""my case is an extraordinary circumstance possibly outside of the usual person who might seek to emulate any of my steps towards legally working with GPL-3.0"
If you have made an agreement with Bellanger, then that agreement is only between the two of you, and you're not using GPL for the engine any more. You're using that agreement instead as a license (which you should made clear in your video game that you're NOT using the GPL'd version of the engine)."
What should a person like myself do in such a case with their video game under such a circumstance? In the credits of the video game should there be some thing like this?:
"Myself: "So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?"
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders.""
How should such a special permission / special arrangement be clearly found with the video game and or where should such a thing be (in the video game credits, on the download page etc.)?
""I would imagine if someone took a Disney logo and put it on the Flare Game bundled with the Flare Engine and *sold* that bundle as their video game."
It doesn't matter if you sold it or not. You don't have the right to relicense the Disney logo under GPL, so it would be illegal no matter what (sold or not, using someone else's intellectual property without the copyright holder's permission is always illegal). For example creating a fan-game is always illegal, it's just the copyright holder usually decides not to take legal actions as long as the fan-game is free of charge. But they most likely will sue you if you try to sell your fan-game with *their* intellectual property."
Okay so copyright is quite solid and deep in ~'legal' fortification / legal protection offered to the owner of said copyright. So the very act of relicensing (without special permission from the copyright owner) with or without GPL involved is completely illegal from the start?
""With an effort to retroactively try to terminate the 'stolen' intellectual property trademark owner's rights via the GPL-3.0 License term of forcing all related collective content to become GPL-3.0 as well."
You got this all wrong, upside-down. GPL does not terminate the original trademark, if an asset's terms of use does not allow relicensing under the GPL then you're legally not allowed to use that asset in a GPL'd game.
If it is your trademark and you decide to license your work under GPL, then you should be aware that by doing so you give up your rights to that trademark."
Okay so the copyright owner of their own video game (without special permissions like in my case) and with their work being separate from the GPL-3.0 License ZIP / linked files; regularly has to keep the video game separate from any GPL-3.0 License components to keep their video game from being changed to a GPL-3.0 License? Yet if the video game copyright owner under regular circumstances mixes their video game with any GPL-3.0 components (e.g no special permissions and both their video game and the GPL-3.0 License components are in the same ZIP file) everything in that ZIP file (without special permissions) has to become GPL-3.0? This is in part because the copyright owner of the video game put their copyrighted video game with GPL-3.0 License components and not the user? Yet if under regular circumstances the with video game being separate from the GPL-3.0 License components / parts. With also the video game not violating the GPL-3.0 License terms on the video game owner's behalf. Can the video game owner be expected to legally be able to sell their video game separate from the GPL-3.0 license components? So GPL-3.0 could kick in if the video game author / copyright owner under regular circumstances combines their video game with GPL-3.0 license components? The user cannot take the video game author's copyrighted work / video game and ~'revoke' / remove the original video game's copyright under regular circumstances and specifically they cannot remove copyright of a work they do not own by putting said work with a GPL-3.0 License component / work; because the user does not have ownership of the video game and cannot force the video game author to make it GPL-3.0 for only the video game copyright owner has that choice to make? Is that more close how these legal details work together? As like the author of a video game only has the choice to make their copyrighted work GPL-3.0 License and no one else can force that to happen? For that would be illegal / against the legal rights of the video game author / copyright owner?
""even with an unregistered copyright they have sole entity ownership of their video game and can be the only one to legally sell their video game internationally?"
First, there's no such thing, registering copyright. If you're the creator of that work, then copyright is AUTOMATICALLY belongs to you (at least if you live in one of these countries, but this might be true for other countries as well). In some countries (like in mine and most of the EU), the ownership of the intellectual property is unalienatable, meaning you cannot sell the ownership even if you want to. All you can do is just licensing your work and sell the licensing right, but it is always going to be yours, no-one can take the ownership away from you. In the USA you can sell the ownership too, but I recommend to NEVER EVER do that."
From my current understanding that is technically true. Yet I heard that it is a good idea / due diligence / good practice to register a trademark and also for extra legal fortification (within reason) to register a copyright like here in Canada: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr03915.... . So that if there is ever a legal dispute / battle, your legal case is a lot more legitimate if you have a proven legally registered trademark and also copyright. It is not 'needed' but if ~'the gloves come off' / if there is a serious legal dispute / disagreement a registered trademark is very legally fortified / solid and a registered copyright is even more legally fortified / solid. I think that (in Canada at least) once a person makes something that is their own unique work, that unique work is instantly legally owned by the author of said work (under regular circumstances).
"Second, the copyright owner decides the terms of the use of their work by others. They can make it so that no-one else can sell their work (this usually called non-free, proprietary). But instead of figuring out the terms of use from ground up with the help of an expensive lawyer, they can instead choose to pick an already existing license. If they choose GPL as a license, then they should be aware that that license grants permission to ANYONE to sell their work, because it is a free and copyleft license. If they are not okay with that, then they should pick another license (or pay a lawyer to write their own licensing agreement)."
So it is to the copyright owner's discretion / freedom of choice to pick the license to share their copyrighted work under? No one can do this except the author of the copyrighted work? I wonder how many 'pre-made' sharing licenses there are to pick from? Is there a list or more sources than what @MedicineStorm linked here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html ?
@bzt "...Could became, but it didn't. Sorry, but I had to, because you always generate so much noise that the important part easily gets lost.
[True, my message although made for clarity became quite wordy and hard to easily navigate / read. It was a case of myself favouring maximizing accuracy / detail / clarity at the expense of being easy to read and not boring the reader to tears. The medium is the message, although I felt that if I did anything less than a near-exhaustive reply to be as clear and open as I could; I would be doing less than I was able to do. Given the complex nature of the GPL-3.0 terms and many things to consider at once I went with a huge amount of detail for clarity to avoid assumptions; yet admittedly the readability suffered for the sake of accurate finite detail for the purpose of clarity.]
For example the important part in this sentence is, you said "YOUR COLLECTIVE WORK". There's no such thing. You simply CANNOT create a collective work including a GPL'd part, the license DOES NOT PERMIT that (read section 5c).
"My video game made using the Flare engine is an aggregate"
It is only an aggregate if you do not combine them into one distribution medium, and ends users receive (download) them separately."
@~'anyone' I have special permission granted from Clint Bellanger in my case for a special selling exception / a special permission arrangement / my case is an extraordinary circumstance possibly outside of the usual person who might seek to emulate any of my steps towards legally working with GPL-3.0 and making video games. Okay so with an "aggregate" in the context of the GPL-3.0 License, with regular circumstances a person working with GPL-3.0 must put the GPL-3.0 part / components in a separate area / file as a separate distribution media. Then whatever is not GPL-3.0 / content outside of the context of GPL-3.0 License. These two things can be combined by the user separately into a working game. As like with having the game mod files being say a ZIP file that are separate from the Flare Engine and can be sold with copyright and sole legal entity ownership by the author. Then having a separate ZIP / link / way to publicly access for free the Flare Engine. These two separate bodies of work can be combined by the user to run the game. Now what is the legal status of that?
I would imagine if someone took a Disney logo and put it on the Flare Game bundled with the Flare Engine and *sold* that bundle as their video game. That action would be illegal for it would breach some kind of international law regarding copyright / trademark. Is this the case for I personally have not seen someone / an entity 'loophole' / legally circumvent / avoid being illegal with the international trademark law for intellectual property they do not legally own using GPL-3.0? With an effort to retroactively try to terminate the 'stolen' intellectual property trademark owner's rights via the GPL-3.0 License term of forcing all related collective content to become GPL-3.0 as well. Although I wonder if GPL-3.0 License has termination clauses / points where the person / entity trying to 'weaponize' / abuse GPL-3.0 to try and ~'pirate' intellectual property / try and 'loophole' international trademark law for commercial use; if doing that is in breach of the terms of GPL-3.0? With said person / entity trying that would have their right to use the GPL-3.0 License content revoked? I am sure there are people who understand this with great detail who can have accurate answers.
So legally without all of the complexity of getting special permission(s) to legally commercialize a video game / effectively a ~'Flare Game' Mod that runs on the Flare Engine. At very least a regular person can legally make their Flare Game style mod into as ZIP file; and even with an unregistered copyright they have sole entity ownership of their video game and can be the only one to legally sell their video game internationally? With their video game that runs on the Flare Engine but their video game ZIP does not contain the Flare Engine and GPL-3.0 License components? Then the users can combine the video game ZIP and the Flare Engine ZIP / linked files together and that becomes some-kind of working video game for the user. If the user then tries to sell that exact version combination of the video game ZIP with the Flare Engine bundled without permission from the video game creator and the Flare engine creator / owner (Clint Bellanger) does that person have their GPL-3.0 License revoked and the video game creator can defend their case of intellectual property theft? In say having Steam / GOG / Epic etc. take down the ~'stolen' video game for the video game creator who legally is the sole entity with ownership of their video game / copyright / trademark? If the video game was a modified version of the original without breach of any respective individuals' copyright legal rights that should be legal to commercially sell? For it is a unique version and not technically just stealing an exact copy of another's video game and trying to sell it as is. Also that style of 'good will' between content creators is honouring Clint Bellanger's wishes and philosophy of "this is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders". I would like to get more feedback (within reason) on these possibly 'grey' areas. For such feedback could help other people who want also make video games with GPL-3.0 License components. Moreover I believe that this whole open discussion helps the creative community on how to act legally and with good will and in good faith when making video games commercially with the Flare Engine and other related GPL-3.0 components.
"@WithinAmnesia: "legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work"" Please do not truncate my statement @bzt . This can become misinformation and taking what I originally said out of context. For clarity I do not claim ownership of the intellectual property of any of the open source / forever free components of my collective work nor do I prevent the public from using them freely as I originally found them. That being said this is original quote from my above post in full: "To the best of my understanding: Anything that I can legally share (and not prevent the original open source and or sharable work / works from also being shared separately) with / containing my registered trademark legally filed and upholding international law / The Madrid System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system , legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work; so far as if I have my registered trademark within said unique collective work."
I am open for discussion and I believe that it would be better for the sake of clarity to have everyone go over the GPL-3.0 / GNU license details. For a quick reference here is the Wikipedia article (which I presume is accurate for educational purposes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Use_of_licensed...
"Use of licensed software
Software under the GPL may be run for all purposes, including commercial purposes and even as a tool for creating proprietary software, such as when using GPL-licensed compilers.[49] Users or companies who distribute GPL-licensed works (e.g. software), may charge a fee for copies or give them free of charge. This distinguishes the GPL from shareware software licenses that allow copying for personal use but prohibit the commercial distribution or proprietary licenses where copying is prohibited by copyright law. The FSF argues that freedom-respecting free software should also not restrict commercial use and distribution (including redistribution):[48]
In purely private (or internal) use-with no sales and no distribution-the software code may be modified and parts reused without requiring the source code to be released. For sales or distribution, the entire source code needs to be made available to end users, including any code changes and additions-in that case, copyleft is applied to ensure that end users retain the freedoms defined above.[50]
However, software running as an application program under a GPL-licensed operating system such as Linux is not required to be licensed under GPL or to be distributed with source-code availability-the licensing depends only on the used libraries and software components and not on the underlying platform.[51] For example, if a program consists only of original source code, or is combined with source code from other software components,[d] then the custom software components need not be licensed under GPL and need not make their source code available; even if the underlying operating system used is licensed under the GPL, applications running on it are not considered derivative works.[51] Only if GPLed parts are used in a program (and the program is distributed), then all other source code of the program needs to be made available under the same license terms. The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) was created to have a weaker copyleft than the GPL, in that it does not require custom-developed source code (distinct from the LGPL'ed parts) to be made available under the same license terms.
The fifth section of version 3 states that no GPL-licensed code shall be considered an effective "technical protection measure" as defined by Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and that those who convey the work waive all legal power to prohibit circumvention of the technical protection measure "to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work". This means that users cannot be held liable for circumventing DRM implemented using GPL v3-licensed code under laws such as the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).[52]
Copyleft Main article: Copyleft
The distribution rights granted by the GPL for modified versions of the work are not unconditional. When someone distributes a GPL'ed work plus their own modifications, the requirements for distributing the whole work cannot be any greater than the requirements that are in the GPL.
This requirement is known as copyleft. It earns its legal power from the use of copyright on software programs. Because a GPL work is copyrighted, a licensee has no right to redistribute it, not even in modified form (barring fair use), except under the terms of the license. One is only required to adhere to the terms of the GPL if one wishes to exercise rights normally restricted by copyright law, such as redistribution. Conversely, if one distributes copies of the work without abiding by the terms of the GPL (for instance, by keeping the source code secret), they can be sued by the original author under copyright law.
Copyright law has historically been used to prevent distribution of work by parties not authorized by the creator. Copyleft uses the same copyright laws to accomplish a very different goal. It grants rights to distribution to all parties insofar as they provide the same rights to subsequent ones, and they to the next, etc. In this way the GPL and other copyleft licenses attempt to enforce libre access to the work and all derivatives.[53]
Many distributors of GPL'ed programs bundle the source code with the executables. An alternative method of satisfying the copyleft is to provide a written offer to provide the source code on a physical medium (such as a CD) upon request. In practice, many GPL'ed programs are distributed over the Internet, and the source code is made available over FTP or HTTP. For Internet distribution, this complies with the license.
Copyleft applies only when a person seeks to redistribute the program. Developers may make private modified versions with no obligation to divulge the modifications, as long as they do not distribute the modified software to anyone else. Copyleft applies only to the software, and not to its output (unless that output is itself a derivative work of the program).[e] For example, a public web portal running a modified derivative of a GPL'ed content management system is not required to distribute its changes to the underlying software, because its output is not a derivative.
There has been debate on whether it is a violation of the GPL to release the source code in obfuscated form, such as in cases in which the author is less willing to make the source code available. The consensus was that while unethical, it was not considered a violation. The issue was clarified when the license was altered with v2 to require that the "preferred" version of the source code be made available.[55] "
Some key quotations from the Flare Engine GPL-3.0 License: "Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it." -Line 40
"For the developers' and authors' protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users' and authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous versions." -Line 44 [Note: when I say my 'unique work' in context to my work with the Flare Engine this is describing my modified version(s) that I developed and that I am the author thereof.]
"0. Definitions.
"This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as semiconductor masks.
"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". "Licensees" and "recipients" may be individuals or organizations.
To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.
A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.
To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well.
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
An interactive user interface displays "Appropriate Legal Notices" to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2) tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion." -Line 73
"4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.
b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to "keep intact all notices".
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate." -Line 195 [Note: my trademark is for my separate works regarding my medieval fantasy setting applicable to multiple forms of media. My video game made using the Flare engine is an aggregate of the open source Flare Engine and of my own separate copyrighted and trademarked medieval fantasy works.]
"7. Additional Terms.
"Additional permissions" are terms that supplement the terms of this License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions. Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by this License without regard to the additional permissions.
When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own removal in certain cases when you modify the work.) You may place additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work, for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:
a) Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the terms of sections 15 and 16 of this License; or
b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or
c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version; or
d) Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or authors of the material; or
e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or
f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on those licensors and authors.
All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. If a license document contains a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms of that license document, provided that the further restriction does not survive such relicensing or conveying.
If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you must place, in the relevant source files, a statement of the additional terms that apply to those files, or a notice indicating where to find the applicable terms.
Additional terms, permissive or non-permissive, may be stated in the form of a separately written license, or stated as exceptions; the above requirements apply either way." -Line 343
"10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.
Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.
An "entity transaction" is a transaction transferring control of an organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered work results from an entity transaction, each party to that transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever licenses to the work the party's predecessor in interest had or could give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it." -Line 446
"Selling Free Software
Some views on the ideas of selling exceptions to free software licenses, such as the GNU GPL are also available.
Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible-just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The word "free" has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of "free software," we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of "free speech," not "free beer.") Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, study and change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
Nonfree programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is nonfree because its users are denied freedom.
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price doesn't make the software free, or even closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to free software development projects or to the Free Software Foundation. This way you can advance the world of free software.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won't have anything to spare to support development." - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
"Selling exceptions depends fundamentally on using a copyleft license, such as the GNU GPL, for the free software release. A copyleft license permits embedding in a larger program only if the whole combined program is released under that license; this is how it ensures extended versions will also be free. Thus, users that want to make the combined program proprietary need special permission. Only the copyright holder can grant that, and selling exceptions is one style of doing so. Someone else, who received the code under the GNU GPL or another copyleft license, cannot grant an exception." - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html
"I have been in contact with Clint Bellanger and I have a lot more clarity now and it looks good. I can legally sell my video game and the community can also be forever free to modify my video game:
*after a ~long series of confidential emails / out of respect Clint Bellanger I will only post a very small brief piece for educational reasons / to add closure to this thread*
Myself: "So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?"
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders."" - Second Post from the top of this thread https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/if-i-make-a-video-game-via-the-flare-...
With all of that considered and quoted my fingers and brain are a bit sore XD. It appears to myself that I am legal and not in breach of the GNU / GPL-3.0 License with my use of the Flare Engine in my permission provided by the legal copyright holder with this statement (as quoted above): ""So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders.""
To my current understanding I am acting in good faith, good will and with proper accreditation of the respective entities related to my unique work and I am being legal with my commercial operations in regards to my development and planned commercial release of my video game(s) made with the Flare Engine. I hope that my open form of discussion has improved clarity on my part and I am acting to uphold the spirit for open source software and the aims of the GNU and the spirit and good will of the Open Game Art community.
I have a registered trademark being processed (it takes time even when you pay upfront) currently from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr01369.... . To the best of my understanding: Anything that I can legally share (and not prevent the original open source and or sharable work / works from also being shared separately) with / containing my registered trademark legally filed and upholding international law / The Madrid System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system , legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work; so far as if I have my registered trademark within said unique collective work. If any person / entity tries (without my [legal] consent) to sell my legally registered trademarked unique collective work then that is illegal by international law. Even if it has open source comments, that I do not prevent from being shared freely from their respective sources / I cannot 'own' the free components; but I can definitely legally own my unique and legally registered trademarked components. That is my current non-exhaustive understanding of my legal status of my work in terms of legal share-ability.
Now as soon as some one takes the legally registered trademarked parts out and modifies the open source / free sharable work; even slightly, then it becomes free to share / it becomes that author's unique work. Yet my unique original version of my game built with my own components and with open source / free to share components (with proper accreditation and upholding the ability of said open source / free to share to remain open to freely publicly share / keep them as I found them) with my legally registered trademark, this unique collective work is still my sole intellectual properly and only I can legally sell this very distinct / unique and exact version of my video game under international law. Anyone / entity who buys my legally registered trademarked video game can still take all of the open source and forever free / publicly sharable components out and make their own version as their collective work legally. Yet a person / entity cannot sell (without my [legal] consent) my collective work as a whole with (at least) my legally registered trademark that upholds the Madrid System without breaking international law. I do encourage people to make video games and all of my work from my art submissions on Open Game Art are meant to be in good faith and encourage / empowered people creatively to hopefully make video games with Flare. I personally believe that I have to not be taken advantage of and be exploited and be stripped of the ability to sell my own unique collection of work.
Thus the efforts for legal fortification of my position (e.g. legally filing a registered trademark). Also as of the efforts for clarity / transparency / seeking public opinions undertaken on my part for the public / everyone to see what my legal options are. Also in the hope to find a path where the open source / forever free spirit / I am still being legal / acting in good faith is upheld. With also being that I can still legally be the sole entity that has ownership of my own unique version of my own collective body of work / my own video game. With also possessing / owning / having the legal authority / legal right to be the sole entity able to legally sell my unique legally registered trademarked collective body of work of my video game. This legal clarity / transparency and legal fortifications are taken on my part to hopefully enable myself to justify the significant hours and personal expense required in creating a video game that I hope can become commercially viable. While also being in good faith / legally sound on my end to also act towards empowering the public to also make video games. I wish to become a commercially viable video game developer with the freedom creatively and legally to do so within reason and without sacrificing my ability to live healthily in order to do so. Also I wish to have the peace of mind that I can be in a legal position to empower myself to create a video game that has the potential to hopefully be commercially viable. Also I wish to help others in the public / global community to also make their own video games.
I have the hope that my efforts of transparency, clarity, good will and leading by example can lead towards creative empowerment of the public / global community herein towards improving the creative endeavours of aspiring developers; regardless as of those who are rich and of those who are poor. From a personal standpoint and or from my own personal perspective and or my past character building experiences; I have struggled in three decades to break out of being a modder for other video games that I have enjoyed to be creative with and to make unique content thereof. Yet I was / I am legally unable to become commercially viable if I sold my very costly to produce work. In fact I could have been / I could be legally sued and I could have lost / I can lose my work and personal finances in regards to trying to be commercially viable working under a work that I do not have legal right to sell thereof. Thus the only way that I can legally become commercially viable in creating my own video games as a video game developer is if I can become the sole legal entity that possess the sole legal authority and legal intellectual property ownership of my own work. An international legal right and legal authority bestowed by and upheld by international law under the Madrid System to legally empower and fortify myself and my legal position to be able to legally sell my own work across the world.
I must then be legally sound / uphold the law with any assets and creative tools I use to create my unique collective works with to hopefully create commercially viable video games. On my current path I believe that I am legally sound / upholding international law and the Madrid System. I am not inhibiting / preventing / stopping / getting in the way of the public from using open source / forever free assets nor am I claiming ownership of an open source / forever free work and or collections of work. Also I am using accreditation / listing credits of the respective authours and making the effort to show the source of the open source / forever free assets / creative tools. I am making the clear distinction that I do not own the components of my video games that are open source / forever free assets and open source / forever free creative tools within my unique collective work of my video game. I do own my unique work and I am taking due diligence and effort to become legally fortified. So that I can legally be the sole legal entity with the legal right to my unique collective works legally fortified with a legal registered trademark. A legal registered trademark that I am the sole legal entity that has legal ownership thereof and is enforced by international law. A legal registered trademark of which that is legally filed under the Madrid System that gives the sole legal right to myself that I solely, can legally be the sole entity legally under international law to sell my unique legally trademarked collective work of my video game. Of which it is illegal by international law as of the Madrid System for any entity acting to sell and or actively selling and or has in the past tense sold my legally trademarked unique collective work of my video game without my legal consent. Thus to the best of my understanding, I am the sole legal entity who has the legal ownership of the intellectually property rights of my unique works and by extension any legally sharable collective of my works; in as at least so far as that such work has within it containing my legal registered trademark. Of which I am sole legal owner thereof and have the exclusive sole legal right bestowed to myself and internationally enforced for myself by international law as of the legal authority invested by the powers of the Madrid System; for myself as the rightful and legal sole entity to possess the internationally legal sole ability to sell my own collective work of my video games to the world.
This is my current non-exhaustive understanding of my legal status / my perspectives of my legal situation regarding my collective works in terms of legal share-ability. Also as to where I am with my legal standing of my collective works with a legally registered trademark within the Madrid System https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr01369.... + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system . [Note: This response took some effort / I am sorry for the long read. I hope that my reply is clear and without difficulty to readily understand. I am actively taking the due diligence / effort to be transparent in hopes of acting in good will / good faith and to be honest and open to reason. I welcome constructive and open discussion.]
I wonder if anyone is open to HD flare art commissions? I could in theory do both game mechanic testing work and have 'Flare HD' art assets being made if I had to commission them anyway. Although my main concern is work load complexity / asking for too much too fast. Although I wonder if anyone in the community is interested as a hobby? The 2H attack animations could work in theory for original and ~'Flare HD'. Has anyone outside of Clint Bellanger created animations for Flare? Perhaps the 2H attack animations would be a good / reasonable starter art project for it enables a gameplay play-style as well.
Shorthand: Could a 2 affix and 2 suffix item generator system work?
Also new high definition art assets and animations for Flare are important to myself yet getting the core gameplay mechanics tested and working comes first.
Also can crafting be used to take away item affixes and suffixes effectively to return 'magical' items into 'base items'?
Longhand: Okay so 3 affixes and 3 suffixes is a bit much in terms of complexity (also it gets a bit crazy in name length / player expectations and borders on meme territory like the classic example of the longest German word: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan (Danube steamship company captain). So your system has 2 affixes and 1 suffix within realistic (non-insanity) work flow? Could 2 affixes and 2 suffixes be used? I even struggle to get 3 affixes and 3 suffixes and a lot can be merged like vanilla WoW's random stat items. Also doe this random item generator work with a bunch of custom item rarity text colours (it should?). Also I guess item 'enchanting' could just be a form of crafting even to add affixes and suffixes (if there is space / room [how would a check be done then?])? I suppose base items could be (with a crafting system) 'salvaged' and have new item bases made and have the crafting add more stats to them later to give deep crafting depth hopefully / wide level ranges of item relevance / 'up-trading' item ~crafting economy kind of like in Path of Exile.
Animations. When I can flesh out / test to see if the the Flare x 4 prototype can work sufficiency / good enough / reliably. Then once the major / game play critical features are fleshed-out and working I can shift gears and battle with the art and animations properly. Right now I would super ecstatic if the rough ~'placeholder' Flare x 4 art can work (even with low resolution player presentation). Although once the long battle for major gameplay features is majorly conquered / very close to complete / ~'done'. Then the big battle of 'going wide' / pushing out the visual diversity begins. Right now I am kind of wedged in to a corner trying to find what works and what creative tools / assets I can work with to build a (hopefully) a game worth playing. For in short I want to get the blender animations in a place where all of the main player expectations of character play-styles can be viable / enjoyed in the game (sword and shield/offhand, dual wielding, two-handed with armours being cloth, leather, mail, plate [possibly heavy / full plate]. I do have the animations / high definition renders for the graphics for turning Flare x 4 into ~'Flare HD' on my priorities; although after all of the major gameplay features / mechanics are fleshed out and prototyped / working and the main creative game 'tool set' is established / properly tested. If I have to get professional help for new art assets so be it. I am sure that with there being so many wonderous blender artist that someone can help make art assets if it come down to paying for commissions for making Flare HD art assets. So either way I hope to make good on the Flare HD art assets and animations, but only after the gameplay and game world building features and toolset(s) are properly hammered out.
Gems are cool although I guess with a crafting system they could (hopefully) be used in away to upgrade item bases and or even possibly add affixes / suffixes to items (if possible) kind of like a jewelcrafting version of enchanting (using added affixes and suffixes). How can an item be 'wiped' / converted back to item base item (like how Path of Exile can remove affixes and suffixes from items and return the base item)?
Wow big thanks to Justin Jacobs a.k.a Dorkster for this feature: Layered animations for non-player entities. What a legend XD. @Danimal Now you can make super crazy areas with tons of different kinds of humanoid monsters, creatures and N.P.C.s! Man this is such massive feature. For now Flare can have content depth like an M.M.O.R.P.G. with even thousands of creature customizations and ways to make places and populations feel unique and diverse and really build character to the world. Tons and tons of world building:-D!
Where can one find the heavy .blend sources? I use the .blend files to make new dual wield animations. Also I will most likely have to battle out new Flare x 4 scale animations / art assets which will require .blend source files.
What can be done with the Item Generator? Can it have 3 affixes and 3 suffixes applied to the base item (and still work)? What are the possibilities and the restrictions with the current iteration of the item generator? Can specific chosen fixed ranged item (not random) affixes and suffixes be applied to items? Such as 'Blessed Fine Pure Steel Cuirass of Major Vitality and Lesser Might and Minor Gloam [Frost/Ice] Resistance'? A bit of a long possible item names but still lots of pixels can lead to long item names.
Has anyone tried to make an 'enchanting' system, like where items get new arbitrary attributes and or item effects (e.g. Crusader). Likewise has any tried to make an item system with sockets with gems / jewels / runes items for Flare? I think all that Flare is missing from Diablo II item depth is affixes and suffixes (random item generator), sockets and gems / jewels / runes (minus runewords). Is a gem / socket system out of realistic reach or is it one of those things that can be done but needs lots of work to implemented?
@rubberduck Can these Flare HD art assets use / be compatible with / in 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles? Also I am without a clear understanding as to how to turn this: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balduran-s-Sea-Tower-Redesi... into this: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/blob/master/art_src/tilesets/gra... . I am hoping to have a 'Flare x 4' prototype working and eventually I hope to piece by piece replace the enlarged x 4 original Flare art assets / animations with new Flare HD art assets. Basically Flare but 4 times the pixel density / each original art asset pixel is split into 4 to start to get a working prototype with enlarged x 4 original flare art assets. How close is this 'Flare x 4' to your ideas of 'Flare HD'? For example can the 'Flare HD' tilesets work as rendered 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles? Also how can one make a 256 x 128 scale pixel tile standard lighting rig / work pipe line / get blender to make 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles from say a bunch big castle 3D models?
I am working on 128 x 128 pixel scale icons and I am wondering how to have each icon be its own .png image? For if I have (like you say) thousands of icons, it would be a nightmare to have to change the whole giant icons.png image to make a small change. Also keeping track of say icon 1528, is like uhh so where is that again? XD. vanilla World of Warcraft has over 2,000+ unique icons and if anyone were to match that scale of content than there needs to be compartmentalized / modular / each icon is its' own separate .png image to battle the complexity with simplified icon image management.
How are you trying to get the random item generator to work? Is it like Diablo / Path of Exile? I was thinking that such a system would be hard to make. So I just kind of left it in the back of my mind; but that is really cool to hear that you are going for it. --------------- How does a respect option work? Is it an NPC or event and or an item? How does that work? I know with console commands that there are a respect options. Although I wonder how to 'gamify' / put that in game? Is it a case of an NPC dialog triggering an event or something like a quest? How does one go about making a respec option for a game in Flare?
I also am overhauling everything on my side of things. For I want to get the core gameplay hammered out and I am trying to get 'Flare x 4' working so that I can add longevity / 'Flare HD' down the road. To hopefully go from 2000's player presentation / graphics to 2020's / on par with Diablo II Resurrected player presentation / graphics. I figured that if it takes myself into the late 2020's to get all of the maps and areas ('game world ecosystems' / large content areas) built out / long term support of the game. Then I better make a game that can stand up to the test of time. So I hope that right now pushing as hard as I can for a working 'Flare x 4' can eventually lead to 'Flare HD'; of which I hope can be played well into the 2030's and beyond. This will hopefully avoid the original Baldur's Gate / Diablo 'dated graphics' / low resolution textures / art assets and be more like Pillars of Eternity / Path of Exile / Diablo II Resurrected eventually. Although that all starts with getting the framework / 'skeleton' of the 'Flare x 4' prototyped and working and bit by bit, piece by piece swap out the low resolution art assets with high resolution art assets (hopefully making a realistic work load and path towards 'Flare HD').
I hope that I / we / the community can succeed at 'Flare x 4' and the community can get access to basically the working 'version 1.0' / prototype of 'Flare HD'. Given that all of the art is open source / forever free to use that means if one of us rises to a greater feat of gameplay features / quality of experience then everyone else is also empowered. I really like this open source / forever free approach to game development for it enables everyone rich or poor to have a fair chance at making great games decade after decade. I remember playing Baldur's Gate, 2000's WoW, Diablo, Runescape, Zelda, Mount and Blade etc. and being so frustrated that I could not make a great game of my own legally with the same game engine. I did not have millions of dollars to ~'face tank' a whole studio of expenses to produce a great game. So I had to venture out and self-teach myself how to create content for old games that I enjoyed. I had to learn from nothing and figure out first how to 'mod' for a community in the ~'digital wilderness'; hopping around tinkering and modding games from community to community. I just keep the momentum up year after year and I just keep failing upwards until I get better and better. I become more and more creatively powerful with each cycle of success and failure; with each time getting closer and closer to realizing my life long dreams.
I eventually ended up here trying to combine my favourite parts of other great games in a tool set / game engine that can support / create great games and that is finally forever free / open source for everyone. I hope that by making a great game series / realize a medieval fantasy setting in some kick ass video games, that it will inspire more people keep making better and better video games. What ever assets I make I hope that they can be free for everyone to use for if I 'make it' (able to reliable produce commercially viable video games that can stand the test of time and be enjoyed by the community); I would like to bring more than just myself up. So as to kind of make right the old wrongs / problems of my past frustrations of being a creative person with no powerful tools to realize my creative visions / dreams. Thus to empower the world and have creative people of all kinds be empowered with open and powerful video game creating tools and a kick ass game engine forever free :-).
Also I have this castle I want to make into a tileset but I want to get Flare x 4 stress tested and working properly and start making 'Flare HD' quality of tilesets with 256 x 128 pixel scale tiles . I am wondering how to get this model rigged up in a standard (hopefully blender) render rig so I can make Flare compatible tileset and use them. I hope to make Flare standard tilesets (with same style as the base game art assets) and then have my own unique version to match my own artistic styles for my game. So that when I go to make new arts assets (like a castle tileset) I can share my work with the community to be opensource / forever free to use and I also get to make my own game better. Although I need to better understand how to turn this: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balduran-s-Sea-Tower-Redesi... into this: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/blob/master/art_src/tilesets/gra...
Thank you, that provides a lot of clarity @bzt.
""my case is an extraordinary circumstance possibly outside of the usual person who might seek to emulate any of my steps towards legally working with GPL-3.0"
If you have made an agreement with Bellanger, then that agreement is only between the two of you, and you're not using GPL for the engine any more. You're using that agreement instead as a license (which you should made clear in your video game that you're NOT using the GPL'd version of the engine)."
What should a person like myself do in such a case with their video game under such a circumstance? In the credits of the video game should there be some thing like this?:
"Myself:
"So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?"
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders.""
How should such a special permission / special arrangement be clearly found with the video game and or where should such a thing be (in the video game credits, on the download page etc.)?
""I would imagine if someone took a Disney logo and put it on the Flare Game bundled with the Flare Engine and *sold* that bundle as their video game."
It doesn't matter if you sold it or not. You don't have the right to relicense the Disney logo under GPL, so it would be illegal no matter what (sold or not, using someone else's intellectual property without the copyright holder's permission is always illegal). For example creating a fan-game is always illegal, it's just the copyright holder usually decides not to take legal actions as long as the fan-game is free of charge. But they most likely will sue you if you try to sell your fan-game with *their* intellectual property."
Okay so copyright is quite solid and deep in ~'legal' fortification / legal protection offered to the owner of said copyright. So the very act of relicensing (without special permission from the copyright owner) with or without GPL involved is completely illegal from the start?
""With an effort to retroactively try to terminate the 'stolen' intellectual property trademark owner's rights via the GPL-3.0 License term of forcing all related collective content to become GPL-3.0 as well."
You got this all wrong, upside-down. GPL does not terminate the original trademark, if an asset's terms of use does not allow relicensing under the GPL then you're legally not allowed to use that asset in a GPL'd game.
If it is your trademark and you decide to license your work under GPL, then you should be aware that by doing so you give up your rights to that trademark."
Okay so the copyright owner of their own video game (without special permissions like in my case) and with their work being separate from the GPL-3.0 License ZIP / linked files; regularly has to keep the video game separate from any GPL-3.0 License components to keep their video game from being changed to a GPL-3.0 License? Yet if the video game copyright owner under regular circumstances mixes their video game with any GPL-3.0 components (e.g no special permissions and both their video game and the GPL-3.0 License components are in the same ZIP file) everything in that ZIP file (without special permissions) has to become GPL-3.0? This is in part because the copyright owner of the video game put their copyrighted video game with GPL-3.0 License components and not the user? Yet if under regular circumstances the with video game being separate from the GPL-3.0 License components / parts. With also the video game not violating the GPL-3.0 License terms on the video game owner's behalf. Can the video game owner be expected to legally be able to sell their video game separate from the GPL-3.0 license components? So GPL-3.0 could kick in if the video game author / copyright owner under regular circumstances combines their video game with GPL-3.0 license components? The user cannot take the video game author's copyrighted work / video game and ~'revoke' / remove the original video game's copyright under regular circumstances and specifically they cannot remove copyright of a work they do not own by putting said work with a GPL-3.0 License component / work; because the user does not have ownership of the video game and cannot force the video game author to make it GPL-3.0 for only the video game copyright owner has that choice to make? Is that more close how these legal details work together? As like the author of a video game only has the choice to make their copyrighted work GPL-3.0 License and no one else can force that to happen? For that would be illegal / against the legal rights of the video game author / copyright owner?
""even with an unregistered copyright they have sole entity ownership of their video game and can be the only one to legally sell their video game internationally?"
First, there's no such thing, registering copyright. If you're the creator of that work, then copyright is AUTOMATICALLY belongs to you (at least if you live in one of these countries, but this might be true for other countries as well). In some countries (like in mine and most of the EU), the ownership of the intellectual property is unalienatable, meaning you cannot sell the ownership even if you want to. All you can do is just licensing your work and sell the licensing right, but it is always going to be yours, no-one can take the ownership away from you. In the USA you can sell the ownership too, but I recommend to NEVER EVER do that."
From my current understanding that is technically true. Yet I heard that it is a good idea / due diligence / good practice to register a trademark and also for extra legal fortification (within reason) to register a copyright like here in Canada: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr03915.... . So that if there is ever a legal dispute / battle, your legal case is a lot more legitimate if you have a proven legally registered trademark and also copyright. It is not 'needed' but if ~'the gloves come off' / if there is a serious legal dispute / disagreement a registered trademark is very legally fortified / solid and a registered copyright is even more legally fortified / solid. I think that (in Canada at least) once a person makes something that is their own unique work, that unique work is instantly legally owned by the author of said work (under regular circumstances).
"Second, the copyright owner decides the terms of the use of their work by others. They can make it so that no-one else can sell their work (this usually called non-free, proprietary). But instead of figuring out the terms of use from ground up with the help of an expensive lawyer, they can instead choose to pick an already existing license. If they choose GPL as a license, then they should be aware that that license grants permission to ANYONE to sell their work, because it is a free and copyleft license. If they are not okay with that, then they should pick another license (or pay a lawyer to write their own licensing agreement)."
So it is to the copyright owner's discretion / freedom of choice to pick the license to share their copyrighted work under? No one can do this except the author of the copyrighted work? I wonder how many 'pre-made' sharing licenses there are to pick from? Is there a list or more sources than what @MedicineStorm linked here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html ?
@bzt "...Could became, but it didn't. Sorry, but I had to, because you always generate so much noise that the important part easily gets lost.
[True, my message although made for clarity became quite wordy and hard to easily navigate / read. It was a case of myself favouring maximizing accuracy / detail / clarity at the expense of being easy to read and not boring the reader to tears. The medium is the message, although I felt that if I did anything less than a near-exhaustive reply to be as clear and open as I could; I would be doing less than I was able to do. Given the complex nature of the GPL-3.0 terms and many things to consider at once I went with a huge amount of detail for clarity to avoid assumptions; yet admittedly the readability suffered for the sake of accurate finite detail for the purpose of clarity.]
For example the important part in this sentence is, you said "YOUR COLLECTIVE WORK". There's no such thing. You simply CANNOT create a collective work including a GPL'd part, the license DOES NOT PERMIT that (read section 5c).
"My video game made using the Flare engine is an aggregate"
It is only an aggregate if you do not combine them into one distribution medium, and ends users receive (download) them separately."
@~'anyone' I have special permission granted from Clint Bellanger in my case for a special selling exception / a special permission arrangement / my case is an extraordinary circumstance possibly outside of the usual person who might seek to emulate any of my steps towards legally working with GPL-3.0 and making video games. Okay so with an "aggregate" in the context of the GPL-3.0 License, with regular circumstances a person working with GPL-3.0 must put the GPL-3.0 part / components in a separate area / file as a separate distribution media. Then whatever is not GPL-3.0 / content outside of the context of GPL-3.0 License. These two things can be combined by the user separately into a working game. As like with having the game mod files being say a ZIP file that are separate from the Flare Engine and can be sold with copyright and sole legal entity ownership by the author. Then having a separate ZIP / link / way to publicly access for free the Flare Engine. These two separate bodies of work can be combined by the user to run the game. Now what is the legal status of that?
I would imagine if someone took a Disney logo and put it on the Flare Game bundled with the Flare Engine and *sold* that bundle as their video game. That action would be illegal for it would breach some kind of international law regarding copyright / trademark. Is this the case for I personally have not seen someone / an entity 'loophole' / legally circumvent / avoid being illegal with the international trademark law for intellectual property they do not legally own using GPL-3.0? With an effort to retroactively try to terminate the 'stolen' intellectual property trademark owner's rights via the GPL-3.0 License term of forcing all related collective content to become GPL-3.0 as well. Although I wonder if GPL-3.0 License has termination clauses / points where the person / entity trying to 'weaponize' / abuse GPL-3.0 to try and ~'pirate' intellectual property / try and 'loophole' international trademark law for commercial use; if doing that is in breach of the terms of GPL-3.0? With said person / entity trying that would have their right to use the GPL-3.0 License content revoked? I am sure there are people who understand this with great detail who can have accurate answers.
So legally without all of the complexity of getting special permission(s) to legally commercialize a video game / effectively a ~'Flare Game' Mod that runs on the Flare Engine. At very least a regular person can legally make their Flare Game style mod into as ZIP file; and even with an unregistered copyright they have sole entity ownership of their video game and can be the only one to legally sell their video game internationally? With their video game that runs on the Flare Engine but their video game ZIP does not contain the Flare Engine and GPL-3.0 License components? Then the users can combine the video game ZIP and the Flare Engine ZIP / linked files together and that becomes some-kind of working video game for the user. If the user then tries to sell that exact version combination of the video game ZIP with the Flare Engine bundled without permission from the video game creator and the Flare engine creator / owner (Clint Bellanger) does that person have their GPL-3.0 License revoked and the video game creator can defend their case of intellectual property theft? In say having Steam / GOG / Epic etc. take down the ~'stolen' video game for the video game creator who legally is the sole entity with ownership of their video game / copyright / trademark? If the video game was a modified version of the original without breach of any respective individuals' copyright legal rights that should be legal to commercially sell? For it is a unique version and not technically just stealing an exact copy of another's video game and trying to sell it as is. Also that style of 'good will' between content creators is honouring Clint Bellanger's wishes and philosophy of "this is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders". I would like to get more feedback (within reason) on these possibly 'grey' areas. For such feedback could help other people who want also make video games with GPL-3.0 License components. Moreover I believe that this whole open discussion helps the creative community on how to act legally and with good will and in good faith when making video games commercially with the Flare Engine and other related GPL-3.0 components.
"@WithinAmnesia: "legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work""
Please do not truncate my statement @bzt . This can become misinformation and taking what I originally said out of context. For clarity I do not claim ownership of the intellectual property of any of the open source / forever free components of my collective work nor do I prevent the public from using them freely as I originally found them. That being said this is original quote from my above post in full: "To the best of my understanding: Anything that I can legally share (and not prevent the original open source and or sharable work / works from also being shared separately) with / containing my registered trademark legally filed and upholding international law / The Madrid System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system , legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work; so far as if I have my registered trademark within said unique collective work."
I am open for discussion and I believe that it would be better for the sake of clarity to have everyone go over the GPL-3.0 / GNU license details. For a quick reference here is the Wikipedia article (which I presume is accurate for educational purposes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Use_of_licensed...
"Use of licensed software
Software under the GPL may be run for all purposes, including commercial purposes and even as a tool for creating proprietary software, such as when using GPL-licensed compilers.[49] Users or companies who distribute GPL-licensed works (e.g. software), may charge a fee for copies or give them free of charge. This distinguishes the GPL from shareware software licenses that allow copying for personal use but prohibit the commercial distribution or proprietary licenses where copying is prohibited by copyright law. The FSF argues that freedom-respecting free software should also not restrict commercial use and distribution (including redistribution):[48]
In purely private (or internal) use-with no sales and no distribution-the software code may be modified and parts reused without requiring the source code to be released. For sales or distribution, the entire source code needs to be made available to end users, including any code changes and additions-in that case, copyleft is applied to ensure that end users retain the freedoms defined above.[50]
However, software running as an application program under a GPL-licensed operating system such as Linux is not required to be licensed under GPL or to be distributed with source-code availability-the licensing depends only on the used libraries and software components and not on the underlying platform.[51] For example, if a program consists only of original source code, or is combined with source code from other software components,[d] then the custom software components need not be licensed under GPL and need not make their source code available; even if the underlying operating system used is licensed under the GPL, applications running on it are not considered derivative works.[51] Only if GPLed parts are used in a program (and the program is distributed), then all other source code of the program needs to be made available under the same license terms. The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) was created to have a weaker copyleft than the GPL, in that it does not require custom-developed source code (distinct from the LGPL'ed parts) to be made available under the same license terms.
The fifth section of version 3 states that no GPL-licensed code shall be considered an effective "technical protection measure" as defined by Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and that those who convey the work waive all legal power to prohibit circumvention of the technical protection measure "to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work". This means that users cannot be held liable for circumventing DRM implemented using GPL v3-licensed code under laws such as the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).[52]
Copyleft
Main article: Copyleft
The distribution rights granted by the GPL for modified versions of the work are not unconditional. When someone distributes a GPL'ed work plus their own modifications, the requirements for distributing the whole work cannot be any greater than the requirements that are in the GPL.
This requirement is known as copyleft. It earns its legal power from the use of copyright on software programs. Because a GPL work is copyrighted, a licensee has no right to redistribute it, not even in modified form (barring fair use), except under the terms of the license. One is only required to adhere to the terms of the GPL if one wishes to exercise rights normally restricted by copyright law, such as redistribution. Conversely, if one distributes copies of the work without abiding by the terms of the GPL (for instance, by keeping the source code secret), they can be sued by the original author under copyright law.
Copyright law has historically been used to prevent distribution of work by parties not authorized by the creator. Copyleft uses the same copyright laws to accomplish a very different goal. It grants rights to distribution to all parties insofar as they provide the same rights to subsequent ones, and they to the next, etc. In this way the GPL and other copyleft licenses attempt to enforce libre access to the work and all derivatives.[53]
Many distributors of GPL'ed programs bundle the source code with the executables. An alternative method of satisfying the copyleft is to provide a written offer to provide the source code on a physical medium (such as a CD) upon request. In practice, many GPL'ed programs are distributed over the Internet, and the source code is made available over FTP or HTTP. For Internet distribution, this complies with the license.
Copyleft applies only when a person seeks to redistribute the program. Developers may make private modified versions with no obligation to divulge the modifications, as long as they do not distribute the modified software to anyone else. Copyleft applies only to the software, and not to its output (unless that output is itself a derivative work of the program).[e] For example, a public web portal running a modified derivative of a GPL'ed content management system is not required to distribute its changes to the underlying software, because its output is not a derivative.
There has been debate on whether it is a violation of the GPL to release the source code in obfuscated form, such as in cases in which the author is less willing to make the source code available. The consensus was that while unethical, it was not considered a violation. The issue was clarified when the license was altered with v2 to require that the "preferred" version of the source code be made available.[55] "
Now also here is the GNU website for reference: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Now here is the Flare Engine GPL-3.0 License: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-engine + https://github.com/flareteam/flare-engine/blob/master/COPYING
Some key quotations from the Flare Engine GPL-3.0 License:
"Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps:
(1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License
giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it." -Line 40
"For the developers' and authors' protection, the GPL clearly explains
that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users' and
authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as
changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to
authors of previous versions." -Line 44 [Note: when I say my 'unique work' in context to my work with the Flare Engine this is describing my modified version(s) that I developed and that I am the author thereof.]
"0. Definitions.
"This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of
works, such as semiconductor masks.
"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this
License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". "Licensees" and
"recipients" may be individuals or organizations.
To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work
in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an
exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the
earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.
A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based
on the Program.
To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without
permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for
infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a
computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying,
distribution (with or without modification), making available to the
public, and in some countries other activities as well.
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other
parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through
a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
An interactive user interface displays "Appropriate Legal Notices"
to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible
feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2)
tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the
extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the
work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If
the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a
menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion." -Line 73
"4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice;
keep intact all notices stating that this License and any
non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code;
keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all
recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey,
and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to
produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the
terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
it, and giving a relevant date.
b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is
released under this License and any conditions added under section
7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to
"keep intact all notices".
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this
License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This
License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7
additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts,
regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no
permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not
invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display
Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive
interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your
work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent
works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work,
and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
"aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not
used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users
beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work
in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other
parts of the aggregate." -Line 195 [Note: my trademark is for my separate works regarding my medieval fantasy setting applicable to multiple forms of media. My video game made using the Flare engine is an aggregate of the open source Flare Engine and of my own separate copyrighted and trademarked medieval fantasy works.]
"7. Additional Terms.
"Additional permissions" are terms that supplement the terms of this
License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions.
Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall
be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent
that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions
apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately
under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by
this License without regard to the additional permissions.
When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option
remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of
it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own
removal in certain cases when you modify the work.) You may place
additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work,
for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you
add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of
that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:
a) Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the
terms of sections 15 and 16 of this License; or
b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or
author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal
Notices displayed by works containing it; or
c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or
requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in
reasonable ways as different from the original version; or
d) Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or
authors of the material; or
e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some
trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or
f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that
material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of
it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for
any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on
those licensors and authors.
All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further
restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you
received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
governed by this License along with a term that is a further
restriction, you may remove that term. If a license document contains
a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this
License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms
of that license document, provided that the further restriction does
not survive such relicensing or conveying.
If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you
must place, in the relevant source files, a statement of the
additional terms that apply to those files, or a notice indicating
where to find the applicable terms.
Additional terms, permissive or non-permissive, may be stated in the
form of a separately written license, or stated as exceptions;
the above requirements apply either way." -Line 343
"10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.
Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and
propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible
for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.
An "entity transaction" is a transaction transferring control of an
organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an
organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered
work results from an entity transaction, each party to that
transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever
licenses to the work the party's predecessor in interest had or could
give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the
Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if
the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may
not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of
rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation
(including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that
any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for
sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it." -Line 446
"Selling Free Software
Some views on the ideas of selling exceptions to free software licenses, such as the GNU GPL are also available.
Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible-just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The word "free" has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of "free software," we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of "free speech," not "free beer.") Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, study and change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
Nonfree programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is nonfree because its users are denied freedom.
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price doesn't make the software free, or even closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to free software development projects or to the Free Software Foundation. This way you can advance the world of free software.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won't have anything to spare to support development." - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
"Selling exceptions depends fundamentally on using a copyleft license, such as the GNU GPL, for the free software release. A copyleft license permits embedding in a larger program only if the whole combined program is released under that license; this is how it ensures extended versions will also be free. Thus, users that want to make the combined program proprietary need special permission. Only the copyright holder can grant that, and selling exceptions is one style of doing so. Someone else, who received the code under the GNU GPL or another copyleft license, cannot grant an exception." - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html
"I have been in contact with Clint Bellanger and I have a lot more clarity now and it looks good. I can legally sell my video game and the community can also be forever free to modify my video game:
*after a ~long series of confidential emails / out of respect Clint Bellanger I will only post a very small brief piece for educational reasons / to add closure to this thread*
Myself:
"So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?"
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders."" - Second Post from the top of this thread https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/if-i-make-a-video-game-via-the-flare-...
With all of that considered and quoted my fingers and brain are a bit sore XD. It appears to myself that I am legal and not in breach of the GNU / GPL-3.0 License with my use of the Flare Engine in my permission provided by the legal copyright holder with this statement (as quoted above): ""So I can make a video game "built on" the Flare Engine and Fantasy core and all Open Source / GPL-3.0 License / CC-BY-SA license assets / components with proper permissions and with proper attribution of components creditor with credits and have a registered trademarked title and legally be the sole entity able to sell that exact version of the video game online? Also the community is legally forever free to modify my video game as long as the title is changed and the video game's content is at least once modified?
Clint Bellanger: [The legal copyright owner of the Flare Engine and the Flare Game]
"Basically yes on everything you said. This is one reason I chose the license, so that remixer and modders could safely release and sell their projects as long as they were also cool with other remixers and modders.""
To my current understanding I am acting in good faith, good will and with proper accreditation of the respective entities related to my unique work and I am being legal with my commercial operations in regards to my development and planned commercial release of my video game(s) made with the Flare Engine. I hope that my open form of discussion has improved clarity on my part and I am acting to uphold the spirit for open source software and the aims of the GNU and the spirit and good will of the Open Game Art community.
I have a registered trademark being processed (it takes time even when you pay upfront) currently from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr01369.... . To the best of my understanding: Anything that I can legally share (and not prevent the original open source and or sharable work / works from also being shared separately) with / containing my registered trademark legally filed and upholding international law / The Madrid System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system , legally becomes my intellectual property in as so far as my unique version of the collective work; so far as if I have my registered trademark within said unique collective work. If any person / entity tries (without my [legal] consent) to sell my legally registered trademarked unique collective work then that is illegal by international law. Even if it has open source comments, that I do not prevent from being shared freely from their respective sources / I cannot 'own' the free components; but I can definitely legally own my unique and legally registered trademarked components. That is my current non-exhaustive understanding of my legal status of my work in terms of legal share-ability.
Now as soon as some one takes the legally registered trademarked parts out and modifies the open source / free sharable work; even slightly, then it becomes free to share / it becomes that author's unique work. Yet my unique original version of my game built with my own components and with open source / free to share components (with proper accreditation and upholding the ability of said open source / free to share to remain open to freely publicly share / keep them as I found them) with my legally registered trademark, this unique collective work is still my sole intellectual properly and only I can legally sell this very distinct / unique and exact version of my video game under international law. Anyone / entity who buys my legally registered trademarked video game can still take all of the open source and forever free / publicly sharable components out and make their own version as their collective work legally. Yet a person / entity cannot sell (without my [legal] consent) my collective work as a whole with (at least) my legally registered trademark that upholds the Madrid System without breaking international law. I do encourage people to make video games and all of my work from my art submissions on Open Game Art are meant to be in good faith and encourage / empowered people creatively to hopefully make video games with Flare. I personally believe that I have to not be taken advantage of and be exploited and be stripped of the ability to sell my own unique collection of work.
Thus the efforts for legal fortification of my position (e.g. legally filing a registered trademark). Also as of the efforts for clarity / transparency / seeking public opinions undertaken on my part for the public / everyone to see what my legal options are. Also in the hope to find a path where the open source / forever free spirit / I am still being legal / acting in good faith is upheld. With also being that I can still legally be the sole entity that has ownership of my own unique version of my own collective body of work / my own video game. With also possessing / owning / having the legal authority / legal right to be the sole entity able to legally sell my unique legally registered trademarked collective body of work of my video game. This legal clarity / transparency and legal fortifications are taken on my part to hopefully enable myself to justify the significant hours and personal expense required in creating a video game that I hope can become commercially viable. While also being in good faith / legally sound on my end to also act towards empowering the public to also make video games. I wish to become a commercially viable video game developer with the freedom creatively and legally to do so within reason and without sacrificing my ability to live healthily in order to do so. Also I wish to have the peace of mind that I can be in a legal position to empower myself to create a video game that has the potential to hopefully be commercially viable. Also I wish to help others in the public / global community to also make their own video games.
I have the hope that my efforts of transparency, clarity, good will and leading by example can lead towards creative empowerment of the public / global community herein towards improving the creative endeavours of aspiring developers; regardless as of those who are rich and of those who are poor. From a personal standpoint and or from my own personal perspective and or my past character building experiences; I have struggled in three decades to break out of being a modder for other video games that I have enjoyed to be creative with and to make unique content thereof. Yet I was / I am legally unable to become commercially viable if I sold my very costly to produce work. In fact I could have been / I could be legally sued and I could have lost / I can lose my work and personal finances in regards to trying to be commercially viable working under a work that I do not have legal right to sell thereof. Thus the only way that I can legally become commercially viable in creating my own video games as a video game developer is if I can become the sole legal entity that possess the sole legal authority and legal intellectual property ownership of my own work. An international legal right and legal authority bestowed by and upheld by international law under the Madrid System to legally empower and fortify myself and my legal position to be able to legally sell my own work across the world.
I must then be legally sound / uphold the law with any assets and creative tools I use to create my unique collective works with to hopefully create commercially viable video games. On my current path I believe that I am legally sound / upholding international law and the Madrid System. I am not inhibiting / preventing / stopping / getting in the way of the public from using open source / forever free assets nor am I claiming ownership of an open source / forever free work and or collections of work. Also I am using accreditation / listing credits of the respective authours and making the effort to show the source of the open source / forever free assets / creative tools. I am making the clear distinction that I do not own the components of my video games that are open source / forever free assets and open source / forever free creative tools within my unique collective work of my video game. I do own my unique work and I am taking due diligence and effort to become legally fortified. So that I can legally be the sole legal entity with the legal right to my unique collective works legally fortified with a legal registered trademark. A legal registered trademark that I am the sole legal entity that has legal ownership thereof and is enforced by international law. A legal registered trademark of which that is legally filed under the Madrid System that gives the sole legal right to myself that I solely, can legally be the sole entity legally under international law to sell my unique legally trademarked collective work of my video game. Of which it is illegal by international law as of the Madrid System for any entity acting to sell and or actively selling and or has in the past tense sold my legally trademarked unique collective work of my video game without my legal consent. Thus to the best of my understanding, I am the sole legal entity who has the legal ownership of the intellectually property rights of my unique works and by extension any legally sharable collective of my works; in as at least so far as that such work has within it containing my legal registered trademark. Of which I am sole legal owner thereof and have the exclusive sole legal right bestowed to myself and internationally enforced for myself by international law as of the legal authority invested by the powers of the Madrid System; for myself as the rightful and legal sole entity to possess the internationally legal sole ability to sell my own collective work of my video games to the world.
This is my current non-exhaustive understanding of my legal status / my perspectives of my legal situation regarding my collective works in terms of legal share-ability. Also as to where I am with my legal standing of my collective works with a legally registered trademark within the Madrid System https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr01369.... + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_system . [Note: This response took some effort / I am sorry for the long read. I hope that my reply is clear and without difficulty to readily understand. I am actively taking the due diligence / effort to be transparent in hopes of acting in good will / good faith and to be honest and open to reason. I welcome constructive and open discussion.]
I wonder if anyone is open to HD flare art commissions? I could in theory do both game mechanic testing work and have 'Flare HD' art assets being made if I had to commission them anyway. Although my main concern is work load complexity / asking for too much too fast. Although I wonder if anyone in the community is interested as a hobby? The 2H attack animations could work in theory for original and ~'Flare HD'. Has anyone outside of Clint Bellanger created animations for Flare? Perhaps the 2H attack animations would be a good / reasonable starter art project for it enables a gameplay play-style as well.
Shorthand: Could a 2 affix and 2 suffix item generator system work?
Also new high definition art assets and animations for Flare are important to myself yet getting the core gameplay mechanics tested and working comes first.
Also can crafting be used to take away item affixes and suffixes effectively to return 'magical' items into 'base items'?
Longhand: Okay so 3 affixes and 3 suffixes is a bit much in terms of complexity (also it gets a bit crazy in name length / player expectations and borders on meme territory like the classic example of the longest German word: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan (Danube steamship company captain). So your system has 2 affixes and 1 suffix within realistic (non-insanity) work flow? Could 2 affixes and 2 suffixes be used? I even struggle to get 3 affixes and 3 suffixes and a lot can be merged like vanilla WoW's random stat items. Also doe this random item generator work with a bunch of custom item rarity text colours (it should?). Also I guess item 'enchanting' could just be a form of crafting even to add affixes and suffixes (if there is space / room [how would a check be done then?])? I suppose base items could be (with a crafting system) 'salvaged' and have new item bases made and have the crafting add more stats to them later to give deep crafting depth hopefully / wide level ranges of item relevance / 'up-trading' item ~crafting economy kind of like in Path of Exile.
Animations. When I can flesh out / test to see if the the Flare x 4 prototype can work sufficiency / good enough / reliably. Then once the major / game play critical features are fleshed-out and working I can shift gears and battle with the art and animations properly. Right now I would super ecstatic if the rough ~'placeholder' Flare x 4 art can work (even with low resolution player presentation). Although once the long battle for major gameplay features is majorly conquered / very close to complete / ~'done'. Then the big battle of 'going wide' / pushing out the visual diversity begins. Right now I am kind of wedged in to a corner trying to find what works and what creative tools / assets I can work with to build a (hopefully) a game worth playing. For in short I want to get the blender animations in a place where all of the main player expectations of character play-styles can be viable / enjoyed in the game (sword and shield/offhand, dual wielding, two-handed with armours being cloth, leather, mail, plate [possibly heavy / full plate]. I do have the animations / high definition renders for the graphics for turning Flare x 4 into ~'Flare HD' on my priorities; although after all of the major gameplay features / mechanics are fleshed out and prototyped / working and the main creative game 'tool set' is established / properly tested. If I have to get professional help for new art assets so be it. I am sure that with there being so many wonderous blender artist that someone can help make art assets if it come down to paying for commissions for making Flare HD art assets. So either way I hope to make good on the Flare HD art assets and animations, but only after the gameplay and game world building features and toolset(s) are properly hammered out.
Gems are cool although I guess with a crafting system they could (hopefully) be used in away to upgrade item bases and or even possibly add affixes / suffixes to items (if possible) kind of like a jewelcrafting version of enchanting (using added affixes and suffixes). How can an item be 'wiped' / converted back to item base item (like how Path of Exile can remove affixes and suffixes from items and return the base item)?
Wow big thanks to Justin Jacobs a.k.a Dorkster for this feature:
Layered animations for non-player entities. What a legend XD.
@Danimal Now you can make super crazy areas with tons of different kinds of humanoid monsters, creatures and N.P.C.s! Man this is such massive feature. For now Flare can have content depth like an M.M.O.R.P.G. with even thousands of creature customizations and ways to make places and populations feel unique and diverse and really build character to the world. Tons and tons of world building:-D!
Where can one find the heavy .blend sources? I use the .blend files to make new dual wield animations. Also I will most likely have to battle out new Flare x 4 scale animations / art assets which will require .blend source files.
What can be done with the Item Generator? Can it have 3 affixes and 3 suffixes applied to the base item (and still work)? What are the possibilities and the restrictions with the current iteration of the item generator? Can specific chosen fixed ranged item (not random) affixes and suffixes be applied to items? Such as 'Blessed Fine Pure Steel Cuirass of Major Vitality and Lesser Might and Minor Gloam [Frost/Ice] Resistance'? A bit of a long possible item names but still lots of pixels can lead to long item names.
Has anyone tried to make an 'enchanting' system, like where items get new arbitrary attributes and or item effects (e.g. Crusader). Likewise has any tried to make an item system with sockets with gems / jewels / runes items for Flare? I think all that Flare is missing from Diablo II item depth is affixes and suffixes (random item generator), sockets and gems / jewels / runes (minus runewords). Is a gem / socket system out of realistic reach or is it one of those things that can be done but needs lots of work to implemented?
@rubberduck Can these Flare HD art assets use / be compatible with / in 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles? Also I am without a clear understanding as to how to turn this: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balduran-s-Sea-Tower-Redesi... into this: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/blob/master/art_src/tilesets/gra... . I am hoping to have a 'Flare x 4' prototype working and eventually I hope to piece by piece replace the enlarged x 4 original Flare art assets / animations with new Flare HD art assets. Basically Flare but 4 times the pixel density / each original art asset pixel is split into 4 to start to get a working prototype with enlarged x 4 original flare art assets. How close is this 'Flare x 4' to your ideas of 'Flare HD'? For example can the 'Flare HD' tilesets work as rendered 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles? Also how can one make a 256 x 128 scale pixel tile standard lighting rig / work pipe line / get blender to make 256 x 128 scale pixel tiles from say a bunch big castle 3D models?
I am working on 128 x 128 pixel scale icons and I am wondering how to have each icon be its own .png image? For if I have (like you say) thousands of icons, it would be a nightmare to have to change the whole giant icons.png image to make a small change. Also keeping track of say icon 1528, is like uhh so where is that again? XD. vanilla World of Warcraft has over 2,000+ unique icons and if anyone were to match that scale of content than there needs to be compartmentalized / modular / each icon is its' own separate .png image to battle the complexity with simplified icon image management.
How are you trying to get the random item generator to work? Is it like Diablo / Path of Exile? I was thinking that such a system would be hard to make. So I just kind of left it in the back of my mind; but that is really cool to hear that you are going for it.
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How does a respect option work? Is it an NPC or event and or an item? How does that work? I know with console commands that there are a respect options. Although I wonder how to 'gamify' / put that in game? Is it a case of an NPC dialog triggering an event or something like a quest? How does one go about making a respec option for a game in Flare?
I also am overhauling everything on my side of things. For I want to get the core gameplay hammered out and I am trying to get 'Flare x 4' working so that I can add longevity / 'Flare HD' down the road. To hopefully go from 2000's player presentation / graphics to 2020's / on par with Diablo II Resurrected player presentation / graphics. I figured that if it takes myself into the late 2020's to get all of the maps and areas ('game world ecosystems' / large content areas) built out / long term support of the game. Then I better make a game that can stand up to the test of time. So I hope that right now pushing as hard as I can for a working 'Flare x 4' can eventually lead to 'Flare HD'; of which I hope can be played well into the 2030's and beyond. This will hopefully avoid the original Baldur's Gate / Diablo 'dated graphics' / low resolution textures / art assets and be more like Pillars of Eternity / Path of Exile / Diablo II Resurrected eventually. Although that all starts with getting the framework / 'skeleton' of the 'Flare x 4' prototyped and working and bit by bit, piece by piece swap out the low resolution art assets with high resolution art assets (hopefully making a realistic work load and path towards 'Flare HD').
I hope that I / we / the community can succeed at 'Flare x 4' and the community can get access to basically the working 'version 1.0' / prototype of 'Flare HD'. Given that all of the art is open source / forever free to use that means if one of us rises to a greater feat of gameplay features / quality of experience then everyone else is also empowered. I really like this open source / forever free approach to game development for it enables everyone rich or poor to have a fair chance at making great games decade after decade. I remember playing Baldur's Gate, 2000's WoW, Diablo, Runescape, Zelda, Mount and Blade etc. and being so frustrated that I could not make a great game of my own legally with the same game engine. I did not have millions of dollars to ~'face tank' a whole studio of expenses to produce a great game. So I had to venture out and self-teach myself how to create content for old games that I enjoyed. I had to learn from nothing and figure out first how to 'mod' for a community in the ~'digital wilderness'; hopping around tinkering and modding games from community to community. I just keep the momentum up year after year and I just keep failing upwards until I get better and better. I become more and more creatively powerful with each cycle of success and failure; with each time getting closer and closer to realizing my life long dreams.
I eventually ended up here trying to combine my favourite parts of other great games in a tool set / game engine that can support / create great games and that is finally forever free / open source for everyone. I hope that by making a great game series / realize a medieval fantasy setting in some kick ass video games, that it will inspire more people keep making better and better video games. What ever assets I make I hope that they can be free for everyone to use for if I 'make it' (able to reliable produce commercially viable video games that can stand the test of time and be enjoyed by the community); I would like to bring more than just myself up. So as to kind of make right the old wrongs / problems of my past frustrations of being a creative person with no powerful tools to realize my creative visions / dreams. Thus to empower the world and have creative people of all kinds be empowered with open and powerful video game creating tools and a kick ass game engine forever free :-).
Also I have this castle I want to make into a tileset but I want to get Flare x 4 stress tested and working properly and start making 'Flare HD' quality of tilesets with 256 x 128 pixel scale tiles . I am wondering how to get this model rigged up in a standard (hopefully blender) render rig so I can make Flare compatible tileset and use them. I hope to make Flare standard tilesets (with same style as the base game art assets) and then have my own unique version to match my own artistic styles for my game. So that when I go to make new arts assets (like a castle tileset) I can share my work with the community to be opensource / forever free to use and I also get to make my own game better. Although I need to better understand how to turn this: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balduran-s-Sea-Tower-Redesi... into this: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/blob/master/art_src/tilesets/gra...
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