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LucasArts Embraces Game Mod Community
An anonymous reader writes "LucasArts has taken a great step in promoting the modification of their titles and supporting the communities that love them! According to this press release, LucasArts has teamed up with LFNetwork to open LucasFiles.com. The site is dedicated to all files that fall in the LucasArts realm." Given competing games like Neverwinter Nights, which have a phenomenal amount of user-created add-ons, this is a very smart move for LucasArts.
Very smart indeed! Just think about how successful Counter-Strike is. Sierra/Valve doesn't make anything from Counter-Strike but they make boat-loads from the Half-Life game that you need to run Counter-Strike.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
And the first and highly game mod will be a re-skin for Jar-Jar Binks so he doesn't look like a walking poop-stain!
:)
No. of downloads: 8732
Rated: 10 stars
Description: Highly requested! Jar-Jar replaced with a baywatch babe!
This is not a troll, this is a pleade for it to be done
-Foxxz
(For anyone who doesn't know, ScummVM is a replacement .exe for old games like Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island; it uses antialiased graphics and hardware MIDI to dramatically improve the picture and sound, and runs on any platform SDL does - unlike the old .exe's that come with the games, which struggle to run on modern machines. LucasArts seem to have mistaken ScummVM with an abandonware site...)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Until they fix the camera angle...
There are plenty of user made mods that free the camera, along with tons of other mods that expand and extend the game. The _usermade_ Pool of Radiance mod is better than the recent standalone game!
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes NWN great, and probably why LucasArts is so interested.
Why Slashdot is under attack
From http://www.lucasfiles.com/submission.php:
/usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/lucasfiles.com/httpdocs /ssi/right.php on line 10
You hereby grant to LF Network the royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable right and license to use and exploit all rights in copyright in and to Your Posted Material throughout the universe in all forms of media, whether now known or later developed or created. Accordingly, among other rights, LF Network may reproduce, modify, publish, translate, distribute, sell, perform, and display Your Posted Material alone or as part of other works in any form, media or technology.
Furthermore, the terms of submission incorporate by reference Attachment A, which reads:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: latest() in
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Just wait and see what good ol' Georgie's lawyers will say when someone takes Jedi Knight 2 and creates Dirty Wookie Lovin' involving a few dancing blue women, Princess Leia in her sail barge outfit, and one well-endowed Wookie...
If this Officially Sanctioned site follows Lucas Arts policy in any way it will be up for grabs once you post. If they borrow from your idea, you won't get anything for it. Sure you might get bragging rights, but that's about it.
Take a look at the Submission Release (.DOC) that you must submit when applying for an Art Position ( FX ARTIST 2 ) with the company.
For those without Word or Open Office:
2. I understand and acknowledge that because of LEC's position (i) it receives numerous submissions of artwork and music from third parties, and (ii) it is constantly developing in-house ideas, formats, stories, concepts, artwork, music, and the like, and that many such submissions and/or developments heretofore or hereafter received and/or developed by LEC may be similar to or identical to those contained in my Submission. I understand and agree that LEC's use of material containing elements similar to or identical with protectible property contained in the Material shall not obligate LEC to me in any manner if LEC shall have developed or obtained such material either heretofore or hereafter independently or exclusively from sources other than from me.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
This could be a cool thing just so long as the lucas guys started to release bonus packs kinda like the Unreal guys, that and if it hasn't already happend a new big fluffy pack(aka bfp3) for jedi knight 2 if there isn't already one......
Actually, we havn't heard a single word from LucasArts legal in two weeks (besides a promise two weeks ago that I would get a phonecall first thing that monday. I didn't so it was time for another release :)
- Ender
Leader Type Person,
ScummVM
But not by lucasarts, by whatever copyright they might step on.
New maps, more wookies, flying yodas, etc will probably be tolerated. How would they feel about Jedi Starfighter being turned into a Star Trek game?
But if someone did something like a total conversion mod, say about Dragonball Z or the such, and they gave it some name like Bid for Power, and it was really really cool - much better than any official DBZ game ever created - FUNimation would send out cease and decist orders.
This is a good step, but the modding communities options are still extremely limited.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I actually bought a stack of those old adventure games *because* of ScummVM. I had played a few of them (Maniac, Monkey Island, Zak McCracken) growing up, but didn't realize how many more of those great games there were.
I bought (just a few months ago) both Indiana Jones games, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, a Monkey Island or two, Loom, and I don't remember what all else. But the point is I bought them BECAUSE of ScummVM, and I wish LucasArts would just GET IT and leave the ScummVM folks alone. They're not stealing IP. They're not hurting profits. They're actually contributing to sales of older games. Why are they still being hounded?
Ah, well-- enough ranting. Glad to see the ScummVM folks are sick of waiting for LucasArts to make up its mind, and have gone ahead with the latest release of ScummVM without their permission. Good work, guys!!
Obviously what's called for here are some high definition Star Trek Mods.
Just imagine Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty and Uhura all flying around in an enterprise-skinned millenium falcon. It'll take the concept of nerd-to-nerd combat and make it a high artform:
JARJAR_85
Mesa no lika vulcans.
KIRK_237
Set Phasors to kill.
On another note, surely LucasArts realise that their new MMORPG universe will be 95% populated by naked Natalie Portmans.
LucasArts attitude towards fan developers (who are probably its best customers) is astonishingly short-minded and sometimes insulting.
I'm thinking particularly of their shutting down the Star Wars Modelling Alliance, a fan site devoted to developing (surprisingly good) models of Star Wars characters and creatures. The sheer amount of creative work that came out of people using those models was astonishing. In additional to publishing a lot of great freeware models the site would also post some of the "pictures" and "films" that people had made, etc.. Some were complete gems - one that sticks out particularly in my mind involved a few ATSTs rampaging around urban London.
Perhaps there is someone associated with the site here that knows better, but I was always under the impression that their persistent and long-lasting "hardware difficulties" which started shortly after E1 came out boiled down to letters from the legal department at LucasFilm.
It is a real pity that existing law is structured such that market-regulation can be used to crush non-market creativity.