: On a tangential topic: does anybody know if there is a legally approved
: process for distributing a scenario for Aleph One, with *lots* of modified
: content (all new textures, weapons, landscapes, new and modified monsters,
: all new maps of course, entirely changed interface and new music) but some
: original Marathon content too, in a format that anybody, Mac or PC, own
: Marathon or not, can download and play the thing with a simple installer?
: The best I can think right now is to test that patches work on the demo,
: make the installer acknowledge the demo too, and in the download
: instructions say that you must have SOME version of Marathon Infinity to
: install this, even if just the demo, and then link to the demo download.
: And then have another version that works for SLD, and link to the Aleph
: One SDL page for the appropriate app.
For what it's worth, both M1A1 and Rubicon AO Lite were released as entire packages for use with AO. Legally, there is no question that they violated Bungie's copyright. Do the Bungie folks know about it - absolutely. Have they notified their owners at M$ - I doubt it. In other words, until and unless M$ starts cracking down on the use of Bungie's copyrighted material, which they have every legal right to do, I think it's safe to say that you can get away with releasing full scenarios. Realistically this is probably the only way you can make a new scenario for AO widely available unless the open source community can be convinced to make universal installers for Mac, PC and Linux that at least verify the availability of the MAS.
