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Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

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Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#71

Post by [deleted] »

anthk wrote: post #67
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complicated than that. For an asset to be derived work from an original, it is not necessary for it to contain anything from the original. If you start from copyrighted assets, and meticulously replace them all with your own art piece by piece, while following the style and constraints of the originals, and while looking at the originals, I'd bet that a court would find your work to be derived from the orig…

FreeDoom does that with Doom and it has compatible assets but not in the same style altough they are done in such smart way that most PWADs and TC are totally playable without clashes, from Requiem to Back To Saturn. On game engines, reimplementations are not derivations at all but tools for interoperability, totally legal to create. From Wine to most of the stuff of https://osgameclones.com , to GNUStep against NeXT…

[deleted]

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#72

Post by anthk »

TuxMark5 wrote: post #53
l72 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about old Lucas arts adventure games that are purchasable on gog and other platforms and come bundled with scummvm?

I see no issue with it. The same way I see no issue selling old DOS games packaged with DOSBox. Neither ScummVM nor DOSBox are games themselves. In this case it's the content that matters. However in OpenTTDs case, the entire implementation is original (including the new high res assets). I would have 0 issues with this TTD/OpenTTD situation if OpenTTD was left on Steam as-is and TTD was a separate purchase that gran…

>Scummvm

Scummvm could adapt OpenTTD for their own working in the exact same way as OpenTTD. They did that with Ultima.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#73

Post by TylerE »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #29
TylerE wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the simutrans folks decided on a weird hardcoded frame rate (40fps) that looks janky as hell on every single display ever I will never understand. Unplayable. instant motion sickness.

I haven’t played simultrans, but I wonder if it feels less janky on a 120 Hz or 240 Hz monitor, since both of those values are evenly divisible by 40. Compared to playing on a 60 Hz display or other non-multiple of 40 refresh rate monitors.

Actually, it's not 40, it's 25, even worse.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#75

Post by A1kmm »

refulgentis wrote: post #27
denotational wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the “rightsholders” have no rights over OpenTTD (only the assets are copyrightable, and OpenTTD has had its own set of open-source assets for the past 15 years), I can’t agree with this. I’m not sure how to interpret this other than Atari not wanting to compete with OpenTTD on Steam.

I can’t tell if this is narrowly worded to only talk about copyright because you don’t know it was built from decompiled TTD, that source code is copyrightable, and TTD is a trademark. or, you do know, but feel the current IP rights regime is illegitimate. And I don’t want to insult you by quietly assuming the first, so figured I’d spell it out. I’m usually sentimentally open to IP rights being overly constrictive in…

I think the registered trademark is Transport Tycoon not TTD. The public may have called it TTD, but I'm not sure they used it in trade (IANAL, not legal advice). And I don't think the OpenTTD devs call it "Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe" anywhere. So the trademark case against the OpenTTD devs is likely pretty weak.

I personally think it is the copyright that is the most uncertain. Firstly, there are probably quite a few venues around the world where Atari might be able to take this up, and quite a diversity of precedent between them. Historically Atari litigated in the US - in 1981 they lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_v._Amusement_World on a case someone infringed by copying their look and feel without copying any assets. Other precedents in that jurisdiction have found it's not infringing if similarities are inherent to the subject matter of the game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_East_USA,_Inc._v._Epyx,_I.... but similarity of art style is copyrightable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Int....

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#76

Post by chupasaurus »

TylerE wrote: post #73
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t played simultrans, but I wonder if it feels less janky on a 120 Hz or 240 Hz monitor, since both of those values are evenly divisible by 40. Compared to playing on a 60 Hz display or other non-multiple of 40 refresh rate monitors.

Actually, it's not 40, it's 25, even worse.

Ever heard of little games called Diablo 1 and 2? People spent billions of hours playing those on displays with framerates faster than 25 for 2 decades.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#77

Post by pvdebbe »

Macha wrote: post #21
skulk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenTTD has the `cargodist` option which simulates reality more closely. Passengers enter stations with a destination in mind and will transfer at other stations.

Note that a big difference between cargodist and simutrans is in simutrans the customers have a destination before they come to your station, so opening up new routes will increase your customer base. In cargodist, you get the same amount of passengers, regardless of connected destinations, and they just choose from among connected destinations in your network.

I really want somebody to mod this into OpenTTD because cargodist was a good step and a nice approximation for a time, it's no match to the "destination in mind" pax. I'm reduced to play commercial offerings like Transport Fever 2. But as far as I know, it would be a considerable undertaking.

Elsewhere in the thread chain:

>[OpenTTD has bad UI]

Hmm, really? It's cluttered with windows and options but I think the mechanics of windows popping and quick dismissing works out for this kind of a game really well. It scales across #n of monitors so well. I run mine on a 43" 4K television panel, no scaling, and I get all my screen estate I need. Works out so swimmingly.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#78

Post by DiabloD3 »

khoirul wrote: post #74

Lots of words, but nowhere does it say: why? . Did Chris Sawyer sue them or something?

Chris Sawyer has not been involved in TTD for quite some time, and any remaining rights he had were bought out officially in 2024.

Chris Sawyer was last involved in the IP when it was rugpulled out from under him in the early 2000s and sent to Frontier Developments, the Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster guys, to bury the IP in an unmarked grave with RCT3; Frontier is also the same guys that screwed Haemimont Games games over, the Tropico and Surviving Mars guys, leading to the studio being bought out and rebooted by Paradox to continue Surviving Mars development.

The IP ownership has been legally retained by Atari SA, aka Infogrames, aka GT Interactive, aka GoodTimes Entertainment, which has a very long history of screwing game developers and stealing their IP out from under them and also misrepresenting IP ownership and licensing.

Now, it is also worth mentioning that Chris Sawyer is anti-open source, so he probably personally approves of trying to steal money from OpenTTD players, even if he isn't personally getting a cut of it.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#79

Post by bigstrat2003 »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #78
khoirul wrote: post #74

Lots of words, but nowhere does it say: why? . Did Chris Sawyer sue them or something?

Chris Sawyer has not been involved in TTD for quite some time, and any remaining rights he had were bought out officially in 2024. Chris Sawyer was last involved in the IP when it was rugpulled out from under him in the early 2000s and sent to Frontier Developments, the Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster guys, to bury the IP in an unmarked grave with RCT3; Frontier is also the same guys that screwed Haemimont Games games…

> Now, it is also worth mentioning that Chris Sawyer is anti-open source, so he probably personally approves of trying to steal money from OpenTTD players, even if he isn't personally getting a cut of it.

It's pretty rude to put something like that on him if he hasn't actually said that.

Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam

#80

Post by fwipsy »

TuxMark5 wrote: post #50
fwipsy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atari didn't put in the effort, but Chris Sawyer did. Now Atari paid Sawyer for the rights to the game. I do not think Atari is a parasite here just because they paid for the game instead of creating it. It seems to me that the logical outcome of your interpretation is that Sawyer's leniency towards the OpenTTD devs would be punished by losing exclusivity to his IP. Essentially, you are asserting "squatter's rights"…

My issue with this argument is that I'm not sure how much of OpenTTD is their IP. OpenTTD has been development for so long that I doubt that any original disassembly remnants remain in the latest version of OpenTTD. The only true piece of IP that OpenTTD may use is the name (the TTD part of OpenTTD) and the graphics, the latter of which being the more important one. However, as far as I know, OpenTTD devs have create…

If you take an essay, and rewrite every paragraph and also add some new words, then it's still plagiarism. Perhaps not under copyright law, but ethically. OpenTTD goes beyond "heavily inspired" because it is intended to reimplement the original game.

I am sympathetic to arguments of the form "It was abandonware," "Copyright lasts for too long anyways," etc. But I don't think you can claim OpenTTD owes nothing to the creators of TTD. OpenTTD was meant to replace TTD and would not exist without it.

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