Outpost 1 Source Code?

[lordly_dragon]

well I may be looking sort of strange but the copyrights of OP1 and OP2 are expired long time ago. Remember, a patent does not last forever. Also, when you are a videogame company you at least write every game that you have made somewhere on your website or something like it... did you find any trace of OP2?

If someone have the original cd, I sugest we do something to back us out. Firstly, copie the actuall complete version of op2 on a cd and add the orignial one. Secondly, mail to yourself those two cd. Thirdly, (can be done before) buy a  patent (here where I live it is so cheap..). Finaly, when you receive what you posted to yourself, DO NOT OPEN IT, leave it there.

As I said before, every game have his copyright and patent updated. For example, every year BW copyright change from 1996-1997 to 1996-1998 and so one... Did op1 or 2 did that... answer is no so it is unprotected by copyright law. Also, since we add our own stuff we can protect our OWN version of OP2 and OP1 (if we mod it.)

 With a patent, with the letter and with the expiration of the copyright about OP2, we are shelled against every possible judiciary act .

I am not for nor against the sourcecode project. But, if we proceed we must shield ourselves.

edit: About OP3, there is no problem at all since virtually the game can be the property of the first to rebuy the patent...In Canada, you are talking about a major 25 canadian bucks witch is cheap....

[BlackBox]

Copyrights last 75 years in the USA, lordly_dragon. They could definitely sue us if they wanted. And there aren't software patents in the US. (And I hope there never will be, they are horrible)

The risk of us getting sued is really, really, really small. They probably wouldn't even acknowledge the game(s) anymore (maybe not even know what they are). It would be more of a waste of money than anything to go after us.

Actually getting the source code for OP1 would be really hard. Even talking to a real person at VU is nearly impossible.

[lordly_dragon]

US and Canadian rules are not the same... But, for Outpost3 we should do such a thing mainly for the novel, the music and things that are not op2 based. This is our intelectual property and can be backed simply by mailing it to yourself. This is how author like J.K. Rowling or whatever who you choose.  

[HaXtOr]

US and Canadian rules are not the same... But, for Outpost3 we should do such a thing mainly for the novel, the music and things that are not op2 based. This is our intelectual property and can be backed simply by mailing it to yourself. This is how author like J.K. Rowling or whatever who you choose.

why the heck would you need to mail it to your self? it doesnt make any scence

[BlackBox]

Outpost 1 was developed in the US. Thus, it would be governed by US laws.

So really, that leaves two choices for getting the rights and source to OP1:
- Wait 75 years for the copyright to expire (and hope it's still possible to get it)
- Try to obtain the rights from VU
 

[instigator]

hmm is there something to be said for nagging the mess out of the entire company? hehe how bout a research team. we have say 5 ppl. monday one person calls 4+ times in one day. tuesday a new person calls many times etc. flood them with emails as well (not spam). yeah well im just talking to hear my head raddle i guess.

but that was veeery interesting about the copyright stuff. if they dont have the source code dont they own the name only? heh we can just change the name to "New Terra: The Rebirth" or someting instead of Oupost2 lol. wouldnt they have to magicly produce the source if they wanted to sue opu to prove that they own it?? if we rename it, change a few things, how COULD they sue us.

hmm well i might have some more thoughts on this later. interesting. this is making me like law more and more. maybe there is some kind of legal loophole that we could sneak in through...

OHHH!! hey guys did op2 ever have a code name while it was being developed? sounds funny for a game so old. lol.

[BlackBox]

Well, they don't necessarily have to produce the source to claim rights to it. I guess you would have to read their EULA (it's on the last page of the OP2 manual I think), but it probably says that they own all rights to the software (so that would include all the compiled code, and of course the artwork and sounds that are part of the game).

The way the laws work, the only thing you really "own" if you have the OP2 CD and the manual is the physical CD and the manual, but not the data on it. (That is 'licensed'). Yes, it sounds very stupid, but don't blame me, blame the people who created these laws who-knows-when.

As for the codename of OP2, I can't be certain, but I think it was 'Tethys'. Tethys is a moon of Jupiter (makes sense, it IS a space game)

Also the blatant references in the SDK (TethysGame::method) are there.

Other not-so-blatant references I've found are:
In one of the program components, they accidentally forgot to turn off debug support when compiling the component. That means there are references to the program database (PDB) file that MSVC uses when debugging. The reference was something like "C:\Tethys\Tethys.pdb" or something similar.

In the pre release demo, there was a bug with their VOL compiler software, and very small chunks of the game source code got into the headers of the VOL files for the demo.

One of the lines was something like #include "tethys/stdinc.h" or something to that effect.

If you're interested, open maps.vol and sheets.vol of the pre release demo in notepad and have a read near the top of the file.

[Mez]

Purchase of a game is really, purchase of a licence to install the game.
technically, the piece of paper called licence agreement, or the the product key is the most valuable part of teh game, in terms of money (to you).

The manual and CD are just media that as hacker said is the only thing you actually own.

If there was a dispute, then all they would have to do would be to compare the compiled code of "new terra:the rebirth" to outpost2 and not surprisingly it would be very similar, and ud loose the case!

Another point is that you would have to delete this entire forum to pass it off!  the hardest part of this is to delete the content on cache servers!

[Stormy]

It will probably not work out... I hate to say that but I'm being very serious here.... it will probably get OPu in a lot of trouble, and most of all, levi and hacker.

[HaXtOr]

I cant remember but TethysGame was the team name in dynamix i think that worked on op2.


well if we arnt going to ask VS then we should hunt down the op 1 programmers adn see if they have any code or documents

[lordly_dragon]

To answer your question Moogle why should we mail to ourself the content. In fact, when you mail something there is always a mark that the mailing company left. If someone said that you copied is idea you show your UNOPENED wrap and right in the face. My uncle told me that trick. So, I think it does make any sence.

[Stormy]

well if we arnt going to ask VS then we should hunt down the op 1 programmers adn see if they have any code or documents

That's probably a better idea.

[instigator]

Hey here is a thought

What if sierra )dynamix, whoever( gave permission to some company spawn a game off of outpost2. farfeched i know but if someone were to use the op2 source to make another cheap game... if we can find a game that is close to the original source would that help? maybe a demo of some game that never got released.

yeah this one is out there lol

EDIT: HEY! What if there is a different language of op2 or op1 . maybe the source wasnt' fully removed from those since they wernt in english (not that the code would be in spanish lol). maybe they forgot to remove stuff from the other versions. just another thought

[Stormy]

EDIT: HEY! What if there is a different language of op2 or op1 . maybe the source wasnt' fully removed from those since they wernt in english (not that the code would be in spanish lol). maybe they forgot to remove stuff from the other versions. just another thought

Doubtful... I mean, they would keep the source together wouldn't they? I bet they keep the stuff that would need changing in some seperate file and not in the .exe... but who knows? They may have been silly and did all the text and stuff inside the code itself... so there is a chance....
 

[BlackBox]

Well, there's no real way that the source code would get into the final copy of the game. When you compile source code it gets translated to machine readable form, thus you lose most human readable identifiers.

The fluke with the pre release demo VOLs is just that, a fluke. A bug in their software happened to insert raw sectors from disk (something odd happened there). mIRC does that a lot with log files sometimes, i've had chunks of zip files and other stuff get into the logfile somehow.

As for storing code inside the EXE, it doesn't happen. OP2 doesn't use script driven data anywhere. (The closest thing to a 'script' are the mission DLLs themselves, and those are compiled code).
Not to mention it would be slow to process (people don't write large games in Perl for a reason).

As for the other language versions of OP2, I doubt the source would be any different (certainly not other codebases).

The language specific information is compiled into the EXE as a table, so all they would have to do is change one header file to localize the EXE into a different language. (It's probably possible that they kept all the languages in one file and just used preprocessor symbols to choose which language to compile).