Support for demo versions?

International board General discussion
#21

Because Debian community unlike Arch or Gentoo actually care about legal status of packages and I hoped someone actually reviewed the situation. Like to be fair I never knew distribution of game demo versions could be illegal and I almost sure it’s should be legal in Europe at least.

For now It’s not that important in what part repository VCMI is. If we had a goal to make free assets then we could really ask few town creators to license them appropriately and replace everything else.

Though it’s not yet time for this kind of stuff since engine not fully playable yet.

#22

[quote=“SXX”]

Debian can make use of the Demo in the sense that it is legal for Debian to distribute a script that automatically downloads and unpacks the demo (for example from archive.org). But it is not legal for Debian (or Arch or Gentoo or anybody) to distribute the demo unless the demo ships with a license that allows them to do so. I was not able to find such a license for the demo version.

Here a quick overview of the copyright situation in Europe: All creative works are “all rights reserved” by default. Whenever you find some creative work in the internet, then by default you are not allowed to do anything with it other than viewing it (because that’s what the rightsholder allowed you to do by putting it on their website). You are not allowed to distribute it (with or without modifications, with or without taking money for it) unless the copyright holder gave you specific permission to do so through a license.

So, ubi might’ve given certain third parties the permission to offer the demo for download but that does not mean that you automatically have that permission to do the same. Remember, by default any work is “all rights reserved”. It requires a license that says otherwise for you to be able to do more than just having the file on your own computer.

Thus, for Debian, the situation doesn’t change much if vcmi gains support for the demo version. The only change will be that the Debian version of vcmi might then gain the ability to automatically download the demo (for example from archive.org) and use its assets. But Debian (and everybody else unless there exists a license that says otherwise) is still not allowed to redistribute the demo.

This is the whole point of licenses like the GPL or creative commons. Since by default all works are “all rights reserved” it needs a license that specifically says that it is allowed to modify the work and share it with others. Another example is, that on github lots of code is shared without any mention of a license. This code is proprietary and cannot be used by anybody unless the author gives specific permisson. This is in contrast to what most people might think that by default everything is free to copy and it needs a big license to make doing so illegal. It’s the other way round. Everything is “all rights reserved” by default and it needs a license to allow people to do anything with it.

#23

I doubt any game demo in history ever had such a license. :unamused:

RoE demo ships with pretty standard EULA:
gist.github.com/ArseniyShestako … a7530522a1

I understand it all include how licensing work in theory, but to be fair I’m not really worried that much about trying to put something in Debian repository yet since I have no doubt anyone who actually care can buy H3 on GOG with no problem.

Though we really need some testing automation for our CI to track regressions and there also some question regarding how multilayer servers should work in future. This is main reason why I asked for some legal advice in that area.

So thanks for explanation! :wink:

#24

I’ve checked Linux demo and it doesn’t work with VCMI. Map is not working with Mac files either.

For those who wants to easy unpack Mac version on Linux (and maybe other platforms too)

wget "http://download.fileplanet.com/ftp1/fpnew/gamedemos/strategy/heroes_3_complete_demo.sit"
md5sum heroes_3_complete_demo.sit #should be 49343f4fc8c5820c28f4bc8c39a2e149
unar heroes_3_complete_demo.sit
mv Heroes\ III\ Demo/{music,mp3} #change dir name for vcmibuilder
vcmibuilder --data Heroes\ III\ Demo/

unar is from The Unarchiver cmdtools.

When I installed WoG, I’m able to enter map selection screen without glitches. But whole game is in Russian.
When I tried to play random map, some massage apperes. Since I cannot read Russian, I do not know what the problem is.

I’ve also create PKGBUILD for Arch Linux thats downloads MacOS X Demo, extracts files and copy it to vcmi data directory. I’ve uploaded it to AUR.

Screenshot from 2017-06-25 20-10-11.jpg1366×768 564 KB

#25

It’s just problem with VCMI WoG submod, you need to remove russian translation.

#26

Regarding Debian: There is the example of the Microsoft Fonts. Everyone is allowed to download them (“freeware”), but redistribution is not allowed. Debian added the package ttf-mscorefonts-installer to the contrib repository that does nothing but asking the user to agree to the EULA and download the fonts. Contrib means the script is free software but depends on unfree stuff.

#27

There is already mentioned “game-data-packager” in Debian to do the job.

I emailed archivist who put Heroes 3: RoE demo on Web Archive and hopefully he’ll upload Heroes 3: Complete Mac demo there as well. So it’s will be source we can redirect players to. I think it’s would be solid source especially because Web Archive and old games such as H3 should be under DMCA exception in the U.S:
archive.org/about/dmca.php

Also I asked @misiokles to work on mod that disable all missing assets and I’ll also make sure engine is compatible with it.

#28

This is OT on this thread but the game-data-packager based solution would greatly benefit from this vcmi bug getting fixed: bugs.vcmi.eu/view.php?id=2189

As things are right now, Debian needs a wrapper script around vcmi which makes sure that ~/.local/share/vcmi is symlinked to /usr/share/games/vcmi which is quite awkward.

#29

Oops, i’ll make sure to resolve it ASAP.

#30

So Mac demo is now on archive org:

I’ll make sure mod for compatibility with it is available so we can use it on CI.

#31

@josch
If you going to have time, can you look into contributing mac demo download / extract into “game-data-packager”? I’ve made mod for Mac Demo assets and while it’s still need more work (demo missing few menu screens) it’s totally possible to play randomly generated maps with VCMI using these assets.

#32

It’s already part of game-data-packager. Try running:

game-data-packager --package homm3-demo-data heroes3 h3demo.exe
#33

There is only code for Windows demo and GOG version according to what I see in YAML configuration here. Windows demo contain RoE assets only and completely incompatible with our code: texts have different IDs, many things are missing, etc.

Mac demo on other side contain 100% non-graphical assets from complete edition. And it’s also contain all graphics for adventure map and almost everything else except for towns that not included in demo.

#34

Oh sorry, I thought we were still talking about the Demo hosted on archive.org. I don’t think I know where to get the Mac demo from. The fileplanet.com link earlier in this thread seems to be dead.

#35

I guess Discourse can be confusing at times, but I posted the link to web archive entry just a bit above.

Just in case:

https://archive.org/details/heroes_3_complete_demo

Direct link to heroes_3_complete_demo.sit can be viewed via “SHOW ALL” link in “DOWNLOAD OPTIONS”. I even ran actual thing in MacOS9 under QEMU so everyone can see actual screenshots of it now. :wink:

Archive can be unpacked using unar.

PS: Mod for demo support is on GitHub, but since demo missing some background images lobby doesn’t work very well with it as of now. So it’s need a bit more work.

#36

I was working on game-data-packager support but am running into some problems. My current patch is here: http://paste.debian.net/1020136/ but I yet have to figure out how to strip the first directory component from the path of the files in the archive. I’m asking some people more familiar with game-data-packager.

Why is the mac-demo-support mod not part of the mods repository?

#37

I dislike current mod distribution system so there is work in progress on moving all mods management in git:

Once I get it all working mod will be available in repository. Though as I said it’s still need more work.

#38

I managed to add support for the MacOS demo to game-data-packager:

I replaced support for the Windows Demo because vcmi never worked with it and because the MacOS demo supercedes it as it has more content.

You can report bugs with the game-data-packager support for vcmi directly to me.

Thanks!

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