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Something I have not heard mentioned is contacting Ambrosia SW and seeing if they would be interested in marketing such a plugin. I vaguely remember seeing something somewhere on AmbrosiaSW's site saying if you have an idea for a software product, to pitch it to them. In theory, they'd be interested in such a value-add plugin for the EVN engine.
This would then raise some interesting points: would one have to buy the engine and Nova scenario as a package if one only wanted to play the new TC, or would they offer the engine and scenario's as seperate purchases?
I think it would be wonderful to be able to purchase the engine alone. I'm not in love with the EVN universe, but I play the EV conversion using that engine.
It wouldn't hurt to try and talk to Andrew once the FH trilogy is nearing completion. Who knows? Maybe this will be the start of people pimping increasingly complex TCs to Ambrosia. It'd be quite interesting to see new, Ambrosia sanctioned TCs being released once a year (if there were any TCs that lived up to the level of excellence demanded by Ambrosia for such things).
Just because the engine is finished doesn't mean Ambrosia can't keep making $ off new TCs for it.
-STH
------------------ Mac<-->PC pilot file Conversions: (url="http://"http://phair.csh.rit.edu/~seant/EV/PilotConvert/")http://phair.csh.rit...V/PilotConvert/(/url) "Create enigmas, not explanations." -Robert Smithson
Quote
Originally posted by seant: **Something I have not heard mentioned is contacting Ambrosia SW and seeing if they would be interested in marketing such a plugin. **
Dude, before everyone jumps on the flame wagon, I'd better advise you to read the topic. Seriously it was mentioned about six separate times.
~A~
------------------ "How can I make it go faster?" -Me-
Originally posted by Azdara: **Dude, before everyone jumps on the flame wagon, I'd better advise you to read the topic. Seriously it was mentioned about six separate times.
~A~ **
But still, seant has some very interesting points, detailing why Ambrosia might actually agree to market a plug:
Originally posted by seant: **It'd be quite interesting to see new, Ambrosia sanctioned TCs being released once a year (if there were any TCs that lived up to the level of excellence demanded by Ambrosia for such things).
Just because the engine is finished doesn't mean Ambrosia can't keep making $ off new TCs for it.**
It's not a bad idea to ask, or let ASW think about the offer. Ofcourse can they say plain 'no', and the fun is over, but hey..
Apart from that, I now agree with the pro-donationware side.
------------------ (url="http://"http://ulrik.no-ip.org")ulrik.no-ip.org(/url) I hope that a future EV Nova will hold the gövt-switch set expression, working like Wxxxyyy: hereby treat and let behave what belongs to gövt xxx as if it belonged to gövt yyy. This is the small tool we lack to build a believable scenario without unrelaistic amounts of resources and work.
Originally posted by Azdara: **Dude, before everyone jumps on the flame wagon, I'd better advise you to read the topic. Seriously it was mentioned about six separate times. **
Heh. That's what I get for skimming.
<seant puts on a hairshirt and starts beating himself>
Originally posted by Engla: But still, seant has some very interesting points, detailing why Ambrosia might actually agree to market a plug:
Excuse me?
Originally posted by Regulus: they have a similar policy in place for ColdStone engine games, so why not try it?
Sometimes I think I'm typing in invisible ink.
-reg
------------------ "As a rule we believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if only we could." ~ William James
Originally posted by Martin Turner: **Quote: The term 'EV Nova' in and of itself is a trademark of Ambrosia. Using that term, (whether explicit or implied), on a third party product would first require the written approval of Ambrosia.
No, I'm afraid this is incorrect.
For a full discussion, see http://www.intellect...operty.gov.uk/. This is a UK site, but the agreements are international, and the site links appropriately to the various international bodies.
Ownership of a trademark does not prevent someone else from discussing your product by its name, or from claiming that their product is compatible with your product.
What it does prevent someone from doing is passing off their product as your product, or claiming endorsement or association, or trying to selling identical services using your trademark or one sufficiently similar to cause confusion to the public. ... In fact, Apple itself is in trouble now because an earlier agreement with Apple (the company formed by the Beatles) stated that Apple (computer) would not provide music services, and Apple (music) are now claiming that Apple (computer) are doing just that with the iTunes site. In this case, the issue is one of pre-existing contract which is more enforceable than Trademark, however, the principle is the same: selling of identical services (ie, music distribution) using a pre-registered trademark.
Infringement of trademark is not dependent on remuneration the Star Wars plugins are technically illegal, but Lucasfilms have not pursued them very hard. On the other hand, early Star Trek plugins had to be pulled because the owners of the Star Trek franchise complained - even though no money was changing hands.
It would be acceptable to commercially market your plugin shrink-wrapped on supermarket shares for $300, provided that you did not explicitly or implicitly make the claim that your product was endorsed by Ambrosia or an official accompaniment to EV Nova. If you decided to include a copy of Nova in your package, you would have to make it very clear that additional monies were payable to Ambrosia, that by buying your software the purchaser was not purchasing a copy of Nova, and that the Nova software was included for convenience only. Even then, you would need to check the Nova licence carefully. ... Having been professionally on both sides of TradeMark disputes, I would humbly suggest that it's worth checking the law carefully before posting advice about it on these boards and even then you can still be wrong.
**
Um, does that mean stuff like nonprofit fanfiction is technically illegal? I hope not.
Also, I hope FH2 is freeware. But I'll probably download/buy it anyways.
God bless,
UE Patriot
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=date&file;=ReignOfTheUEv12.Bin")Reign of the UE(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=date&file;=PersonsOFTheEVOWebboardv2.Bin")Persons of the EVO Webboard(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ue_patriot")My Website(/url) | Nex ad Bureau Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Originally posted by UE Patriot: Um, does that mean stuff like nonprofit fanfiction is technically illegal? I hope not.
It may well be. However, I would be very surprised to see any company actually crack down on it.
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url) Look over their! There doing a weird dance with they're hats! - Shenlon
Oh, good Lord. The maker of ROtUE is finally back, after all these years...
Back on topic: Before we go around indulging in fantasies of proprietary EVN engines powering our most fanciful ideas, consider the consequences a little more. Would Ambrosia really take the time to actually key the engine to every, or even several good plug-ins? What would Ambrosia do about good plug-ins with mature content- material inappropriate for young children who otherwise might be fine with the stock Nova campaign? And it's wasteful of bandwidth, hard disk space, and time to have to DL the engine every time you want to play a plug. And what about marketability? Is it worth Ambrosia's time to officially 'sanctify' plug-ins that may or may not earn them money (or even recoup their initial investment)?
Stand-alone games are applications: they can be inherently made to support any kind of encryption scheme the author wants to put in. You can't do that to an EVN plug-in: it has to work with the application. And many engines just isn't feasible...
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ue_rd")Fatal Alliance- an upcoming quasi-TC for EVN.(/url) Secret Project: Nearing Completion. (No links available) Visit the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=20&SUBMIT;=Go")Chronicles(/url) today! Be sure to read the short story ' (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/newsdisplay.cgi?action=topics &number;=20&forum;=*EV/EVO+chronicles&DaysPrune;=100&article;=000262&startpoint;=")Fiery Descent(/url)'! (url="http://"http://forums.tildesoft.com")Oblivion:(/url) An upcoming TC for EV:N
Originally posted by UE_Research & Development: Would Ambrosia really take the time to actually key the engine to every, or even several good plug-ins?
The point is no keying would have to be done. The Nova engine in its current state (1.0.6) is completely adequate. All they'd have to do is facilitate registration.
What would Ambrosia do about good plug-ins with mature content- material inappropriate for young children who otherwise might be fine with the stock Nova campaign?
Put an ESRB rating on it, and a parental advisory dialogue box at startup.
And it's wasteful of bandwidth, hard disk space, and time to have to DL the engine every time you want to play a plug.
EVN (the application) is 4.7 megabytes. EVN (the data files) is 171 megabytes. Who cares?
And what about marketability? Is it worth Ambrosia's time to officially 'sanctify' plug-ins that may or may not earn them money (or even recoup their initial investment)?
The initial investment is all Martin's, since the engine requires no or negligible modifications, and he'd just be distributing it as freeware otherwise.
Stand-alone games are applications: they can be inherently made to support any kind of encryption scheme the author wants to put in. You can't do that to an EVN plug-in: it has to work with the application.
Hence why ASW should distribute it.
I had very similar thoughts...shudders from the memory of buying his UE Dreadnought
Anyhow...what were we talking about again?
Damn, mind flooded with horrid memories and now I can't remember what you were discussing...
------------------ The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
You can interpret this as just having Ambrosia handle registration of un-altered plugins. Why would they take the time to facilitate registration for such an easily piratable format? And if you interpret this as including copy-security (so only this copy of the engine could play the game, and the plug-in was hard-coded into the engine via data files), yes, Ambrosia would need to modify the engine code in some way so that any moron who knew even a minimal amount about computer programming could not crack the code. And it takes staff, money, and computers to set up any kind of registration system.
I'm not sure how the ESRB system works, but Ambrosia would probably have to spend money getting certification from the organization. And besides, most people have content besides ratings/advisories boxes that they want to show during start-up.
Everyone who has dial-up will care, I assure you. 5 megabytes is approximately another 2 hours 30 minutes added onto onto their download time. And before you tell anyone out there with dial-up to get high speed Internet, be aware that there are quite a few people out there who keep their dial-up because they can't afford broadband or can't get access to it, not because they're masochists who enjoy tying up their phone lines and watching Internet pages load like molasses.
Engine requiring changes: Building in copy-protection? Copy protection, even just modifying the protection built into the game, would require Ambrosia employee time. And Ambrosia would have to physically modify the application so that there would be copy security.
Read:
...it takes staff, money, and computers to set up any kind of registration system.
...would require Ambrosia employee time
...binding contracts are a problem, piracy would be a major problem...
And you think Ambrosia really has time to review EVERY TC proposal that comes in? (Remember that if the engine was bound to the plug-in via copy-support, and if Ambrosia handled registration, than people would assosiate the two.) Even if they did, you'd still run into problems:
- If they review TC proposals, make a contract, and then the person making the TC drops out, what then? - If they review finished TCs, what if someone makes a TC and spends time on it, only to be rejected by the Ambrosia review staff in favor of another plug-in? What would fair criteria be? Would Ambrosia release and sanction something controversial? - Would they/the ESRB be expected to check every desc and picture for objectionable content? If they took the word of the author(s), what if Evil Author or Forgetful Author either forgets or intentionally does not mention objectionable content? How would Ambrosia's reputation as a software company be hurt if in one of these (otherwise-rated E) TCs, a 10-year-old child stumbled upon porn or graphic descriptions of sex? and the others. - What if it turns out that the TC author plaguarized or stole content or graphics- does Ambrosia really have the resources to check any of these claims out to a reasonable extent? Who would be responsible for any legal action- Ambrosia, the author, or the team? - What if it turns out that the TC author used pirated software (3-D, web design, etc) in order to write parts of the plug-in, put up a web page, or make graphics? I believe that software piracy carries hefty fines, and that Ambrosia would surely be displeased if some lawyer called saying 'we believe that the author of this expansion pack used pirated copies of our software'. - Who would be responsible for bug updates? If the author disappeared, would Ambrosia be responsible for doing so? If neither the author nor Ambrosia did so, would Ambrosia be worried about people being annoyed with badly written scenario/code?
etc. etc.
and one final note:
Nobody forced you to play the plug-in, and even if you downloaded it, you always had the option of deleting it. If you don't like it, make a dedicated topic about your gripes, or contact the author privately. As it is, I don't see anything in your post pertaining to the discussion at hand, so please don't do this again.
Whoa, calm down there.
However, you do have a good point (which I was trying to make earlier) - you released a plugin, and now people are slagging you off for it. As you point out, you didn't force anyone to play it and you didn't force them to download it.
Actually, I think they were kind of kidding because I remember your plugin being quite well respected on the EVO board when that board was still a lively place.
However, I can associate with what you're saying because I had to endure about six months of grief on these boards of people slagging me off.
Some of them had real gripes about the stability of QuickTime movies, which eventually led to the 1.0.4 version of FH with the removable deqt file. Those people - especially Jim - became some of the most important beta testers for Femme Fatale and were the reason why that plugin is still at version 1.0.0 - bug free.
Some of them just hadn't bothered to read the read-me files - I had about 500 emails from those kinds of people, as well as loads of stuff on the boards
Some of them didn't even bother to play the plugin for more than a few minutes before opening up the files in EV-Edit and looking around to see what they could filch. I got loads of emails and board complaints from these people because their computers then crashed - a result of EV-Edit's tendency to strip out the dude percentages from Systs. A number of them emailed me to say 'I have found the following bugs in your plugin - you have put some planets on top of each other. I have corrected this and am now releasing a fix'.
Some of them didn't even bother to download the plugin - they were just cross about all the attention it was getting. One particular person, who I think disappeared off the boards, slagged it off vehemently for months before finally admitting that he had never downloaded it but it 'sounded gay'.
One twelve year old ran a campaign using all the computers at his school to push FH off the ratings. In one week it dropped from a user-rating of 96 to 83. Interestingly, though, things evened themselves out as all the other plugins which were between 95 and 83 gradually moved to where they are now. For some reason, the kid thought it was really cool to do this.
Some people just didn't like it. Strangely, though, they were not the ones who kept on slagging it off. They just tried it, found it not to their taste, and left it.
Eventually it all stopped, people ceased to send me hate mail (no, I mean, they really did, or emails beginning 'I am a plugin maker making a TC and it will be better than yours because it will have twice as many spobs and four times as many ships'), or maybe I just ceased to be bothered about it.
I do feel that one of the reasons people take this attitude is because all the plugins are free. EVO and Nova have always had a sort of awed respect on these boards. Not that it isn't deserved, because they are good pieces of work, but it would be nice if everyone respected everyone else's work a bit more. Nobody can say that Nova was bug-free when it was released - it's on 1.0.6 now. But people diligently reported the bugs, they were fixed, and we all moved on. When Universe Next Door was released, people just slagged it off. When they got fed up of that, they slagged the author off. Surprisingly he never thought it was worthwhile releasing updates to fix the bugs - or maybe people just slagged him without actually reporting them.
Anyway, I do feel that genuine shareware - now often referred to as donationware - would get some of the plugin makers more of the respect they deserve.
Yours, an old, embittered and disgruntled plugin maker.
Martin
------------------ M A R T I N T U R N E R (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FrozenHeart104.sit.bin")Frozen Heart(/url) (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FemmeFatale.sea.bin")Femme Fatale(/url) (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=evo/plugins&file;=Frozen Heart - the No.hqx")Frozen Heart - the Novel(/url)
With the utmost respect, sir, I believe you are referring to UE Patriot, who just recently posted, not me. But I can sympathize with your plight- at least your doubters were eventually silenced. As for me personally, it was refreshing to read a space-based story in which the character actually stood up for what he believed in.
Back to the subject. Shareware? Like many other situations in the world, it depends. Really, it should be made abundantly clear that only the most veteran and respected of developers, or at least those whom have released at least one product of worth, should be able to charge. I really feel that, if this is done at all, an environment should be created that discourages people from just releasing trash for $14.99. Ideally, only the most brash of developers should even consider charging for anything that the community isn't probably going to like.
That's assuming the technical and procedural difficulties are dispatched, of course....
Sorry, my mistake.
Okay, UE R&D;, calm down. This is not theology, this is The Frozen Heart in particular that we're talking about here. Don't forget that EVO and EVN also started out as third party TCs that Ambrosia decided to take on and publish. I'm not suggesting anything else for Martin's E3 trilogy. Now, a few of your points:
Originally posted by UE_Research & Development: Why would they take the time to facilitate registration for such an easily piratable format?
Because they don't distribute it as a plugin, they distribute it as a game , and secure it using EVN's built in checksum feature that prevents tampering with the data files.
yes, Ambrosia would need to modify the engine code in some way
They'd just have to rejig said checksum, which I believe they've had to do for every point release since 1.0.0. I honestly don't think we're talking about a lot of overhead here.
so that any moron who knew even a minimal amount about computer programming could not crack the code.
I don't think anybody has cracked EVN yet.
And it takes staff, money, and computers to set up any kind of registration system.
Ambrosia has a well developed infrastructure for this already in place. Whatever minimal overhead they'd incur would be covered by their cut (as publisher) of the registration fee.
Everyone who has dial-up will care
My point was that EVN was very clearly not targeted at dialup users, and that neither Ambrosia nor ATMOS seem to have suffered overmuch for the inherent restriction of audience.
even just modifying the protection built into the game, would require Ambrosia employee time.
Really, I think you vastly overestimate this.
If they review TC proposals, make a contract, and then the person making the TC drops out, what then?
Martin has a proven track record. This clearly wouldn't work for just anyone, but given the circumstances I think he could make a viable pitch if he elected to do so. Both of the EV sequels were collaborative works, and no real problems came up - and neither Peter Cartwright nor ATMOS had published a plugin on their own before, which Martin has.
This is not theology, this is The Frozen Heart in particular that we're talking about here.
Hmm...so much for anyone who has a plug-in worthy of it...
Yes, I think you do, UE. Chances are, the system for the plug-in registry will be very similar to that of the registry of games, which they finished quite some time ago.
Ask for a refund, and if they refuse, Ambrosia can sue for stealing. Which it is, as they are not getting anything in return. So, unless the developer's a moron, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
Originally posted by UE_Research & Development: Everyone who has dial-up will care, I assure you. 5 megabytes is approximately another 2 hours 30 minutes added onto onto their download time.
I think thats a bit of an exaggeration. When I was on a 33.6k modem, I downloaded the 25MB hour Episode I trailer in 2/12 hours, putting the downlaod rate at 5Mb in 30 minutes.
------------------ (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/index.html")Classic4Nova plug-in(/url)
A decent speed on a 56k modem is 5k/s. Hence, that makes about 18MB/hr at good speeds. UER&D; definitely has his numbers wrong.
Yeah, Maz is right guys. It took me about six hours do download nova on a 56k... or was it eight? Either way, it wasn't 5 megs in 2.5 hours. But I am bloody glad I'm on the DSL train now...
Originally posted by Azdara: **Yeah, Maz is right guys. It took me about six hours do download nova on a 56k... or was it eight? Either way, it wasn't 5 megs in 2.5 hours. But I am bloody glad I'm on the DSL train now...
I managed Nova in about four and a half hours on my 56k, which was pretty speedy.
I'm bloody glad I'm on a 10MBps university line :D.