> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jason Fox > Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 11:50 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [Ogf-l] video games > > > Oh, sorry, I hate being the one to start a flame war.
Not to worry. This is a very flame-resistant list; and this particular issue has come up so many times, there's not enough passion left for a war. The reason this is likely to drag on is NOT because of a flame war, but rather because there are usually new people who haven't been through it before, so a LOT of old ground may need to be covered one more time. And you've done a nice job of covering some of it with your research, so that may reduce the total number of messages. > Definitions: "Interactive Game": means a piece of computer gaming software that is designed > to accept inputs from human players or their agents, and use rules to resolve > the success or failure of those inputs, and return some indication of the > results of those inputs to the users. > > --------" > > Those two statements are indeed in the d20 System Guide v3.0. > There does not appear to be anything comparable in the OGL > however. So it appears you could write software under OGL > but you can not do anything derived from the d20 because that > is against their licensing. Well, not quite. You can write code derived from the d20 SRD, without using the d20 System Trademark License, just the OGL. > I'm seeing opinions on OGL and having to release source code > for software, something I am unwilling to do (for various reasons). This is one of the areas where folks who believe software is possible disagree on how it's possible: * Some believe the source has to be released, period. * Some believe the source has to be released UNLESS you can make a generic engine that parses scripts/data files but itself encompasses NO OGC AT ALL. In other words, if you fed it different scripts, you'd end up playing Champions, not D&D. The engine could understand die-rolling conventions, etc. It could create databases of particular kinds of information. In that case, the scripts/data files would have to be open. * Some believe the software can be broken into open modules and closed modules. Others argue this is a lot more difficult legally (very easy, technically) than it appears. > Sigh. Essentially I am just looking for a game system > (including player attributes, skills, etc) that I can use as > the basis for my video game. What would be nice is if it also > had "content" (weapons, classes, "races", > etc) so I wouldn't have to generate those. Modern looked > pretty promising (good fit with my game concept) but for the > licensing reasons above it appears to be out. Does anyone > have a suggestion for an alternative? I see Prometheus (is > Mark Cortez still on this list? What is the status of that > effort?) but all of the content is still in the fantasy genre. And as far as I know, Prometheus is based off the SRD and licensed under the OGL. So you'd still have the problems of how you clearly indicate OGC within compiled code. Martin L. Shoemaker Martin L. Shoemaker Consulting, Software Design and UML Training [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.MartinLShoemaker.com http://www.UMLBootCamp.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
