[Xsera] Other Xsera

@prophile, on Nov 21 2008, 02:06 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Not directly, but Sfiera is working on utilities to convert between the classic Ares formats and the new formats, so they will be able to be used.

Just to make it clear to others: Sfiera = Pallas Athene

Thanks to the devs for working so hard on this. That was about the shortest creation of an Alpha I have seen. In the future, would it be possible to use the 10.4 Universal SDK and GCC 4.0? Thanks, either way.

This post has been edited by gavin83209 : 21 November 2008 - 11:18 PM

@gavin83209, on Nov 22 2008, 12:18 AM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

That was about the shortest creation of an Alpha I have seen.

I wish, lol.
It's not quite in Alpha yet.

The mention of alpha in the progress log was a mistake. Sorry

@redsteven, on Nov 22 2008, 05:15 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

The mention of alpha in the progress log was a mistake. Sorry

Yeah, sorry about that. That was one of those typos where I knew what I meant but my brain had different ideas... :hector_bird:

Ah. Does the source contain much in the way of playable content? As hinted at below, Tiger and Xcode 2.5 will not compile the Xsera prototype.

@gavin83209, on Nov 22 2008, 09:30 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Ah. Does the source contain much in the way of playable content? As hinted at below, Tiger and Xcode 2.5 will not compile the Xsera prototype.

I'm currently working on making a demo that will allow the player to move, warp, fire, and destroy a Gaitori Carrier. It may or may not have energy, shield, or ammo limits, or anything drawn on either side panel. The demo will not be publicly released, but I'm sure a video will be released showing stuff off, or else why would I be making a demo?

As to why it doesn't work with Tiger and Xcode 2.5: the current minimum build requirements are Leopard and Xcode 3.0, but I'll ask about lowering those specs.

Thank you very much.

@gavin83209, on Nov 21 2008, 10:18 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Thanks to the devs for working so hard on this. That was about the shortest creation of an Alpha I have seen. In the future, would it be possible to use the 10.4 Universal SDK and GCC 4.0? Thanks, either way.

I agree, it's really great that this has progressed so far so fast. I keep hoping that one day I check back here and I see an update that says we got an alpha.

-eveningtoast

@adam_0, on Nov 23 2008, 11:42 AM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

As to why it doesn't work with Tiger and Xcode 2.5: the current minimum build requirements are Leopard and Xcode 3.0, but I'll ask about lowering those specs.

Does that refer to what you need to compile the app? Or to potentially run it?

@redsteven, on Nov 25 2008, 05:48 AM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Does that refer to what you need to compile the app? Or to potentially run it?

build==compile

though i don't know if you need leopard to run it. it shouldn't be too hard for them to get it to run under 10.4.10, but anything before that probably wouldn't be supported.

but it's a good question. what will be the end requirements to run xsera?

Probably at least OS X Leopard, PowerPC or Intel, or a Windows machine newer than about 2002 running XP or greater. Linux specs still an unknown.

@prophile, on Nov 26 2008, 01:32 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Probably at least OS X Leopard, PowerPC or Intel, or a Windows machine newer than about 2002 running XP or greater. Linux specs still an unknown.

Here's a question... the game is coming as a whole, correct? We are not going to require it be licensed by Ambrosia right? Or do people need to have a legitimate Ambrosia key?

@eveningtoast, on Nov 26 2008, 03:41 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

Here's a question... the game is coming as a whole, correct? We are not going to require it be licensed by Ambrosia right? Or do people need to have a legitimate Ambrosia key?

It will be freeware. We can't legally sell it, as Ares is Nathon Lamont's brainchild.

@adam_0, on Nov 26 2008, 08:20 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

It will be freeware. We can't legally sell it, as Ares is Nathon Lamont's brainchild.

yup, no Ambrosia key required.

I see oncoming legal issues; Xsera, logistically, will have all the components that the fully registered version of Ares has, correct? If the scenario is included with Xsera, then we'd be giving out free copies of a game that was meant to have a registration cutoff. Effectively, we'd become software pirates, except the software would only work on OS X instead of OS 9.

You're right, we can't legally sell it as it's Nathan Lamont's intellectual property, but if it includes the same scenario, missions, etc as Ares Classic then we can't legally distribute it either, as freeware or otherwise, without Nathan Lamont's and AmbrosiaSW's permission.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 28 November 2008 - 01:17 PM

Lamont licensed out all the media under a CC license (by-nc-nd): the "attribution" clause makes sense, that just means we have to credit Lamont, and the "non-commercial" clause means we can't sell it.

The "no-derivative-works" clause is a huge pain in the arse because that means we can't scale the sprites up, but that's a can of worms we can get onto later. The fact is, however, that Xsera is freeware, so we're not violating Lamont's Creative Commons license.

The "open source announcement" for Ares is located here

@prophile, on Nov 28 2008, 10:41 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

The "no-derivative-works" clause is a huge pain in the arse because that means we can't scale the sprites up, but that's a can of worms we can get onto later. The fact is, however, that Xsera is freeware, so we're not violating Lamont's Creative Commons license.

I may be incorrect, but from reading the announcement I believe that the "no-derivative-works" clause only applies to the movies.

Quote

In 2008, Nathan Lamont released the original source code to Ares under the GNU GPL 2.0, and most of the media under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

The Ares Source Code

The media (text, images, sounds, and music) are distributed separately. Not all media from the original commercial distribution is included. Some sounds have been intentionally excluded.

The Ares Media

The movies are available under a more restrictive CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

The Ares Movies

My reading of the above is that all media save the movies fall under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which specifically allows you to "remix" the media for use in other projects. This strikes me as entirely workable - it's unlikely we would have wanted to remix the movies in any fashion, and most video players can upscale the resolution without altering the underlying file.

I'm saying the fact that it is freeware is what could make it illegal. Assuming it contains the same scenarios as the original Ares, then it could be considered an illegal version of Ares because, while it's true that it would not run on OS 9, the player would immediately be able to play through the entire game for free, whereas with the prior version the player would have to pay for such features.

@sundered-angel, on Nov 29 2008, 10:42 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

I may be incorrect, but from reading the announcement I believe that the "no-derivative-works" clause only applies to the movies.
My reading of the above is that all media save the movies fall under the (url=CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license(/url), which specifically allows you to "remix" the media for use in other projects. This strikes me as entirely workable - it's unlikely we would have wanted to remix the movies in any fashion, and most video players can upscale the resolution without altering the underlying file.

Well observed: that makes life easier. However, the NC clause applies to both licenses, so we'd still have to release as freeware even if we didn't want to!

@jacabyte, on Nov 29 2008, 10:59 PM, said in [Xsera] Other Xsera:

I'm saying the fact that it is freeware is what could make it illegal. Assuming it contains the same scenarios as the original Ares, then it could be considered an illegal version of Ares because, while it's true that it would not run on OS 9, the player would immediately be able to play through the entire game for free, whereas with the prior version the player would have to pay for such features.

I repeat, we are not using the original code, we are using creative commons-licensed media only. That is perfectly legal.