Atari Woes

Slink · Post by **Slink** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 08:42 am

Rock on, Willis. Good luck, and godspeed (whatever the hell that means).

If and when Atari is to sell of that code, it would be nice to know where it goes.

Transfusion (or qBlood) has been in a magazine before. I bet we could do it again.

We could point out the release of otherwise-obsolete code such as that of Duke3D and Shadow Warrior, in contrast to the Blood source. It would be a sad thing if the code were discarded. I'm actually suggesting this as one plausible solution.
-Slink

Post by **Willis** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:37 am

Escorter wrote:I can't imagine why.
And I think commenting out some lines of code is not a hard work.

And tell me: is there any progress of your campaign, or it's dead?

That campaign was run by frightfan, and later Tim Hale, but seemed to die off around 2001 when they finally at least got rights to use Blood's data in their project qblood, under condition that "Blood" not be used in the title. Hence the Transfusion project. I'm trying to pick up where that campain left off, but its harder to track some of these people now days since none of them work for Monolith anymore, and Atari just doesn't like responding period.

Slink, yes, it would be tragic if the code were just discarded. But I wouldn't call Duke3Ds or Shadow Warriors code obselete... nothing open source is obselete if somebody doesn't want it to be, thats the entire point

Slink · Post by **Slink** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 08:14 pm

Willis wrote:Slink, yes, it would be tragic if the code were just discarded. But I wouldn't call Duke3Ds or Shadow Warriors code obselete... nothing open source is obselete if somebody doesn't want it to be, thats the entire point

Well, yes, that was my point. I think I said that incorrectly. The code is usable if it is released, but the original application of it is becoming obsolete, so if the code is not released, then we are left with obsolete software.

-Slink

Fresh_meat · Post by **Fresh_meat** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:42 pm

Is it not possible to buy the Blood source code ? I know that Blender source code was openned like that, so it's maybe a solution.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:17 am

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Post by **DustyStyx** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:41 am

Anything is possible. The trick is actually getting the attention of some one within the corporation. The easiest way to do that is to offer them a solution that will make them money... at lost of it.

As a note, Blender's source code came at a price of €100,000 in 2002. Remember the basic version of Blender was always free. NaN only charged for the full package of Blender, which was only really useful to a select few developers who wanted to use its engine to make games. Blood is a potential cash cow for Atari, just like so much of the IP it has under it's belt. If Atari is in the mood to sell, I doubt that we could get it for anything less than $120,000 (€100,000), more than likely it would be in the range of $250,000. But that is just a rough guess.

If we had 5,000 Bloodites willing to pitch in $50 it might be possible... A slight reality check tho, we have less than 200 registered users on the forum. That's not to say we are the only ones who care about Blood, it's just a number of us who care about Transfusion &/or the Blood community we have here; and who wanted to register on the forum.

As Willis mentioned whatever Atari has rights to may or may not be the whole package. When Blender was secured, the source code had to be changed before they could release it; removing the game engine core the proprietary version of Blender had as a feature. Effectively they could only offer what NaN had already been offering for free anyway. If we bought the rights to Blood from Atari, we would be buying the rights to use the title Blood, and we would be buying the right to PUBLISH Blood again. Anything beyond that would really depend on the contracts Atari has with Monolith and 3D Realms.

Fresh_meat · Post by **Fresh_meat** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 01:34 am

I doubt that we could get it for anything less than $120,000

Probably but Blood's source code is now obsolet without any technologic secrets (I heard Blood's maps was crypted but the software for uncrypt was free so even the algorythme is open)

Post by **DustyStyx** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 01:38 am

Fresh_meat wrote:
I doubt that we could get it for anything less than $120,000
Probably but Blood's source code is now obsolet without any technologic secrets (I heard Blood's maps was crypted but the software for uncrypt was free so even the algorythme is open)

It's not really the source code we would be buying though, it would be the right to use the Blood title. Rememeber Atari is not the game developer, it's just the publisher. It's more intrested in the name, not the technology behind it. I may be a tad pessimistic, but I've always found that when it comes to the value of something, even my most liberal estimates have proven to be far to conservitive.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 01:44 am

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Post by **DustyStyx** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 02:03 am

Escorter wrote:But we don't want to own Blood, we only want to (re)license its technology.

I doubt that'd be a possability. There is nothing in that arangement that would make Atari $$$.

Monolith is currently in the Horror genera mood. They want to make more F.E.A.R. games even without the F.E.A.R. title, they might be interested in regaining their old Blood title.

Here is something that may work. If Monolith (or maybe Jason Hall) would be willing to go 1:1 with the Blood community in regaining the Blood title, they would be in a position to release the source code.

Atari wins by getting money for their failing corporation.
Monolith wins by geting the Blood title back, and the rights to make a Blood III. (assuming they even want this)
Blood community wins by getting the Blood source code and possibly a Blood III.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:23 pm

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Post by **Willis** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:10 am

Well, Blood 2 was on a different engine, so game code was definatly handled differently. They could do it, but would have to clean up various lines of engine related code. I would be thrilled if they'd do this, though I don't see it happening.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:25 am

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Fresh_meat · Post by **Fresh_meat** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 01:41 am

Yes with a Blood SDK and JFBuild it's posssible but the real question is :
Why Monolith wants to spend time and cash for a old stuff like Blood ?

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:08 am

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