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LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

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Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#11

Post by 999900000999 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10
poly2it wrote: post #6

Best wishes, this is really neat. I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. A potential use-case might be to create a Linux-native client. The one used by most right now (Sober) is proprietary, after the previous (Vinegar) got shut down because of Linux haxxors.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Two factors are at play.

This looks like it just reimplements a few Roblox APIs in an open source engine. It would of probably made more sense to just create a Roblox to Godot translator or something.

Second, your poking a multi billion dollar bear. If this project ever takes off Roblox will take action, right or wrong that's enough to stop most small projects. You can be right, but you don't have millions to fight non stop lawsuits.

In reality this is a cute proof of concept. It's never going to compete with the actual product. If it does Roblox will have it stopped in 72 hours

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#12

Post by gjsman-1000 »

999900000999 wrote: post #11
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Two factors are at play. This looks like it just reimplements a few Roblox APIs in an open source engine. It would of probably made more sense to just create a Roblox to Godot translator or something. Second, your poking a multi billion dollar bear. If this project ever takes off Roblox will take action, right or wrong that's enough to stop most small projects. You can be right, but you don't have millions to fight n…

In practice, no society has ever overcome “might makes right.” Or, arguably, ever will.

The good news though; it’s lawyers shutting down your project. Yesterday, it was hiring someone to break your knees.

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#13

Post by a2128 »

glitchc wrote: post #4

Yeah but can I spend Robux on it? If not, pass. The whole problem is Robux isn't it? It's not like the engine is anything special.

There's a number of developers who get stuck on ROBLOX because they learned their creation tools when they were younger (they're easy to use and easily accessible to any desktop ROBLOX player), spent their formative years mastering their skills, and those skills turn out to be niche and not easily transferable to most other game engines. The choice is between basically restarting as a beginner in Unity, or continue making advanced creations on ROBLOX with all their friends and prestige they've earned in various sub-communities. To be honest I'm surprised it took this long for someone to try making an API-compatible alternative

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#14

Post by Dilettante_ »

ktallett wrote: post #9

This is fantastic! It is a very useful tool for preservation of games on Roblox. I hope this can be used for good to save the many creative and original works on the platform in a way that we didn't with flash games.

>in a way that we didn't with flash games

I thought Flashpoint[1] did pretty well about that? The full download is 1.68TB, I'd wager most stuff you'd have seen back then would be on there.

[1]https://flashpointarchive.org/

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#15

Post by kartoffelsaft »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10
poly2it wrote: post #6

Best wishes, this is really neat. I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. A potential use-case might be to create a Linux-native client. The one used by most right now (Sober) is proprietary, after the previous (Vinegar) got shut down because of Linux haxxors.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Curious what makes you say it'd be less legally dubious than an emulator? To me, it seems this would be at the same legality as the NES emulator because you're basically 'emulating' the environment Roblox game code runs in. To be fair if that intuition's correct it'd still be legal like emulators are if they're careful.

(also not a lawyer)

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#16

Post by [deleted] »

kartoffelsaft wrote: post #15
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Curious what makes you say it'd be less legally dubious than an emulator? To me, it seems this would be at the same legality as the NES emulator because you're basically 'emulating' the environment Roblox game code runs in. To be fair if that intuition's correct it'd still be legal like emulators are if they're careful. (also not a lawyer)

[deleted]

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#17

Post by unleaded »

ktallett wrote: post #9

This is fantastic! It is a very useful tool for preservation of games on Roblox. I hope this can be used for good to save the many creative and original works on the platform in a way that we didn't with flash games.

Roblox preservation has pretty much been a solved problem since around 2016. The clients all have built-in network servers and many people have built launchers to let you easily play a server with your friends. A lot of the knowledge is unfortunately gatekeeped inside Discord communities of crazy people but there are a few "good names" out there (Novetus is the big one)

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#18

Post by conradev »

kartoffelsaft wrote: post #15
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Curious what makes you say it'd be less legally dubious than an emulator? To me, it seems this would be at the same legality as the NES emulator because you're basically 'emulating' the environment Roblox game code runs in. To be fair if that intuition's correct it'd still be legal like emulators are if they're careful. (also not a lawyer)

  So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical.
Emulators often require handling copyrighted materials like games or firmware, whereas APIs are not copyrightable.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America...

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#19

Post by doctorpangloss »

There are a lot of free remakes of commercial games, and a lot of free remakes of commercial game platform engines. How do the developers of Librebox decide to work on this instead of:

- remaking one specific, good game on Roblox, such as remaking Bloxburg, in something more practical like Unity?

- working on an existing free remake of a Roblox game, like Nexus Battles, which of course, was archived?

- working on something else?

I’m asking the “Libreboxdevs.” It’s nice to hear these POVs directly from the developers. As you guys read this on a Saturday morning, consider that I’m not asking for, what features are going to be added to your GitHub project, or a comparison between Librebox and other game engines or whatever. I’m asking about your personal decision making.

Re: LunarEngine: An open source, Roblox-compatible game engine

#20

Post by axus »

999900000999 wrote: post #11
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal. If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android. (Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)

Two factors are at play. This looks like it just reimplements a few Roblox APIs in an open source engine. It would of probably made more sense to just create a Roblox to Godot translator or something. Second, your poking a multi billion dollar bear. If this project ever takes off Roblox will take action, right or wrong that's enough to stop most small projects. You can be right, but you don't have millions to fight n…

The open source part is key. Plenty of online Pokemon and World of Warcraft clones out there, they can't seem to catch them all.
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