The Future... spin-off: Intellectual Property and resource sharing

[Epistolary Richard]

Spun-off from this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=62981

The new game engine and set-up of Rome Total War meant modders could produce even more impressive results than before - however the amount of work that had to go into large-scale mods exploded exponentially. Medieval Total War 2 - with its multiple skins per unit, death-move animations and terrain integrated cities will only add an ever-greater workload to modders who wish to change every aspect of the game.

Collaboration, both within a team and between independent modders, is only going to become more and more important as few if any of us are going to be able to do it all on our own.


One of the pitfalls in collaboration, however, copyright. Unless a modder expressly states otherwise, any work he creates - whether it be a skin, a model, a map, a unit card - cannot be used in another mod made available for public download, it cannot be compiled together in packs, it cannot be developed or made compatible with future versions, it cannot be changed in any way and then made available again.

This means that if others do want to do any of those things then they have to get the permission of the creator. This can be difficult if the creator has retired from the community and is no longer contactable to give his permission.

It's also difficult where a creation was contributed to by several people, each building on the work of the other, as permission has to be gained from all of them.

More complexity is added when someone creates something, but based on the research of others.


We are not short of examples from the RTW modding community. The Modding Legions skins included work from at least four different artists.

The popular Mundus Magnus map was nearly lost to the community, because its creator wasn't contactable when BI was released - therefore no one could convert it either to 1.4 or 1.5.

A huge number of the early RTW texture is now lost to the community because the creators are no longer around. This also means they can't be converted for MTW2 work. Alternatively, people just have to ignore the copyright and hope their acting within the 'wishes' of the creator even though they're not expressed.

Normally, in such cases one member takes it upon himself to breach the copyright for the good of the wider community, but it's not fair for one person to have to expose itself for something many want to happen. After all, the major loser in all these cases is always going to be the community who aren't going to have the same number of quality mods to play with. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the rights of the creator - for to do so would remove much of the incentive for talented people to release their work if they know it is going to be taken and reused against their wishes while the senior members of the community do nothing.


So what can be done? Here are some things we can consider, but other suggestions greatly encouraged:

- a site-wide 'some rights reserved' presumption, so creators have to expressly state that others cannot use their work, rather than having the default being that nothing can be done.

- an 'expiration' date, either absolute after the first time something was published or if the creator has not been active nor replied to a request for permission for a certain period of time.

- a register of self-declared retired/declared inactive modders who's work can then be reused with proper credit.

- greater guidance for modders as to the different licences that can be offered when a creation is made available for download, with boilerplate paragraphs that they can pick'n'mix as they wish to express their intentions properly at the start - perhaps with an easy symbol or colour guide which links into a fuller text.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

This topic is a prime example of how modding resources need to be pooled collectively so that they are of use to individuals looking to improve their experiences with RTW.

I've already mentioned in this topic that I'll make units available as individual downloads for those that don't wish to install the mod, but would rather play around with a few new units at a time. Obviously not all of the units, skins, sprites, UI cards etc included with the mod have been created by myself, so I'll only make my own work available.

As pointed out, some modders created their projects a while ago and have since moved onto to other things from RTW. This is frustrating because contacting these members is exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, unless they return to the community and give their explicit permission for their work to be used in other projects.

This idea of sharing modding knowledge and resources is crucial: if Vercingetorix never created his x-pak extractor tool, where would we all be?

[Dol Guldur]

Whilst these concerns are valid, it is also important to consider that some mods are very similar and shared work can destroy the uniqueness of a mod.

Perhaps, some might think, it would have been wise for me:tw, lotr:tw and fa:tw to actually share the same map...it certainly would have saved a lot of time and effort. But this would detract from the uniqueness of each mod and the pride of the teams. Likewise with units etc.

We've had a simple rule for a long time: what any team member creates belongs to the mod. They can't walk off with it. They will remain credited of course, but the model, texture, coding etc. belongs to the Mod.

Having said all that, the enormity of the task of modding is great and the problems ER raises certainly do need a resolution.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

We've had a simple rule for a long time: what any team member creates belongs to the mod. They can't walk off with it. They will remain credited of course, but the model, texture, coding etc. belongs to the Mod.

Interesting point there DG, I'm in a different boat to yourself with regards to this aspect of modding work. Since I'm a one-man team, any generous donations, submissions, requests etc are fully credited to the author rather than to the mod. The reason for this is because I did not create the aspect under consideration, so cannot take the credit for this aspect that has been created / modified etc.

So technically, anything which is not my own work needs to be fully credited before any release (including beta versions) are made available for download. This is so that the mod user is completely aware of which aspects of the mod were created by a particular author, and to ensure these aspects are distinguishable from one another.

[hellas1]

Hello Modding Community!

This is wonderful! Discussion of mod logistics!

I'm 200% convinced that if modding teams collaborated with one another in exchange of ideas, people, info., etc. ALL mods proposed would be completed.

The 3d artisans, coders, historians, moral supporters, etc. could make EVERY mod come true!

There, in my opinion, is no truly valid reason as to why mods should "die."
Not with the resources I've witnessed here in this forum.
Not acceptible.

The stuff is here folks, let's share. Let the walls down, Drop all egos.

Don't "compete," co-operate.

Sincerely, Hellas1

[Kagemusha]

I think there is already going on lots of sharing in private conversations between Modders.For example other modders have helped out our team very much,like The NTW2 team for giving us the original musket firing effect,or Vercingetorix helping us out with building problems with BI 1.6 or little while a go when we were suffering from Map related problems we had a chat between modders from FATW,RESGESTAE,Bysantium Totalwar and Ran No Jidai that helped a lot debugging our map related problems.I think that the sharing of discoveries is essential so we dont have to all make the same mistakes all the time.
About the MTW2 i think that the most mods will be Medieval based like most of RTW mods were based on the time frame of RTW,but making total covnversions to it will once again need more work force.But for the good side of things,i also believe that the release of MTW2 will also bring in more new modders to fill the ranks of the modding community.