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lowenz

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What forums, they have no web forum, I'm so confused. It's like a 1 sentence Dark Mod Standalone press release then 10 paragraphs about how useful NMR was for the project going standalone.

 

NM, misread that, it was our forum. Who did this interview, why wouldn't it be stated in the article?

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Oh yeah sorry, I was going to tell you guys about it. NMR asked me to do this interview thing, and I did it in a rather short time frame because finals are coming up & I wanted to be complementary and all, so I just spilled something out more or less in one sitting. And then I've been busy and forgot to update you guys about it.

 

It's true they sent us a very long and involved memo that went into a lot of details about all the IP issues involved with the asset replacement, and I shared it with the artists, well Spring, and I think they/he got enough of the gist of it. I think a lot of it overlapped with common sense too -- things like don't just overlap existing textures with some pixels to "replace" them -- but it was nice that it reconfirmed what we had to do. And formally at least it gave Spring what he was originally asking for, which was what was the actual legal standard for when an asset isn't "copying" another, although how to apply it involves interpretation of course.

 

Edit: By "testimonial", this is a form of giving back to them for the work they put in, so it's supposed to be read like a recommendation letter and paint them in a good light. It's not for us; it's for them. They did legal research for us for free, and we had tricky problems to tease out TBH, and it's easier to be a bit generous than actually paying them -- and I anyway learned a ton about the connection between IP and open-source projects like ours, which is something I'm interested in anyway. So it was fine by me to toot their horn a bit. You can have your own opinions, but they're a group that's on our side and ready to go to bat for us if we ever run into any trouble.

 

Edit2: Also, I tried to emphasize that it was our artists that did the actual mountain of work that had to be done. Yes NMR wrote a memo that answered some questions that was helpful, but it was our own artists & contributors that actually put in all the massive amount of work to get it done that are the real champions of the story. I think I mentioned that a couple of times. I don't want you guys to feel like I was cutting short who was really responsible for us going standalone. They just did the job they advertised they would do; no more or less. I played up that it was helpful mainly for other artists out there that are panicking and really need help and want to know who is out there that can help them. Those are the ones actually reading the testimonials; I wanted them to feel like this is a group they want to approach. So I was being generous.

 

But also it can't be totally ignored that we were rolling the dice here & having a legit legal analysis in our favor is nice to have under our belt to pull out & show we didn't just haphazardly do this without covering our bases first. it shows were the kind of team that takes care of things & goes to an effort to do them right.

 

Edit3: All that said, if somebody thinks I said something unfair or over the top, then you can mention it & I'm sure we can ask them to correct something that should be. I wanted to kick something out quickly so I could get back to my own work, otherwise I might have vetted it with you guys first. But it's mostly a thing just for their site anyway.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Done. I hate it that people are so dumb that they can't be bothered to figure out why it looks so bad. Like really? They must have seen my screenshots all over the internet and when their game looks nothing like the screenshots they should put 2 and 2 together at least.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Oh yeah sorry, I was going to tell you guys about it. NMR asked me to do this interview thing, and I did it in a rather short time frame because finals are coming up & I wanted to be complementary and all, so I just spilled something out more or less in one sitting. And then I've been busy and forgot to update you guys about it.

 

It's true they sent us a very long and involved memo that went into a lot of details about all the IP issues involved with the asset replacement, and I shared it with the artists, well Spring, and I think they/he got enough of the gist of it. I think a lot of it overlapped with common sense too -- things like don't just overlap existing textures with some pixels to "replace" them -- but it was nice that it reconfirmed what we had to do. And formally at least it gave Spring what he was originally asking for, which was what was the actual legal standard for when an asset isn't "copying" another, although how to apply it involves interpretation of course.

 

Edit: By "testimonial", this is a form of giving back to them for the work they put in, so it's supposed to be read like a recommendation letter and paint them in a good light. It's not for us; it's for them. They did legal research for us for free, and we had tricky problems to tease out TBH, and it's easier to be a bit generous than actually paying them -- and I anyway learned a ton about the connection between IP and open-source projects like ours, which is something I'm interested in anyway. So it was fine by me to toot their horn a bit. You can have your own opinions, but they're a group that's on our side and ready to go to bat for us if we ever run into any trouble.

 

Edit2: Also, I tried to emphasize that it was our artists that did the actual mountain of work that had to be done. Yes NMR wrote a memo that answered some questions that was helpful, but it was our own artists & contributors that actually put in all the massive amount of work to get it done that are the real champions of the story. I think I mentioned that a couple of times. I don't want you guys to feel like I was cutting short who was really responsible for us going standalone. They just did the job they advertised they would do; no more or less. I played up that it was helpful mainly for other artists out there that are panicking and really need help and want to know who is out there that can help them. Those are the ones actually reading the testimonials; I wanted them to feel like this is a group they want to approach. So I was being generous.

 

But also it can't be totally ignored that we were rolling the dice here & having a legit legal analysis in our favor is nice to have under our belt to pull out & show we didn't just haphazardly do this without covering our bases first. it shows were the kind of team that takes care of things & goes to an effort to do them right.

 

Edit3: All that said, if somebody thinks I said something unfair or over the top, then you can mention it & I'm sure we can ask them to correct something that should be. I wanted to kick something out quickly so I could get back to my own work, otherwise I might have vetted it with you guys first. But it's mostly a thing just for their site anyway.

 

Don't worry about it man, just wanted to make sure we weren't being taken advantage of.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Done. I hate it that people are so dumb that they can't be bothered to figure out why it looks so bad. Like really? They must have seen my screenshots all over the internet and when their game looks nothing like the screenshots they should put 2 and 2 together at least.

 

To be fair, how would someone know it should look any different and isn't an intentional effect? Most backgrounds are heavily treated as it is.

 

How is one to know you have to go through a text config (Darkmod.cfg) file line by line randomly guessing what might affect it for you?

 

As far as I know, I've never seen anyone other than me actually post the line you have to change. The only reason I knew something wasn't right was because I saw a random post by Springheel expressing the exact same complaint, why video footage had blurry backgrounds but clear text. The first thing I told a friend who was going to try out the game was to let me know if it was all blurry as we could fix it, sure enough.

 

Until there's a way in the settings in game to disable the stuff that does that without loading a text editor, and some way for users to realize it's not an intentional graphical effect, it'll continue.

 

PS: For those who might not realize their backgrounds aren't supposed to be soft focus, the line to change is: seta image_downSize "1"

Instead make it: seta image_downSize "0"

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, we were contacted by Gamestar about putting TDM on their disk...could they also publish in Turkey?

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Turkey doesn't have the best English education, so I could imagine why it might have been hard for them to contact us first, but they still wanted to feature us because we're so cool, naturally.

  • Like 1

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Well, we were contacted by Gamestar about putting TDM on their disk...

Ah so that's the reason you thought this was german, I see. Okay sorry for the former post :blush:

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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