To: Banaboy about devilution HOT 14 CLOSED

Analogies certainly have a use in making something easier to understand by making a comparison. The problem with a comparison however is that things are not comparable in every way. If you cannot see the point that I'm making, let me try harder: A book analogy is fine, but it's of limited use in this case since the two objects of comparison don't actually compare well. But if you insist - let's take this a little further:

Devilution is about documentation and accessibility. Imagine that your family still owns an old book from, say, 200 years ago. Perhaps it's a really nice story in there - but there's a problem. It's printed in a blackletter type and people today usually have a really hard time reading the gothic print. Devilution is not about copying the text and re-publishing it in roman type. It doesn't give you the content, you need the Diablo CD (or diabdat.mpq). What they do is figuring out how to read that old book and explaining words that have become so uncommon today that many people don't understand them anymore. So if you have the book, you can enjoy the story again. Same thing for people who bought and rightfully own Diablo: They can probably play the game again even if they don't have that Pentium Pro with Windows 95 anymore (after compiling the source code themselves that is). For anybody willing to see there's absolutely no straws involved there, sorry.

from devilution.

@girng You're completely right, this project totally has to go away! Reversing an executable is illegal. Otherwise any competitor could just reverse your product, create an imitation and start selling it. And that would mean you'd lose money! Oh wait - Blizzard doesn't sell Diablo 1 anymore?

Then how could this project hurt them financially (irrespective of still running servers)? And what would be your interest in taking away what promises to give a lot of people their youth back? There are other companies that have even open-sourced the engine of their old games (e.g. DooM, Duke3d, etc.). And DooM for example is even still sold! Blizzard never did this and there's of course no obligation to do this (there's a lot of effort involved in preparing ancient source code for release to the public). But what's your problem with fans trying to make an exceptional game playable again? Not having had any Windows machine for over 10 years now, I'm very much looking forward to being able to run D1 natively and without Wine on my platform of choice (FreeBSD in this case). Just take a look at how many people are watching this project or contributing to it. There's a lot of people out there who love the project and luckily it seems like Blizzard is going to tolerate it (which is great). So if you hate Devilution just go somewhere else. The net is big enough for all of us.

Thanks to galaxyhaxz and team for makeing this a dream come true.

from devilution.

Your book comparison has a few problems.

1. Diablo is not a book and galaxyhaxz did not simply copy all the characters that form the text of said book. Actually Blizzard never published the source. So sticking with this example: galaxyhaxz did research on how the book was written and made available to the public what is needed to re-write the book yourself. This is quite a different case.

2. I'm an author myself and I do value intellectual property. However in the end it's all about money (whether you like it or not). In my country as an author you of course have the right to either publish your work or keep it to yourself. However in the moment that you decided to publish it, the public has a right to acquire it. As long as your publisher sells it, nobody is allowed to reproduce it. If your book goes out of print, though, everybody is allowed to reproduce the material in order to make it available to other people. You can even charge money for the paper and toner. The only thing that you're not allowed to do is overcharge and make profit from it. This makes a lot of sense. The equivalent regarding gaming is the DMCA. Galaxyhaxz is very passionate about keeping Diablo 1 alive on modern systems and he's giving it all away (unlicense!) without any profit for himself.

Just so much about books and computer games as I'm a bit in a hurry right now. I would guess that galaxyhaxz won't close this if you behave decently and actually continue to discuss the matter like you're doing now. Sometimes it's not as much about what you say but how.

from devilution.

Battlenet is still up , but you cannot buy the game.

from devilution.

Yeah, Battle.net is still up. Which means the game cannot be discontinued by definition. @galaxyhaxz

from devilution.

As the saying goes, don't feed the troll.

from devilution.

I'm not trolling at all, lol but if you think I am, whatever ;)

from devilution.

Doesn't matter about money, it's about intellectual rights.

See this s/s:

But I am not going to continue to argue and write out a post, when @galaxyhaxz will just lock the thread (when he hears something he disagrees with).

from devilution.

"Diablo is not a book".. Lol, he's using it as an analogy. You sure are grasping at straws. This is hilarious

from devilution.

Btw, at @kraileth I'd love to debate with you on another forum instead of github (scared of galaxy locking the topic). That's why I'm not replying to every point. If you have a site, reddit thread, etc where we can debate lmk. I do appreciate your response and at least willingness to talk about it though.

from devilution.

@girng:

You can still access and play on the battle.net servers. That means the game is not discontinued.

Your information looks a bit dated: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20763796285

Qndel
18 posts
May 3

Hey, during all these years the battle.net in D1 was flawless, however something has broken recently. I can create an account, log in, write on chat, but the buttons to join/host a game are greyed out - can't click. When I'm connecting to battle.net, a red warning window appears saying that my internet sucks or there are problems with receiving UDP packets on port 6112 -this is a lie, my internet is awesome and I've opened the port 6112. In Diablo 1 the battle.net served only to match players so they could host the game themselves therefore I see no reason why it doesn't work if logging in/chatting works. Could you please have a look at this?
Thanks in advance
#this happens for all players
#link to the same thread in polish on eu
https://eu.battle.net/forums/pl/bnet/topic/17618921875#1

The thread you presented seems to confirm this:

jaySLAYER
9 posts
Apr 8

i got the game wokring fine but when i connect to battle.net i get a message saying your connnection is blocking udp traffic port 6112 it will let me join b net but only chat

joining and creating games is diasabled

I haven't verified this myself. Had you yourself?

@girng

You posted a source of just a random forum support tech agent. That's not proof that the game is discontinued.

And so do you (post statements from anonymous gamer:)

In the end, the state of support in Battle.net servers doesn't matter much – the game got unsupported via other means:

• no official demo download ;
• no official support for video palette issues in DirectDraw since Vista/w7 ;
• no official way way to buy it ;

If you trying to bash someone, try starting with sites like MyAbandonware – the whole .iso file is hosted here:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/diablo-3it#download

Good luck.

from devilution.

@sskras I'm not trying to bash anyone. I'm just saying this repository is most likely 99% illegal, and Github shouldn't support illegal software. But as I said, I'm not going to continue to debate in this topic because galaxy will just lock the thread whenever he disagrees with something.

And, btw, just because those things don't exist, no demo, support video, or way to buy it, doesn't mean it's NOT still under Blizzard's IP.

Diablo is under Blizzard's IP and still has rights to the game. Discontinued or not.

from devilution.

Ultimately, only a judge can decide on the legality of this project as it is not as clear as you might think. Just look at the ReactOS project which has been in development since 1996.

from devilution.

@girng , the matter of IP was already described by @kraileth here:

I'm an author myself and I do value intellectual property. However in the end it's all about money (whether you like it or not).

Should Blizzard renew selling of Diablo1, this project would allow them to gain more income. So for first you should take it to the judge, as @madhed says.

from devilution.