Are you allowed to use copies of Natural Disaster Survivor to make your own game? I’m looking to make a remastered version (completely different builds, same scripts) and I see a ton of uncopylocked versions of the game. I think it was previously uncopylocked itself.
Can anyone give me a clear answer on this on if I can use it or not and if I’m permitted to earn off it through DevEx if this remastered version became successful?
Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.
You’re allowed to make games based on the same concepts as existing games. As long as you don’t steal assets (maps, models, sounds, images, etc) from the existing game, then you’ll be fine. Also don’t advertise your game as being the original game.
The game used to be uncopylocked from what I heard and I’m interested in using the games scripts but not the maps. The game was originally made by stickmasterluke.
I want to know if using the scripts from this game is allowed considering it used to be uncopylocked.
As of right now Natural Disaster Survival is not uncopylocked. I can’t say it was never uncopylocked but I’m not aware of any time it was. If you can find proof that it was uncopylocked then yes an uncopylocked version is free to use.
But seeing that it isn’t free to use right now that tells you that the game owner, assuming it was uncopylocked, had changed their mind at some point so it may indicate they do not want copies of the game being redistributed.
At the same time, lots of games get their maps stolen so its entirely possible these versions you see are just using stolen maps.
TL:DR If it was uncopylocked, then by definition its free to use but its not uncopylocked right now so obviously owner doesn’t want it being distributed + very likely maps you see are stolen.
I would be very careful trusting that any assets sourced from NDS are truly free to use. There’s so much theft out there that a DMCA request by the developer could have waves of bans on anyone using the stolen assets, knowingly or not.
That being said, if they were server-sided scripts that weren’t replicated to someone just downloading a copy, they could be publicly released by the developer, just make sure there is some official word from them they are aware of the files and are OK with other developers using them.
I would do more research on this. Find out if it was actually uncopylocked by the owner in the past. If it was uncopylocked at any point by Stickmasterluke, you are allowed to use the assets he created in that uncopylocked place.
However, given the games popularity for all these years, I’d guess he would never have uncopylocked it. The game is pretty old so there’s many reasons as to why you have an uncopylocked version. Possibly account compromisers, people simply stealing client-info (maps etc) and adding it to old stolen versions, etc.
I wouldn’t use the assets. Maybe use the scripts as inspiration but nothing more.
If you have a version of the place that was obtained while it was uncopylocked, then everything in that file is free to use.
But just because it was uncopylocked in the past doesn’t mean it’s OK to use anything from the game now that it’s not uncopylocked anymore.
I also wanted to make a game like NDS but with the same system but I can’t find where I can get the obvious system. My game will have a different map, A different lobby, Different everything.