Very nice, great work

Actually...

Mars Effect + Texture Pack I + BailKnights Graphical mod + Distant Stars = Minidump

At least it was for me.. Crashes everytime at pirate raid. The weird thing is that it only does so at about 3h 30m into the game...

Yep, I followed the instructions and got a minidump when I tried to activate it, not sure what I did wrong. That would be awesome if you could put up a link to the finished product, especially using the suggestions on this thread to avoid uploading all the existing textures. Great work though!

PS Any way we could incorporate the research changes Distant Stars made into this uber mod? I know it might be tough since the research changes for distant stars is in the game info file, or maybe it's really easy, simply copying everything labeled "research". Regardless, it would be cool.

I believe this is The Mars Effect's fault. If you look on page five of the TME thread, there's a hotfix which you need to use that will reduce the pirate raid maximum and thus prevent crashes.

CloudwingII - You can't simply copy the researches, because they're converted into binary. Also, first you need my permission to adopt anything from Distant Stars.
Any unathorized use of the mod content is forbidden.
But the sounds and the musics are freely usable.

As I've seen many here request, I have now put together a single package with all four mods in (What you get if you follow the instructions contained within the original post. minus the big mesh and texture folders)

http://swezor.mine.nu/uploads/ME+DS+GM+SaP.rar | 165mb | .RAR format | Hosted on a 3mb(up) line in central Sweden

I cannot keep this server up for very long though, as it's very noisy and is currently residing in my bedroom. expect it to be up for about four hours after this has been posted, no longer. Someone will have to put up a more permanent mirror. (if no mirror has been posted by tommorow afternoon (GMT+1) I'll start the server up again (and post a notice about it)

As a final note, this "super mod" is awesome by all accounts, huge scale battles with much improved effects cannot fail!

//SweZor

I assume nothing works with 1.03 yet?

Nope. with all mods in the package turned on the map names won't show up, you can't cycle between map sizes, and if you try and start one it will take forever to load, and then grant you with the defeat screen.
That's just in SP though, dunno if MP is the same, but it should be.

I also tried with only Bailknights Graphic mod, and it gave me a minidump (and crashed) as did it for a friend of mine.
The patch also broke all of my savegames and records (although reverting back to 1.02 should fix it)

I guess it's up to the modders to see if they can sort this out.

Downloaded new 1.03 patch today, went did the mod path check, then came back and enabled mars effect mod. Then tried start new game, all I got in map window(small scenarios/where you choose map size) was string not found messages. looks like mods need updating? with no mods selected, can start game as normal, able to choose map sizes etc. Im on XP sp2 nvidia 7800gt 256, 3.0 ghz with 1 gig ram. mars efffect 1.5 mod ran fine wih 1.02 patch.

Awolf

Yes, I had the same result. Understandable, given all the changes.

To modders: any idea about timeline for changes? I can't go back to vanilla after using your mods!

Mine is on the way. I will have it uploaded in about 15 minutes. However, due to the forum problems, it will be in a post at the bottom of the 12th Page.

For the other mods, it all depends on whether or not they can actually update them without the new reference data. Most of the 1.03 Patch changes are in Binary format. So, until we get the right files, some modder might not be able to do anything

Need to update the english.str file

Makes sense!

My first thought was conflicting changes to the pirate raids of various mods, but apparantly it's simply a problem of to many bloody pirates at once

Figures i get the thing working and the patch comes out hehe. Well tonight I will play arround with mine I was working on and see what happens. I'll post any updates here for you guys. Oh and for the crash problem I was having. Turns out that it was the pirate raid crash from TME. Made the relavant change to the constants file and bam im good to go.

If you're going to be pissy about it, actually, unless you created the entire file from scratch (generally textures and models), you can't call creative copyright on dick squat.

And if you want to get technical it's Ironclad's engine and scripting language, so they own your mod more than you do, so even a claim of copyright on files you made yourself would be dubious, at best, since you didn't purchase an engine license.

It's the same reason why you can't sell game mods - you don't own it.

In fact, if you DID somehow try to claim copyright on your mod, that would mean nobody could make their own tweaks to it without your permission, of even do what we're doing in this thread, adding more mods to it.

Copyright also 'carries through'. Ironclad gave permission to use, edit, and tweak files for our own creations. This means that you *MUST* also give us permission to do the same to your mod.

LOL

Its Ironclads game NOT yours , i can damn well do what i want with any mod hell if i wanted to be really nasty i could tweak it a little and release it as my own. Not that i'd want to but still.

You mean the gameplay.constants on pg5? The one he said did nothing to pirate raid sizes?

Is there another you're talking about.

Ah, but the main exceptions are custom sounds, music, models, textures, and the like, because they are not (or rather, IF they are not) built off of or do not require material already existing in the game. A modified, or even created script file still requires the game engine to run, and uses their scripting language that they bought or made themselves, so you cannot copyright it unless you own a licensed copy of the engine. A model you created in Maya, however, is yours, and yours alone.

Uzii's icons are presumably made from scratch, so he can call copyright on those.
Bailknight's planet textures are presumably modified textures, so he cannot.

And, as I said, any copyright carries over - the exact same line of text that says you're allowed to make mods means I'm damn-well entitled to do whatever I want with the files you do not explicitly own a copyright on. I can do whatever I want with Distant Star's game files - even use them myself, and I don't have to give any credit at all.

It's not nice, or very good form, but you could put your own name on Distant Stars and there's nothing Skyline_HUN can do about it.

It's not nice, or very good form, however.

If you want to get amusing with this, why don't you ask if Skyline_HUN got permission to use the music and sound files in his mod. I strongly doubt that he did.

I didn`t touch any texture.
And I recommand you should study something called "Derivative work"

That changes nothing. Ironclad still owns the original copyright, and a derivative work cannot bypass that.

Sky- Mostly I was asking about feasibility, I wasn't planning on ripping you off without giving credit where it's due or not asking to use it. I admire your mod. But thanks for answering my question, I really didn't think it would be that simple.

Any chance somebody else could host that combined file? The server that had it is down at the moment.

It`s ture that Ironclad own original copyright but it didn`t mean that you can modify and distribute any derivative works freely.

Copyright is automatically and exclusively on the initial creator's side. What we got is an explicit license (read it) to use ironclads work in exchange for money.

And we got an implicit license to use distant stars for free by its creator. Courts generally ruled things that were published by their creator on the internet are meant to be treated as if they were treated for simple use, no redistribution to strangers or modification allowed, and that's also pretty much common sense. But of course you can't just take his work and do whatever with it, even though it depends on sins to be useful, and incorporates another mod by Uzii (he allowed his mod to be reused without specifying further restrictions). Its copyright to the creator only, not ironclad or anyone else's.


But you can always make a mod very much like distant stars (as long as it was created from scratch) and distribute that. Close imitation isn't forbidden as long as you don't claim to be distant stars.

As with any game and their mods, its much nicer if people to specifically allow modification and redistribution, through a clear license (creative commons attribution share-alike is a popular one, for instance).
The community should just ignore other works, because its very much a pain to deal with them if they either die at one point, or become too popular and the author starts to demand money and such. And as distant stars itself shows, combinations of mods tend to be great. People should just be able to do these...

This whole pack sounds really promising! Please post when there's a stable build for 1.03, unless that's what SweZor's is.

Yes it does, because Ironclad's, and any other developer's, release on modding and what you are allowed to adjust. Ironclad still owns the original copyright, and you recognized that, which means that their copyright release applies just as readily to anything falling under that copyright.

You can't use something in the public domain, tweak it, and then sell it for money. Why do you think the GNU Public License still exists? Because derivative works *MUST* fall under that very same license.

The worst-case (for my argument, at least) is that I cannot use any file created completely from scratch from a mod, but I can still use any other file that was simply number-tweaking. Given that Distant Stars is a balance mod first and foremost, and 99% of its content are simply tweaked 'core' files, they can't even begin to TRY to claim 'derivative work'.

If 'derivative work' were as liquid as you seem to think, there'd be little claim for mods being shut down by Fox for being 'based on' the Aliens universe, or a Star Trek mod being C&D'd, as you could claim Derivative, or at best, Fair Use, neither of which has been successfully fought under.

Finally, there's history. No mod has, to my knowledge, ever been able to use 'derivative work' to claim ownership over its own content. To do so would allow them to even sell the mod themselves. On the other hand, we have two cases. Natural Selection 2 is going to be a mod for sale, but they also bought a license to the source engine, so they own their own creation completely. And Gary's Mod, which Valve is selling, not the mod's creators.

If you know otherwise on that last note, let me know. "Derivative work" also is extremely shaky because you own a LICENSE to USE the software, not the software itself, which means the terms of that license outweigh anything that you could normally do with, say, printed paper.