is it illegal to copy doom1, utimate,or final

is it illegal to copy doom1, utimate,or final doom 's maps to remake them and place them in doom2?

No, unless there's copyright infrengment involved. I've seen doom levels copyed to quake 2, and some dude copyed all the doom 1 levels into doom2 and re textured alot of the stuff to make it look better. So I think your safe, But don't take my word for it, ask a mapper here, because I'm not really sure.

If ID wanted, they could sue you for copying the green armor stand out of the beginning of E1M1. I doubt they will though. That said, a reconstruction or look-alike should pass without a problem. An *exact* cut+paste I wouldn't even try.

Perforator said:

No, unless there's copyright infrengment involved. I've seen doom levels copyed to quake 2, and some dude copyed all the doom 1 levels into doom2 and re textured alot of the stuff to make it look better. So I think your safe, But don't take my word for it, ask a mapper here, because I'm not really sure.

cool... where can I get the wad? the one with the better looking doom1 maps in doom2 i mean.

Lüt said:

If ID wanted, they could sue you for copying the green armor stand out of the beginning of E1M1. I doubt they will though. That said, a reconstruction or look-alike should pass without a problem. An *exact* cut+paste I wouldn't even try.

id is not going to go through the trouble of trying to sue some kid who has no money for copying their levels, textures or whatever. If another software company tried the same thing, I'm sure they'd be all over them like a wet bag of shit. As long as someone isn't making a profit or engaging in illegal distribution of complete games, it won't even show up on their legal radar.

technically it is illegal and id could sue you, although the chances of that happening are incredibly incredibly slim. cdrom.com will refuse levels which are based on original doom levels.

Stphrz said:

id is not going to go through the trouble of trying to sue some kid who has no money for copying their levels, textures or whatever. If another software company tried the same thing, I'm sure they'd be all over them like a wet bag of shit. As long as someone isn't making a profit or engaging in illegal distribution of complete games, it won't even show up on their legal radar.

Another good point... :)

Doubt if it's even illegal as your not exporting to another game but utilising ID's own software, isn't Doom1 included on some Doom2 cd's nowadays? And Doom1 DID have a shareware version, your wad could only be played using Doom2 so I can't see a problem. ID didn't ban cdrom.com from hosting wads containing original levels, as I remember it, ID were asked if they objected about the Dwango wads and never replied, so cdrom.com took it upon themselves not to risk it?

Perforator said:

No, unless there's copyright infrengment involved. I've seen doom levels copyed to quake 2, and some dude copyed all the doom 1 levels into doom2 and re textured alot of the stuff to make it look better. So I think your safe, But don't take my word for it, ask a mapper here, because I'm not really sure.

Well, did they copy the Doom levels to Quake 2 using a converter, or re-make them from scratch? If you take a level from one of their games, then re-make it to a new game from scratch, they don't mind. But, they are *highly* against taking the original and copying it directly to another game (say, Quake to Quake 2), and have been known to contact Quake map authors in the past for doing that.

I'm not sure what their stance is on Doom to Doom 2, but I do know that they consider Quake 3 and Team Arena to be two different games in that regard (ie., you can't take anything from Team Arena and use it in Quake 3, and vice-versa). I can try asking Paul Jaquays about it if you're really that interested in knowing. It might be kind of interesting to find out, actually.

ID's always too bust making a game to care...but don't do anything too suspicious, ya know.
About the conversions between formats, 3dRealms got away with making WAD2MAP and WAD2ART and placed it on the Duke3D CD, so they must not really mind about that.

1. If you copy DooM1/Ultimate/Final into DooM2 for your own use I doubt there are any legal issues.

2. If you copy the stuff and distribute it to your friends through private channels (i.e., diskettes, etc.) there could be some legal issues, but I doubt anyone would care.

3. If you copy the stuff and try to upload it to cdrom.com, chances are that Ty Halderman (the archive manager) would reject the maps.

4. If you copy the stuff and put it on your website for everyone to download, there would definitely be legal issues (i.e., the distribution of copyrighted material). Would id Software mind? Probably not, but don't quote me on that.

5. Same as 4, except that you try to sell the levels. Definite legal issues, and if id Software found out about it... (see Stphrz's reference to sack of wet something or the other).