What's better open or patch?

Greeny · Post by **Greeny** » 10 May 2004 06:15

I stated this poll and thought that openttd would get better votes because you have better resolution

it would have to do with me having an 19 inch flat screen monitor

if ttdpatch could have better reslution or all ready (but i don't know) has i would us it

Maverick · Post by **Maverick** » 10 May 2004 07:24

I feel OTTD has more of a future.
Just recently, I have moved on, unfortunately being forced to dump many of my favorite scenario's, often I used them as bases to start new scenarios. OTTD offers a brighter future at the expense of a more painful present.
But, as I have recently called my scenario "The Next Generation" I feel OTTD really is the NextGen.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 10 May 2004 07:29

Darkvater wrote:The Patch doesn't work on non-windows

€5 says it does

While I might agree that OTTD needs to catch up feature-wise, maybe the devs should remember that it isn't a race - despite what they might think, some of us here do actually have some patience for these things

In the original game, too many things were hard-wired into the game - the cash limit, the English syntax in strings, the size of the map, the screen resolution, etc. I think the first priority before taking on new features which would only add more spaghetti to the mix should have been to "un-hard-wire" these things. I see that adding more than 4 types of rail tracks may cause a sledgehammer-style rewrite

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 11 May 2004 21:58

Darkvater wrote:The Patch doesn't work on non-windows

You can emulate it on mac with Virtual PC. The problem is that it's slow, really slow if you starts the music. On the other hand, OTTD are compiled to PPC so no emulation are needed and it doesn't need that expensive VPC

Darkvater · Post by **Darkvater** » 11 May 2004 22:19

/me Hands € 5 to ChrisCF

It is as Bjarni said not natively supported. Therefor slow, and special software is needed. OpenTTD however is native

eis_os · Post by **eis_os** » 12 May 2004 07:44

These topics make me sick.
OTTD isn't a alternative, and the devs don't even try to get an ok from Chris Sawyer nor Atari. They can't stay the consequences and want to hide behind foreign servers. Only my two cents about it...

Darkvater · Post by **Darkvater** » 12 May 2004 08:29

eis_os wrote:These topics make me sick.
OTTD isn't a alternative, and the devs don't even try to get an ok from Chris Sawyer nor Atari. They can't stay the consequences and want to hide behind foreign servers. Only my two cents about it...

grmbl...

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 12 May 2004 08:32

I agree with eis_os ... he is right and he is not boring ... he is saying very important things but you don't want to listen him ...

pasky · Post by **pasky** » 12 May 2004 09:12

Chris Sawyer is quite hard to contact and Atari plainly does not care at all. And even if it did, what is covered by the original copyright?

* The code. OTTD is a rewrite from scratch, fully in C, so although it mirrors TTDX extremely closely (even the AI is equally) this shouldn't be issue, it mirrors the algorithms but the code itself is different. No
issue.

* The game data. This includes

(a) Strings - this might be an issue but if that'd be the issue alone I'm not sure if they'd succeed at the court because the strings are quite simple and far from being a core part of the game; and you cannot spell "Road construction" that many
ways.

(b) Tables - this might be a bigger issue. It ranges widely from vehicle data through AI hints data, acceptance data or cargo data to palettes. This *might* be an issue but (1) the portion of data is not so big compared to the whole thing [could fair use apply here?] (2) some of the are largely trivial (3) I'm not sure if they were actually just taken from TTDX verbatim or reconstructed accordingly to how TTDX behaves - this matters big time.

So this point might be an issue. So far we might argue that our clone is anyway targetted only at legitimate TTDX users because you cannot play OTTD w/o TTDX data files. This excuse is only very temporary, though.

* The graphics and sounds. We don't distribute them. No issue.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a 100% authoritative source as I didn't do the original OTTD coding and certainly not a lawyer.)

eis_os · Post by **eis_os** » 12 May 2004 09:47

a) http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=5340
b) it's not how to look it's done, the code is mostly 1&1 copie only in c

c) I want to go to into the detail of the OpenTTD canal code, but I had a good proof so Ludde concede that he didn't started from scratch as he said before...

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 12 May 2004 12:08

I did some research (it's in one of the threads in the General OpenTTD forum) and I concluded that OTTD was probably illegal under UK law because of its one-to-one copy of TTD's code (just in C): I think it's pretty akin to a translation of a book.

Flavius · Post by **Flavius** » 12 May 2004 14:02

Unfortunately there are no bogeymen to be found re TTDPatch or OpenTTD. No agreived party, no pot of gold being made by the use of someone else's code.

Sorry guys, just poor abandoned TTO and TTD waiting to be rescued, and to once more be given a place in the sun.

Enter the friends of TT. They found copies on Abandonedware pages, they gave it new life, and there was joy once more across the land.

Bart · Post by **Bart** » 12 May 2004 14:59

Hmm... I can imagine the publisher of Locomotion to make a problem of OpenTTD in particulair. It might re-release TTD next to Locomotion (patched to work for Win XP, which seems to me is quite simple), in order to boost Locomotion's sales (has something to do with franchising, although I can't explain this well in English, but you'll probably know what I mean)...

Oh, and uh, Rollo; TTD wasn't poor and abandoned, currently still more alive then OpenTTD. Really, the OpenTTD team should consider a from-scratch game (e.g. Transport Empire, or TTU?).

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 May 2004 15:34

We are forgetting a very important detail.

Right now, OpenTTD is a rewrite of TTD, and as such may have legal problems.

When it's finished, OpenTTD will have even more differences from TTD than Patch TTD does. It will have subways, trams, elevated railways, all sorts of new vehicles, new buildings, new cargos, bigger maps, and a myriad of other little details. It will, in effect, be a new game, and in order to accomodate all those things, the data structures will have had to be completely and totally changed. If they did originate from the TTD data structures, which I'm not sure of, they certainly won't still be. It's kind of like the SCO vs. Linux lawsuit. Regardless of which side you're on, both sides agree that if in fact Linux was found to have used SCO's proprietary software, the only people in trouble would be those using the offending versions of Linux, because it would take all of a week for a new version to come out which had rewritten the offending sections. In effect, that's what OpenTTD is doing.

So, as I've said before, if you feel there's a legal risk to you, stick with Patch TTD. By the time OpenTTD becomes a genuine challenger to Patch TTD, that is, it includes all the Patch features and more besides, then ipso facto, it will be far enough away from TTD that there won't be a legal risk anymore.

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 12 May 2004 15:49

krtaylor wrote:By the time OpenTTD becomes a genuine challenger to Patch TTD, that is, it includes all the Patch features and more besides, then ipso facto, it will be far enough away from TTD that there won't be a legal risk anymore.

You say that, but http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise27.html

When the first segment of code is rewritten, the new code will be an infringing work if it is substantially similar to the original code, or may be an infringing derivative work if it is a reimplementation in a different programming language [<- probably the case]. That reimplemented first segment is combined with the remaining parts of the original program to form an intermediate version [<- currently happening]. Subsequent modifications produce another work. So when you have completed the piecewise reimplementation, you have a set of works, each of whose creation infringes the exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright of the original program.

I really don't want to get into this legal argument again - we've had it once - but I believe this to be the case.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 May 2004 16:15

Well, I read your link, and it seems like access to the source code is a major element. We know for a fact that nobody could have ever seen the source code.

Anyway, the point isn't whether the case is totally ironclad in this direction, it's whether it's totally ironclad in the other direction, so as to make it worth their while to bring. And it's not.

ludde · Post by **ludde** » 12 May 2004 17:22

eis_os wrote: c) I want to go to into the detail of the OpenTTD canal code, but I had a good proof so Ludde concede that he didn't started from scratch as he said before...

I never said I wrote the code from scratch. You must have a wild imagination.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 May 2004 17:27

Oh. I hadn't heard that anyone actually managed to get their mitts on a copy of the source code. Yes, you are right, this changes the equation more than somewhat.

pasky · Post by **pasky** » 12 May 2004 17:40

Did a post disappear from this topic or who said anyone saw the original source code?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 May 2004 17:46

I don't know if it's a good idea to continue this discussion. If it's going where I think it may be going, we may not want to have a record of it, and certainly not on the public internet.

I've made certain conclusions from the link Oracle posted. If Ludde knew how TTD worked, but didn't ever see the source code, then what he's done would appear to be analogous to using a clean room, since he knew the functionality of TTD (by playing the game) but not the detailed internals (never saw the source code). Which would make it legal, or at least arguably so.

If this doesn't apply, then it could only be because Ludde knew more about the internals of TTD than the clean-room methodology would allow. And if that's true, then it's not a good thing for us to know that.

I know I myself personally have never seen the original TTD source code and probably never will, so unless I know Ludde has, then I would have every reason to believe that OpenTTD is arguably legal.

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