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Warzone2100 / old-trac-import

Archived Import of (old) Warzone 2100 Trac
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data/base/texpages/bdrops/credits.png issues #3498

Closed wzdev-ci closed 12 years ago

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

resolution_wontfix type_bug | by pabs

Some issues with the new credits image:

data/base/texpages/bdrops/credits.png

The text in it is not translatable. Please remove the text from the image and render it at runtime using the available translations. Please use the system fonts to render it.

There is no source code for it. It is a rendering of a 3D model, I guess you are hiding the model somewhere. Therefore it probably can't be distributed because it is GPL (not listed in COPYING.NONGPL). Please include the source and create the image at build time.

Issue migrated from trac:3498 at 2022-04-16 09:50:19 -0700

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

stiv commented

Last I looked at the code (when doing randomized backdrop feature) there is no mechanism in place to display text (translated or not). We simply throw up an image. It is not a menu.

As for the image 'source code', as long as the artist has released the image under an appropriate license, I don't see where the tools used to create it make any difference.

As a practical matter, rendering a large image can easily take a day depending on the rendering options like lighting, fog, etc. Also, you need not only the model, but the actual settings and rendering options used in the tool - camera position, lights, render options, etc. Images are not code.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

dak180 edited the issue description

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

pabs commented

credits.png doesn't seem that useful anyway since the menu has a link to the website.

The tools used to create it indeed do not matter, but if others can't modify it in meaningful and useful ways I personally would not consider it free software. This is no different to someone compiling a .c file with Microsofts compiler and then only shipping the .exe instead of both the .c file and the .exe file or just the .c file, which prevents GCC users from modifying the source code and rebuilding the executable.

If an image takes all day to render, it would be acceptable to ship a separate tarball containing prebuilt versions of the images. On some machines it takes all day to build OpenOffice, but that doesn't mean we ship pre-built executables and withhold the source code.

I never said that images were code, but that doesn't mean an image doesn't have source.

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Games/Upstream#Source

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

Staff commented

You do know that all the other backdrops, that we have, don't have "source media" for it as well ?

None of the current backdrops came from Pumpkin, so you think we need to remove them all, unless we got the original material that the backdrops were generated from ?

It is all pixel art, nothing more. Like a font, just because it may have been generated via POVray, don't mean that the author of the font file has to give the POVray script so other people can generate more fonts, does it?

As for not being useful, I disagree, it serves a valid purpose.

It is the credits screen, we don't have another location to display where the game originally came from, and it would be quite silly to remove their logos and credits. They gave us everything, and the least we can do is show some gratitude.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

stiv commented

This is getting silly. An image is like a .c file AND an image is not code?

All our images and textures are in PNG format - an open standard. You can modify them to your heart's content. You can replace them either by using a file with the same name in the right directory, OR by modifying the filename in the source code (which we provide). Sounds pretty open to me!

I know of nothing in the GPL that requires the sources for in-game art (which may be multiple files) to be provided.

An aside: Ever create an image with multiple layers, textures and image operations? An executable can be built simply by running the compiler. An image is created from source files + a set of operations on those files. Distributing that set of operations would be problematic.

I admire ideological purity (yes, Stallman is a saint), but this is not a bug.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

Per changed status from new to closed

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

Per changed resolution from ` towontfix`

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

Per commented

None of the copyright holders have ever distributed art work "source" with the game, nor expressed a desire that this should be done. We have to be somewhat pragmatic when dealing with the application of a software license on something that is clearly not software.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

pabs changed _comment0 which not transferred by tractive

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

pabs commented

Sorry for the delay in this response, but your replies were quite disappointing and de-motivating, making me reconsider spending time packaging wz for Debian/Ubuntu.

As far as a credits screen goes, the image does a poor job, it doesn't mention the contributions of any of the many folks who have improved the Pumpkin version of Warzone 2100, including the very minor contributions I have made. For this reason alone I would suggest putting a "Credits" item in the menu instead of using this image.

This issue is not about licenses or ideological purity, but pragmatism. I thought you would be able to understand since the lack of source for the videos from Pumpkin means that they cannot be modified in useful ways and will have to be completely re-implemented instead of just changed and re-rendered. If you don't include the artwork source, you won't be able to modify the artwork in meaningful and useful ways. For example you can't do any of the following to credits.png:

I've been lazy about bringing this issue up because it wasn't obvious to me that you were witholding artwork source for the other images.

When I discovered that in 2.3.9 you added a new a video (data/base/novideo.ogg) in pre-encoded form instead of creating it at build time (the instructions for rendering it were small and took no time at all to run), I mentioned it on one ticket and basically gave up packaging 2.3.9 at that point since you fixed the issue in 3.1/master.

I'm trying to understand your position here, but the only thing I can think of is that you want credits.png to never be modified? Why else would you withhold or destroy all the elements that went into creating it?

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

vexed commented

Frankly, all this stuff about art don't fit into the GPL very well.

If the author used proprietary tools that are not available on anything else but his platform, how would that work ?

What about if they used licensed work to make the font / texture / whatever, and legally, can't give us the "source" unless we also get a license ?

In this case, the sole purpose of that ending screen is giving thanks to Eidos & Pumpkin for releasing the source/data to everyone. We do not have the source material for the ending screen, and we never did, it was just done by a forum user, and he made it for us when we requested a new ending screen to fix the issues with the last one, just like all the other backdrops that were done.

What about new sound effects, if they used whatever proprietary program to create it, and had licensed synthesizer samples to make it, then how exactly are we going to get the "source" of that ?

Yeah, I know, don't use it, but that would be extremely shortsighted IMO.

I suppose we could go around and asking the authors of the backdrop to make it something other than GPL, if they are still around, and if they respond. If not, then there isn't much we can do.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

vexed changed _comment0 which not transferred by tractive

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

pabs commented

STOP FRACKING TALKING ABOUT THE GPL AND LICENSES!!! THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE FRACKING GPL!!!

Proprietary tools are no problem as long as there are free tools and their input/output is compatible with the free tools. Like a C++ file can generally be built with Microsoft's compiler or with GCC, sometimes GCC can't build it because it has inline Microsoft-style assembler. Say a game that uses a non-free audio engine, that would be no issue once someone either ported the code to OpenAL or wrote a free version of the audio API.

If they used proprietary fonts/textures to create the artwork, you are screwed and can't distribute the artwork, unless of course the license for those fonts/textures allows use and distribution in that way.

Thanks for the info about where the image came from, I expected as much. In future, please think about what would be a better form for modification of your data before accepting contributions. I would expect that you wouldn't include precompiled libraries in the source and I don't think you should use generated files (including pre-rendered video, pre-rendered 3D models or pre-rendered text) as the source. I wrote this guide so game developers can make better judgements when choosing their data sources:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Games/Upstream#Source

As far as audio goes, yeah it is quite problematic and I'm having similar issues with chromium-bsu. We had a discussion about this on #debian-games and I was surprised to discover that some games actually have source for their audio. So it is possible to have audio that is possible to modify in useful ways, but it takes some work and audio knowledge:

<guus> I'm glad I now have a Makefile in starfighter's git repository which creates sound effects and music from source.
<pabs> guus: what are you using for the music/sound "source"?
<guus> For music: abc for the score, csound with fluidsynth opcodes for rendering it.
<guus> For sound effects: just csound.
<guus> http://sourceforge.net/p/pr-starfighter/code/ci/HEAD/tree/music/
<pabs> thanks. I want to replace the chromium-bsu music/sounds. for the music there is currently a MIDI file plus a WAV, both produced by an electronic keyboard
<pabs> cool, I shall have to try that sometime
<guus> Ah yes, you mentioned that before. But I think I tried playing the MIDI file, and I don't think it resembled the WAV in any way.
<guus> But otherwise, you should be able to use the Makefile and one of the .csd files to render MIDI files.

One other thing I wanted to add, the GEGL project from the GIMP folks can store images as a raw image plus a set of transformations. I expect this would make it easy to modify images in really useful ways.

wzdev-ci commented 12 years ago

pabs commented

Um, sorry for that outburst :(