Legality of a Doom Duke3D mod?

Doom has been redone in Duke Nukem 3D many times now but as far as I know, they were only several maps long.

Recently, I started on a project to do ALL maps, from Knee-Deep in the Dead, to Plutonia, and it's coming along quite well. I am currently working on E1M6. But something has occured to me, along the legal side of this.

As I understand it, when I have finished all the maps and release here and on Duke4, I have given the user an alternative way of playing the IWADs, effectively piracy.

Question 1: Am I correct?

Assuming the answer to question 1 is yes, then (Question 2) can I avoid this by somehow programming the game to require the 4 IWADs to run?

If not, the project will be abandoned and only Episode 1 will be put out. (Like cDoom)

Your help will be appreciated.

well it's not exactly a direct conversion so I would assume you're okay. You might want to avoid using Doom textures to be safe, and using look-alikes instead.

thanks :)

I use Duke monsters/textures/items only, although the city sky is really crap :P

First of all, please set descriptive titles for threads you create.

To answer your actual question: technically it's copyright violation because you're copying the levels. In practise that's only an issue if anyone (ie. Id) cares, and I doubt they do.

Sorry Fraggle.

Would still be nice if I could make it need the IWADs though.

Just out of curiosity, how are you building the levels? Completely by hand or with a wad-to-map converter?

This project of yours falls well within the boundaries of "Fair use". It even seems to fall completely into "Parody" within "Fair use". Parody does not need to mock or make fun of the subject to be considered parody. In this sense it would be "Blank Parody" which means to take the original form of the work and present it in a different way.

You could write an installer which requires a v1.9 IWAD. I'm not good at programming but that was just a thougt.

TimeOfDeath said:

Just out of curiosity, how are you building the levels? Completely by hand or with a wad-to-map converter?

I use Wad2Map, but because it goes all weird, everything has to be textured. While I try to use similar textures to Dooms, sometimes I use different ones. I actually started months ago by hand, but got to E2M3, found out about DosBox. The previous versions looked bad anyway :P


Thanks NiuHaka, much appreciated :)

ASD, thanks for the suggestion but I'm not entirely sure how it would work :/

what advantages does the build engine offer over modern doom ports?

Pirx said:

what advantages does the build engine offer over modern doom ports?

Non-BSP-based architecture, for one. You can just move vertexes in-game and it will work just fine. That, and its portal-based nature. Sure, EE has portals, but it's still BSP-based.

Now, I'm not sure I understand this whole BSP business. There are moving sectors and whatnot in source ports, how is that different from moving architecture in Duke?

Pirx said:

what advantages does the build engine offer over modern doom ports?

For recreating the original Doom maps? Absolutely none.

In a more general way, there are things the Build engine does that modern ports can't, not even ZDoom.

Watch this to the end, the most impressive effects are not in the beginning of the demonstration:

The trade-off is that the portal system is slower than Doom's more static BSP system. That means that absolutely huge maps (e.g., The Hag's Fingers in Sunder) are pretty much impossible on the Build engine even with modern hardware; whereas you can get acceptable performances with well-optimized Doom ports.

For maps the size of the original Doom IWADs, this won't be a problem of course.

GoatLord said:

Now, I'm not sure I understand this whole BSP business. There are moving sectors and whatnot in source ports, how is that different from moving architecture in Duke?

Very different. First, polyobjects are not moving sectors. The "inside" of the polyobject is not a sector. If you noclip inside a polyobject, you won't be in the polyobject sector since it doesn't exist, you'll be in the normal underlaying sector. Sectors do not move at all.

Secondly, the Build engine is able to have individual vertex move, deforming the shape of the sector. That isn't possible at all.

Why not just use the Quake engine?

DukeDoom (as I've named it) is not a TC, so I am not making it because of improved engines although I do use deep water (not submergable), slopes, and ambient sounds. The only disadvantage I can think of in this case is the lack of Tag 666 and 667, which made E1M8 really annoying to make.

However like I say, it is not a TC, so you would be fighting Mini-Battlelords instead of Barons and Cycloids instead of Cyberdemons, as well as Duke3D textures instead of Doom's.

And all this time I thought that Zdoom and such brought Doom up to speed with Build.

There's some really awesome portal effects in that vid. Makes me sad that there isn't really an equivalent to GZDoom for BUILD.

The polymer renderer adds some really cool lighting, but as far as I know that's all it does, and needs like the best video card in the world to run >.<

Offtopic: will it be vanilla compatible?

ASD said:

Offtopic: will it be vanilla compatible?

it will not be compatible with Vanilla Duke either, solely because there is 6 episodes and 3 of them contain 32 maps.

I can't wait to play Plutonia in Duke3d :D

Slippy_Pig said:

I can't wait to play Plutonia in Duke3d :D

Thanks Slippy, tbh neither can I, been fantasising about Go 2 It, Odyssey of Noises and Hunted already. 95 levels to Congo..

EDIT: Actually there's a bunch of misaligned skies in E1M5 and E1M8 (I did E1M8 first), which can't be seen in the map editor..really bugging me. Sometimes misalignment doesn't look too bad, depending on the texture. Skies aren't among those textures >=@

Can't wait for release if it happens :P But I'm sure there is no harm recreating the maps from the Doom IWADS into DN3D. Can't image E1M1 DN3D'd :D

Thanks TB :)

E1M1 looks alright, although I might go over the texturing in the nukage room. And I guess that in terms of legal stuff, it's not Doom, it's Duke3D with Doom's levels. And Duke3D itself is already modified, I've shuffled enemy characteristics about a bit. I took Commander (Revenant) and made a palette 19 variant for the mancubus. The variant has a laser minigun. Can't be bad :P

Gez said:

In a more general way, there are things the Build engine does that modern ports can't, not even ZDoom.

[...]

The trade-off is that the portal system is slower than Doom's more static BSP system. That means that absolutely huge maps (e.g., The Hag's Fingers in Sunder) are pretty much impossible on the Build engine even with modern hardware; whereas you can get acceptable performances with well-optimized Doom ports.

thank you.

well, this portal tech was marvelous when duke3d came out. iirc underwater was a separate sector, and you moved seamlessly between these sectors when diving and surfacing.

and the editor was intuitive and fun. i and a friend built a few maps with it, (one a recreation of doom2 map1, which grew to silly dimensions over time), all aimed at a friend who used to LAN with us and either camped or ran for the exit. so, camping spots and exits became elaborate traps, using cameras, crushers, teleporters, invisible bombs and gas containers. the best one was an exit, very obviously guarded by crushers, a lava pit and tripmines, so we knew he'll try to reach it no matter how often he died... only to be teleported into a fish tank in which he drowned miserably, while we entered the execution room through a secret to gloat over him. it was the only time i dabbled in mapping, and later we returned to doom as we liked its more serious approach better. anyway, i'd love to find these maps again.

Pirx said:

thank you.

well, this portal tech was marvelous when duke3d came out. iirc underwater was a separate sector, and you moved seamlessly between these sectors when diving and surfacing.

and the editor was intuitive and fun. i and a friend built a few maps with it, (one a recreation of doom2 map1, which grew to silly dimensions over time), all aimed at a friend who used to LAN with us and either camped or ran for the exit. so, camping spots and exits became elaborate traps, using cameras, crushers, teleporters, invisible bombs and gas containers. the best one was an exit, very obviously guarded by crushers, a lava pit and tripmines, so we knew he'll try to reach it no matter how often he died... only to be teleported into a fish tank in which he drowned miserably, while we entered the execution room through a secret to gloat over him. it was the only time i dabbled in mapping, and later we returned to doom as we liked its more serious approach better. anyway, i'd love to find these maps again.

Hahaha, that sounds incredible. If you find the maps, I'd like to take a look at them!