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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/30/19 in all areas

  1. It's not just textures, it's also models, sounds, maps, animations, dialogue, and particle effects. Even just putting together a list of all the necessary artists to contact would be futile, let alone actually making contact with them and getting them to support changing the license. This is a non-starter.
    3 points
  2. I really appreciate this thread and the intentions behind it. As someone who wholly believes in the principles of the GNU GPL and CC-BY-SA licenses, having the game licensed under a share-alike non-NC license would be better for the public good. I personally have no qualms with people reusing assets for commercial projects as long as credit is given to the original authors and as long as they're willing to share their modifications under the same terms. However, like people have been claiming, this is a very difficult task for the Dark Mod. It would require a near full replacement and reorganization of the artwork pipeline. In my opinion the only way this could be achieved would be by joining efforts with similar projects and create shared artwork assets pool while sourcing a bunch of stuff from Open Game Art and commissions. I'm not sure if the effort is even worth at this point, and I would rather put more focus on promoting the game in different ways and getting more people interested in creating FMs. On a side note, I think the biggest impediments preventing TDM from reaching a broader audience are the lack of a full (mini) campaign with an integrated tutorial replacing the current one, and the poor state of the mission downloader interface, which makes it difficult to read and unappealing for people to explore it (which is already being worked on). Other than that, people could organize a bunch of live streams to promote new levels and such. It did wonders for OpenXcom, and I think it could work well for TDM too.
    1 point
  3. It is "solvable", by us going through literally all 8000 assets and proving that we have the rights to use the assets that were sourced elsewhere. Not. Going. To. Happen. We do not have the man power or the will to undertake such a mission.
    1 point
  4. Speaking of which, I myself get all game related info from the site Blues News. There only new versions of TDM are mentioned if at all, but maybe I could ask them if they would announce each new mission as well? Thus TDM would be mentioned much more often, reminding people that it exists. Or where do you get your daily gaming info fix ;)?
    1 point
  5. There is no direct correlation between game being good and being popular. If the platform mentioned above hosts mediocre games, getting TDM on if will benefit that platform, first and foremost (look, we got quality content now!). And because of that quality content, the chance of it being noticed and used in other commercial titles for free is much higher, than with content from the mediocre games above. Again, this is win for everybody but the TDM team and/or content creators.
    1 point
  6. I will say I appreciate the passion you're showing for getting our game promoted. We should be more well known, and it's great that people still have an urge to get the word out. There are a lot of reasons why we can't change the license, why even thinking about it is a non-starter like Spring said. But one of those reasons isn't that we don't want to be more widely promoted. That would be great, and if there are ways we can do that that don't require entire structural overhauls of the game or its assets then I'm all for it! If you're really into this, I don't want to dampen your spirits for that part. You could (we all could) start thinking creatively of ways we could be promoted in all kinds of outlets ... a promotion campaign or a new & really great promo video or making TDM part of some large event or contest. I understand we're limited by certain parts of our structure and that's a drag (albeit necessary), but there are still tons of things we can do, and if you have the initiative and energy to try some ideas out I encourage that.
    1 point
  7. Dark Mod was also PC gamers Mod of the year in 2013 and is still mentioned from time to time. It's not that the game isn't well known, but rather that it's not for casual gamers....just like Thief. It has a dedicated audience. I seriously doubt having it on Steam would improve matters all that much, considering Thief hasn't suddenly been rediscovered. Anyway, changing the license isn't going to happen.
    1 point
  8. The Dark Mod has been promoted on some decently trafficked sites, it's had a ton of exposure over the years. We were the FASTEST EVER game to be voted to be Greenlit on Steam. Ever. It was an insane moment.
    1 point
  9. Yes originally the NC part got tacked on because some massive repository required (under the SA part) that we keep it, and we don't have a paper trail. I doubt that the NC part of our license is the bottle neck that's limiting our exposure and promotion at this point. I haven't studied it, so you might have a point. I don't want to be completely dismissive of the idea that gaming media may be looking over us because of our license. Although if that's really the case, then that's unfortunate that something like two letters in a license will lead a gaming outlet to reject attention to a game that won PC Gaming's mod of the year just for that, and I want to think so much the worse for them. Edit: I'm kind of sour on the whole economics of gaming promotion to begin with; it's one of the things TDM has been refreshingly clear of and even part of our ethos (if corporate gaming won't do it, fans will do it themselves). But before I even get to that stage, my first intuition is that it would be a massive, potentially impossible, task tantamount to kicking a pack of rabid sleeping dogs for marginal results, a few people here and there even if it works. And to add another category of cases I don't think mentioned yet, everybody that created and submitted assets to the project (possibly including every FM; I'd have to look at that again), did so under that license. So technically you'd have to get all of their consent to relicense their contributions, and some of them haven't posted or responded to messages in years. And for that matter some contributors, like me, don't actually want to relicense and would refuse because, at least in my case, I've seen first hand that commercialization-talk leads to actual dysfunction in the management of the mod. That's not to say that dropping the NC part will necessarily open us up to that by itself. It's more like, sometimes we get people coming in making waves with commercialization talk, and the easiest most convenient way we can shut it down--without having to have a 6 hour lecture on organization theory & small team interpersonal dynamics--is just point to that part of our license and be done with it. Those two letters have done more good than harm for us at least in that respect. I'm ok with more promotion and exposure, but we hit some limits before (like trying to get on digital platforms) that still make us hesitate for things calling for massive structural changes to the mod. We were lucky we got it standalone and it'd have to be something pretty amazing to go through something like that again, which this really isn't. Next month will mark our 10th year of release without any issues with our assets or licensing (beyond the heroic efforts to get 2.0 out), and we've had one of the coolest communities making some of the coolest stuff in gaming out there. Why would we kick a bunch of rabid sleeping dogs now?
    1 point
  10. IIUC, this means someone will be able to use TDM content, whether in changed or unchanged form, for a commercial use, in any way they see fit. Not gonna happen.
    1 point
  11. In honor of completing the architecture for my small map, here are some screenshots. All that's left is.... everything else
    1 point
  12. 1 point
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