Learn AoE graphics style and then autogenerate assets

[kindl]

Hello there. We cannot use the original AoE assets. Have a look at this work https://github.com/junyanz/pytorch-CycleGAN-and-pix2pix which can turn zebras into horses and vice versa using learning. I thought it would be awesome to learn the graphical style of AoE assets and apply it to pictures of houses, castles and other buildings to generate game assets. The next step would be, to use it on satellite data to create maps similar to real world regions. This idea is a bit crazy and still out of reach, but openage is all about crazy ideas.

[Birch-san]

We cannot use the original AoE assets.

do you mean that:

• it's an intractable technical problem
• the law prevents us ?

[zuntrax]

It's a legal problem. We can use them, but we can't distribute them. In the long run, we want to have our own asset pack under a free license.

[Birch-san]

do we face exactly the same legal problem with the AoEII assets also?

[Birch-san]

are there legal implications for distributing assets generated by a program whose training set we are prohibited from distributing? would the training set be under source control?

[TheJJ]

I have no idea how that is interpreted legally, but if my brain learned the style and I created new assets in Blender (wheeee #833) then it would be ok. So if my artificial brain learned the style it should be ok, I would say.

Then again there's stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschmacksmuster and inspiration vs infringement, artwork copyright, ...

The learned models would be under source control and the created assets are new, but inspired by the original work, and contributed to the openage-data repo.

[VelorumS]

Yes, the AI totally has human rights.

[zuntrax]

I'm pretty sure "Geschmacksmuster" doesn't apply here, because protecting all the assets that way would be rather expensive. We're probably only talking about usual copyright stuff.

[heinezen]

If the assets are created totally from scratch without using the original ones and if the AI only applies the style to it (instead of copying it), we shouldn't have severe legal problems. It is very difficult to secure a "Geschmacksmuster" because the style you want to protect has to be unique.

[elnabo]

Even if we have nice new graphics, the game data / gamelogic from the base game is still needed.

[castilma]

@elnabo, that surprised me. I thought we wouldn't need any original game data once we are done with the assets. But I didn't think about non-media data. Are you sure we can't distribute the corresponding nyan files?

[elnabo]

But the nyan data would be built on copyrighted data (for AoE2, AoE1, ...).

[castilma]

Well, I'm not a lawyer. I hoped that would be ok.

[TheJJ]

I think it is okay. This is based 0. on intuition and 1. on http://www.xbox.com/en-us/developers/rules

[Birch-san]

You can't reverse engineer our games to access the assets or otherwise do things that the games don't normally permit in order to create your Items.

[TheJJ]

We didn't, others did. And so far we didn't accept Microsoft's licensing offer. Also, we're in Germany where reverse engineering for compatibility purposes is always allowed, unless we signed some contract that forbids us reversing. (related murrican law)

[coffenbacher]

And so far we didn't accept Microsoft's licensing offer.

What does this mean??

[TheJJ]

That means that we did not make any use of the offer presented in http://www.xbox.com/en-us/developers/rules and therefore we don't have to comply any rules. Currently, the project operates completely without shipping any possibly copyrighted content.

I hope it remains that way when we create our own replacement assets, we'd have to ask someone that knows those things™ better though.

[heinezen]

@TheJJ The copyright laws applied to a project are usually the ones were the data is hosted or distributed. So we could (in theory) always fall back to relocating the repository to a country with the appropriate laws.

It's also advantageous that we a) are completely non-commercial and non-profit b) don't use anything from the original code base and c) are currently only supporting operating systems that Microsoft doesn't support with their product.

I've looked into the topic of EULAs a bit and it turns out that they are not legally binding in the EU. As long as we don't crack the game, disassemble and distribute it, we are totally fine.

[janisozaur]

Actually, in EU you are allowed to reverse engineer a product in some cases. See this: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-208_en.htm

[TheJJ]

The only thing I'm currently unsure about and it would be awesome if somebody investigated is: when we create replacement assets in the same style, and replacement data with similar or equal names and values (a fucking Pikeman is a Pikeman that has 4 melee attack), is that any problem? I.e. can non-special names ("villager...") and values (hp=10) or the graphics style be subject to funny copyright laws?

[heinezen]

I can answer this:

• Names: OK. AoE2 uses mostly hostorical (Chevalier,Mameluke,Paladin) or generic names (villager, scout, swordsman)). They are not covered by copyright law.
• Values: OK. They fall into the category of ideas and are usually not covered by copyright law.
• Replacement assets: Depends. If we copy the exact same style, it can be a problem because copyright covers the looks of a game. We are allowed to create replacement assets and even autogenerate them, but the question is whether we will have the right to distribute them. We may have to alter their looks a bit.

Relevant: § 69a-69f UrhG insb. §69d Abs. 3

[Birch-san]

hey, it finally happened
https://twitter.com/neilsonks/status/1657502130595328000