Daywolf

hehe good luck with that. Being a lawyer in the field of video games is a specialty profession, and rather rare. It's very hard to find a lawyer that deals with video games, so generally small or independent developers self-educate and then seek counsel when necessary.

To clarify (I was trying to make it short as usual) I was meaning a total conversion, not so much a moderate mod conversion. I meant that if the plan was to modify such a game client until it was a completely new game (in context of my previous post) and thus could be copyrighted (a form of prototyping), then that could be risky. And when I mean “plan” I mean open and well known to everyone, being of no secret, while the mod version is up and running as it’s being converted. Legally, that could spell vulture bait. Could, but still in this case unlikely. Now I’ve never come across any legal actions that have happened in such a case, but it could be possible if the copyright and trademark holder chose to take action, which they could at any point as it stands anyway. There was one legal action that took place a couple years ago but on a mod level, the mod dev team was not in the process of using it to prototype and sell it at some point, and the case was thrown out. Heavy criticism was directed towards the company that filed the lawsuit of course, as it was simply a mod which many companies actually encourage. It was an obscure title, not an mmo or multi-player, I don’t recall the name of it atm. Of course I’m not a lawyer, I don’t pretend to be, I just have followed legal cases regarding games and have taken considerable time to study copyright and trademark laws regarding videogame development. With that said, imho I still think EA does not give a rats behind about this (apart from anyone making serious profits) and I‘m sure they know of this effort to create an EMU. If they took any action, it would smear their name as they have shut down their servers years ago. In light of that, lawyer fees to take an EnB EMU down would require a sizable investment with uncertainty for a real win, and a no win scenario in comparison to the lost revenue they would suffer by dragging their corporate name through the mud (like that company did that filed a lawsuit against a mod team). People that bought the game want to play it, and EA no longer provides that service, so any lawsuit or even a cease and desist order would simply make them out to be the unethical bad guy and hurt sales of their other games. So modding graphics etc.. no big deal. Of course then the debate is does it really need it? EnB does have a look and feel, and some people play for that fact.

Follow the sticky guide in this forum section on how to sign up for ST4. Can't log in if you don't have an account. It works, just gotta fill it in correctly. https://enb-emulator.com/index.php?/topic/845-signup-for-st4-step-by-step/

Well, this is strictly copyright and trade mark issues (not patent), but yes if it's 100% changed, including art assets, game client (new), dialogs and names, it could be submitted for copyright. Basically 5 years worth of work... if it's a large group working fast. 99.999% change will get ya a special prize And yes, it would probably be a bad idea to change it so much over time, being in public eye as it gradually changes, so that EA might decide to jump for the chance to make up for some lost money from their failure; as it's being developed with that intention in mind. So to aim for that goal, it would probably be best to toss it all out on day one, being left I guess with only but the server app.

Pay with what? $300 might get you a competent programmer for one day. If you divide it among all the volunteers, that's prolly less than $15 ea. for the whole month. I think most on this project, as with most hobby projects, would rather see that money go to keeping the project alive, saving it for rainy days/months. Then you get into the whole legal mumbo jumbo once people start to make money from an EMU project. Donations are great, should be no prob here, but once you start attaching in-game rewards/items, gets into gray areas. I know, 9 times out of 10 not even an eyebrow is raised, but then EA is not so nice to it's own customers, and slave driver to it's devs, so I wouldn't trust EA all so much if things went a bit far.

hehe that's not too bad, that's about the cost just for my modeling, animation and graphics editing apps... which are fairly bargain level. If you were running a commercial standard studio, application costs/licensing would be astronomical. Anything for development is just so expensive.

I think they mentioned more memory on this one. It’s probably 16GB since they increased pop to 1000. RAM is pretty important for a smooth running game server.

I don’t know, but I don’t think $300 is all that much, I mean about all you can use it for is to buy a good size group some pie and ice cream. It’s not like they can go to a lot and drive off in a new Lamborghini. It’s so little that if it were spent on any personal things, the rest of the dev team would feel left out and there could be squabbling. I’m sure a good deal of it goes for server rental fees. Whatever is left from all the monthly fees is probably going to a savings for when they are ready to build or buy a server rather than rent one. Something like that is not cheep, I wouldn’t bid under $1k(US) for a wee minimal mmorpg server which would be actually about at cost (not that I’m bidding). Most likely, they will want at least a few k to start for a build, nothing fancy, multi unit, but still it’ll take some savings and $300 is hardly a dent in that. And it’s not like they haven’t been transparent in the past as they have mentioned what servers (the past one) they were renting etc.., but I mean what is the point of making an itemized report every month for ~$750 which yes is about minimum for operating costs at this point if I know what I’m talking about… and I do heh. If you don’t know what rentals cost, you should go browse around 1and1 dot com and look at moderate to upper-end dedicated servers. I’m mean not my choice, co-loc is better (and elsewhere), but you need the funds to buy your hardware first.

I think the question is, what did they spend it on. You can't go wrong with ice cream!!

lol if I wasn't so stuffed with bake to rise pizza tonight, I'd be hurting too. Luckily I have time for a supermarket run in the morning

Reese's peanut butter cup ice cream over fresh apple pie Otherwise I'd agree in most cases about cake and ice-cream... or ice-cream cake. Maybe we'll all be invited to the next EnB-EMU ice-cream party

I thought Lurks were peeps that were always on but never post http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lurker

"its"? You mean usr/pwd? Register here? http://www.net-7.org/index.php#

Good point, carry on.

*shrugs* I don't know... forums are lame, but not as lame as IRC most of the time.

hah how did you manage that, worthless postcount threads??

omg I'm #5!

Cockroaches, termites, black widows, lice and that spawn bug that throws hefty baddies at lowbie players ripping them to shreds. I haven’t been effected by it, but it’s annoying to hear the win:)g

atm you regenerate it. Don't need to recopy the url though.

Pie and ice cream

Should be for character portrait (from in-game), but not finished yet. He mentioned something about maybe allowing avatar uploads until he finishes it.

Well I’m not going to fight over it. I just think it’s poor management practice. I wasn’t going to say anything in the beginning (I know the real Riddick character wouldn’t wine, and I‘m not wining), but couldn’t find someone to fix the issue with my then screwed up character (now submitted to the void). If I saw someone with a forum name of Riddick, post asking for his game name back, I wouldn’t hesitate to release it to him. But I just think this was handled very poorly, no players should go through this. Just wanted some answers to an inappropriate action. Obviously whoever did it is not going to speak up at this point, since they didn’t bother to contact me in the first place to clear this up and at least get my character renamed so I can use it. I just ask that this practice ends here, or you will create a game full of winers fighting over names they think they own.

Here I’ll briefly recap what I’ve mentioned before. Some zones have platforms that are key to controlling the zone/system, they can be captured (surrounded by defense platforms). Since currently each class has strengths and weaknesses, it takes teamwork to capture such platforms. So say to capture a controlling platform, it would require someone to upload a virus to the platform, which could only be done by a trader (or faster by a group of traders). Warrior classes are heavy defense/attack, defending form surrounding defense platforms and opposing players. Explorers have the ability to hack the platforms and make it accessible to the traders long enough for the upload to take place (which takes some time). Each zone is flagged to the controlling faction, the faction that has the capture. To have the most captures flags their NPC’s to buy and sell goods at discount to that race regardless of their participation in the PvP system. So say the Terran faction is holding half the control point platforms, well then all Terran characters gain a bonus to negotiation for their race since control offers a more lucrative business for trade NPC‘s. Not to nurf negotiation to any races, but only a marginal bonus to whichever race has overall controlling faction. Also for that controlling race, having access to some special gates usable for shortcut trade routs, not many, but enough for "gate wars" storyline/purpose as they fight over gate control. This is so PvP will be favorable in the game, in one respect or another benefiting everyone so to not make it negative as some view it, to not sweep it out of sight into arenas that toss out any storyline. And with the different class aspects of capturing platforms, one class is not left out in favor for another, but all needed for victory conditions and without balance issues. This is not solo-PvP friendly at all, but requires group tactics, planning and leadership. So far all I've ever seen suggested would make it warrior class only PvP, and/or cause serious balance issues/infighting.

No, I tried for a couple hours, I couldn't get it to ignore the Net7 configuration system. Somehow it seems Net7 overrides any CP settings. Could be a way, but I haven't found it. There are a few issues where Net7 is a royal pain in the butt. Yeah, using AA settings from the CP would be a serious improvement in this old EnB client. Then the other failure is the inability to allow more than one client to connect, but that is another thread of course. This is the only EMU system that has such limitations that I've come across (experimenting with different EMU's for educational purposes). Hmmm... maybe someday.

Hey that’s funny, I thought about mentioning the Civil War, but decided to make my post readably short, capsulated. Yes, some people take reenactment seriously, but then I think it goes beyond that here when cities need to be rebuilt, the environment changed. That is definitely not an easy thing to do, Kenu has that quite right, I know what He’s talking about. Then it effects the players, oh man, I’ve seen it get ruthless here against any form of PvP option or PvP supporter, mainly from misunderstanding thinking that they will 100% be drawn into it and/or be nurfed. Misconception. Personally I’d like to see a system that is not propagated to other zones (as some Devs here have suggested creating new zones for it, out of sight out of mind) but use all existing zones and allow factional won benefits to all players, like vendors that sell at discount in factional home territories when the home faction has the upper hand in the faction war etc. based on a territorial capture system. Even without changing the environment, I’m not sure how running a minimized system based on reenactment would settle with PvP players, as opposed to something that is on an epic scale and jives with a uniform storyline. Generally, epic systems do better than marginalized systems, being something the player comes back for day after day as the story progresses. Maybe I’m not the typical PvP player though, most of my mmog PvP experience has been strict progressive RP (RP-PvP) and in large groups/guilds, where the context of a developing story is actually more important than the combat. I’m not sure how reenactment could provide an evolving storyline, so seems very boring to me, apart from the developers standpoint of being difficult to implement on the content side. Ultimately, I’d like to see a pure PvP server some day, run by another group of players/devs. From my understanding I see EnB having the potential for being a great PvP experience. It happens with all EMU’s, though this EMU is still too green to start that. They do plan to do something with PvP here, but not for some time it seems, and I fear that they will probably marginalize it anyway since there have been such disagreements, which means it’ll probably fail here. But there is still hope.