Commercial Angband fork using lib/gamedata

[Estie]

Mickey Mouse to become public domain in 2024 - hell must have frozen over.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by PoleaxeGames

The plan is
1. Free
2. The code I write is open source
3. The code and assets I don't have a license to redistribute (including Unity) any downloaders of my source would have to get on their own.
4. I'll rename anything that a commercial entity has a copyright to.

I checked online and there seems to be disagreement as to whether #3 is allowed or not. Ultimately it depends on what the Angrand devs want to enforce or not, so I'd like to get official blessing to move ahead with this.

The Free Software Foundation’s opinion is that #3 is not allowed. The FSF is also very much an interested party on the subject, as that’s one of the things they explicitly don’t want to happen. I’m not a copyright lawyer, nor do I feel like reading licenses ATM, so I’m not going to opine on that.

Any sort of commercialized version of Angband with the current data files is a nightmare. (The non-commercial version may well rely entirely on various copyright holders not caring. Or it may be fair use. Still not a copyright lawyer.) The developers of Moria and Angband lifted from everywhere willy-nilly. Tolkien, D&D, and MERP are the big three, but I would not bet on anything you think is original actually being so, except Quylthulgs.

You can reimplement the mechanics safely, but anything beyond that is questionable.

Also, honestly, without some major reworking, I doubt a commercial version of Angband would fly.

[tangar]

I don't think there will be any trouble from DnD or some misc entities. After all it will be yet another indie project which won't bring real maney, so no one will be interested to grab hold of it.

Also it's kinda close to nearly non-profit game as there are plenty of other ways to get much more $$ - just develop new mobile p2w grind stuff, not very niche roguelike game which (sadly) is too complex for modern gamer.

So indie dev who will make open-source game even if it will be sold on Steam for a fistful of dollars won't get any CC trouble, I'm sure in it.

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Tangar: that is only half of it. D&D is still pretty heavily used (floating eyes, druj, Vecna, etc.)

Floating eye.. It's not copyrighted stuff. "Hobbit" word copyrighted only because it's the name of the book and Tolkien invented this word by himself. While floating eye it's pretty ancient mythology stuff, so it won't hurt. As long as you don't mention phrase "Dungeon & Dragons" in your game name and stay sane, you are more than safe to use any regular monsters species from it. There are no examples of court trials where dev was convicted for using DnD stuff like 'beholder'.. Funny thing, there is a game called like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beholder_(video_game) though it's different genre.. And word beholder used in a lot of places and games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beholder ... no one will care if you will make such monster. Though it's easy to rename it to 'floating eye' (which is cc0).

Also... 1st edition of DnD published in 1974.. soon it will be legal in Canada too