[Fwd: Re: Freedoom]

Fri Sep 15 07:00:58 UTC 2006

Hi all,

I long long time ago I send a message to the freedoom maintainer with 
some ideas and an offer to help. I thought the message got ignored, but 
it actually got filed under to be answered later, so a few days ago I 
got this answered, I'm currently a bit swamped with work from a new job, 
but if anyone else here wants to help them out that would be great!

Regards,

Hans

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Freedoom
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:03:21 +0100
From: Jon Dowland <jon at alcopop.org>
To: Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl>
CC: fraggle at soulsphere.org
References: <4434E94F.6060905 at hhs.nl>

Hi: sorry for such a long delay in replying :( I've intended
to for a while, but more recently, I've spent every spare
moment on doom stuff on freedoom 0.5.

At 1144325487 past the epoch, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> First a short intro. I'm a Linux enthousiast / programmer
> and a packager for Fedora Extras which is an online
> community that packages software in the native package
> format for Fedora Core a (well known) Linux distribution.
> 
> I'm also a member of our Games Special Interest Group:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Games

Cool: I'm a member of the "debian games group"[1], which I
guess is the counterpart to your group :) It might be that
there is quite a lot the groups could work together on...

One thing that 0.5 brings you might be interested in is a
proper release of our build system.

> And as such I've been involved in the packaging of
> freedoom for Fedora, together with one other Fedora
> Packager: Michael <wart at kobold.org> First of all great
> work on freedoom!

Thanks :)

> We've been thinking a bit about freedoom and about
> packaging aditional levels (pwads) which then use freedoom
> as iwad, and we though that maybe we could do something to
> help you (I'm a coder not a artist or level designer!).
> 
> For example Michael found this nice levels called marswad
> and we've had some discussion with their author: For the
> pwad see: http://toastytech.com/doom/

We can always use more help with resources. You can see the
current status of our project[2] (well, you could if the
website wasn't broken) which indicates we definitely need
more levels.

Most PWADs however have a licence which is not compatible
with ours[3]. For example:

>  although I usually ask that I am credited or linked back
>  to. 

That is a restriction beyond what our licence stipulates :(
I see below however that you are aware of this.

> So basicly with a few buts these levels are free, no I
> don't no much / anything about this stuff so this might be
> stupid, but wouldn't it be an idea to use these levels to
> extend freedoom?

It's a possibility. As I write this I haven't looked at the
marswar levels for a while. They might have to be chopped up
to fit into freedoom, so levels at the beginning looked like
the others around it and weren't too long/difficult, etc.

In general however, the ideal freedoom level right now is in
a finished, but unpolished state. The level will be tweaked,
re-arranged and possibly re-themed by other people (like a
true open source code project is). Most PWADs already
released are in a "final" state that doesn't lend well to
future manipulation.

> More in general wouldn't it be a good idea to use textures
> / monsters / etc from the huge amount of non ID doom stuff
> out there? *

The vast majority of it is of a dubious copyright or licence
unfortunately :( We have used donated resources in a few
cases: the demon was briefly a skeleton from "Army of
Darkness Doom"; then it was a recoloured Slimer sprite from
a Ghostbusters mod. More generic things (like weapons) have
been donated from a number of TCs.

> As said I'm not an artist/level designer, but I do have
> (ever growing) experience in asking and if needed
> massaging people into setting their IP free , as in
> releasing it onder a freesoftware / opensource license.

that's always useful. Actually, as a side-note, there's an
ongoing community effort to get the Heretic/Hexen source
opened up. We're treading carefully here, but you might find
<http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38080>
interesting - sorry about the pop-ups :(

> Another thing I / we could do to help you is pass along
> any practical help requests to the Fedora Community where
> there are Artists who might be willing to help. We could
> for example write a piece about freedoom and about the
> still needed bits in our Weekly Magazine.

Some kind of promotion piece might be useful. It could be
coordinated along side some stuff at our end and maybe in
other communities, too. I'm sort-of taking a short break
since getting 0.5 out before resuming work on freedoom. When
I do, I'm going to draw up a plan for 0.6, which I want out
in much shorter a time frame from 0.5 (which was 9 months).

Maybe keep bugging us :) Or, try to catch us in #doom-tech
on oftc, or possibly post some stuff on our doomworld-hosted
forum, and see what others come up with too. But thanks for
your interest, work, and for getting in touch.

> * One of the particular problems with freedoom seems to be
> a lack of a couple of monsters. The alien TC has many new
> monsters if you want I can try to get a free license for
> those for use in freedoom, I know that as is the alien TC
> has other issues besides the license because it well erm
> uses to some extend ideas / IP from a well known movie,
> but I believe that if we just use (a few of) the monsters
> without the rest of the alien theme we are pretty safe
> (IANAL).

You will have quite a lot of difficulty tracking down Justin
Fischer imho - I could be wrong but I think he doesn't like
being contacted about Aliens TC anymore. The Quake Aliens TC
was hit by a cease-and-decist so it would be quite a hot
potato. In the specific case of the demon, we've just put a
worm-style sprite in for 0.5 which I think really rocks -
what do you think?

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/Games/
[2] http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/contributors/status/
[3] http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/deutex/COPYING

-- 
Jon Dowland
http://alcopop.org/

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