Combat Mission: Campaigns CANCELLED
- Thread starter Michael Dorosh
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grofaz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by grofaz View Post
Hey Red thanks. Hmmmm so for all intents and puposes BF released CMBB under GPL minus the elicensing. Then technically anyone can make a new game based on the engine?
No. It is obviously a mistake. The CMBB executables in there (most have the CD check, not elicense) also come with their own copyright and license splash screen IIRC. You would fail in court.
Plus you don't have the source. I don't understand why the question even comes up.
True, but as far as the art assets (textures and BMPs mainly) the user can do as he wishes provided under the GPL? Correct.
Originally Posted by grofaz View Post
Hey Red thanks. Hmmmm so for all intents and puposes BF released CMBB under GPL minus the elicensing. Then technically anyone can make a new game based on the engine?
No. It is obviously a mistake. The CMBB executables in there (most have the CD check, not elicense) also come with their own copyright and license splash screen IIRC. You would fail in court.
Plus you don't have the source. I don't understand why the question even comes up.
True, but as far as the art assets (textures and BMPs mainly) the user can do as he wishes provided under the GPL? Correct.
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I still think that BFC only intended to place the new textures and graphics that were CMC specific under the GPL.
If you use the ones from the original CMBB, which as you noticed are included in the zipfiles that you download with a GPL license, you might get away with it as there is no internal copyright or license note and the subdirectories don't override the global license either.
I still don't recommend doing it and the textures are probably hard to use since you would need to build a 3D model "under" them. If you want to play hardball here the most useful item here are probably the CMBB soundfiles. If you assume the GPL validity on the parts of the package that aren't re-annotated with other licenses, then you could say they are now legal to use in other games, including one of your own design, as long as you obey to the GPL.
I still wouldn't go to court with them. All that it takes is for BFC to nuke the sourceforce license display, or the zipfiles and you will stand empty-handed in court with original artwork owned by a company that sued you.
I also have no idea what the legal situation is if a company mistakenly placed things out there under the GPL. Or let's say Hunter placed the stuff but wasn't authorized to do so for the CMBB artwork by BFC. Then the license is invalid since Hunter wasn't licensed to re-license it under a different license and isn't the copyright holder.
This is why I recommend that you stick with the material that BFC obviously intended to be placed under the GPL, the CMC code and artwork, and keep your flippers off the CMBB stuff when it comes to new uses.
If you use the ones from the original CMBB, which as you noticed are included in the zipfiles that you download with a GPL license, you might get away with it as there is no internal copyright or license note and the subdirectories don't override the global license either.
I still don't recommend doing it and the textures are probably hard to use since you would need to build a 3D model "under" them. If you want to play hardball here the most useful item here are probably the CMBB soundfiles. If you assume the GPL validity on the parts of the package that aren't re-annotated with other licenses, then you could say they are now legal to use in other games, including one of your own design, as long as you obey to the GPL.
I still wouldn't go to court with them. All that it takes is for BFC to nuke the sourceforce license display, or the zipfiles and you will stand empty-handed in court with original artwork owned by a company that sued you.
I also have no idea what the legal situation is if a company mistakenly placed things out there under the GPL. Or let's say Hunter placed the stuff but wasn't authorized to do so for the CMBB artwork by BFC. Then the license is invalid since Hunter wasn't licensed to re-license it under a different license and isn't the copyright holder.
This is why I recommend that you stick with the material that BFC obviously intended to be placed under the GPL, the CMC code and artwork, and keep your flippers off the CMBB stuff when it comes to new uses.
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grofaz
Recruit
Roger that, good points all. Thank you for taking the time to answer.
Cheers!
Cheers!
Or, some dedicated madman can re-work the game, put in what was missing etc and then go back to BFC and say, hey, Ive improved CMBB, here it is, all yours.......
Still would have ramifications I suppose, just not so many.....
But there's no source for the CMBB part.
grofaz
Recruit
Like Red says, without the source code there is little you can do. It would be nice if they could enhance the graphics like taking the best mods out there and replacing the originals and packaging both titles (CMBB and CMAK) with new maps etc, selecting the theater of operations, and including a mod selector, language selector etc. I think it would be a nice re-launch of the legendary series. It would take very little effort and they would get a nice return, not a hit but something nice for the community to have and perhaps bring on-board a few more grogs to this great title.
shell-shocked
Member
Did anyone do FULL checks about the functionality of the CMBB part? Was there any indication of remaining bugs?
I just might (read: never going to happen) ditch the CMC python part and replace it with something entirely different.
I just might (read: never going to happen) ditch the CMC python part and replace it with something entirely different.
The newest binary in there didn't even run since it used eLicense. Martin said he'd look into it. The second oldest one uses the CD check.
I rate the chance that this is usable (even the newer one) as 0.001% or whereabouts.
Documentation about the data format wasn't thrilling either. And it was a toy home-grown binary format, not XML or something else safer to parse.
shell-shocked
Member
Good. Now I don't have to think about doing something with it. 
Even if you could get it to work the functionality offered is not worth the hassle, IMO.
The battles are still being generated with a system that is so crude as to give very unsatisfactory results in too many cases.
Even the most slapdash of human GM jobs will give you a better game experience.
The battles are still being generated with a system that is so crude as to give very unsatisfactory results in too many cases.
Even the most slapdash of human GM jobs will give you a better game experience.
Michael Dorosh
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So help out a complete neophyte - I appreciate all the comments here, and realize they are not directed at me, but they are nonetheless going over my head.
I get the impression CM:C's code was not a success. We all agree the basic concept of an operational layer that interfaced with CM:BB's tactical layer was an amazing idea. I did have some objections to how the conceptual planning was carried out (I was a beta tester fairly early on, incidentally - not in the original batch by any means but during one of the early public "cattle calls"). I think the concept would have been at least mildly successful among the hardcore fans, but I doubt - from what I saw - that even had it become fully functional it would have been a best seller. I don't think anyone ever advertised it as such, either, so there was no false hope there.
But from the technical standpoint you are now discussing - was the code doomed? I'm getting a sense there was a certain amateurishness to what was done, but I don't understand if this was due to simply being written ten years ago, lack of direct input from BFC, compete ineptness on the coders part, the fact that they mentioned having to start over on the game with the departure of key personnel, etc. Can someone walk me through their reaction to the technical quality of the code and some of the issues, just out of curiousity's sake?
I get the impression CM:C's code was not a success. We all agree the basic concept of an operational layer that interfaced with CM:BB's tactical layer was an amazing idea. I did have some objections to how the conceptual planning was carried out (I was a beta tester fairly early on, incidentally - not in the original batch by any means but during one of the early public "cattle calls"). I think the concept would have been at least mildly successful among the hardcore fans, but I doubt - from what I saw - that even had it become fully functional it would have been a best seller. I don't think anyone ever advertised it as such, either, so there was no false hope there.
But from the technical standpoint you are now discussing - was the code doomed? I'm getting a sense there was a certain amateurishness to what was done, but I don't understand if this was due to simply being written ten years ago, lack of direct input from BFC, compete ineptness on the coders part, the fact that they mentioned having to start over on the game with the departure of key personnel, etc. Can someone walk me through their reaction to the technical quality of the code and some of the issues, just out of curiousity's sake?
I posted more detailed notes on BFC and here when it came out, this is what stuck in memory.
The interface coded into CMBB is probably hopeless as-is. It is a naively designed bunch of binary fields with no extensibility in mind. Debugging it would be a nightmare, as would be any changes. And we all know there would have to be changes as the outer code gets more complete and you discover you need to interface more.
The CMC code itself was written in Python, a scripting language. It is very slow compared to languages like C++, very roughly you can say that some computationally intensive code runs 50-100 times slower. The original claim was that this doesn't matter since it's not a game engine and there is no AI. However, as we have seen when running the now released code, just the resupply computation was too much, with posters here on GS waiting literally hours for moves to complete. This is no surprise to anyone familiar with programming language performance characteristics.
Oh and Python can't use multiple core or processors to speed up CPU intensive calculations.
Then, the "team" as it was was one of those buzzword knight orders, with their "agile" development, and the choice of Python comes in right there. This doesn't have to be bad, but it rings alarm belts. Most programmers heavy into buzzwords are not able to come up with robust, well-performing systems. This team in particular made no headway, split up, communicated less than well with the community, so there's another brick in the wall of my buzzword-dislike.
shell-shocked
Member
Code looked fine when I looked at it. The problem was that there were too many features and they were too complicated. It looked overengineered. I think people would have been happy with CMC even with just 10% of the features.
I think someone could try to fix and finish CMC by removing all that extra clutter. But then again, it might be easier to just start from zero.
I think someone could try to fix and finish CMC by removing all that extra clutter. But then again, it might be easier to just start from zero.
What about the CMBB integration? You can't seriously think that what is in the provided binaries is 100% bug-free.
Maybe, maybe not. What has never been in doubt is that BFC consider it a finished job and one they are not ever going to revisit. It was already like that when HTS were still working on CMC. The one thing that was set in stone was the interface to CMBB.
Elvis
Member
Actually that was not set in stone. Hunter had been working directly with Charles on modifing CMBB to work with CMBB. As you point out, it never got finished but the door to working on making changes in CMBB top accomodate CMC was not closed. He was not stuck using the CMBB that everyone had.
shell-shocked
Member
So the CMBB end might work? Does the latest eLicensed version work if I buy CMBB from BFC (I only have a GamersGate and two CDV versions)?
Elvis
Member
Nothing ever really worked. For me that was the biggest problem there was. You could semi-launch a CMC generated battle with CMBB but the information never made it back to CMC.
Because of that I wouldn't spend a penny on a 4th version of the game just for this as I don't believe it will ever work. I don't remember about the GamersGate version but the CDV is the reason (some may find this hard to believe) I sent Michael my extra copy of CMBB when we were working on CMC.