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Irritant Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 115 Location: Maryland |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:13 pm Post subject: |

avirox wrote:
but I can see why the community would be annoyed at this closed doors agreement. Perhaps they could have at least polled the community beforehand to gauge their reaction.

I think it's pretty obvious a poll would have gone pretty negatively, but at least it would have been out in the open.
As far as I can tell, everything is above board legally, so no issues there. The real issue is moral. It was most definitely wrong of Lee Vermuelen to give the Nexuiz name away without consulting the community(as well as a number of the developers).
Kedhrins "publisher speak" wasn't exactly endearing to the community either. He selectively answered a few questions, while ignoring others, and did so in a bit of a tone that suggested that they weren't budging, "so screw you, the Nexuiz community, I doesn't have to dooo shiit". Later though, after realizing just how bad the publicity was, and how big a shitstorm he was involved in, seemed to back off on that tone.
Aside from that, just not sure how well a console deathmatch game would really work out. The art is ok, though it reminds me an awful lot of Warsow(not a bad thing, but is it really Nexuiz?).
Where does it go from here? Good question. I know I've made some suggestions myself, but I feel it's viewed as meddling anyway, given that I work on another game. IMO, I think that Lee, LH, and Illfonic need to rethink some things in order to salvage the image of both the game and themselves.
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dreadlorde Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 86 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:37 pm Post subject: |

The only problem I have with this is the fact they're using the Nexuiz name in a game which is

Quote:
- a 100% separate entity from the Nexuiz you guys know and love. The game play in our version of Nexuiz is very similar. However, in order to properly port it over to consoles we've tweaked a few things here and there - we want to make sure this is a different project (yet still similar) out of respect for your version of Nexuiz.

And the following is just retarded reasoning:

Quote:
There are no plans at this time to make content we make, including source code, open to the public. Please keep in mind we are spending a lot of money on this project, my team and I have been slaving away on this for the past 2 months - working 12+ hours 7 days a week in order to get it to where it is. We are very passionate about this project as well.

Other than that, I'm happy LordHavoc + other content creators will finally be remunerated for all of their hard work. Not sure how IllFonic received a proprietary license for Quake when id stopped selling licenses for it (found that on the id website not to long ago iirc. Can dig it up if needed).
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Supa Joined: 26 Oct 2004 Posts: 122 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 5:49 pm Post subject: |

Baker wrote:
I really think what is going on is evil and a betrayal to the whole idea of FOSS.

Wow.

Baker wrote:
I hope Console Non-GPL Nexuiz is a failure

Just wow.
Why are you bringing their pointless, baseless whine here? You've brought it to func_ too. Can you people not understand what it means to be the owner of a brand? Vermeulen can do whatever he wants with the name Nexuiz and if people don't like that then they need to either find something else to do or come up with their own project. Remember, absolutely no assets or gamecode from the PC version are going to be used in the console version - they have an entire paid team to recreate everything from scratch, why would they want to reuse FOSS-quality 'art'? The engine itself has already been licensed and it has already been made clear that handing over ownership of code to LH is a part of getting commit access to the DP SVN.
There really is nothing to debate here - the Nexuiz brand belongs to Vermeulen, the PC Nexuiz assets and gamecode will not be reused by Illfonic because they are perfectly capable of creating their own and the engine does *not* belong to their community, it belongs to LH.
Really, if they really do hate Alientrap so much then they should just fork the project and give real game development a shot, though I can imagine it'd be FAR easier for them as they would have a base to start from. Considering Vermeulen and Alientrap didn't have that luxury pre-v1.0 and everything else that happened, I find this backlash to be disgustingly ungrateful.

Baker wrote:
Ironically, this gives justification to private fears of certain mod authors that their work could be misused. I know R00k fears that the Clan Arena X source code could be warped by evil commercial interests.

*sigh* You're still naive. :|

Baker wrote:
I'm sorry but I've always viewed Kedhrin Gonzalez as a mega-fail. All I need to do was watch his PlanetQuake video to back in 2006 to know he is a whiney boy loser with no core moral values but with plenty of selfishness and self-rightousness.

Please don't tell me you're trying to 'take the moral high ground'.

Baker wrote:
Well, yes because of the self-important attitude which is the core moral failure that dominates the current environment

Well, at least we can agree on *something*. Keep in mind, though, that such an entitlement complex can infest entire communites. :)
Honestly, I just can't believe how ungrateful some people can be. Vermeulen, AT and LH basically gave an entire community the game after a VERY protracted and rough development period. The least they can do is be happy that Vermeulen and LH are finally recieving some kind of recognition for that.
Last edited by Supa on Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 6:19 pm Post subject: |

^ +12 for Ms. Supa From what I gathered since the announcement, this is all just a blind stallman-powered brainwash smear campaign. It doesn't help when they pepper that on the Nexuiz moddb profile either, like some rebellious movement against themselves, especially the theory on asset taking (who would want to scavenge that old 'art' when you've got a professional team of industry artists that have proven to do better than that?) It especially bothers me that IllFonic is portrayed as a bunch of wrongdoing thieves in these accusations, when many of us here at I3D knew who they are for years.
IllFonic did not "steal" Nexuiz.
It has to stop and yes there is no debate about it - Nexuiz was always Vermuelen's baby. Unknowningly to the community complete with DidNotDoTheResearch to the development history, Nexuiz was originally intended to profit. The console version is simply 'attempt #2' at that. It can't get any simpler than that. It's only when they can't get it for free under a specific license the whine bicker starts coming in, despite the fact it's impossible to have a GPL game on the Xbox360, PS3 and Wii.
I've contributed to Nexuiz in the past (weapon sounds, effects) and released addons as well (jaguar, felicia, etc) - and I find this new game completely awesome and I sincerely wish Alientrap and IllFonic luck, both at a fortune they deserve as well as luck at dealing with the unpleasable fandumb.
Also... Nexuiz.com. Got a clue yet?
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mh Joined: 12 Jan 2008 Posts: 909 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:26 pm Post subject: |

leileilol wrote:
^ +12 for Ms. Supa From what I gathered since the announcement, this is all just a blind stallman-powered brainwash smear campaign. It doesn't help when they pepper that on the Nexuiz moddb profile either, like some rebellious movement against themselves, especially the theory on asset taking (who would want to scavenge that old 'art' when you've got a professional team of industry artists that have proven to do better than that?) It especially bothers me that IllFonic is portrayed as a bunch of wrongdoing thieves in these accusations, when many of us here at I3D knew who they are for years.
IllFonic did not "steal" Nexuiz.
It has to stop and yes there is no debate about it - Nexuiz was always Vermuelen's baby. Unknowningly to the community complete with DidNotDoTheResearch to the development history, Nexuiz was originally intended to profit. The console version is simply 'attempt #2' at that. It can't get any simpler than that. It's only when they can't get it for free under a specific license the whine bicker starts coming in, despite the fact it's impossible to have a GPL game on the Xbox360, PS3 and Wii.
I've contributed to Nexuiz in the past (weapon sounds, effects) and released addons as well (jaguar, felicia, etc) - and I find this new game completely awesome and I sincerely wish Alientrap and IllFonic luck, both at a fortune they deserve as well as luck at dealing with the unpleasable fandumb.
Also... Nexuiz.com. Got a clue yet?

You know - I pretty much agree with this. Now, I am personally a huge supporter of Free Software, and - even though Nexuiz means very little to me - I would have been excited if a console version (whatever that turned out to be) remained Free, but I'm not particularly feeling any butthurt over the way things are. Because what I despise is the FSF trying to shove their manifesto down people's throats via ill-informed fear-mongering (and Unix, but that's another story).
Nobody is being ripped off, nothing is been stolen, everything is above-board. The console folks are completely separate to the PC community, so there will be no negative impact on the PC version. Improvements from the console version will be feeding back into the PC version (>clicky<) and the whole thing is being done with the agreement and cooperation of all parties involved.
THIS IS ACTUALLY RATHER COOL
Think about it. What we have here is (1) a successful Free PC shooter being legally ported to console platforms, (2) improvements from those console platforms coming back to the PC version, (3) people who have given a lot to the community getting some money that they can pay bills and buy food with (and still being in a position to give), so (4) everybody wins.
This, people, is GPL software and proprietary software working hand-in-hand for the mutual benefit of both, and giving something good to the console people.
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Teiman Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 309 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:50 pm Post subject: |

This is really cool news. Another success for Open Source software. HUGE SUCCESS I hope the source code is released anyway, Is superweird that these guys don't want to, and It may create a problem if latter, some guy prove that DarkPlaces contains uncreditec code. But I trust on LordHavoc on replace any offending code.
This is totally against the spirit of the letter. The BSD license exist for what this people want to do, anyway... but talking about the spirit of the letter is nitipicking.
And about names.. well... theres a Apple Music and theres a Apple Computers. The Apple computers are inteligent software people, that have the Mac computer and the iTunes store. The Apple Music are these idiots greedy bastard that don't want people to use the beatles music in movies and games (I wish die in a fire). Theres not overlap or very small overlap in Nexuiz PS3 and Nexuiz PC.
I suppose something will be made to give freedom to the Nexuiz OpenSource project to continue use the word by any way want.
But "GPL Nexuiz" is a horrible name... what about Open Nexuiz or Nexuiz Community Version ? ...

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reckless Joined: 24 Jan 2008 Posts: 390 Location: inside tha debugger |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:58 pm Post subject: |

got to agree there GPL is'nt nessesarilly synonym with everything must be free thats totally up to the involved parts, and if they agree more power to them for making something that is actually commerciable. they should hire LH tbh hees one damn hell of a programmer
in time i can only see something good coming from this (blood infusion to this old game engine).

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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:16 pm Post subject: |

All I am saying is this has been handled very, very badly. I'm not anti-commercial whatsoever. There are no engine code or GPL issues here. Yes, they can make their own artwork so their are no legal issues at all. But there is a large ethical issue.
You don't build a successful community over the course of 5 years with the concept of community development and then tell them they must change their name. Or maybe you do, but it could sure be handled a hell of a lot better.
And then have an assclown talk down to them, being so pretentious as to then say (paraphrasing) "you are lucky I am talking to you at all."

Supa wrote:
Why are you bringing their pointless, baseless whine here? You've brought it to func_ too. Can you people not understand what it means to be the owner of a brand?

Because I don't believe it is pointless or baseless.
It is being handled poorly.
All they had to do was called the name "Nexuiz Wars" or "Nexuiz: The Beginning" or something and tell the established community that they could continue to use the name and go along as they have always done.
Instead the message was: thanks for your long contribution, now we are kicking you out of the house.
How people handle things socially is important.
Hell, one way to have completely appeased the base would have been saying "You get to pick the new name for GPL Nexuiz" and in homage to the project "5 of the models from Console Nexuiz" will be donated to "GPL Nexuiz".
Instead, it was a big "screw you" and "I'll listen to your concerns, but I don't care".
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frag.machine Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 728 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:35 pm Post subject: |

mh wrote:
Nobody is being ripped off, nothing is been stolen, everything is above-board. The console folks are completely separate to the PC community, so there will be no negative impact on the PC version. Improvements from the console version will be feeding back into the PC version (>clicky<) and the whole thing is being done with the agreement and cooperation of all parties involved.

While I agree with most what Supa, leileilol and mh said, I am not so sure about statements like "nobody is being ripped off". I know, they have a team working and blah blah blah and they licensed some of the maps and blah blah blah but let's face it: it's a lot of work for such small team in a likely narrow timeline to launch (I am supposing they won't announce the game and then go back to their caves to work in crunch mode for 1 year or 2 to recreate every artwork asset). And some community made stuff may not be licensed and used "as placeholder" and then accidentally slips into the final product (this already happened with 100% closed source projects, let alone something like Nexuiz), so keeping an eye just for assure that only licensed work is present in the game doesn't hurt. Also, I think there's a grey zone in the QuakeC part. A simple conversion to straight C code in the same way id did to Quake2 wouldn't mean "a completely different work" IMO. And that's something pretty hard to verify actually, so we'll need to just trust on them. Overall, regardless of "who-owns-what" the damage is already done in the PR department I am afraid.

mh wrote:
(2) improvements from those console platforms coming back to the PC version

I am curious from a technical point of view, about what are the "improvements" made to console that would be worth to bring back to the PC version. Tying a reasonably platform-neutral engine as Darkplaces to XNA or DirectX10/11 is not exactly what I would call "a benefit".
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Irritant Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 115 Location: Maryland |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:41 pm Post subject: |

Supa wrote:
Remember, absolutely no assets or gamecode from the PC version are going to be used in the console version

You and Leilei keep saying this, but that is a false statement actually. They are in fact retooling some maps and other items. The screenshots on their website are that of a retextured and revamped "Strength", a map from the original Nexuiz. This is straight from Kendhrin's mouth.
I think in this case of such a volatile situation, it's probably a very good idea to make sure the facts are straight before throwing in a strongly worded opinion.
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Irritant Joined: 19 May 2008 Posts: 115 Location: Maryland |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:49 pm Post subject: |

Aside from the legal issue, which seems in order, there is no "stealing", some conveniently overlook the moral issue, which mostly is revolving around the name. Yes, Vermuelen had the right to sell or give away the Nexuiz brand. It is perfectly his legal right. I don't think that is in question at all.
However, was it right to do so, when he hasn't been a part of the community for over 4 years, when he really had no input or work on the product in that time, and when he did not consult the people who did? When Vermuelen last had his handprints on Nexuiz, the name had little value. It was the developers and community who built that name into something worthwhile, so at the very least, they should have been consulted. I think that is all anyone is really saying about the name.
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mh Joined: 12 Jan 2008 Posts: 909 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:09 pm Post subject: |

Irritant wrote:
You and Leilei keep saying this, but that is a false statement actually. They are in fact retooling some maps and other items. The screenshots on their website are that of a retextured and revamped "Strength", a map from the original Nexuiz. This is straight from Kendhrin's mouth.

I wouldn't worry too much about pre-release shots. Let's wait until the final product is out before making judgement.
Regarding the name issue: this isn't really too much different than - say - the N64 version of Quake II, which used the name "Quake II" but had completely different maps. And that certainly wasn't the first game to do so; to a lesser or greater extent content differences between PC and console versions of games have been a fairly common thing, yet the same named has been used.

frag.machine wrote:
I am curious from a technical point of view, about what are the "improvements" made to console that would be worth to bring back to the PC version. Tying a reasonably platform-neutral engine as Darkplaces to XNA or DirectX10/11 is not exactly what I would call "a benefit".

Actually a toggleable D3D rendering backend for Windows DP would be a good first improvement. Sounds like sacrilege, but the reality is that there are still very bad (unstable or poorly performing) OpenGL drivers out there and even a direct API-call-to-API-call translation from OpenGL to D3D can make a game that was totally unplayable into one that's suddenly very playable on certain hardware (specific example: I get < 1 FPS with GL DP - lowest settings - on one machine in certain scenes that I know can give the full 72 with D3D - and this is not ancient hardware, this is modern 2010 hardware).
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Supa Joined: 26 Oct 2004 Posts: 122 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:17 pm Post subject: |

Baker wrote:
Hell, one way to have completely appeased the base would have been saying "You get to pick the new name for GPL Nexuiz" and in homage to the project "5 of the models from Console Nexuiz" will be donated to "GPL Nexuiz".

Pointless. Capitulating to a group of people with an entitlement complex will only lead to them demanding MORE.

frag.machine wrote:
I am not so sure about statements like "nobody is being ripped off". I know, they have a team working and blah blah blah and they licensed some of the maps and blah blah blah but let's face it: it's a lot of work for such small team in a likely narrow timeline to launch

It's not like this project started a week ago. Wait for GDC coverage to start. :)

Irritant wrote:
They are in fact retooling some maps and other items. The screenshots on their website are that of a retextured and revamped "Strength", a map from the original Nexuiz. This is straight from Kendhrin's mouth.

You're correct, but who do you think they got the rights for that map from? We've been over the fact that they have a full team and can therefore create everything they need from scratch, so they don't *have* to "steal" anything from the original. They've already licensed the brand and engine, why can't they license a AT map layout?

Irritant wrote:
I think in this case of such a volatile situation, it's probably a very good idea to make sure the facts are straight before throwing in a strongly worded opinion.

Very much agreed. :)

Irritant wrote:
Aside from the legal issue, which seems in order, there is no "stealing", some conveniently overlook the moral issue, which mostly is revolving around the name.

Right! Too bad moralilty can't pay the bills. :|
Last edited by Supa on Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

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mh Joined: 12 Jan 2008 Posts: 909 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:24 pm Post subject: |

avirox wrote:
nexuiz is going non-GPL

Nobody said Nexuiz is going non-GPL. There is going to be a console version of it which won't be GPL, the PC version will still be GPL, and LH is retaining all rights to any modified code of the console version to do with as he pleases, including roll them back into the GPL codebase.
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Baker Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1538 |

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:25 pm Post subject: |

Supa wrote:
Pointless. Capitulating to a group of people with an entitlement complex will only lead to them demanding MORE.

I've always thought of the Nexuiz community as a rather benign and educated place.

mh wrote:
Nobody said Nexuiz is going non-GPL.

The files aren't going non-GPL. But the project name and identity is in a very unclear area ...
metlslime phrased this very well ...

metlslime wrote:
I wouldn't trust any company to let me use their trademark for an unofficial project, in the long run. Even if illfonic plays nice for now, as soon as they get bought by a giant faceless company, that company will honor none of the "gentelman's agreements" about any trademark or other IP it believes it owns.

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