Kolnoth 0.3.0 -- Frat Orcs - (seemingly all ok)

[thespaceinvader]

This is getting slightly offtopic

[Zarel]

Say, if he says 'sure' on a public part of the KoL forums, would that be good enough, or should he come here so he can't arbitrarily delete it (not that he would, but even in theory)?

Legally, that's enough. I'm not one to comment on whether or not that's good enough for Wesnoth policy, though.

[drachefly]

Okay, I am wondering what sorts of permissions we need to get and what dangers Asymmetric would be putting itself in.

Correct me where I go wrong.

I believe that even if permission is granted to use the name 'Kingdom of Loathing', it will still be trademarked, which is distinct from copyright (GNU itself would not allow Microsoft to release software under the GPL and call it GNU software without permission).

I believe that this permission could be extended only to specific versions.

I am examining a case for 'fair use'. I would very much like to have permission, but if I can do it under fair use, then Jick would not need to put anything under the GPL and would retain full legal rights, while I would still be permitted to put it under GPL. This seems like a good place to be for everyone, if we can make that case.
1) transformative? yes. This is not the same game.
2) It's been published, it's fictional. I don't know what this does, it seems to me to be a fairly ordinary case.
3) Amount and Substantiality? Small, but perhaps very important. Hmm.
4) Effect on work's value: this in itself should be positive - free advertising. The question that arises would be whether we'd open the door for someone to have legal cover to make a knockoff using names and likenesses.

This is somewhat farfetched, but conceivable. The critical thing here is, if we GPL under fair use and someone tries to bend the project to compete somehow with KoL, then this criterion will immediately fail and it will be illegal, GPL or not.

Does that make sense?

Does it pervert the intention of the GPL?

If you think it does, I'd point out that if someone GPL's a review of a copyrighted book with quotes from the book, and then someone modifies that review to expand the quotes, and others repeat this process, eventually it's going to be infringing, not of the GPL copyleft, but of the quoted material's copyright.

If so, does that mean that GPLed material can never incorporate anything under fair use?

[Zarel]

Correct me where I go wrong.

Sure.

I believe that even if permission is granted to use the name 'Kingdom of Loathing', it will still be trademarked, which is distinct from copyright (GNU itself would not allow Microsoft to release software under the GPL and call it GNU software without permission).

That would be an issue, if "Kingdom of Loathing" were trademarked. Fortunately, it most likely is not. Furthermore, even if it were, trademark law only protects incorrect/misleading usage of a trademark. If you're using "Kingdom of Loathing" to refer to Kingdom of Loathing, it is perfectly legal and no one can do anything about it.

I believe that this permission could be extended only to specific versions.

No, permission can be extended to anything.

I am examining a case for 'fair use'. I would very much like to have permission, but if I can do it under fair use, then Jick would not need to put anything under the GPL and would retain full legal rights, while I would still be permitted to put it under GPL. This seems like a good place to be for everyone, if we can make that case.

It would amount to the exact same result (i.e. anyone can use the parts of KoL you'd be using), so I don't see why you don't just go ahead and ask him.

1) transformative? yes. This is not the same game.
2) It's been published, it's fictional. I don't know what this does, it seems to me to be a fairly ordinary case.
3) Amount and Substantiality? Small, but perhaps very important. Hmm.
4) Effect on work's value: this in itself should be positive - free advertising. The question that arises would be whether we'd open the door for someone to have legal cover to make a knockoff using names and likenesses.

This is somewhat farfetched, but conceivable. The critical thing here is, if we GPL under fair use and someone tries to bend the project to compete somehow with KoL, then this criterion will immediately fail and it will be illegal, GPL or not.

This is ridiculously complicated. How's about you just get Jick to say the words "You can use my characters in your game, but you can't bend them to compete directly with KoL"? It would amount to exactly the same thing, except with no legal gray area.

You're overthinking this. You use Fair Use in situations where the copyright owner is evil and doesn't let you do anything at all with their work, and you have no other choice, and you know the copyright owner is going to sue you anyway, but you have enough resources to fight a court battle and win. In all other cases, you just ask the copyright holder for explicit permission to do what you want to do.

[drachefly]

Right about the trademarks.

I guess I just wanted to understand how free GPLed material had to be. If we do a tight mapping from KoL into Wesnoth, there are a lot of KoL entities which will now be under GPL. He's not a tightass, but I can really see how that could make him uncomfortable. And even if he never gets around to thinking bad thoughts, if he never gets around to giving permission, I wanted to know whether we could go ahead anyway.

It would amount to the exact same result (i.e. anyone can use the parts of KoL you'd be using)

Ah, but context matters. Can he release it for use within a specific project only? I believe that would fall afoul of the GPL. Because then someone couldn't come in, use parts of it and rearrange any way they wanted.

If it's directly released under GPL by him, then it can be used for whatever anyone wants. If it's released under GPL by, say, me, then any future uses will also need to be fair use as far as his copyright is concerned.

Now, sure, he's got a lot on his plate, and maybe he just hasn't answered because he's dealing with exploding servers and the latest game update and maybe having a life or something. But I wanted to make this all as painless and risk-free as possible.

[thespaceinvader]

I honestly have no idea how this should work. Content developed for wesnoth doesn't have to be GPL'd, although it does if you want to release it on our servers.

Hmm...

[drachefly]

Well, he sent me a pm saying I could as long as credit was given and I didn't use their stuff to make money. Now to get said permission in public...

I have some other questions. 'smallfoot' was previously defined. I redefined it in my units.cfg file to replace the damage resistances. Is this a no-no?

Should I take these kinds of questions to the WML workshop?

[thespaceinvader]

That's an idea, though I'm sure that someone is likely to answer them here, given time.

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that you're better of making your own movetype rather than redefining anything...

[drachefly]

Yeah, to be on the safe side I namespaced all the modified movetypes.

[drachefly]

Okay, this is closing in on done.

I'm just wrestling with getting this to be recognized without crashing the game.

Yeah, that's not so easy. (edit: as I resolved this on my own, I'll hide it)

Spoiler:

So, as I read the BuildingFactions wiki entry, this is what I need to put in my kolnoth.cfg file directly in the campaigns directory, not in the kolnoth directory...

Code: Select all

[binary_path]
path=data/campaigns/kolnoth/
[/binary_path]
#ifdef MULTIPLAYER
{@campaigns/kolnoth/}
[+units]
   {@campaigns/kolnoth/units/adventurers}
   {@campaigns/kolnoth/units/hippies}
[/units]
#endif

now, within the kolnoth directory I have also the single player campaign.

I have a names.cfg, traits.cfg, and units.cfg. lots of stuff like this.

When I set this up, Wesnoth gags with an error that does not mention kolnoth, but only occurs when kolnoth is present.

/me is confused. How do I assemble this?

[drachefly]

Kolnoth alpha is ready!

Features:
2 complete PvP factions
1 utterly trivial scenario that's in place basically to test the ability to make scenarios
ugly as sin
poorly balanced (so far, but a lot better than 0.1a was)
the game won't document the many hippy traits (see below)

But hey, hippies and adventurers!

Since the game won't explain to you, here's the
Hippy Trait Documentation
nudist: -80% sleaze vulnerability, -30% cold vulnerability (hippies are normally at 150% in both; this eliminates and mitigates their two weaknesses)
filthy: stench attacks +1
crusty: +3 hp/level, -20% physical vulnerability
psychedelic: -40% experience to level, all defense values better than 30% worsened by 5%
fruitarian: loyal, but all attacks do 1 less damage
naturalist: 10% better evade in forest, 1 less movement cost to a variety of terrains. Making a naturalist ski hippy will produce problems. I'll fix it eventually.

(once upon a time, 0.1.2 lived here)

[drachefly]

Okay, 0.1.2a was pretty broken.

I've fixed all the bugs I know about, and am promoting this to beta.

On the balance front, it's still kind of rough.

I've raised the cost on hippies
I renamed the adventurer traits to match the Bartle player types. Roughly,
club = Dextrous + Strong ( no bonus HP )
heart = resilient (but +2 HP/level rather than +4 + 1/level)
spade = quick (with -1 hp/level rather than -5%)
diamond = intelligent

but you can get clubby clubs and hearty hearts, etc.. In most cases, the effects don't stack, they do something different.
Hearty hearts get -10% vulnerability to all damage rather than a further HP increase.
Spadey Spades get the teleport ability instead of a second extra movement point.
Clubby clubs get an extra swing on melee attacks
Diamondy Diamonds just stack as usual, resulting in only 60% XP requirement.

By the way, is it conventional to take down the old versions to avoid confusion/save space?

(once upon a time, 0.1.4 lived here)

[drachefly]

I've changed a few things and tested, and to a first approximation things seem balanced. The major changes were:

1) fire spinners have a melee attack. This is a simple error fix.
2) sky captains have a lot of little attacks, burdened with swarm. This is a nerf.
3) ART. Yay! It's still stick figures, but that's a design decision, not a limitation.
4) the scenario is useful to visit once so that all of the adventurers and hippies are added to the help system.

And so, 0.1.5 beta, take 3.

(once upon a time, kolnoth-v0.1.5b.tar.zip lived here)

[drachefly]

0.1.6 is here!

The main change is that Saucerors and Pastamancers now properly do random damage.

The other changes were:
nerfed DB2 melee damage from 7 to 5
nerfed DB3 melee damage from 8 to 6
buffed DB3 ranged attacks from 4 to 5
nerfed SC3 LTS damage from 15 to 13
buffed TT3 ranged damage from 8 to 12
enhanced several adventurer descriptions
made wmllint happy in a lot more cases


That's all the features I intend to add to the 0.1 line (aside from any balancing that needs doing, and if we can get the art upgrade finished). For 0.2, a third faction. The main options are the goblins; frat orcs; and the demons and undead. Any preferences?

(On the KoL forum, noonegotmyname has suggested not to combine the knob goblins with the frat orcs. I think that's a good point, so the list has been changed)

(Kolnoth 0.1.6 was once here)

[drachefly]

I have added knob goblins. It's a small faction, but the knob is small. It's a small knob.

Anyway, the faction is pretty simple concept. Three lines of units, fighter, mixed fighter, archer+sneak... and they all start at L0.

I would have included the harem girls, but I couldn't wrap my mind around a situation in which they'd be called to the battlefield. So they're not in the faction for MP purposes.

(once, 0.2.0 lived here)