FreeCraft Forks Offer RTS Alternatives

TekPolitik writes "Blizzard's attempt to shut down the multi-platform freeware RTS, FreeCraft appears to have backfired. There are now two replacement projects - Project Inferno and Stratagus. The new sites are making some effort to catalog all the games that use the new engine. Stratagus lists Wargus, Aleona's Tales and RoboVasion. Project Inferno lists ShadowConflict." The Stratagus FAQ page constructively explains: "Stratagus aims at being a generic realtime strategy engine, with no special focus on Warcraft2."

Comments

Re:Reasons for shutting down FreeCraft

[mugnyte]

Why would the engine functionality mean anything? Games seem to repeat models quite often. Perhaps if there was an official list of the unique aspects of WC that people cannot copy without infringing on Blizzard's copyrighted/patented/trademarked IP (notice, IANAL). Without that, its kinda vaporous. Even if they could produce such a list, its questionable if those aspects alone make WC a unique game, and repeating them or any part of them "confuses" a game player into thinking they are playing a Blizzard game.

MS has lost to "Lindows" and Fox just lost to "Fair and Balanced". I've never heard of any law that says you can't imitate an existing behavior by writing it yourself, unless there's a unique algorithm involved, the GIF compression. Did WC employ a unique algorithm that had a patent?

mug