So you're telling me that AC Bro'hood, despite it's various (and somewhat numerous) additions on AC 2 along with expansion on the storyline and fairly amazing (despite all of the idiots) online play is a rip of AC 2? This saddens me.

That's a bad definition because, while we have many fangames which would be considered copyright infringements, we don't call many of them 'rips'.

You are confusing two issues here:

- The definition of a word.
- When we should complain about a game.

There is no reason to change the definition of "rip" to discuss the second issue, and discussing the second issue is not relevant to the definition of the word "rip".

legal action on byond? Rofl.

Yeah, they could've, but then you might also say that all of the Final Fantasies for a given console could've just been patched on to the previous one to improve the experience there, even though they're completely different games and stories.

Yeah, I do agree that they could have patched it on as an expansion, but that wouldn't have made good business sense and it doesn't really fit the bill, logically, for an expansion. Expansions don't generally expand on the story itself as much as put on separate branches of the story or add on some random features. In this case, not only did it add a bunch of features (+ online, that's still kickass), but it also expanded completely on the storyline.

No all of you wrap it up in one word and attach a description of it and call it an engima. You wonder why there is an obfuscation.

Who is "all of you"? I offered a very clear definition of the term. You are not a mind reader, and you certainly are not me.


You're trying to pull me into an irrelevant argument. Why are you doing this? Do you think this is an argument about the state of BYOND? If you can't respond to what I write, why quote my post?

The doublethink here would make Orwell goggle in awe. The definition of words doesn't change to suit your argument. First, rips are "copyright infringements", and then they're "the enigma that symbolises all things wrong in BYOND", finally becoming religious dogma. Are you drunk?

I'm a broken record, oh well.

Your post might have had *some* point, however removed from the current topic, but it was lost within the biblical analogies and allegations of tyranny.

I think the major complaint here is that "rips" on BYOND, 90% of the time, are simply people downloading a source, changing some names around, running it, and calling it something else. This is possible because BYOND is simply so easy to use, and the community just doesn't care about these things. That's why moderators have done their best to keep rips out of the public eye. BYOND Anime had something like 12 games last I remembered. Almost every rip was given absolutely no marketing via the guild, which is the best thing you can do.

Now, realistically, most programs are not built from the ground up. Lots of games are built using software-development kits. Other than that, game developers tend to reuse previous engines for other games (especially sequels, I suppose). Almost every FPS for a long time (and to this day) was based on Quake's (Quake 2's) engine or Unreal Tournament's engine. CoD:MW's and CoDM:W2's engine were based on the same engine Infinity Ward used to make CoD2. MGS2 used MGS1's engine; I think they completely redid the engine for MGS3, for some reason I can't remember, and they might have even used the same engine from MGS3 for MGS4.

Almost every single text MUD you will find uses another source as its base. You can find a tree detailing the progression of these major contributions here.

As for the subject of New Vegas... New Vegas is a completely different set of characters in a a completely different part of the world, following a completely different story. The only thing it has in common with Fallout 3 (haha, I said Las Vegas) is textures, combat stuff, inventory stuff, leveling stuff, and attribute stuff. These things aren't nearly as important as adventure and story in the Fallout world. Also, lots of these things are improved upon.

New Vegas is a fully-featured, full-length game.

It is not DLC.

L4D2 is also a justifiable release, because it provides lots of new content, including an entire set of new, unique campaigns (and new gameplay mechanics). The only reason you can even be mad at Valve for making L4D2 is because they promised to make free DLC for L4D for a long time, but I think that promise was a bit unreasonable. Valve has been providing lots of new content for their a couple of their major games (TF2, L4D...) for a long time for absolutely no cost to the user. They have to make money at some point.

The same arguments can probably be made for most of the games you've given.

PS: I think there has been a misunderstanding here as to what a fan game is. Final Fantasy Dissidia, Budokai, Kingdom Hearts... these aren't fan game. They are games produced by a group that owns the rights to said characters, worlds, etc... it is "official." Fan games are not "official."

Thats a pretty huge difference, i dont know why you're so intent on downplaying it as if it never mattered.

MGS1 and 2 were completely different games, they weren't even on the same console, I find it highly unlikely the same engine was used. The same goes for 3 to 4.

The mechanics from MGS1 to MGS2 did not change whatsoever. Neither did the mechanics from 2 to 3, or 3 to 4. They just added things to it. Aim, shoot, jump, crouch, stealth, and enemy detection. The engine was updated in MGS3 to account for the new hardware/software/something like that, so they could fully take advantage of it.

Unreal Engine is used for a lot of games, not just FPS ones. However, its a constantly updated process, games aren't still using the same source from 10 years ago.

I don't see how this is relevant. The point is that games use it as a base to build on.

MW1 and 2 don't even use the same engine. MW1 and WaW use the same engine, and MW2 and BLOPS do.

MW2 and WaW both used updated version of MW1's engine, which is an updated version of CoD2's engine. You can refer to the wiki for more information on this. Specifically this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_4.0#IW_4.0

BYOND is the engine we're using, every game on here isn't exactly the same like the rips are.

Unreal Tournament's engine and Quake 2's engine are used as a groundwork to build the game on. You get a license, and you receive the source (and an SDK?). It is exactly the same scenario, except you don't have to acquire a license to download Dragonball Zeta's source.

I think you are misunderstanding what an engine is here.

MGS1-MGS2 is a pretty big leap, so was 3-4. 2-3 I could maybe see them using the same engine. Where's the info on this?

I was listening to commentary from the developers, I do believe it was, saying that they "finally decided to rewrite the engine" for MGS3, so they could take advantage of the hardware, or something like that. I'll do some searching tomorrow, as it is quite late right now.

edit: "Kojima commented that the outside environment was very difficult to create. He explained that the reason previous games were primarily set indoors is because the current consoles at the time were not powerful enough to portray a true jungle environment. In contrast with urban environments, the outdoors do not have a flat surface, resulting in Snake having to cross uneven terrain such as rocks, dirt mounds, and treestumps. As a result, the collision engine used in previous installments could not be used, and a new one had to be built."

Or are you? A game engine isn't the equivalent of Zeta, an engine is what BYOND or the Unreal SDK or Unity is. They don't come with some 100% completed game that everyone just edits the name of and re-releases.

You're right. I was being a little bit hasty when I said that... please excuse me. It's late?

Uhhm... I think the main point I was trying to make is that games are rarely made from the ground up. There is a very clear relation to using Unreal Tournament's engine and, say, downloading AberMUD and building off of it. Both of them end up doing a very large chunk of your work for you. The only difference is downloading AberMUD both does the groundwork AND the building on top of it. At which point it is up to you to take things out or add things.

So it's not the exact same situation, but almost.