Abandonware pictures/things collection.

[grzelu]

Hi everyone,

I went up with idea of collecting sets of pictures (containing heroes, npcs, items and all other things) from abandonware games. I searched if there had any project of this kind already started, but I couldn't find anything.

The main goal is to collect graphics, representing objects from diffrent games and to put them in one place, for example for use by game developers (imagine roguelike-like game composed of tiles from hundreds of games).

There are several problems as well. I searched for any software or even techniques for retrieving graphics, but hardly found anything (in some cases set of tiles is hidden somewhere amongst game files, but not every game that we're interested in must be tile-based).

To make things clear: it is not collection of screenshots, but of single things representing, moreless, words from dictionary, like "sword", "hero", "house", "tree" etc.

What do you think about that? Is anybody interested in participating in such project? Thanks for your opinions, criticism, ideas, solutions and attention :)

[RRS]

...for example for use by game developers...
"Abandonware" itself isn't a legal term. We may consider it harmless, as these games are no longer sold. It doesn't mean the copyrights have expired. What you've suggested sounds like extracting content from old games to and distribute it as free-to-use stock graphics. While it's again harmless in some uses - like mods based on popular franchises (think Star Wars conversion for Homeworld) - wouldn't it be cooler to work on something to create new, not just preying on somebody's work?

[Eagle of Fire]

Like RRS said, there is a copyright infringement issue in this project. The only way you can get around it is if you make a work of fiction that you label as a parody.

Many sprite comics on the net do so and are in turn protected from lawsuits... Maybe that's why you think you could get away with your own endeavor.

Also, I would recommend that you look on sprite sites. Many games are already completely or almost completely skinned out. Most of those sprites are from console games but you can sometimes find sprite sheets from PC games.

[RRS]

Some people may think I just wanted to sound negative.

Think it this way:
count how many, say, "Dune 2 remake" projects we have. How many people put their effort into this.

Can they sell the fruit of their labor? No.

Even putting this on your CV/resume looks odd. "I was reverse-engineering a game to create modern version of it, using old sprites and samples". Well, wouldn't it sound better if you just made a new game that only looks&feels like that old one? Noone can forbid you copying certain style.

Remember Betrayal in Antara? It looks like upgraded Betrayal at Krondor, despite being in completely different world, as Feist wasn't working with them anymore. So they made a workaround and cloned their own version of his fictional world.

Jedi Knights(TM) swinging their Lightsabers(TM)? You're mistaken. We're Warrior-Monks of Athuba swinging our Glowswords.

Seriously, tweaking with someone's else work is OK only during your learning phase.

Besides I'm whining because so many times I was looking for people to join one of my projects, only to hear no response, while seeing many are working on such "Star Wars fan stuff" things, while they could be making something more original - or at least not tightly tied to a license you don't own.

[grzelu]

Thanks for your response. First of all I want to make it clear that is hobbyst project, which isn't purposed to give any financial profits (not to be put in CV as well, but this may happen, who knows).

Against the argument from creativity: that is true that I draw much worse than guys from Lascaux ;) But that is not the point. We live in the times of mixing. Mixing is concerned as full-valued artistic strategy. Mixing music is very common, but some greatest composers mixed music as well. At "Era Nowe Horyzonty", biggest and most prestigeus movie festival in Poland, there was whole block of movies made from older movies (what a skill needed to combine them into entity!). Even in literature there were many trends based on mixing other writers novels, poetry, etc. With computers (against philosophy and literature) we deal with combinatorical creativity, anyway (due to the fact that counting machines are finite state machines). In my opinion MMORPG based on islands - each made of "things" from different games is extremly creative, mostly because something like this doesn't exist... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_creativity. But as I said: it's not the goal. I only want to make collection of graphics/tiles/sprites.

[The Fifth Horseman]

You will find many such websites exist. I am somewhat interested in ripping graphics/music/other content, but because of the technical challenge (figuring out the formats used and successfully implementing a conversion algorithm) rather than to actually make use of them.