Work on Maddog Williams

rrebello · Post by **rrebello** » Mon May 19, 2014 4:10 am

Greetings everyone,

As I was saying a few days ago in #scummvm on Freenode, I'm willing to work on adding support for The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian to ScummVM out of personal motivation. Since most devs were apparently away when I introduced the topic on IRC, I've decided to bring the discussion to the forum so that more of them will hopefully give their opinion on a few points which concern me.

First of all, for those of you who've never heard of the game, Maddog Williams is an adventure game released in 1991 by Game Crafters on Atari ST and later on Amiga and PC. Info about it as well as download links (the game has long been turned into freeware) can be obtained from the creators website.

Maddog Williams strongly resembles early Sierra games like King's Quest I, albeit without mouse support. That means it's not technically a point-and-click adventure game, although I'm of the opinion that the concept could be relaxed a bit in this case as all of the other elements pertaining to 2D adventure gaming are present in the game. That being said, my first concern is related to the possibility of acceptance of such a work by the ScummVM team. What are your views on that? I'm perfectly aware that I could always create a fork off the main project and publish my work independently under a compatible license, but that's not a route I'd like to follow.

The second point of concern lies in the license accompanying the game, which states that it can be freely used, copied and given to others as long as, among other things, it is not "reverse-engineered in any way". I'm not really sure if that actually applies to the case of REing the game engine for the purpose of "achieving better compatibility", which is the focus of the work being proposed. Hence my concern. Once again I'd like to hear your opinions on that matter, especially since I'm not a US citizen and am not fully aware of details regarding these legal issues.

Well, thanks to all of you who have read this far and my apologies for the somewhat lengthy post.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Mon May 19, 2014 6:07 am

I can't speak for the technical part or for the devs at all but history has shown that if you could get permission from the rights holder to use (but not share) the source code for the implementation in ScummVM you wouldn't need to break/bend any licenses through REing.
(I'd wait for sev to answer here, he has done most of such negotiations with companies in the past)

Maybe they have concerns on another level if ScummVM supports their game...you'll never know?

On the other hand, if they don't know about ScummVM yet and see what achievements could be reached with supporting Maddog (like, when they use the same -updated- engine for the second part -if that ever surfaces-) they'd i.e. doesn't need to create specific platform ports and so on...

Anyway, first thing would be to get in touch with the rights and source holder...as i said, talk to sev about that.

Seldon · Post by **Seldon** » Mon May 19, 2014 3:10 pm

I wouldn't say that Maddog resembles Sierra games in any way... However it is an adventure of some sort and maybe somehow it would be justified to include it in scummvm.

EDIT: Just ignore what I have written. I was stupid and understood the title of the game as Mad Dog McCree...

Post by **digitall** » Tue May 20, 2014 9:20 pm

FYI for future reference:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/adventure ... f-duridian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adven ... f_Duridian

The developer's website is here:
http://www.gamecrafters.com/

The history of the game's development is here along with an e-mail address which may be more useful than the general enquiries address on the main page, if someone wants to approach the developers:
http://www.gamecrafters.com/gamecrafter ... story.html

It should be noted that as the front page makes clear, the game is freeware and already uses DOSBox for running on Windows and OSX. Also, the game is dedicated in Memorium to one of the design team who died in 1999:
<snip>
As long as Maddog Williams lives on, so will a part of Richard.
</snip>

The original developers are thus likely to be amenable to preserving the code within ScummVM and may even supply the original source code and should be contacted prior to any thought of RE work on this.

rrebello · Post by **rrebello** » Tue May 20, 2014 10:19 pm

Raziel and digitall,

Thank you for replying to this. Even though I've started to disassemble and analyse parts of the game out of curiosity (sorry, couldn't help it), I completely understand and agree that contact with the original developers should be made before even considering such a work.

However, since I'm not a member of the ScummVM dev team, I'm not sure how you guys would take it if I simply approached the original developers myself. It would be logical, though, because I'm the one showing interest in doing the work, but I can't simply assume things. So, what do you think? Maybe I should wait for more devs to manifest their views on this?

EDIT: Or maybe, as Raziel suggested, talk to Sev about this? In any case, I'd like to check first if there's enough interest before pestering him with these questions.

Post by **digitall** » Tue May 20, 2014 10:39 pm

rrbello: I would suggest sending an e-mail to sev at sev at scummvm dot org, linking this thread and asking about whether he would approach the developers by e-mail initially to see if they would be amenable. I'd suggest also sending this to Strangerke at strangerke at scummvm dot org as well as he has also dealt with this before.

rrebello · Post by **rrebello** » Tue May 20, 2014 10:43 pm

Ok, I'll follow your suggestion and e-mail them. Thanks.