Reply 20 of 21, by Rekrul
wrote:There was a guy in the community who was working on an Android port of the game. He'd probably release it for free or for a really small price. And he would have done the job properly. Unfortunately the C.E.O. of WeGo Interactive (the company which now owns Re-Volt) wrote him an e-mail, in horrendously bad English, ordering him to stop.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you're writing a port of a copyrighted game, keep your mouth shut until the game is finished! All that announcing it does is tip off the copyright holder that you're doing something that they might object to, and even if they don't tell you to stop immediately (or even if they say they're OK with it), they could pull the rug out from under you at a moment's notice.
On the other hand, if you complete the port and then release the finished game for free, the worst that will happen is the copyright holder will send you a legal nasty-gram telling you to take it down. You comply, safe in the knowledge that once it's been put on the net, it will live on forever. Worried about patching bugs and such? Release the source code as well and someone else will take over the project.
Gaming history is littered with examples of people who publicly announced a modern port of an old game only to have the copyright owner force them to abandon it.
wrote:I have been criticized for using DOSBox in my installers for games that ScummVM supports. I try to explain that often can get more optimal results with DOSBox. I have come to the conclusion that many who swear by ScummVM over DOSBox because of sound haven't a clue how to properly setup the sound.
One feature of ScummVM that I absolutely love is the ability to increase/decrease the game speed at will. True, it only seems to work on Lucasarts games, but it makes traveling around the maps and entering the door codes in The Dig so much nicer!
