A few problems and questions about 1.5

[Apollo]

I count three to four programmers in this thread alone. This is news to them. There's the first point explained rather soundly, I think.

My second point was a counter to your implication that petitioning GOG would be a waste of time, despite them actively encouraging people to do just that.


I should also point out that whilst Activision licensed the name from Atari, the IP is their own. They have very little reason to sell it on to the people they licensed the name from, especially since it seems they were about to break the IP from the license anyway.

None of which had anything to do with Bz.

Online petitions seem worthless to me when it takes large sums of money to get things done in business.
One million names on an online petition you can't even consider valid as anyone can make up info.

I have pointed out that in the past Kahless had Activision legal research the facts and Acti. stated Atari owns it all per the contract as of 2006. Atari confirmed that to me last year when i spoke to them.

When have you actually talked to anyone in charge in the companies and what are the actual statements made or are you just stating an opinion.

[Apollo]

I suspect your chances of recovering "assets" from them are close to 0. The medium they would have been originally stored in will probably have been junked long ago, unless involved individuals, such a Ken, wisely chose to make their own backups, the company will almost certainly not have any idea now about the items you now wish to recover. Even if it does have them, It is highly unlikely to hand over any "intellectual property" to a 3rd party on request.

Yeah, i heard something similar to that back in 1999 from Activision support, it didn't stop me. I proved them wrong in 2000.

I have almost all Bz assets since 6 years ago but i want the TRO assets too as i would want a bundled two title release Bz and TRO. Assets i don't have i've converted from the game and gone over in 3ds max.

The original assets Activision has stored at Iron Mtn.

[Ded10c]

None of which had anything to do with Bz.

Online petitions seem worthless to me when it takes large sums of money to get things done in business.
One million names on an online petition you can't even consider valid as anyone can make up info.

I have pointed out that in the past Kahless had Activision legal research the facts and Acti. stated Atari owns it all per the contract as of 2006. Atari confirmed that to me last year when i spoke to them.

When have you actually talked to anyone in charge in the companies and what are the actual statements made or are you just stating an opinion.

Specify "original BZ programmers" if you mean that, rather than just programmers in general. And odd that they should be recommending we use the petitions *despite* your apparent better solution.

I actually did dig into this two years ago. I was informed that it was just the *name* that was passed back to Atari in 2006, since they wanted to release a new title under it. I'm not so stupid as to present fact without evidence to back it up.

Now, since we both have conflicting information from the same source, I suggest we ask them to confirm. Their website makes making contact an awful lot more difficult than it was last time.

By the way; getting assets from TRO is highly unlikely as Team Evolve and Macmillan are both completely defunct. I made contact with Rob Waring a few months ago, and he said there's very little left from back then. The disk is about as good as it gets; same goes for Zaero, Airfist, and Painkeep.

[Nielk1]

Atari only had control of the name "Battlezone", the thought that a publisher like Activision would ever set up a deal to revert ownership of assets to the owners of the name that had been licensed is ridiculous. It has not been the case in the many other games that fans have attempted to get into the public domain. The problem time, time, and time again is always that the publisher has distribution rights of the game and rarely the assets, with the developer having domain over the assets. **** goes even more wonky when you license things from a 3rd party like the name "Battlezone" in this case.

Unless you are going to show actual proof that things are how you say they are, you might as well just be blowing smoke out your ass. What you are saying has not been true for any other game that I can name: that the mere name decide the owner of not only the resulting IP but the assets as well is ludicrous and no business would ever accept a contract in that vein. The only, and I mean the ONLY, way that this could be true would be some form of failure clause in the contract (where by the developer/publisher so uttered failed that they damaged the brand in a way that would allow Atari to take ownership of the assets so they would never be seen again).

You act like what you state is a fact but it flies in the face of all established facts and established practices. For anyone to believe that would require proof, not assurances and fairy dust.

I'll tell you right now, with the minimal cost of updating such a title and large acclaim, do you not think that if one party had any control of the title it would not be re-released in a quick cache in like so many games have been? The most major thing preventing that is the fractured nature of the ownership.

We aren't going to worship you for your efforts, and we are all pretty cynical at this point. Proof or nothin' be the name of this game.

[ssuser]

Back on Topic... Again.

In regard to one of the above posts I was NOT trying to run 1.5 maps in 1.4, perhaps I did not make this clear. Some of the IA maps I have tried to run in the latest patch did not run, and they appeared to be done for earlier versions of 1.5

correct me here if I am wrong:

1037 is the internal version for 1.4 maps

1038, 1039, and 1040 are all version numbers for various versions of 1.5

Some 1038 and 1039 maps would not run, I had problems with some 1040 version maps as well. The 1040 errors may have other causes.
I was under the impression that Ultraken had fixed all the previous version load problems, unless this is only for saved games?

RE: assets, I would like to see UltraKen do an update for TRO, just to make it run on win7/win8, no other time consuming fancy changes. I wonder who would have source for TRO, since TeamEvolve is now gone? Someone must legally own it.

[Ded10c]

RE: assets, I would like to see UltraKen do an update for TRO, just to make it run on win7/win8, no other time consuming fancy changes. I wonder who would have source for TRO, since TeamEvolve is now gone? Someone must legally own it.

Nobody I found has a copy.

[Apollo]

The people with TRO source are afraid of being sued.

[Ded10c]

Surely that would require the developer and publisher to actually still exist... still, no harm in being cautious, I suppose.

[Apollo]

I actually did dig into this two years ago. I was informed that it was just the *name* that was passed back to Atari in 2006, since they wanted to release a new title under it. I'm not so stupid as to present fact without evidence to back it up.

Now, since we both have conflicting information from the same source, I suggest we ask them to confirm. Their website makes making contact an awful lot more difficult than it was last time.

Kahless had a paralegal assigned the case @ Activision legal dept. and investigated it, what source was you informed from?

This is why i would like a copy of the actual contract, without that noone has any proof that what Acti. or Atari says is true.

[Ded10c]

I actually did dig into this two years ago. I was informed that it was just the *name* that was passed back to Atari in 2006, since they wanted to release a new title under it. I'm not so stupid as to present fact without evidence to back it up.

Now, since we both have conflicting information from the same source, I suggest we ask them to confirm. Their website makes making contact an awful lot more difficult than it was last time.

Kahless had a paralegal assigned the case @ Activision legal dept. and investigated it, what source was you informed from?

This is why i would like a copy of the actually contract, without that noone has any proof that what Acti. or Atari says is true.

I had a contact address for someone who worked in the legal department; both the correspondence and their address are long lost to me. Probably not as reliable a source as Kahless', but that's not exactly ideal either. We still have nothing concrete.

[Nielk1]

This is why i would like a copy of the actually contract, without that noone has any proof that what Acti. or Atari says is true.

This includes you. Aberrations from the norm (what you state) are not to be believed without documentation.

[Apollo]

I'll ask Atari for supporting documents since i have more resent contact there.

The problem with Kahless's info is the paralegal called him on the phone after her research was done. So i don't have her exact words only what Kahless said. The permissions letters seems to support what he said and so does Atari's statements from several contacts. Atari wanted Kahless to get a license for his book having characters based on Battlezone, not just the name. (I think Activision traded the game rights for use of the trademark for 8 years in the contract but i can't be sure without the contract)

Ssuser,
No clue why new versions crash in 1.5, which maps? I can check them out if i had it to test.

[Ded10c]

characters based on Battlezone

To what degree was that? Sound utterly ridiculous.

[DuoRanger]

whew back from the dead(with a shieeety and buggy ps2 keyboard until i buy a new one, aaah nostalgia)

Hadley, about that, game lawyers will always find a way to screw up with fan projects bcuz there's money involved, just look at MERP, WB sued those guys because they feared that a Oblivion/Skyrim Mod would intervene with their sells for their LOTR game(which sucked a lot), blizzard has a bad fame because of that too, even if a X years old game has his SRC leaked or released to public, the game publisher will always find a way to screw with that.

but there's a few publishers who doesnt give a crap about that and release it for fans, like id or raven who released the complete SRC for Jedi Academy, or Crave who released the entire source of Spring engine for TA(which is being updated since now).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpKqQxTURik

BZ's case it more complicated because of the chain of events that happened after bz2 and the selling of pandemic for EA even if atari its now dead, they still own the rights for bz name because of the original one, but pandemic made BZ2 as activision made the 1st one back when pandemic didn't existed yet a year before.

the auction for BZ rights is next week along with TA(which is probbaly going to Uber's Hands because of Planetary Annihilation)

if (i can't fawking believe that i'll say that)activision buys up, its fine, or maybe relic(i remember that George Collins was working for Relic during Dawn of war II dev).

here's the list

[Red Devil]

i wonder what will happen to it if nobody bids on it.