Policy on abandoned mods.

Freeform discussion about anything related to modding Transcendence.
User avatar
alterecco
Fleet Officer
Fleet Officer
Posts: 1658
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:08 am
Location: Previously enslaved by the Iocrym

But does that not go agains some of the talks that we had earlier about this, regarding duplication and (copying) stealing. If the author looses all rights to the content uploaded to xelerus, there is a chance we wont see some of the better stuff up there, such as the next Dvelenk6 or Aeonic?

I am not sure what to do in it's place, I just wanted to point out that it might represent a problem for some authors.
User avatar
Atarlost
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2391
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:02 am

Can't just lose ownership. Some mods use graphics or sounds with specific copyleft licenses.

Script is the really important thing though. Models can be reproduced manually as can any sound someone's likely to record or synthesize themselves. There are no doubt subtle differences (besides lack of texture) between my Ranx DN mesh and Georges that would prevent it from being claimed to be theft.
User avatar
Song
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2831
Joined: Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:27 am

Well, in my future big mods, including development mods, i'm putting a little bit in the .txt that accompanies it to say that free use is allowed if I've been gone 6 months. Should be easy as a stop-gap measure for currently active people.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
User avatar
Prophet
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 826
Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:09 pm

Including a README.txt file with mods is always a good idea if you have collisions, overwritten resources, borrowed code, FAQs etc... but for something simple a readme is not always necessary.

Another idea is to utilize the ingame credits attribute:
<TranscendenceExtension UNID="&unidExtension;" version="1.0" name="[Mod Name]" credits="Original by: [Autohor], updated by: [You]">
This is a very simple and easy addition for abandoned mods, at least until we can hammer out something more concrete.
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
User avatar
ptbptb
Militia Lieutenant
Militia Lieutenant
Posts: 143
Joined: Mon May 10, 2010 7:34 pm

To bring this to a more immediate level, I've got a version of the Almighty Wrench that I consider ready for testing and hopefully approximately balanced.

At present it's set up so that after approximately 20 attempts at repairing a level 1 item you become as adept at repairing level 2 as you were level 1 before. Unlike before there is no 'nothing happens' option. You either repair it, or you fail. If you fail the item will be destroyed (if you're lucky - the chance of insta-kill still exists). To compensate for that the chance of failure has been a little reduced.

So would it be OK to upload it to 'development' in my UNID space - with the appropriate credit given to the previous author?
Post Reply