Question about a CE to CE\DOS patch

[NKF]

This is not exactly X-Com modding, more a legal question, so I've just lumped it in the general X-Com UFO section for the time being.

 

While helping out another player, I've ended up creating a file patch for the Collectors Edition of UFO that supplies the missing files needed for the Dos portion of the game.

 

More specifically, the intro.exe, setup.exe (and its generated files mvol.dat and sound.cfg), dos4gw.exe, ufo.bat, and the missing files from the sounds\, ufoexe\ and ufo2exe\ directories.

 

All this does is turn the CE version into a CE/Dos hybrid, which is how it is commonly distributed digitally these days. (plus a fixed geoscape.exe!)

 

It's not too different from what's already available in the 1.4 patch bar the sound files, but would this be okay to be made publicly available for download?

 

It might not be a big deal, but stuff like this does concern me and I need to make sure.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're wanting to post an archive which contains any files from the DOS installation of the game that do not exist in the CE version?

 

From a purely legal perspective, no, not legal. That said, such a pack would be about on par with a fair few mods out there - most of them include slightly altered versions of the original game files, when strictly speaking they should use patchers to apply their altered content. But no one has ever cared, so...

[NKF]

Life support for those that own a copy of the CE version (CE, the PCGamer copy) but can't run the game for whatever reason (hardware, OS version, etc). Running the dos version via Dosbox is probably the stablest means of getting the game to run on a variety of system so far.

 

Actually, now that I've had a look at the v1.4 patch and the pack I set up - I think all I've done is recreate the v1.4 patch!

 

The only difference is that mine includes DOS4GW.exe, and the generated sound files that setup.exe creates.

 

Also my batch file is the standard ufo.bat file while the 1.4 update uses a few others. Still, how quaint. Guess all I need to do is point people to the 1.4 update and perhaps just zip up a copy of dos4gw.exe, which I believe should be legal enough to provide. All that's left is a patcher for geoscape.exe.

 

Rather taken the wind out of my sails there.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

I guess if you hide the download under a password you should be fine as it will be not that 'public'

[NKF]

Not much point at this stage. As I've mentioned, all I've achieved is replicate what's available in the v1.4 patch, which is already publicly available to download, and the only real addition is the Dos4gw extender.

 

Dos4gw doesn't have any such restrictions as far as I'm aware.

 

- NKF

[Alienated]

I guess you should contact the legal distributors with your idea as a proposal. I know what difficulty "to contact" means nowadays but it still seems the solution. If they don't even give bleep, then you have some right to give bleep too and post your patch. Just give it a look of legality, I mean you give proper credits and links here and there, this guy and that guy. Then chances are they will leave you and your post alone. It seems to me lot of people do so on the web.

 

And I agree, emulators can be better environment for "alien" applications than ports of them though business isn't to make an emulator for many applications but to make many ports of an application for many systems. That's why so many systems exist. You basically just bloody well insult software-hardware business policies. You may become a hero someday.