How would people react to a donations -> vr mods gig?

"n00854180t" wrote:

(re-)distribution/packaging of their intellectual property and copyrighted materials.

As superllama noted, that's a way different situation and he's not repackaging or distributing any material that's not under his own copyright.

I didn't say he was, but do keep in mind that reverse engineering a binary and then distributing derivative work for profit is somewhat shaky legal ground, especially if it involves circumventing copyright/security protection mechanisms.

I'm certainly not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying it's one to tread carefully with, especially if it involves getting paid to do it. There are lots of factors that might make it perfectly fine (to include local law enforcement not caring), but OP should at least make some effort to protect themselves from possible legal repercussions. For me, not taking money is how I achieve that.

Like I said. The truth doesn't matter, because honestly all it takes is one legal threat - baseless or not - and you're screwed unless you have some really good lawyers handy.

And as I've found out recently, the VR community is a lot larger and has a much bigger audience than it did a year ago. You'd be amazed at the people who keep tabs on this shit.

"dghost" wrote:

"n00854180t" wrote:

(re-)distribution/packaging of their intellectual property and copyrighted materials.

As superllama noted, that's a way different situation and he's not repackaging or distributing any material that's not under his own copyright.

I didn't say he was, but do keep in mind that reverse engineering a binary and then distributing derivative work for profit is somewhat shaky legal ground, especially if it involves circumventing copyright/security protection mechanisms.

He wouldn't be reversing the binary, only its calls to DirectX functions and the value inputs there (i.e., completely outside the game binary at that point), and then overriding those with his own versions - which means it would not be a derivative work at all.

It's the same deal as Vireo/VorpX/TriDef - and they're doing it for way more games than he would be. There's no legal basis here to shut this sort of thing down, no matter how many mental contortions are performed.

Copy protection doesn't even enter into it.

Actually in order to work the way Morrowrift does where the headtracking is separate from in-game view, I would have to include some run-time memory hacks to get things like the view frustum that aren't handled by DirectX to work right-- and there is a great deal of reverse engineering required in order to locate these things that need to be reset each frame. It doesn't actually modify the exe or contain any code from the exe; the only thing it would contain is a few memory offsets which the DLL will need to read and write to when various functions are called. If it's illegal to distribute code that reaches into RAM and transforms the view frustum in a game, even though it ONLY modifies the game AT RUNTIME and doesn't change any of the executable code, just global memory values that the code allocates, then that would be a problem.

Multiplayer games with VAC or PunkBuster, for example, would probably see it as a cheating hack, since it has to edit game memory-- this means people would have to play on servers that have VAC or PunkBuster disabled to avoid getting banned, and I'd probably brand that across the screen when it loads just so everyone knows.

I don't know though, if there's a real risk of some company freaking out over a simple frustum transform, maybe I shouldn't try this, or maybe I should contact the companies first or something.

Or possibly instead of targeting specific games, I could make some sort of master tool that makes it easier for other people to VRhack any given game and then accept crowdfunding for that (maybe even kickstarter), and generate config files for other people to use. That would be a lot of work, but it might stop companies from feeling threatened.

Honestly superllama, I wouldn't worry about it. Worst case you get a C&D and have to cease ops for a bit.

There are far too many closet-pseudo-lawyers on this forum that want to see everyone giving their first born to lawyers in order to be "safe from lawsuit" while tying their shoelaces.

If people actually subscribed to that mentality as much as this forum likes to pretend they do, there would be no Rift, no games, etc. because everyone would be standing around shoveling money at lawyers instead of actually doing anything.

Well, I just compiled a full D3D9 wrapper that also wraps the D3DDevice and stuff properly, but still haven't done anything with it yet except make sure it loads right and insert debug messages in places. I'm starting to hesitate to continue though because I may have thought of a better plan of action... I'd appreciate it if you guys could read this over and let me know if this solves any of the issues with my original idea. I've already alluded to it but here's the potential new idea all fleshed out:

1) I make a kickstarter project for a standalone toolset called "MyVR Builder" or something like that. The project would be a standalone tool which can run with any game, and give you an overlay full of tools for transforming the game into a VR-supporting game, using various algorithms to locate and apply tracking and separation to various rendering variables in the game's memory, shaders, and d3d callchain, and generating configuration files. There would also be a Player version which doesn't allow creation of new configurations, but can play games with existing configurations.

2) The kickstarter rewards would basically be varying levels of early access, with a more expensive one being a special consideration for a game of your choice (It'd be added as one of the early testing games, with a configuration made by me before the site officially opens). The lowest tier would be late beta access to the player and the config download site, then late beta access to the builder and the site, and larger amounts would get you earlier access. Plus nice things like a backer-only IRC channel/forum.

3) Upon completion, licenses for the builder would be sold for $30 or so, the player would be a free download, and the website would have forums and a way to upload and share configurations you've made, as well as download configurations uploaded by other users (myself included-- if there's a game that nobody is able to hack with the current tools, I'll probably work on the toolset until it can support the game and then release the testing configuration I used).

If I did this, the tool itself would not be a derivative project or a violation of copyrights in any way, but merely a tool for users to create their own derivative configuration files, which would not be sold but merely distributed among users. I'm pretty sure that's legal as long as I state in the EULA that it's not intended for illegal use, but for modifying the runtime state of video game software that you already own, in keeping with the game's terms of use.

If this is a good idea, I'll need to start thinking of what my goal would be... it could potentially be a huge endeavor to make such a configurable tool, and might take a year's worth of work especially given how different various games are in how they render things, but I'd guess there are probably a few thousand people who want good Skyrim support alone, and many more who have tinkered with TriDef and friends for other games and still find their configurations lacking.

I'm eager to see what people think of this idea and how much they think I could ask for as a goal.

on vr-projections.com there is an option of uploading your content... you can give paypall buttons for donations, buttons for gumroad donations/sale. The website is pretty much under constraction its a start, Good thing about it is that you can upload adults games. but you can not sell them via gumroad couse gumroad do not allow this kind of stuff...normal games can be sold via gumroad if sombody needs more info how paypal.gumroad things work with vr-projections I can help out for now. regards

People and donations?Give me a break.You wont se a f.... cent. If people can get things for free they are not going to help you out. So dont give away your work for a " good word" you can have like 10k downloads and Big zero on your donation account.That's what real life is .These free demos are awesome but these developers often in my opinion give too much for free,people already got used to free stuff and when they hear about paying or donations, they get convulsions.Dont get me wrong I respect those who give away their time and effor d for sake of development of VR market, but make no mistake You can not expect that people will respect you for that.Let's end these delusions.People Pay only when They need something from you--not for what you have given to them. Even when you look at Kickstartetr best backed projects, its almost always about pre-sale- not about goondes of hearts...People backed occulus rift- they were promisted to get heads sets,They got it ,And whan Palmer with his friends made a huge backet of money people started to look for excuses to gat their share which they were never promissed.This is what real life is like.Dont expect good things from people.People are evil and the good onces die first