Ripping Apart HomeWorld Mods For Sins???

Well you would have to get permission from the modders.

I thought we WERE modders!

Someone handmade those geometries. You didn't do it, you found it. You have to get permission for the people who were sweating over their computers to make them.
The Mod Community is not a singular entity that you can just steal from as soon as you decide that you think you're a "modder."

I would NEVER upload anything for my personal use that someone else made, I see the direction you were going in now. (I used to write video games from scratch for the Amiga (ancient) computer, sounds, graphics, everything...... and as a developer I know that you can fill in the spaces as long as you DONT DISTRIBUTE those filled in spaces with anything you didn't originate, THAT IS OBVIOUS!!!

I was only suggesting making the conversions easier by not having to reinvent the wheel right away, The original idea being that you could quickly rough in the framework so that the more specific details can be addressed, any good developer would know that...

DUH!!!

i dont see why u'd have to ask permission.
unless offcourse if u profit from it or leave their names out of the credits.

otherwise why not? i would see it as an honour and an homage if "my work" from back then would still be good enough to be re-used for this game now.

also, some of these people could be damned hard to find.

sorry for the "duh", I felt offended when my ethics and abilities were questioned

44RS, because some of those people might not feel the same as you. Models can be an incredible amount of effort and sweat to create, and they are a direct expression of someone's creativity. You can't just assume that everyone else would be okay with unpermitted distribution of their work, particularly when not everyone reads the credits for mods and some thrilled player ends up congratulating and/or praising the person that "borrowed" someone else's work without permission when assembling a mod.

You should ask to use it, and if you can't find who owns it, don't use it.

-- Retro

i dunno, it does prelong the lifetime of the work...

I'm no legal expert but I'll answer based on what I believe to be the case legally.
With non comercial developed, publicly released code/script/data/models you can do what you like, as long as it's not for profit (which would include revenue from net advertising) you can fiddle with other people's creations and upload as much as you want.
In cases where mods are based on cultural references the person who created the models and art etc will not have any copyright to their work. I could not make a Tie Fighter model in some 3d package and copyright it for example. Even if they have copyright on their work as long as you are not using it for profit or damaging any profit that the author is possibly making from it you are pretty safe.
What has happened in some cases has been certain companies such as Fox stopping development and distribution of free mods by applying legal pressure but as far as I know there has never been an actual court case settled to set a precident as to whether they have a leg to stand on.
Where you will run in to problems is if you are talking about taking out content (3d models) from a comercial package and distributing as part of a free mod then you are effectively breaking the law.

People's previous responses are based on the ethics of the issue which is an entirely different discussion.

44RS, you keep assuming that this is what the work's author actually WANTS, though. You can't do that, and have to ask.

Haree:
This is incorrect. Several major not-for-profit mods have been closed down because they used other company's IP. Games Workshop routinely does this with people who attempt to build mods with Warhammer assets. Their extremely valid arguments for doing this have several points:
- users of the mod might confuse modmaker original customizations with actual endorsed originator content. An example is including light sabres in a Star Trek mod.
- the "brand" of the mod can be damaged. Example: a mod's maker includes a speculative sexual relationship between major characters that is told in an objectionable way.
- the mod maker combines unapproved assets from other mods (e.g. throwing a star trek model into a star wars mod) that IS legally improper to use, and the brand gets bad publicity as a result.
- to endorse and approve that any mod has suitability, the company would have to invest time and effort, and therefore money, and there is no profit in that exercise (much like when bounty runs out on an empire), and then they have to provide that service for every other modmaker out there.

I'm sure there are more good reasons, but it is much cheaper for the company to just say "NO, you can't use my game's assets" than it is to try and recover from a black eye in the marketplace because some idiot built something that made them look bad.

-- Retro

haha well i'm glad we got THAT cleared up!

I mentioned how some companies close down free mods. Their argument is that it ruins the value of their IP or directly competes with their own products therefore costing them money.

The quote you have taken was me trying to explain that if an author who released his work for no profit on the internet has no legal basis to say "This is copyrighted, you can't use this in your own work" unless he/she would be impacted in the wallet by doing so. Therefore you are safe to. An author claiming copyright on freely released material is ensuring that you can't profit from the material, not that you can't do what you like with it for no profit.

As far as the ethics argument goes i'm a believer in freedom of data so that people can stand on other's shoulders to achieve great things as the human race has been doing since history was recorded. Credit should deffinately be given where it is due and certainly no respect should be given to people who steal and claim the credit. However I don't have a lot of respect for people that don't want anyone to use anything they create just because of their ego. Reinventing the wheel everytime someone wants to create a cood mod for people to freely enjoy doesn't help anyone. Open source is the way forward