 has been very supportive and gracious with us in terms of development," says Bagnall.

It also says that volunteer 'MythDevelopers' ( i guess that was pre-Magma ) wrote their own 'core library' that sounds like what you want, would that be easier to get a hold of?

The article ends with some advice.

Persistence is the key.... You'll also need to have an idea that they can say "yes" to. We offered to support the Myth games at no cost to the publisher. That is awfully hard to turn down.

qwarqwa, those are some very good advice and pointers. Thanks! Let's just hope that they will look favourable on a project like this!

I wrote a few apps that parse pieces of the myth tags. Chaos does the most and you can grab it's source here. It's written in python. I only added functionality on an as needed basis so there is plenty of stuff left out. Most importantly Collections.

Most of the info I got from the Vengeance source or reverse engineering. Myrd also helped me figure out how some of the stuff was put together. Vengeance is for Myth III which used models so it wasn't very helpful for collections.

I am intrigued by your idea.

While the source code itself won't be possible to get, if you're still of a mind to pursue likening Myth in another engine, the collections (image resources) and attack/vitality/physics/etc data are all there to be viewed free of charge by programs called Fear, and Amber (though amber is mac only at this time).

While it's not exactly the same as knowing how the source works, you could at the least imput the myth units with their exact game balance specifications (the correct vitality for each unit, movement speed, attack rate, damage settings, area of effect radius, etc etc etc).

Might seem like a chore, but Fear (which comes with Myth 2) is a pretty damn powerful in-house editor that bungie graciously released along with the full game.

Anyhow, your project sounds very intriguing! I was wondering - do any of the other real time strategy games you are incorporating have a decent physics engine?

That's really the one thing I see that every other RTS game besides myth lacks - the ability to dodge arrows, have bottles dud, and bounce an explosive grenade juuuuuuust right by judging the angles it will land on.

Long live tiny computer armies getting exploded!

-ooga