Legacy 1.23b story

[Vhailor]

Thoughts?

I think the easier approach would be to release some official resources and reference docs, and leave it to modders. As I understand it, there are already groups aiming to reboot FFXIV 1.x on their own, without any assistance from SE whatsoever. Why not release the assets and such, boost their efforts? The whole thing would be nearly free-of-cost, and might even turn into a useful test bed for new ideas as modders play around and implement new things that could apply to modern-day XIV.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think the easier approach would be to release some official resources and reference docs, and leave it to modders. As I understand it, there are already groups aiming to reboot FFXIV 1.x on their own, without any assistance from SE whatsoever. Why not release the assets and such, boost their efforts? The whole thing would be nearly free-of-cost, and might even turn into a useful test bed for new ideas as modders play around and implement new things that could apply to modern-day XIV.

SE would never do that, because that would allow players to create their own FFXIV V1.0 game. Yoshi-P's response kinda means that SE would really have no recourse to take down any V1.x server emulator, since he basically said "we threw it away". That said any working server emulator would run afoul of copyright laws, and has been tested with WoW and previously Battle.net itself. It's not the server emulator itself that is really the problem, it's the fact that you'd need people to commit copyright infringement to acquire the 1.x client, since as everyone knows, you had to pay money for the game client. It was never free.

Now what SE could do as a sort of middle-ground. They could release an authorized complete 1.00+1.23b patch set as a disc image for people who have the 1.x license, as this information is obviously still data they retain. Anyone who has a paid license to 2.x or later could "buy" access to this 1.x game client. This gives people a legitimate way of obtaining the game client without inducement of copyright infringement. After all, us 1.x players did pay for the 1.x game so we should have the right to obtain and use the client, even if the server's been gone for years. Whatever people do with it (Machinima, single player conversion, limited multiplayer, etc) SE would just ignore unless it violates the Materials License in the same way they'd not approve if it was ARR/HW/SB (So no unapproved SE assets, no hate/porn mods.)

The loser of at least one WoW server emulator was ordered to pay 88 million dollars in 2010. So it is unlikely anyone who has the means of producing a working server emulator would even be willing to publish working game binaries without some kind of approval from SE that SE will not sue them. I'm aware of what exists already, and what exists only lets you explore an empty world and invoke some of the cutscenes at the inn. Completely contextless.

I'd like to experience it. But the best way would probably be as Vhailor suggested: release more source code so private servers can form. It wouldn't be the same if my character was illustrated as a Derplander fill-in. I couldn't play 1.0 despite owning a copy someone gave me because of system requirements so. Would still be nice to at least experience the story, and after watching a lot of the Speakers Network videos, to walk around the areas (particularly Coerthas) because I like that sort of thing.

SE would not release the source code because as Yoshi-P said, they threw it away. I'd hope that a company like SE kept a versioning system around so that it would be possible to actually see the source code, but it's unlikely that the client and server were produced as separate things, and rather they were built together, and thus the entire build process tools and original assets would be needed to compile the game, and that's just not a viable thing even if SE could get all the copyrights clearances approved. They may own the game, but ask yourself why the materials license always calls out specific tracks that aren't to be used.

Speakers Network utilizes one of the server emulators in a working state to basically allow themselves to take video/screenshots of areas, had they access to a working 1.x game, many of these areas would have NPC's in them, let alone monsters. On the plus side it also lets them explore areas that were in development.

At any rate, what will eventually happen, SE approval or not, is someone will come up with a way to play the 1.x game solo/pseudo-solo. SE is a lawsuit happy company and tends to stomp on any kind of fan production/sequel/prequel if it starts to look like anything more than proof-of-concept. So I doubt anyone would release such a thing without some requirement that they have a fully patched 1.23b game client just sitting on their computer to side step the copyright elephant.

[Vhailor]

SE would never do that, because that would allow players to create their own FFXIV V1.0 game. Yoshi-P's response kinda means that SE would really have no recourse to take down any V1.x server emulator, since he basically said "we threw it away". That said any working server emulator would run afoul of copyright laws, and has been tested with WoW and previously Battle.net itself. It's not the server emulator itself that is really the problem, it's the fact that you'd need people to commit copyright infringement to acquire the 1.x client, since as everyone knows, you had to pay money for the game client. It was never free.

I wasn't commenting on how likely this is to happen. Just because something can or arguably should happen, doesn't mean it will.

I was commenting about which path would be the simplest to take from SE's perspective, in regards to offering players the chance to experience the 1.x storyline. If they did it internally, there's a big effort around it, there's a risk to corporate reputation if people rip it to shreds or SE overcharges for it or makes changes people don't like. Server resources. All that good stuff.

If they release it for modders, it's... well, have fun, we'll enjoy seeing what people do with it.

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Also, out of curiosity, you do realize that other games have allowed modders, right? All of the legal challenges are very solvable; it's been done for over 25 years. Typically there's permission to use the available assets and tools in any way desired, but with the caveat that users aren't allowed to charge for it (basically a Creative Commons license of sorts).

The only barrier here is SE's willingness to be open with their content and release some version of the 1.x assets and toolkits used to develop them. And it IS a large barrier, and you are right in that SE probably will never take this course of action - but the additional 'challenges' you've mentioned are pure nonsense.

[KisaiTenshi]

Also, out of curiosity, you do realize that other games have allowed modders, right? All of the legal challenges are very solvable; it's been done for over 25 years. Typically there's permission to use the available assets and tools in any way desired, but with the caveat that users aren't allowed to charge for it (basically a Creative Commons license of sorts).

The only barrier here is SE's willingness to be open with their content and release some version of the 1.x assets and toolkits used to develop them. And it IS a large barrier, and you are right in that SE probably will never take this course of action - but the additional 'challenges' you've mentioned are pure nonsense.

That is the point. Square-Enix has generally sued people out of existence for even announcing that they were thinking of making any unofficial sequel or prequel. They are as bad as Nintendo for this kind of thing.

Unauthorized modding usually comes with the caveat that the project may disappear at any time, and usually charging money or trying to crowdfund development of it is a guaranteed way to have the project die.

Authorized modding of certain games by certain publishers has to be done either with the blessing of the company who owns the copyright and trademarks, or the original developers release the source code to the game engine, but not the assets, which still requires you use your legally purchased game discs.

The original source code to games like Simcity (Micropolis), and a port of Star Control 2 (The Ur-Quan Masters) were basically done that way. They created new assets for those games so they work with what was essentially the source code to the original game.

The game engine used by FFXIV V1.0 is the Crystal Tools engine. In order to "open source" FFXIV V1.0, they would be need to open source the tools they used to build FFXIII, FFXIII-2, Lightning Returns, FFXIV v1.0, Dragon Quest X. So open sourcing the client is unlikely not something that SE would do since it would allow modding of those games as well.

Likewise you'll see a lot of references to middleware when developers talk about Crystal Tools, so it's very likely that the client and server share significant amounts of code, so open sourcing that is probably not something that can be reasonably done without developers from SE putting significant effort into making what they release not rely on anything proprietary that they can't release, or do not have the license to release.

As much as I would like to play 1.x again on something that is capable of playing it, it's just not going to be possible without SE giving their blessing to do it, and providing at least the netcode and LUA scripts to work from. That means someone has to spend time and money figuring that out, and as we've seen before, SE would rather just repackage a bad port than ever consider releasing the source code.

With XIV V1.0 there is nothing for SE to lose except some PR embarrassment. The 1.x game is not better. People are not going to prefer to play 1.23b over SB. This is not a "WoW Classic" kind of situation. At worst SE would gain subs from the players who are interested in the storyline and pick up the 1.x story and want to continue it into the present client. At best, players who played 2.x would go back and play 1.x to fill in the story like it was a prequel.

But ultimately Japanese developers don't really get "open source". Often what you get are really dense license agreements that prohibit you from doing anything meaningful that wouldn't be equal to a doujin (fan) game that you can't charge money for.