Mod for Morrowind about Avernum

[sco50000]

I want people to join me in making a huge mod for the game Morrowind. Go to me website at The Avernum Project or email me at sco50000@hotmail.com . Please join. And if you have played Morrowind before, all the better!!

[JadeWolf]

Is Morrowind compatible with Mac?

[John S]

I've never played Morrowind, so these questions are not obvious to me, as they doubtlessly are to you.

 

1) By "mod", do you mean change the code for Avernum, or change the code for Morrowind?

 

2) Are you sure this shouldn't be in the BoA section? Some of the people there are pretty good at programming. And if worst comes to worst, someone can make a scenario for you based on Morrowind.

[Student of Trinity]

He's proposing to port Avernum to Morrowind. It sounds like a cool project, except that it also sounds like blatant copyright violation, effectively taking bread out of the mouths of Jeff Vogel's children, and all that.

 

An original Morrowind scenario inspired by Avernum, though, could be a different story -- unless it used so much directly copied graphics that it amounted to a copyright violation on BoA. In that case, I don't exactly where the moral and legal line(s) should be drawn, but I'm sure they're not so far away you can totally ignore them.

 

I do know that I'd be reluctant to put in the stupendous amount of work involved in this kind of project, if there was a good chance I would simply be participating in a crime, because I wouldn't want to end up feeling guilty about anything I'd worked that hard on, and I would want to be able to distribute the result freely to reap gratitude and acclaim for my efforts.

[Alorael at Large]

No Morrowind for the Mac, unfortunately.

 

—Alorael, who will say right away that that loses about half of the Avernum crowd.

[Drakefyre]

Porting Avernum to Morrowind is a copyright violation and illegal. Using the Avernum universe as a setting is more ambiguous, but I still stay away from it.

[Walter]

I think that if you want to do that (reuse the same storyline in a scenario for another game), you would need to get Jeff's explicit permission for it to be legal. So try e-mailing him to make sure it's ok with him before you devote any time to this project.

[sco50000]

I did send him an email but he hasent replied yet. And I haven't even started the mod anyway.

[sco50000]

Okay... I just wan't to get some things straight. First of all, i'm not editing code of any kind but I'm using Morrwind's TES Construction Set to make a mod. I'm not changing Avernum in any way, shape, or form and the last thing I want to do is break copyright laws! Okay, i'm done.

[Kingy]

That would actually be brilliant. I think that both Avernum and Morrowind are great games and it would be interesting to see a first person, brilliant graphics (rather than something that's pretty much a text adventure [Not that I have anything against the graphics, infact I like them]) version of Avernum. I think it would be incredibly hard to pull off though. I would help but unfortunitly I have no skills in that sort of area.

[John S]

Okay, so Morrowind has a "TES Construction Set". Sounds like the BoA Editor. Well, I bet the people in the BoA Editor forum would be more inclined to help, seeing as they're already doing that sort of thing.

[Alorael at Large]

Even if you're not editing Avernum, you're violating Jeff's copyright on the world of Avernum. (I presume he has one!) That said, as long as it's not a commercial mod, Jeff is unlikely to care enough to do anything about it.

 

—Alorael, who still doesn't encourage intellectual property theft. And you should know that Jeff hates fan fiction, so fan mods probably aren't encouraged.

[Lilith]

You can't really copyright something as broad and vague as the idea of the world. As long as you changed around the names of all the places and characters, and maybe messed around with the plot a little, it's unlikely that Jeff could successfully sue you.

[Alorael at Large]

You could sure be sued for "Avernum" and probably "slthzerikai" and "vahnatai." Nephilim are biblical, so you get a pass on that one.

 

Jeff wouldn't bother to sue you, but he could.

 

—Alorael, who certainly doesn't mean to imply that underground worlds are copyrighted. If anyone gets that, it's probably Jules Verne.

[Walter]

Basically if it is close enough to be considered an avernum mod for it, it could legally be considered to be a copyright infringement.

[Kingy]

It would be very hard to actually make a decent mod of Avernum using the TES Construction thing. I looked at it just before. I'm not saying it can't be done, just saying it would take ages and by the time it's done Oblivion would be out and the mod would see less people using it anyway.

[sco50000]

Jeff Vogel has given me a no. His reason was something like that if he gave me permissions it would inhibit his future game selling abbilities.

[Aran]

Quote:

Originally written by Interior Analog:
You could sure be sued for "Avernum" and probably "slthzerikai" and "vahnatai." Nephilim are biblical, so you get a pass on that one.

Jeff wouldn't bother to sue you, but he could.

—Alorael, who certainly doesn't mean to imply that underground worlds are copyrighted. If anyone gets that, it's probably Jules Verne.

Avernum is an antique name for the Underworld, iirc. It is as much under copyright as the names Anaximander, Erika and Hawthorne are.

I've seen "Slithzerikai" used in other settings, but it is probably original to Spiderweb Software, as well as Vahnatai.

That said, "Ermarian" is fan-invented and therefore - thankfully - not subject to copyright.

[Alorael at Large]

In a context reminiscent of Avernum, using Avernum becomes copyright infringement, I believe. That might only be true for trademarks, though. I'm not an intellectual property rights expert.

 

—Alorael, who enjoy a lawsuit by Lake Avernum against Spiderweb for libel. Not everyone in the area is a banished societal misfit.

[Kingy]

Whoopie. I join up and instantly it's been stopped.