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How about using TDM automation framework (and maybe pcem/qemu)? More info see: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19828-automation-features-and-discussion/

I think the game treats everything inside "fms" as "mission assets", and everything in game root directory as "core assets". You can check it at the start of game console, where all the paths are listed.

Depending what happens with the legal status of content produced by generative AI, some contributors might not only want to but be legally required to distribute their assets under a more permissive license. We have already seen AI generated textures in at least one FM. There is precedent from the US copyright office that all such works are automatically in the public domain and asserting any kind of copyright claim about them is fraud. That includes CC-BY-NC-SA, as all copyleft licenses still depend on asserting ownership over the work in order to set conditions on its use. Even CC0 is not actually the same thing as public domain.

You've had almost 20 years of random people submitting assets to the mod. Would be nice to assume everything is done properly, but what are the chances that some things weren't? I don't know if it's even possible to find that out at this point.

Just want to mention some locations that are hosting our data, as examples. Like our game(-sourcecode) can be installed from opensuse official game repo. And darkradiant from a ubuntu repo. We got the game(and assets) on moddb. I tried to get tdm installer / binary on several app repo's, but others succeeded. And We all tried to get tdm (game & assets) on steam and Gog. But got it my old installer-frontend on tdm's download page and a package on playonlinux (tdm windows on wine). And my written tdm-wiki article about installing tdm on several os'ses. https://software.opensuse.org/package/thedarkmod?locale=si Official game Repo listing: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Games Opensuse Build service: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/games/thedarkmod Darkradiant on ubuntu https://packages.debian.org/sid/darkradiant Tdm wiki article: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Installer_and_Manual_Installation

I feel that tweaking shaders visually does more harm than good in the end. Here is one example of what shader tweaking leads to, and where I'll do yet another visually-breaking change: 6354 Before that is was untweakable specular which also broke visuals: 5044 What a game engine needs is a universal model (preferably well-known) with several tweakable parameters. In fact, the very idea of PBR and why it wins today is that it models real physics, and thus it works more or less the same way in every engine and scenario. It is a well-known standard (with minor variations). We can't have PBR yet (and maybe forever), thus we stick close to Phong reflection model, which has been around for decades and is also quite standard. Artists should make assets that would result in a beautiful picture, not shaders. But they can't do it if we have some weird non-standard lighting model which changes every year. We should never tweak shaders based on how average missions becomes seemingly nicer to us! If someone decides to add normal mapping, it should behave as an approximation for how real high-resolution surface should behave in our model, not as some kind of "beautifier effect". If you want to add some effect which is outside the current model, it should be done in a way that: it does not change how the previous model works (and how current missions look) it can be tweaked by understandable parameters it is applied in all shaders and all lighting the same way I believe we already have fresnel and rim, but it is kinda hardcoded and not present in all shaders. Yet another result of someone tweaking shaders based on how it looks and not on how sound it is mathematically.

OK. Thanks! In my case the issue is moot because I don't know how to do it. Hence my plea for help... If an FM author built their mission using assets that are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA (which I believe all do), if I understand correctly then that means they must license that mission under CC-BY-NC-SA too. Which in turn means anyone can build further on their work as long as they follow the conditions stipulated in the license. It seems odd to release a work under a certain license and then say "but I don't want you to do what the license explicitly grants you to do". "Applying a Creative Commons license to your material is a serious decision. When you apply a CC license, you give permission to anyone to use your material for the full duration of applicable copyright and similar rights." (https://creativecommons.org/faq/) If an author once benefited from the license when they created their mission, why would they not want others to benefit similarly from the same licenses? The license requires their name be mentioned in every remix that follows. At the same time I can understand that some creators more than anything want to create. The desire and drive to create may be so great that they accept conditions during the time of creation, to give them artistic freedom and to use the best available assets; contitions that they regret later when their work is finished and published, and they want to keep control over it. For the OMs I think the project as a whole would benefit from a relaxed and welcoming stance towards changes.

@stgatilov Can answer this one. I think there's an argument for having this as a material effect to make assets stand out but I am not sure about "tying it to the ambient" light when we eventually plan to have those lights globally render proper fresnel at some point.

I understand, and I would distinguish between the two possible cases where * we make money from it, and * someone else can make money from it. As long as we don't make money from it, it should not get us into trouble, right? I also don't see further formalization as as a requirement, so both pillars can remain intact. If they licensed their assets under CC-BY-NC-SA then that licensing prevents their assets to be monetized without their consent. I don't see how a creator can object to which license other creators choose to use, or if others choose to monetize assets they create. Also, even if a creator once licensed their assets under CC-BY-NC-SA, it doesn't prevent themselves from monetizing it. It's their assets. (They can't revoke the CC-BY-NC-SA license, nor is that necessary.)

Yes, all images, models and sounds would be gone. Even if you made a barebones replacement that only provides a very limited selection of assets you would need to create thousands of files just to achieve basic game functionality (movement sounds, guard clothes and speech, menus, tools and weapons etc.). It's probably orders of magnitude more work than when TDM got rid of all Doom3 assets for going standalone in v2.0. Technically it's probably possible for an FM to contain a full game's worth of assets, except for the code itself. IIRC some Doom3 mods had custom .dll's to extend the base code, though.

Is "assets" synonymous to "media/gamedata"? And are you referring to the 2.3 GB media/gamedata included in TDM at install? If all 2.3 GB media/gamedata were removed from the "TDB-libre" version, then no license change would be needed. Say then we have a small fan mission that is entirely libre, built entirely from libre assets and created to intentionally avoid using any of the current 2.3 GB media/gamedata. If we wanted to play that mission using only the source code, what media/gamedata components would be missing to do that? * GUI graphics and music? * HUD elements? * Any in-game sounds? * Inventory objects? * ... anything else that can neither be included in the mission's own media/gamedata, nor avoided during mission design? I'm assuming here that a mission actually can include its own media/gamedata (textures, sound, models), but I may be wrong and I'm grateful for any explanation that helps me understand. If you ask me, the TDM-installer works perfectly already today, and the instructions are brief and easy to follow. Installation from the Debian repository would be somewhat easier, but I also see other (perhaps greater) benefits which I mentioned earlier.

It's much simpler than that: TDM includes numerous 3rd-party assets which forbid commercial usage. Even if every single team member approved of a license change, it would still not be possible without identifying and removing all of those 3rd-party assets (and any derived assets based on them) and replacing them with free alternatives. They do. There are numerous easy ways to obtain and install non-FOSS projects on Debian. You can download and extract a tarball, run a dedicated installer, add a custom PPA from Ubuntu or some other source, install an AppImage, or install a FlatPak. You can even install non-FOSS projects directly from Debian using the non-free repository. At no point do they "force" anyone to do anything. What they don't allow is adding non-FOSS or otherwise restricted content into the main Debian repository, which is their right as a free software project.

Personally I can see some ancillary benefits from trying to move TDM from non-commercial-libre to true-libre, beyond getting off the FOSS community's naughty list. There are a fair few indie devs who have tried to make modernized Thief-likes. None of them have done half as good a job as this community. I think that is generally down to the engine. All the detection and movement systems take a lot of time to implement, which you guys have already paid down. Imagine if those indie devs had the option to use TDM as the base for their games. More of these games would be published, and more would be successful. And this in turn would grow the public knowledge base about working in Dark Radiant and TDM. Some of those devs might make their own public FMs. Some might contribute to the wiki and documentation. Some might contribute to project maintenance or even donate new features that they develop. Personally I would call this one of the bigger things that you could do to keep the project alive. It would definitely be a big project to bring the project assets into compliance or to fork off a compliant TDM-lite. A year ago I would have said it is impossible, but AI is changing things. It can make art and it can write code, and especially when it has a working example of the thing it is recreating to learn from. It still would not be easy, but at least possible. Let this be a lesson for creators to select your licensing carefully. It is not always easy to change after the fact.

To cater to both audiences. I mentioned LibreGameWiki as one example. nbohr1more mentioned other uses. Explicitly allowing reuse and spread will help TDM reach a wider audience and would hopefully attract more volunteers. More volunteers which can help improve both TDM versions. There are several benefits for a project of being in the Debian repo. One is that TDM Debian-users can report defects on any package directly to Debian (no need to register on separate forums). Debian may then fix the issue themselves (in their "TDM-libre" package) and will offer the patch upstream to TDM, who can then choose to accept or reject the patch. I envision "TDM-libre" to have the same capability of downloading any mission as regular TDM. The only difference is that "TDM-libre" would come packaged with the regular engine (which is GPL+BSD) and an included mission that has libre media/gamedata. When I play TDM by myself, I want the unlimited-play and can accept commercial restrictions. But if I were to promote it somewhere, or charge for a stream when playing online, or make a video, I would want a version without commercial restrictions (and can temporarily accept limited-play) to make sure I don't violate anyone's copyright. Perhaps. That's what I'm trying to find out.

As much as I'm a big fan of FOSS, it gets messy when it involves assets with a whole mix of licenses. The engine? Sure that'll work, but TDM is useless with just the engine. Even if you have a separate libre version with verified assets, you've now split the project into a full version and a libre-only version and for what? Some entry in a niche wiki and the Debian repo? Once people want actual full missions to play you begin to drift away from the restricted licenses imposed on the libre version and have to code and accommodate for that. If TDM was developed with the day-one intention of only allowed libre licensed assets then there'd be no problem, but it hasn't and what your asking is probably too much work and effort for little benefit.

@stgatilov: You also mentioned some relevant things here: "Maybe start with finding who are these "we" people who want to change the license to assets?..." So far I only know of myself. Others are free to agree or disagree. (It may be worth keeping in mind that the population of current TDM contributors is not a representative sample of the population of all potential contributors. Anyone who has already joined did so accepting the current conditions. If we offer options, more may want to join.) "As a programmer, I definitely do not want to maintain any additional packages." I understand. And since I can't do it myself it will never happen unless someone is willing to help. "And I do not want to get entangled into any kind of licensing questions." The strength of any collaboration can be evaluated by its ability to harness the talents and interests of each contributor. Any open source project, where everyone participates by their own free will, will have a hard time compelling any of its participants into doing something that does not interest them.

This is actually a rather old request that we encountered often shortly after going standalone in 2013. Hardcore GNU\Linux folks, especially those who use Debian, think that all open projects should use GPL v3 licenses with full "Libre" licensed content ( Creative Commons ). The goal is that open projects should be a shared resource that no single person or group regulates and can be used for ANY purpose without fear of prosecution or litigation. The primary motivation is "extreme paranoia". Any license restriction is seen as a potential trap that could unintentionally jeopardize contributors or users. For example: Imagine that I create a blog where I review darkmod missions and earn advertising revenue by visits. Through a very convoluted legal premise, the owner of non-free assets used in TDM could claim I owe them revenue since their license doesn't allow "any" commercial exploit of their work. Likewise, the owner of an internet cafe where the game is played might owe the asset owner their revenue. The ISP that made the asset available to it's subscribers might owe them too. The overarching theme is that copyright scope is not clearly defined and can be perverted to sabotage open projects. A fully Libre compliant project is immune to these risks. People who want their favorite projects to be easily available in GNU\Debian evangelize this type of license change. The problem is that most TDM contributors would strongly object to allowing their work to be used by 3rd party commercial projects, especially if those 3rd parties simply rebranded darkmod and sold it as a game in an app store. Even if that were a palatable eventuality, it would also make Embracer Group ( current owners of Thief IP ) more inclined to attempt a legal take-down of our project. A Libre version would need to be a fork that is maintained outside our community so that we can still clearly state that we prohibit all commercial usage. Debian and other similar distros need an easy way to allow users to install projects that are strictly non-commercial rather than forcing all open projects to permit 3rd parties to resell their work.

I suggest you use the term "I", to make clear that it is something YOU want, and that you speak for yourself. But, as wesp5 mentioned, I don't really know what this is about, at all. And, I'm also wondering about all the newly registered people lately, who just arrived at this forum, and already want to revolutionize this mod. This is a thing I noticed 2 or 3 years ago, and which hasn't been present in the 15 years I play this mod and frequent these forums now. Really seems like a common thing these days, to not knock on the door, but kick it in, and stomp right in.

It is much easier to assume that we have single license for assets and all the contributors agree to distribute under it when they donate their stuff to the project. Otherwise you have to track metainformation for thousands of files, and surely there will be some errors made during tracking. If I don't care about the "TDM-libre" story, why should I bother?

Maybe start with finding who are these "we" people who want to change the license to assets?... As a programmer, I definitely do not want to maintain any additional packages. And I do not want to get entangled into any kind of licensing questions. Just that I understand: A license that forbids commercial usage is considered not free (CC-NC). A license that allows commercial usage but efficiently forbids making money from it is considered free (GPL and AGPL). Yes, this is a great distinction Now someone should come and say "but hey, you can sell your support for GPL product!" UPDATE: Well, I think there is also an approach when company provides reduced version under GPL and expanded version under commercial license (like Qt). As long as reduced version is reduced enough, it seems to work fine.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

I'll put it at the top of my queue of missions to play, even if just to see the size of it. Is it explicitly said to be Libre with all its components? Mission story, models, textures, readables, and sound? If it is not, then I don't see that it would work to just change the assets it uses. If there is no mission that is explicitly said to be libre today, I see two options: * Ask if any author(s) would be willing to re-license one of their missions including its assets. * Try enlisting people interested in helping creating a libre mission from scratch. (Assuming it is even possible to play a mission which uses absolutely none of the 2.3 GB media/gamedata.) (Is it?)

If someone wanted to tackle a Libre mission, the mission with the smallest size and fewest assets is "Closemouthed Shadows": https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=closemouthed_shadows

I did play Thief and FMs, but I don't play it any more, except for major things like Black Parade. The clunky movement and antiquated Dromed editor is what discouraged me from interacting with it over the years. I regularly play and sometimes make content for TDM, because it has much better movement model than Thief. I know that most missions don't use it well, but if you construct your geometry (gaps, ledges, distances) using power of two measurements, movement and mantling feels fast and snappy. There's no need for regression in that regard, in my opinion, there's a need for assets and missions made with the movement model in mind, to showcase its strengths properly. Even if TDM originally intended to "simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief, many things will be familiar to veteran Thief players" the actual mod history was a bit different. The team came up with a mission platform that has its own identity when it comes to mechanics. The way assets were made might have been a huge mistake, but that didn't prevent the platform from growing. Since you like anecdotal evidence, noone other Skacky once said that TDM movement model was super clunky, after playing The Painter's Wife. It was really hard to convince him that if a mapper places geometry this poorly, and isn't aware what spatial measurements play to the strengths of a movement model, no movement model will save his mission. And there is no fixing of this problem on the engine side, although it's not the first time when TDM team tries to address the asset problem with engine changes, which I suspect will ultimately lead to even more problems down the line. In game development, things like core mechanics and player tools are locked-down first, in one of the pre-production phases, because all the levels will be constructed around them. Making changes in core mechanics in a project this mature is very risky, I assume you don't plan on going through all playable spaces in all released TDM FMs to check for errors. Instead of making incremental changes in fundamental mechanics, I'd encourage you to create a fork, or some kind of major version bump candidate, like 3.0, where all things could be revamped: movement, player tools, UI, new frob mechanics, perhaps with UI contextual icons, new training map to incorporate all that, etc. Once all new elements fall into place and create something new, with a map or maps to back it up as relevant changes, it will be easier to convince existing player/author base that it was worth it. I assume the existing fanbase is already fragmented, as a result of all those heated discussions around the topic. But with multiple versions available for download, the transition to hypothetical "TDM 3.0" should be easier. It could be similar to UE2 and UE3, and you could also use this as an occasion to draw the line for backwards compatibility. I know there are old systems and variables kept in place just in order not to break existing missions. This way you could e.g. redo the LOD system, implement lights using math functions instead of textures, etc.