Test your Sword of Moonlight know it all-ness...

[HwitVlf]

Excellent!
I have a manual page 'template' so I'll make a replica and post it if that's ok with you.

So, would this be a decent 'phrasing'?
------------
BEFORE YOU GET STARTED

Sword of Moonlight games are comprised of a set of 'maps' that we call a 'project'.
The number of maps used will vary depending on how expansive a game is, but a
single Sword of Moonlight project can have up to 64 maps.

Your project's complexity is up to you, but it is a good idea to begin by making
a simple production the first time.

[Holy_Diver]

Can you skip ahead and post the EULA type stuff for us?

[HwitVlf]

I'll take that as a silent 'yes, you can use my translation as the source for a manual remake.'

I looked through the manual and nothing jumped out as a liscence statement.
If it's in the manual its burried somewhere in the middle text.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php/topic,189.0.html

[Holy_Diver]

I wonder what no licensing means then? Anything goes? As long as we don't rip stuff from licensed games...

Probably you'd have to talk to Agetec before trying to get a KF game on XNA or something in this country (The States) ...But for Diadem of Maunstraut for example, I wonder?? (if you took out the stuff ripped from KF1)

Tom might want to copyright DoM/Trismegistus in that case...

Edited: I think btw I can make these commercially viable games. Som already looks pretty damn good on a widescreen HD setup.

PS: I'm not positive everything I've done to work around SOM would be doable on the Xbox OS or XNA, but it's the closest place you'd get to a console release SOM being stuck on Windows and all. The SOM exe itself might not even be Xbox doable.

[dmpdesign]

I am no expert on XNA (yet) but I have begun to look into it a bit more (and now joined the club to register to make games there).

I do know this about it in general.

The program you construct for the xbox games does need fed through C# language into a specific toolset to create the final game.  I doubt SOM as is could do that.

Games submitted must be no larger than 150mb (ouch, that doesnt even cover DD's soundtrack).

They have some legal mumbo jumbo that says the source code must either be open source or custom made, in other words you can't use source code from an already licensed software (unless you own the license) so I am pretty sure SOM is out...not to mention its not open source.

There are plenty of tutorials for making new gaming engines and I think if a group of folks ever got ambitious enough to make their own game for sale in the style of KF they would be better off not doing it with SOM.  I would hate to see someone put a ton of time into an SOM game only to not be able to use it.  That and the software really is very difficult to support across platforms.

[Holy_Diver]

I dunno, I think SOM is way more interesting. I didn't realize XNA was so messed up that way. I'm not sure C# is such a problem to port to, and C# can be very flexible, if C# would be the onliy requirement. I know Torque was converting it's tools into XNA, so it's not so much that you have to use a specific "game engine" setup, though I'm sure there is a bit of that. 150mb is not so hard at all. I can easily program an extension for SOM to use mpg music instead of wav, which should cut the soundtrack download size down greatly. Though I'm thinking that 150mb is the download and not the install size. A SOM game could easily fit in under that. We could technically make it open source I'd think by calling SOM a data file, and mapping it into memory and executing it from there. But that probably would not pass thru the gatekeepers... possibly even if Fromsoftware and Agetec gave everything the go ahead.

Given the dead in the water status of KF, it might be possible to even convince Agetec and Fromsoftware let us go forward. I think the Opensource bit is actually in our favor. I'm actually shocked about that. Though I reckon it's more you gotta turn over sources to MS than have your sources available for the world to see online. Trying to convince the whole world to go opensource games I considered to be my greatest hurdle... it will be interesting if these "indie" game network things the major gatekeepers are doing already have that concept built in.

I thought about joining (the no fee way) one day while I ran into the forums while Googling, but their registration process was messed up that day (I got an email letting me know it was fixed) ...all I've really thought about it was it's the only way to publish an Xbox game without buying a dev package/license.

[Holy_Diver]

I could maybe make a SOM game play on a PS3. But only in the non-XMB os mode. It's possible if it works there it would work normally, but I'm not sure that would get you a seat on the PSN. Actually I have no idea how indie developers get their games on the PSN, unless they go thru the save devkit/quality insurance process as everyone else. WinE would have to be involved obviously (which I'm not positive is legal in the first place)

[Holy_Diver]

PS: All of this is just the appetizer you know. After we've picked SOM apart, I will be rebuilding it from scratch, and at that point anything goes!