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Comment by happy_path | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, this kind of engine rewrites need original data files. Alternative art content would be awesome (a la OpenTTD). Could donations help this?

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I don't think this would be of interest for anyone surrounding this project. Requiring you to buy the original game keeps the publisher happy (to a certain level) and also gives you an argument for legality regarding the non-graphical content which might also be copyright protected.

If you are not using any of their content you are not violating their copyright.

But then you need to replace dialogues and storyline as well ? Also items/spells/mechanics can't be a straight clone ? So you would end up with a completely different game ?

You say that like it's a bad thing.

But it's also a massive increase in scope, and will likely make the end product less appealing/interesting from a nostalgia point of view.

Stat blocks aren't protected by copyright. Most game mechanics aren't patentable in the first place and Diablo patents would have expired.

Names fall under trademark law and even names that they've bothered to apply for (let alone all those rejected for various reasons) aren't difficult to change.

Story is a different question. The core story is incredible thin and derivative. Creating a new story wouldn't be very hard. That said, most players today would probably be much more interested in multiplayer anyway.

I'm thinking more along the lines of names + stats, and game rules in general, if that wasn't copyrightable I'd imagine nobody would have to license D&D to create a video game based on it.

All that is content too and it's in the game files.

They do already (see below) and they most certainly will do in the future once this project gets more complete.

In what sense are they breaking the copyright? Saying that the project needs some commercial files?

They haven't copied the code but re-implemented (in another programming language that didn't existed when this game was originally released).

The code is not the problem, nobody says that. But everything which was created as part of the Diablo universe can potentially be subject to copyright law.

For example here they take the original text from the game for the labels: https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2/blob/37ae98d81b79...

For sure most of the game specific data can be extracted from the game files but it's unlikely that there are no artifacts in the game code itself.

Fair enough, however I think that could fall on the "fair use" side of the thins (not a lawyer, nor American, but still).

https://flarerpg.org/

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