Releasing edits of other games

[BennyJackdaw]

I haven't used the RPG engine much. I've been toying with the idea of making my own RPG, and I might even show off a character I drew for a potential protagonist, although it's just a random character I haven't grown attached to yyet. All I know is that if I do create an RPG, the playable characters are going to be outlandish and non-human, because I am always looking for games that have non-human characters playable: especially ones that are far outside the box.

So far, all I have done is some practice work on Nathan Karr's RPG OHRODENTS, where I added a new playable character and a new boss. The thing is that I am not sure if I am allowed to post edits of other people's games, even if I give credit. Also, the character I added is my Dragon Quest OC Arte. He's supposed to be a Fat Rat. Ironically, the boss I added is based off the Blue Dragon enemy of the same name.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

When it comes to posting edited versions of someone else's games, you'll have to ask the person who made the game. There's no general rule.

I would definitely not recommend uploading an edited version of someone else's game without their permission. Heck, even editing the game without someone's permission is a bit of a sticky situation sometimes (this is why I put passwords on pretty much all of my games these days, I've had people in the past open up my games and steal graphics from them without even bothering to ask if that's okay.)

[BennyJackdaw]

When it comes to posting edited versions of someone else's games, you'll have to ask the person who made the game. There's no general rule.

I would definitely not recommend uploading an edited version of someone else's game without their permission. Heck, even editing the game without someone's permission is a bit of a sticky situation sometimes (this is why I put passwords on pretty much all of my games these days, I've had people in the past open up my games and steal graphics from them without even bothering to ask if that's okay.)

I suppose if Nathan Karr shows up, he could make the decision. It's his game. Is there any way to Ping him?

[Spoonweaver]

I'm sure he'll pop up eventually.
Until then you can always throw caution to the wind and share your lovely creations.
If Nathan ends up not enjoying your Nathan_Mod.rpg then you can remove it all later.

It's always 100% better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

I suppose if Nathan Karr shows up, he could make the decision. It's his game. Is there any way to Ping him?

It's possible to send members private messages on these forums. I think the forum's even set up to send an email alert to you when you get a PM, so even if he's not actively checking the forums he should see it.

And if he doesn't reply to one of those, the Discord server (linked on the wiki) might be another option. I can't remember off the top of my head if he's been in there recently (I pretty much just pop in occasionally, read what's going on, and usually leave without saying much) but I know he has been on there at some points.

[kylekrack]

He's not currently in the Discord server, for what it's worth. You're still welcome to join it, though, Benny.

[BennyJackdaw]

I suppose if Nathan Karr shows up, he could make the decision. It's his game. Is there any way to Ping him?

It's possible to send members private messages on these forums. I think the forum's even set up to send an email alert to you when you get a PM, so even if he's not actively checking the forums he should see it.

And if he doesn't reply to one of those, the Discord server (linked on the wiki) might be another option. I can't remember off the top of my head if he's been in there recently (I pretty much just pop in occasionally, read what's going on, and usually leave without saying much) but I know he 8has been on there at some points.

I think he might have already told me it was all right on furaffinity, but I don't know for sure, so I'll wait to see what he says, and maybe give him a message.

[Nathan Karr]

I'm sure he'll pop up eventually.

Yeah. I can't stay away from the OHRRPGCE community, I just sometimes need a few days
Or a month
Or a couple years
Between appearances. And when I'm not active in the community, I'm still thinking about it and pondering over the game development opportunities I have with the engine. Basically my main reason for leaving is usually that I feel myself getting stressed out or angry or am afraid I've crossed a line and said something to upset others and take an unannounced break to cool off; after a day or two this flips around and I start to stress myself out over not knowing what the response was and I stay away because I'm stressed out when I left because I was stressed out.

I'm often relieved to go back and see something I was afraid might be incendiary got a much milder reaction than I was expecting. Usually after a year or two I come to the conclusion that what I said and believed was right all along anyway and I need to be braver at stating my convictions instead of taking a single pot shot and running away like a total sissy; sometimes I come to the conclusion that my reasoning was flawed or my methods of trying to share my opinion were needlessly hostile.

It's always 100% better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

This worked wonders for Jim Henson. "Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" was his attitude towards spoofing movies and TV shows, putting video clips in Muppet Babies, and covering songs.

Weird Al was basically the same way early in his career, just making parody songs and then sorting out any legal troubles afterward in the unlikely event someone raised a fuss. He asks musicians permission out of professional courtesy because he's a really cool and respectful guy rather than anything else (legally, parody songs are covered under Fair Use), and better acts (Nirvana for example) react in kind and feel it a sort of rite of passage to have him do a parody of one of their songs, some request to play or sing along with him, Michael Jackson famously gave him blanket endorsement to do parodies of literally any song he owned other than Black or White (which Michael felt was too important of a message to allow a cheap joke about overeating to float around). Musicians who say no (Lady Gaga's initial reaction to getting a request until her agents realized what it'd do for her sales, various rappers declining) tends to just say a lot about their ego.



Now, when it comes to releasing edits of games in general:
Tutohrial and Vikings of Midgard are both games directly made to be edited by engine newcomers. If you make something of them that's significantly different (Moron Mission, Antagonist, almost every single game by Taoki/Mircea, and Bing Bing Adventure all derived from Vikings of Midgard, for example) there's literally zero issue to take with that. These games often include/consist of free to use graphical and sound assets with the explicit and implicit permissions of reuse and alteration granted.

I'm pretty sure Fnrrf would have no issue with anyone releasing a game directly edited from his 8-bit graphics set's RPG files and their sample maps made to test out the tilesets rather than being a stickler for saying you'd need to export these assets and import them into a new game file (something I do in part because it's an easier way to change/unify the palette and re-order sprites within a given category while paring down the total number of, say, hero sprites to consist only of those I actually intend to use). TutOHRial, Trytuges, Snake Hallway, and OHRodents are all made using these sprites but none of them are made directly out of that RPG file for the parenthetically aforesaid reasons.

And now in this thread I'll give some further explicit permissions: I have no issue with releasing modified versions of any game I put online without a price tag (so far, all of them) and any sprite asset I've made for them is free to use, modify, or remix for other games. Music and backdrops I can't give universal permission for because I often don't make those myself anyway (technically some of the artists I've commissioned to draw Natalie or gotten gift art from could raise a fuss and demand I take the cropped, dithered edits of their art I use in my games out of TutOHRial for example).

The main reason I don't have OHRodents on Itch.io is because it uses music assets and characters that don't belong to me (the Rat Queen is from Beath of Flams, Radar is from a fan game of an obscure Commodore 64/Vic 20 game and his redesign belongs to Komera, Pikahcu is from Arfenhouse, Sugarman is from megaman sprite game complete with whatever ripped music he was associated with, and the list goes on). Fan games belong here and Castle Paradox, in my view.

[BennyJackdaw]

I suppose I could show up what I did, but I have to ask one thing... Of all the games to borrow music from, I noticed that one of the enemy themes is from Deadly Towers for the Nintendo. That's a curious game to borrow from.

Anyway, all the info is here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9629539/

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

I'm pretty sure Fnrrf would have no issue with anyone releasing a game directly edited from his 8-bit graphics set's RPG files and their sample maps made to test out the tilesets rather than being a stickler for saying you'd need to export these assets and import them into a new game file

Confirming this is 100% accurate. That was the whole point of releasing them as an RPG file -- so if someone wanted to use most (or all) of the graphics as-is they'd have them ready to go in a "template" type file with all the graphics but not much of any actual game data filled in.