If you could add one thing to Vanilla Doom

[phi108]

Creaphis said:

Actually, the more I think about this point the less I'm convinced of it. The line between package and object is extremely fine, as the ultimate natures of both are the same invisible differences in magnetism; but a distinction can still be drawn, made more obvious by analogy. When I play some old Doom mod, what I see as the intellectual property is the levels, graphics or other modifications themselves - ie. everything that can possibly be encountered while the work is being used. Much in the same way, when watching a movie, what comprises the work, the intellectual property, is the movie as it is viewable, not the basic molecular composition of the physical apparati that make viewing the movie possible. Now, let's pretend that I'm watching a movie from a DVD, which some selfless filmmaker has placed under a Creative Commons license with a no-derivates clause. Let's also pretend that I have some superbly luddite friend who only has a VHS player. I make a copy and hand it to him. Is transcribing the movie from one format, ie. physical package, to another, in violation of copyright? In any remote, idealistic way? If it isn't, then in what important way do digital distribution packages differ?

This just reads like a very good interpretation of the property of the authors, though I may just like it because it would be convienient for us who want to see uploaded fixed versions.

I just wonder if there was ever an author who was as attached to the packaging and installation method as he was to the work. Surely he would want to package it in a convienient way, though with the way some mods are packaged, I don't really know. Are those weird packagings the most efficient method of the time, badly-performed packaging by the author, or intentionally different?

[Belial]

Common sense > copyright.

Fix it, upload it, if the author doesn't like it then he can complain.

[Scuba Steve]

Agreed.

If Urban Brawl or Action Doom break... you have my permission to fix them by any means necessary. Now myk won't crap his pants in 14 years if someone fixes it.

[Graf Zahl]

myk said:

This is incorrect. Ty does not allow stuff by community authors to be used without permission on the archive. The archives stance toward non-community stuff used without permission is that he'll take action if any complaints are raised by copyright owners.

What I've been saying all along is consistent with how the archive works.

What makes community authors' work so much more necessary to protect?

If you take a hard line on copyright you need to be consistent. If you aren't you are a hypocrite.

phi108 said:

I just wonder if there was ever an author who was as attached to the packaging and installation method as he was to the work. Surely he would want to package it in a convienient way, though with the way some mods are packaged, I don't really know. Are those weird packagings the most efficient method of the time, badly-performed packaging by the author, or intentionally different?

There's 4 different scenarios:

1. Some predate any decent sprite merging tools and had to resort to DMGRAPH manipulation of the IWAD (Example: Teutic)
2. Use of bad tools that today cause more problems than they solve (Example: Obtic)
3. Cluelessness about robustness of the distributed content. (Example: Ottawau.)
4. Wrong priorities. The files themselves are fine but the distribution package is a mess because they were prepared for floppy disk distribution. (Examples: Strain and Cleimos2.)

As for usability today it's as follows:

1. Requires dangerous installation procedures. Most likely not usable by today's players without doing serious harm to the game files.
2. Depending on the installer, like 1, probably slightly better if the installation batch does not modify the IWAD. Would not run without installation steps requiring the IWAD though.
3. Unusable today
4. If people get past the reconstruction process, no problem. However, the installation batches normally also contain code to alter the IWAD so again people need to be very careful how to do it.


So the best case scenario for these distributions is that people may get it into a working fashion if they know 100% what they are doing.

In cases like Teutic and Ottawau though there is no chance that anyone could make it work who hasn't been around in the good old DOS days and knows what can be done inside out - in case of Ottawau probably not even the most knowledgeable people due to the messed up binary patches.

[Never_Again]

[Maes]

phi108 said:

Are those weird packagings the most efficient method of the time, badly-performed packaging by the author, or intentionally different?

DEUSF was pretty much the standard way for anything using modified sprites (with very few exceptions that already came with all sprites replaces and/or included). DMGRAPH/DMAUD were used to bang directly in the IWADs, but only really lame mods (HAPPY.ZIP) used them to install custom textures, seeing how DOOM could just read them off a PWAD with no problem.

Mods like OTTAWAU are a case apart, for they use direct file patching (they don't even use DOOM-specific utilities for that job), and the problem is that they're perked to the DOS platform and to a particular version of DOOM, which, perversely, even legitimate owners of DOOM (in the form of Ultimate Doom) cannot use. Had the author chose to release this as a bunch of separate PWAD and a DEH file, there wouldn't be any problem.

The real WTF is that he did so in 1996...well after Ultimate Doom was released, and the modding scene mature enough to provide more appropriate tools. Seeing how the author knew well how to include sprites and graphics in PWADs (from his previous works) I can only assume that he deliberately made it that hard, and that he has/had the "source" PWADs and DEH file somewhere.

Never_Again said:

And this is exactly what I did (and yet the redundant discussion continues to drag on as if I never posted).
I changed the filenames and updated the TXT to reflect the changes. The fix has been submitted to /idgames and is in /incoming as I type this.

Gotta hand it to you, that's exactly what that mod needed. Goog job! (And sorry for not noticing).

How you figured out the DEH changes?

I'd also suggest not bothering arguing with myk or with anyone on why he doesn't lash out on ALL non-conformant PWADs: it's like asking a cop that has pulled you over why he isn't also giving tickets to the other motorists that are speeding past you and breaking the law: he can't, and won't, but will surely make "the best" out of you, right now.

[Never_Again]

[Super Jamie]

Good work, Never_Again :)

[GreyGhost]

Super Jamie said:

Wow, that really is messed up. This is all stupid, someone should just ask Ty for permission to fix it. We can argue back and forth with fake legalese till the cows come home but at the end of the day - despite all valid arguments for and against - it's his decision as archive administrator.

Unfortunately Ty's in no position to authorise changes - would be nice if he was.

@Never_Again - I missed that, well done. Where did you find a v1.9 .exe the installer would accept? Every one I used (including two created using upgrade patches) was rejected as being the shareware version!

[Super Jamie]

GreyGhost said:

Unfortunately Ty's in no position to authorise changes - would be nice if he was.

He's not really in any position to accept/deny content if it uses licensed material such as Aliens sprites, Duke3D textures or ROTT music yet all these things are OK on /idgames.

[Never_Again]

[Mad Butcher]

Try changing the date on your computer to April 1995. That is how I got Ottawau to install.

[GreyGhost]

Never_Again said:

So you can simply take DOOM2.EXE v1.9 and rename it to DOOM.EXE.

Sneaky!! :D

I upgraded Doom v1.1 (from my infamous bootleg CD) and v1.2 (from floppy disks) to v1.9 - both .exe's were rejected - in the end I got it to work by editing the batch file to by-pass version checking.

[Never_Again]

[GreyGhost]

The CRC checksums match - maybe I should have tried Mad Butcher's suggestion. Weird! Actually, having a corrupt .exe was the least of my worries, not being able to find the changes with AptDiff would have been more frustrating.

Heh - we discussed that CD nearly two years in another thread which has links and more info. :-)

[Never_Again]

[Creaphis]

GreyGhost said:

Unfortunately Ty's in no position to authorise changes - would be nice if he was.

Huh? Then who is? Of course he's in no position to change copyright law, but he is in a position to decide what goes on the archive as far as I know.

[GreyGhost]

Whoever has copyright control. As archive maintainer, one of Ty's responsibilities is to try and keep the archive from being shut down by outraged copyright holders, so he has to stay at arms length of any decision to patch/modify other people's work and just judge the submitted material on it's merits.

[myk]

Belial said:
Common sense > copyright.

Assuming this is true, what makes you think common sense has only one interpretation? The archive uses common sense, if you ask me, in respecting the copyrights of authors first and foremost because it is they who put their hands into it. Ty doesn't make interpretations as to when to accept or ignore community member copyrights because that's unreasonable without establishing it beforehand. We all have different opinions on when it would be "reasonable" to ignore any said copyrights, hence we leave it to the authors as universally established.

Graf Zahl said:
What makes community authors' work so much more necessary to protect?

How is your question pertinent when you have been annoyed at what you've perceived as bad uses of your code? (I'm referring to closed source use of GZDoom code.)

If you take a hard line on copyright you need to be consistent. If you aren't you are a hypocrite.

Dear Mr. Pot,

How does that not apply equally to a "soft line" position? Following that logic, if you're ignoring the copyrights of authors in the community, and think behavior must be consistent to avoid hypocricy, then you have to ignore other copyrights as well, such as id's. Go upload the IWADs to idgames.

Yours truly,

Mr. Kettle

Never_Again said:
1) Did the Plutonia 2 team seek and obtain permission from id software to use these textures in PL2.WAD?

No.

3) If not, did you argue with the team against the inclusion of said textures in the same "spirit of community" approach you applied in this thread?

Yes. You should find that somewhere in the Yahoo group for PL2. I think it is viewable by non-members, but I'm not sure.

4) Have you sought to have Plutonia 2 removed from /idgames and if not, why?

It would have been and would be pointless because the archive doesn't exclude stuff for such infractions, with some exceptions resulting from companies sending the admin cease and desist letters (namely Disney and MTV.) From observation, reading the documents on the archive and previous reports and consultation, I am familiar with how Ty operates.

Creaphis said:
Huh? Then who is? Of course he's in no position to change copyright law, but he is in a position to decide what goes on the archive as far as I know.

He decides, making reasonable decisions and trying to protect the works of all authors as much as possible.

[Graf Zahl]

Thanks for confirming.

So the legitimate copyright claims of owners of stolen resources are worth shit but some ancient clauses that were made to prevent abuse by shovelware distributors are now burying these old creations.

Yes, that makes perfect sense...


Sorry, but I can't respect such a ludicrous viewpoint. Either be in it for the ride (as in respect copyright as a whole and get rid of everything that violates copyright) or not. But such half-assed and selective handling of copyright does not make your standpoint any more valid.

It's a hollow ideal that protects exactly the wrong things in any conceivable way.

[Maes]

Well in any case:

PRESERVATION - COPYRIGHT MYSTICISM

1 - 0

:-p

[Creaphis]

Never_Again said:

Thank you, I was getting worried that my post was only visible to myself only.

We noticed your fix, but this topic is now bigger than it.

GreyGhost said:

As archive maintainer, one of Ty's responsibilities is to try and keep the archive from being shut down by outraged copyright holders, so he has to stay at arms length of any decision to patch/modify other people's work and just judge the submitted material on it's merits.

Hm, so perhaps the best thing to do is to just upload fixes and seek forgiveness rather than permission? :) It's too late for that, because I just emailed him:

Creaphis said to Ty Halderman:
An issue has recently come to a head over at the Doomworld forums. Many old projects that are currently hosted on the idgames archive have installation procedures that rely on obsolete operating systems, and on tools that are obscure, difficult to use, or dangerous. This means that a high degree of technical knowledge is necessary to install these projects today, and that these projects are inaccessible to Doom fans without this knowledge. It has been proposed that these projects be reuploaded in a "modernized" form, with all data contained in simple .wad and .deh files, so that they can be appreciated by present and future audiences. The problem, however, is that some of these old projects have attached clauses prohibiting modification, and have authors that are now impossible to contact. This has divided Doomworld's users into two camps: one feels that modified packages such as these should be publicly hosted, according to the "common sense" that these map authors wish for their work to remain accessible and enjoyable, and do not have any particular attachment to the exact method of distribution they originally used. The other camp states that, because modification such as this is not explicitly allowed by the projects' licenses, such modification is a breach of copyright and could potentially be going against the authors' wishes, and should therefore be abstained from.

As the maintainer of the idgames archive, what is your feeling on this matter? More importantly, would you be willing to host versions of these old projects that have been modified to be more accessible? Your decision here is likely to have a wide impact on Doom community feeling and practice.

In case you would find it interesting, the Doomworld discussion on this subject contains additional arguments and starts here:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/831066

Some examples of problem wads:

Teutic
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=941
OTTOWAU.WAD
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=1651
Obituary
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=2021
Strain
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=8467
Cleimos 2
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=3864
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=3863

-Paul Hiebert, aka "Creaphis"

[TheeXile]

Wow. I totally missed this epic debate.


Normally I'd be more about keeping the copyright and asking people with problems with the old stuff to focus instead on making new and better stuff then (if the original authors don't/won't give permissions, I mean), but that's not really how creative communities work, isn't it? Still, it's the direction I'm leaning towards.

I think it's just a simple matter of filing this under the "who cares" category, though, since a large percentage of these WADs are already technically in copyright violation to varying degrees anyway and the more we dig ourselves into the legalities of all of this, the uglier it'll probably get.



I think the best compromise solution would just be to volunteer to separately host remakes of old wads on a different database and see if anyone gives a crap :P.

Make it a torrent database if you're really paranoid.

[Maes]

Well, at this point I may as well openly publish my email to "jsg" (Jean-Serge Gagnon) about the OTTAWAU issue. Keep in mind, he hasn't replied yet even if the mail didn't bounce:

Hi,

I am Maes from the Doomworld forums (http://www.doomworld.com/vb/)

I'm contacting you because one of your older PWADs (OTTAWAU,
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=1651) became the center
object of a heated debate on copyrights, author's wishes and so on.
Better see that for yourself :
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/48718-if-you-could-add-one-thing-to-vanilla-doom/3/

To make a long story short, what was initially a discussion thread
about what features we'd include in vanilla Doom back in the day
degenerated in a Holy War about whether certain older mods like
OTTAWAU that used unusual/custom installers, should have their
resources extracted and be re-released in a form compatible with
modern Doom source ports, regardless of the wishes of the original
author (that'd be you).

What sparked so much controversy over OTTAWAU is that certain people
interpreted the "MAY NOT use this as a base..." clause as including
the distribution system as well (custom installers targetting only DOS
Doom v1.9 registered in your case), and so e.g. extracting your
sprites and graphics and packaging them in a standard PWAD format for
a public release giving you full credtit (without using them as a base
for anything else) would consitute a violation of your wishes. Some
even went as far as suggesting that such mods should just be abandoned
once and for all, as there's no way to break the copyright deadlock.

Others, such as myself, consider that we'd do a sort of service to the
authors of those old mods by re-releasing them in a
standards-compliant format.

Now, I don't know how much you've been involved with Doom after its
hey day, but we at Doomworld would surely like to hear your input on
this matter. If your time allows for it, take a second or two to
register and chime in, or reply to me so I can forward your input to
the Doomworld community.

Thank you for you time, and (I hope) happy Dooming ;-)

[Zetta]

Gez said:

Why not actual scripts, then?

Shame it was impossible, on a more Realistic note, The fist is about the least useful weapon i have ever seen. If i had a say i would make the fists twice as strong and have the player start with fists instead of pistol. I hate that. :(

[Ty Halderman]

Interesting discussion. Let me try to put my stance forward (after which strafing is probably appropriate).

I maintain a community archive hosted by a private group. The goal is to keep everything legal from id's point of view (we are allowed to mirror their site because of our cooperation with them).

We have allowed limited use of resources from other id Software games in PWADs. They haven't objected. Neither I nor they want a new game to be created based on an existing game, but there are some nice graphics out there and people hack them into the lovely DOOM palette and use them.

From my point of view, copyright is not the issue. Notice that the section of the text file says "Copyright / Permissions" and not just "Copyright." The reason is that if someone wishes to state their copyright, that's the section to do it in. Copyright is an invisible right, and applies (in the US, at least, which is where this archive lives) at the moment of creation and does not have to be specified, but some people prefer to do so if it's original content. Fine, do or don't--not my issue. So other than when the lawyers from Disney and MTV come to the door, which was like over 10 years ago, I couldn't care less about copyright specifically.

I however look at this section to determine what permissions have been granted by the author. Permissions are assumed not granted unless specified, and that includes anything inside the zip file. That is my responsiblity as the maintainer of this community archive, and I represent the authors individually in that sense.

I however fully agree that it would be appropriate if possible to resurrect some of these obscurely-usable files. The thing is how to do it if you can't contact an author.

Certainly I don't want anyone repackaging Eternal DOOM, even though it has a hard-to-use-nowadays front end and did a bunch of stuff to create ETERNAL.WAD from ETERNALL.WAD and the IWAD. Why? Because people just run ETERNALL.WAD with their favorite port and it works. That's the case with many of these complicated installations--the ports are smart now and can bypass a lot of that. It's why we put that functionality into BOOM. If someone wanted to repackage it as a port-only mod, I would expect them to contact me, and for me to discuss it with the team prior to allowing it. I feel the same about any of my work and think other authors do too.

None of this should be construed to mean you shouldn't repackage things. The issue is that I can't accept them into the archive without replacing the existing one, and I can't do that without the author's permission. Simple.

What I recommend is that Doomworld create a place that these repackaged files live, for those whose author cannot be reached. The idgames archive is not part of Doomworld, and that's something that gets missed often, apparently. I have my rules, but Doomworld doesn't have to abide by them. Or some other 3rd party site--just get a piece of the community together and get after it.

I would also suggest that some detailed research be done into trying to track down people. Certainly I'd think Denis and Thomas Möller still exist somewhere and someone knows one of them. Rand Phares was a simple Google search--his new company for iPhone games is even called cleimos.com! He in particular probably hasn't thought about the installation of Cleimos2 in years, and would be happy either to repackage it (if he, unlike me, still has DOOM on his computer), or grant permission.

Hope that clarified something.

[Maes]

Ty, how would you classify the extreme case of OTTAWAU and some other packages that go well beyond what modern source ports can compensate for?

This is not just about the ability or not to use sprites or flats from PWADs without merging, this one is so fucked up that graphics and other resources are not even in mergable PWADs, but rely on direct patching of the .exe and IWAD via custom DOS-only tools, and then again, they only work vs very specific versions of the IWAD and EXE, which also turned out to be inaccurate (read the rest of the thread for more details)

No source port author in his right mind would make a custom loader just for that one modification, therefore a one-time, one-size-fits-all fix makes more sense.

[Creaphis]

I don't think that any properly-built repackaging of these old projects would truly be "port-only." DeuSF is relatively well-known as far as old utilies go, and the end-user wishing to play the project on vanilla would still be able to use it. Note that DOOM.EXE users are much more likely to know how to use DeuSF than source-port users are to know how to use the tools necessary to build OTTAWAU.WAD.

That said, Ty's position is perfectly fair, and another private archive somewhere probably would be the best "one-size-fits-all" solution.

[Graf Zahl]

Ty Halderman said:

Certainly I don't want anyone repackaging Eternal DOOM, even though it has a hard-to-use-nowadays front end and did a bunch of stuff to create ETERNAL.WAD from ETERNALL.WAD and the IWAD. Why? Because people just run ETERNALL.WAD with their favorite port and it works. That's the case with many of these complicated installations--the ports are smart now and can bypass a lot of that. It's why we put that functionality into BOOM. If someone wanted to repackage it as a port-only mod, I would expect them to contact me, and for me to discuss it with the team prior to allowing it. I feel the same about any of my work and think other authors do too.

I don't think that it's even necessary to bother with distributions like Eternal which is perfectly fine.

This was about those which are essentially broken (OTTAWAU), dangerous to use like DMGRAPH based installations that may destroy the IWAD (Teutic) or ones where the files have been split up into multiple parts (Cleimos 2 or Strain) which are unintuitive to install for today's users. In the last case I wouldn't even want to touch the actual files, just run the installer that constructs the actual game files and repack that, no changes made.

And most importantly, why would anyone want to create a port-only version of them? This is something that clearly is one of the things the authors did not want because it really is altering the original content which I would never approve.

Just to make it clear, here's what is needed to run Teutic with the sprite replacements in modern ports without modified IWAD:

- copy Doom into a second directory
- unpack Teutic into that directory
- install Teutic with its batch files
- extract all the new sprites from the modified IWAD.
- add sprites including SS_START/SS_END markers into main PWAD.

No problem for me (albeit tedious and annoying) but I'm dead certain that 99% of all potential users won't be able to do this.

(if he, unlike me, still has DOOM on his computer), or grant permission.

Why is it that I find this the most disturbing sentence in here... :?

[Ty Halderman]

Sorry, by "port-only" I just meant that someone could repackage the resources into a single PWAD (with correct lump blocking) and it would just run with a port, without any additional batch files, DEUSF, etc.

As for OTTAWAU, it wasn't unprecedented in 1995 to back up the exe and IWAD (which that batch file does) and hack them to run an addon, then put things back afterwards. Use of BDIFF makes sense from the point of view of an early distribution--lots of people were trying various approaches at that time. But regardless, I agree with assessments that this one in particular, and several to a lesser degree, could have been done better, differently, or ever updated since release.

And I don't have DOOM installed because I don't play it any more and last time I did was 3 computers ago. I can go run it if I have to--I just have other interests keeping me busy.