Slashdot Mirror
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Using Unlicensed Assets From Doom 3?
segafreak writes "ShackNews reports that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of Chernobyl may contain unlicensed assets from other commercial games such as Doom 3 and Half Life 2. Though this has yet to be confirmed by any of the developers involved, if true this would be somewhat worrying. 'Responding to inquiries made by Shacknews, id Software CEO Todd Hollshead stated: I've seen a post on a web forum that claims DOOM3 assets are used in another game, but we've been working hard on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as our own internal project and have not had the time to fully investigate or otherwise verify that the claim is true. Only from what I've seen on the Web, it's concerning. However, it may turn out to be nothing.'"
OMG, that could be true. I'm pretty sure S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has brown walls too!
I read the internet for the articles.
It seems that Half-Life 2's normal maps and water are used. For those too lazy to read TFA. Wouldn't it be ironical if the reason Stalker finally turned from vapourware into a real product is that they "borrowed" HL2 and D3 assets...
I say let the corporate execs fight this out the new-fashioned way...
An in-game cage match.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
From the linked screenshots, the alleged borrowed assets appear to be shaders or bumpmaps and such. That is, tools for the map developer that the gamer doesn't "see" per se. Perhaps, like sound effects, companies license the use of such "tools"? I know I've heard the same gunshot noise in 500 movies and video games, and that crazy death scream...
This is very troubling if true. It will mean that id can go after anyone who uses black in their games...
While the Mapcore post that first made the alert was made on April 1st, I have remained skeptical mostly because of the very generic nature of the naming systems. How easily could two different companies come up with nearly identical images called "grate7" or "fanblade." I dabble in texture making a little and, for me atleast, all water normal maps turn out nearly the same, so I don't think I see the HL2 connection. We do know the developers are fans of HL2, though, as they refer to it directly in the game. I am significantly less skeptical about the Doom3 connection, however, once I noticed a certain file entitled "hellgate1"
Demented But Determined.
I think it is clear that STALKER's all-black textures were stolen from Doom 3. I also suspect that some of the dynamic darkening techniques were stolen from Doom 3.
And then enjoying one's own property.
There's been some question as to whether or not this content is actually used in the game. Theory goes that in order to build up a quick proof of concept to shop around to publishers they did use content from Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, but it has all since been replaced with original content. The original files remain due to typical game developer laziness/bad organization that results in old, unused development content going out (a la Hot Coffee).
Of course that doesn't mean it was ok to steal content for even just their concept, but it's quite as bad as if that content is used in the retail release.
They should have embroidered the images with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous DMCA laws.
A later and wilier developer should send the images backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sue id Software for infringement of the same laws.
/sig
What could have happened, judging by the images, is that both teams used the same 3rd-party procedural texture generation tool (or public domain source code) and both kept the default "seed" for the random number generator rather than plugging in a new number.
I know I haven't been able to sleep since I heard this story! S.T.A.L.K.E.R., might have (may have, even), used some highly generic normal-mapping textures that the user doesn't really see, from other games!!! God damn that is worrying!
Think of enourmous damage that has been done to the Half Life and Doom franchise by such a thing! I was looking forward to the next Doom game, but it is all ruined for me now.
The next thing you know, people will be sampling a half second loop from other people's songs, adding other musical elements over it, and turning it into a new piece of music! And children will be encouraged to cut pictures out from magazines, and glue them on another piece of paper to create a new piece of artwork... IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS EVEN!!
Won't someone think of the childre... er, the big multinational corporations!!!
I know I've heard the same gunshot noise in 500 movies and video games,
There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies. I once went to a talk by an audio guy from Lucasfilm who showed a collection of about thirty short clips from movies made over several decades, all with the same ricochet sound. It was recorded in the 1940s, used heavily during the Western movie and TV boom of the 1950s, and picked up from old Westerns in later years.
Stock content. You don't honestly believe that every game shop has it's own team rendering water and grabbing those renders, transfering them into displacement maps and putting them on to each puddle individually, do you?
There are dev-shops and kits for specifically this purpose. You buy trees and procedurals by the dozen. It's perfectly likely that both teams bought the same stock water procedurals. F.e. I bet the horses in LOTR and 300 are all from the very same rig.
No news here. Move on.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
With the small exception that it actually came out a few weeks back and, with some exceptions, is a relatively polished game. True that MP isn't nearly what many had hoped (8+ coop anyone?), but that doesn't detract that despite the long development cycle... it's a real game, not vapor.
And, IMHO, it's a pretty good game at that. So, yer post is absolutely true... with the exceptions of comparisons to Daikatana and DNF. Oh and the bit about the boards... they're pretty jumping, actually.
So other than the inaccurate reference to those other two games, and the comment about the dead forums... man, you're right on!
#SickNotWeak
able to finish the game that fast.
...
No wait, you said S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I use the GPL as a placeholder.
Steal Textures And Later Kreate and Eventually Resell?
[ducks]
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This story is several days old now. I heard a rumor on Gamespot PC forums that the textures were open source, but I haven't found a link to confirm...
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the mod that makes Doom 3 fun!
Wow. You found a funny way to plagiarise a passage from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy about a funny way to plagiarise a passage.
How meta of you!
Or, say this was an indy developer they had copied textures from. Would you still say the same thing then?
The point I'm trying to make here is that the Doom 3 engine is available, and id wants people to use it. They also need to make money to continue developing games, so they LICENSE the engine. If the STALKER people wanted to use parts of Doom 3, they should have paid the reasonable license fee. It's that simple. Oh, and your analogies are completely flawed.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
There's a lot of bogus info on this thread. The assets used do appear in game - the flashlight lighting texture and the water texture are easy to see match Doom 3 and Halflife 2 /in game/. They're not from a common texture pack or common procedural generator, they're original works swiped directly from Doom 3 and Halflife 2 complete with intact file names. It's not really surprising this happened, as during beta, STALKER massively swiped Counterstrike sounds and models the same way for the multiplayer component of the game with the intent of replacing them during development. What probably happened is they forgot about some of the stuff they were supposed to replace and shipped it.
It doesn't look like anything really major was swiped (so far), but it's enough to cause them legal issues with Valve and Id. It's also a good example of why you shouldn't ever use placeholders that would be a disaster if you forgot to replace.
How completely unfair to the developers and investors of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be publicly accused of using code/assets from other products, but not have the accusations substantiated! Even if they're found innocent, this bad press has already done the damage.
If I was Game World/THQ, I'd be pissed!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
it looks like ironic is defined as ironical. Lol.
r onic&resource=Webster's&quicksearch=on
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?action=search&word=i
The flashlight texture in D3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are the same.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Several years ago, a game came out about 9 months after one I'd worked on, with some of their map tiles being identical to the ones in our game. After a bit of discussion with the other company, it turned out they'd outsourced most of their art development, and all the copied tiles came from one of the art houses "best" artists. A bit of digging revealed that this guy was making a fine living, by copying graphics from other games and tweaking them. He'd done it to dozens of games before we caught him. He got fired from the art house he was working at then, but I'm sure he was back in business in no time.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs have been caught out in the same way.
Gordon's PDA
and his ugly mug
Gordon's corpse has some nice loot on it. Oh uh *^*^*^*^*^*SPOILERS*^*^*^*^*^*
...too late? Anyway, he's found dead in the game.
so what if people want to make a videogame in which you fight, say, a Shambler, a Headcrab and Blanka? should they not be allowed to use the original bitmaps/meshes? i dont see why one should not be allowed to use whole characters intact, as long as it's clearly a citation (which is not the case here, but still) other posts compared the issue at hand with the sampling of rimshots etc in popular music, which i think is correct. one should, however, also consider the equivalent of 2 live crew STEALING whole synthieloops from kraftwerk, as lots of goodness will come out of such a practice =)
In Soviet Russia, STALKER steals from you!
according to this.
8 945
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3