Copyrights with a fresh IWAD

Now I'm mostly under the impression that you can't directly copy materials such as textures, sounds and sprites into your PWAD or IWAD, but if one were to create a new IWAD entirely, where would the line be drawn? Are modifications of sprites, say perhaps a new pistol with the doomguy hand, off-limits? What about slightly changed COLORMAPs? I'm aware of FreeDoom but it doesn't seem to shed all that much insight on my particular questions as it is constructed with a different goal.

Also, considering the Shareware DOOM is freely obtainable, does the same apply for the materials within? I'm wondering where the line is, what's more or less allowed slash sanctioned.

The Shareware iwad is still subject to copyright protection. It's not freeware, and id haven't made it public domain. It is supplied by id free of charge subject to certain stated terms and conditions (see the documentation that accompanies it).

When making a pwad, you are permitted to use material from the iwad subject to id's terms (notably that it must require a copy of the original game to work). If you want to release your work as a standalone iwad, you don't have this permission, and so absolutely everything within the iwad should be your own work from scratch, or material for which you have obtained permission from its creators (and possibly modified yourself, if permission to do so has also been granted).

Grazza said:
If you want to release your work as a standalone iwad, you don't have this permission, and so absolutely everything within the iwad should be your own work from scratch, or material for which you have obtained permission from its creators (and possibly modified yourself, if permission to do so has also been granted). [/B]

I see. So for exact clarification, there is to be absolutely no part of the original id software materials present in the IWAD for it to be legitimately considered as such?

Well, nothing that is id's copyright. Not everything is subject to copyright protection - it needs to be a creative work.

You might be able to argue that certain things in the iwad are not creative works, such as listings of entries that could be automatically generated. I think this is the way freedoom is viewing things like the texture listing, which needs to be preserved if the freedoom iwad is to work with existing pwads.

Creating your own IWAD from scratch and possibly the Doom exe version to go with it has got to be one of the greatest achievements. Even better if you somehow manage to make it commercial (and deserve the money). Is it possible to sell your own IWAD (together with an appropriately licensed EXE) as an indie game?

printz said:

Is it possible to sell your own IWAD (together with an appropriately licensed EXE) as an indie game?

Yes. If the IWAD is entirely new (as with Freedoom) and the code is a GPL source port, it can be sold. Urban Brawl might be considered an example of this, although it's based on ZDoom which makes it slightly legally dubious. Technically Freedoom is being sold on commercial Debian install CDs; there are also various iPhone games based on GPL source ports + Freedoom.

App Store + Freedom = Hell on Earth

Also known as Not-Freedoom