Is it illegal to use a abandonware game's textures?

[Sniper-Goth]

Something that i was thinking today, it is illegal or it would need permission of the authors for use their textures in other games?
This could make Red Eclipse's texture library bigger.


PS:If it is against the rules, please delete the post.

[Boognish]

Red Eclipse would probably stay away from use of abandoned games textures because their copyrights are too hazy.

[Sniper-Goth]

And if the abandoned game is in Public Domain, does this change anything?

[ballist1c]

Abandonware might not be the best option; we seriously need to look into licensing for a lot more Cube 2 textures (if they are 512x512).

[arand]

Something that i was thinking today, it is illegal or it would need permission of the authors for use their textures in other games?
This could make Red Eclipse's texture library bigger.

Abandonware is normally officially speaking illegal (usually works in practice as long as nobody is looking), so likewise for their textures. So that won't do for RE, unfortunately.

As for "public domain", it's a complicated thing, likely it's not something that can be relied on, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... lic_domain for example). There are however licenses that emulate what one tends to think of as "public domain", for example CC0 or the WTFPL...

So for it to be ok to use, you really need a good statement from the developers/publishers with a good license, which is rare, I'd say extremely rare.

If you have means of contacting some copyright holder, do go ahead!

[raiden]

Another option could be to use some of those textures as a spring of inspiration and redo similar ones, NOT the same, from scratch. Gimp could be a useful tool. This way should be legal and gives new indy and hopefully original material in result. This would need some time, but it could be worth the effort.

[ballist1c]

Another option could be to use some of those textures as a spring of inspiration and redo similar ones, NOT the same, from scratch. Gimp could be a useful tool. This way should be legal and gives new indy and hopefully original material in result. This would need some time, but it could be worth the effort.

Hm, could be a nice project for break next month - give me an example of ones I could do, and I'll see what happens

[raiden]

Nice ballist1c. Making textures is an own special topic and I'm also still learning about it. Some questions may pop up: how I can made them seamless tileable, or could I use normal maps and how ? - for example.

Because of that and to make it less complicate I recommend to take a look into the packages folder of the RE related game Sauerbraten (or RE's texturefolders also indeed). It uses many nice texture packages which could inspire you to find related ones for RE. There are metal themed, technological and nice ones for natural environments like desert or forest. Another advantage are the included readme files there. They inform mostly about the license agreements with the authors and give hints and tricks about their development in parts or some links.
(Older commercial games also compress their textures mostly in special formats so far as I know. So it's not possible to take a look into them without an additional tool.)

[hulk]

There is no such thing as 'Abandonware', so yes it would be illegal, sorry.

[fawstoar]

You'd get a more solid answer were you to specify the game in question.

[Sniper-Goth]

You'd get a more solid answer were you to specify the game in question.

Well, i was thinking of the games Turok 1,Strife,Witchaven,Hades 2, and maybe Dark Salvation.
Looks like theres no way to get them for Red Eclipse, because some of the companies don't even exist anymore for contact.
But i could rip some of them to see how it would look into the game, or even try to "remake" them.

[raiden]

Mmh, textures from these games should be a bit low resoluted. A kind of "remake" sounds still for the best way to me.