Well seeing as how freecraft was slapped down hard by Blizzard, It's probably only a matter of time before they come here. Any chance we can get the engine to stand on its own? Get rid of the dependence on Starcraft so it could be used in other projects unrelated to Star...
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Over time, we've been moving to an architecture that would allow us to easily add and remove support for specific APIs and file formats. When we're done, it would be rather easy to make Dark Nova a stand-alone game engine with its own content. Right now, however, I'd say we're only about a third done with this.
I've been pondering moving all the Starcraft-proprietary file format support and such into a special directory and relicensing it under a GPL-like license that would prevent commercial use of the Starcraft data formats while still allowing the rest of Dark Nova to be distributed under BSD. That way, people could use Dark Nova as the basis for a commercial product simply by removing a directory and adding a compiler definition like "DARKNOVA_NO_STARCRAFT" or something like that. This would still be a long way off, though.
In the meantime, the best thing to do is to make it clear in all documentation what our intentions are and that we're willing to compromise, and to keep our heads down and not invite Blizzard's wrath. If we make it clear that we're simply fans that want to work with Blizzard, they should leave us alone.
On a side note, it's my understanding that the people who ran Freecraft pretty much gave up on the project as soon as they received the cease and desist letter, which I believe was mainly about infringement of trademarks. Freecraft probably could have simply done a name change to survive, but the people running it didn't have the will. There are a number of forks of Freecraft, however, that still survive to this day, and some are still trying to resurrect the original Freecraft project.
Dark Nova, by contrast, neither follows the "*craft" nomenclature, nor does it require extraction of files to disk. Therefore, Dark Nova is in some ways safer than Freecraft. In the end, though, being right or wrong (in either a moral or legal context) isn't going to protect us from the deep pockets of Vivendi Universal. Like it or not, if they want us shut down, that's what'll happen.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Well seeing as how freecraft was slapped down hard by Blizzard, It's probably only a matter of time before they come here. Any chance we can get the engine to stand on its own? Get rid of the dependence on Starcraft so it could be used in other projects unrelated to Star...
Over time, we've been moving to an architecture that would allow us to easily add and remove support for specific APIs and file formats. When we're done, it would be rather easy to make Dark Nova a stand-alone game engine with its own content. Right now, however, I'd say we're only about a third done with this.
I've been pondering moving all the Starcraft-proprietary file format support and such into a special directory and relicensing it under a GPL-like license that would prevent commercial use of the Starcraft data formats while still allowing the rest of Dark Nova to be distributed under BSD. That way, people could use Dark Nova as the basis for a commercial product simply by removing a directory and adding a compiler definition like "DARKNOVA_NO_STARCRAFT" or something like that. This would still be a long way off, though.
In the meantime, the best thing to do is to make it clear in all documentation what our intentions are and that we're willing to compromise, and to keep our heads down and not invite Blizzard's wrath. If we make it clear that we're simply fans that want to work with Blizzard, they should leave us alone.
On a side note, it's my understanding that the people who ran Freecraft pretty much gave up on the project as soon as they received the cease and desist letter, which I believe was mainly about infringement of trademarks. Freecraft probably could have simply done a name change to survive, but the people running it didn't have the will. There are a number of forks of Freecraft, however, that still survive to this day, and some are still trying to resurrect the original Freecraft project.
Dark Nova, by contrast, neither follows the "*craft" nomenclature, nor does it require extraction of files to disk. Therefore, Dark Nova is in some ways safer than Freecraft. In the end, though, being right or wrong (in either a moral or legal context) isn't going to protect us from the deep pockets of Vivendi Universal. Like it or not, if they want us shut down, that's what'll happen.