| Author |
Message |
david bennett (Dpoly)
New member
Username: Dpoly
Post Number: 6
Registered: 4-2017
| | Posted on Sunday, September 10, 2017 - 11:59 am: | |
This is to announce the first public release of Polygamo, a free language compiler and general game player that implements the ZRF language.
Link here: http://www.polyomino.com/2017/09/10/polygamo-initial-release/.
Any thoughts or comments most welcome. |
M Winther (Kalroten)
New member
Username: Kalroten
Post Number: 172
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Monday, September 18, 2017 - 6:58 pm: | |
So this means that you introduce another interpreter for the ZRF language. It means that all games on this site can soon be played for free. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this copyright infringement? After all, the Zillions games are copyrighted, designed for the Zillions program.
Mats |
david bennett (Dpoly)
New member
Username: Dpoly
Post Number: 7
Registered: 4-2017
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - 12:26 am: | |
Hi Mats
It's certainly not my intention to breach anyone's copyright, and as far as I know I have not done so. Legal decisions here in Australia, in the USA and elsewhere have confirmed that there is copyright in the source code and expression of a program, but not in a computer language (or API). Polygamo is entirely original source code, written in C# with nothing copied from Zillions (which you can easily confirm). All it shares is the abstract language.
The games distributed with Zillions are copyright to Zillions. You only get them by paying for them. Whether you are allowed to play them with Polygamo is for Mark and Jeff to say by way of the licence.
The games on this site are copyright to their original authors. I hope that those authors will not mind people playing them with Polygamo, but that's for them to say. According to my notes you have contributed to 223 games on this site, so I would be interested to hear your views.
Finally, the aim is for Polygamo to start with a common set of playable games, and then head off in its own direction. It will never play all the games on this site, it will probably never play some of them (eg chess variants) as well as Zillions does, but I hope it will play others better. Zillions is an incredible achievement but it has languished in recent years, partly because of being tied to the old Windows format. I would like to help give the thousands of contributed games a new lease of life on many new devices. Including your games, perhaps. |
Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member
Username: Gschmidt2
Post Number: 189
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - 1:33 am: | |
Although game developers such as me do tend to put copyright notices in their work, I do not believe the fact that they are "designed for the Zillions program" has anything to do with the rights to the submissions themselves. In fact, I believe that has absolutely no bearing on anything. The main reason for putting a copyright in your work is to deter someone from claiming the work as their own and/or profiting from it. Also, given the fact that all Zillions submissions are freely available to anyone, even if they haven't purchased a Zillions license, these games are open source. Therefore, I see no reason why David, or anyone else would be prohibited from developing a game engine that can play these games. However, if David were to decide to sell his package AND bundle it with the games on this site, that could be a problem. But I do not believe the problem would be with any sort of rights violation of Zillions itself, but rather with the individual game contributors themselves. I don't believe it's David's intention to do that anyway so I see no practical problem here. Finally, if you read the "legal matters" link from the Zillions help file, the Zillions software itself is covered by copyright, but nowhere does it state that the ZRF language is. To make a very crude analogy, it's legal to sell drug paraphernalia, but it's illegal to sell the stuff you put into it. So in summary, David can publish his game engine and probably even sell it if he wanted to. He can allow anyone to use his software as they see fit, but he can't claim the games themselves as his own or sell them without risk. |
M Winther (Kalroten)
New member
Username: Kalroten
Post Number: 173
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - 6:10 am: | |
Ok, that clarifies things. It is indeed sad that the Zillions developers have abandoned their creation, because it's such a fine software. It is a worriment that it won't even work in a future Windows release, which would make all the programs defunct. Programmers have made a considerable cultural contribution. I myself am kind of proud of my contributions in the historical checkers department. I will soon add Nigerian and Tanzanian checkers.
Incidentally, there are extremely strong open source chess engines (I believe written in C), such as Fruit. So adding a powerful chess engine to Polygamo should be doable.
Mats |
Mats Winther (M_winther)
New member
Username: M_winther
Post Number: 6
Registered: 5-2017
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - 6:36 am: | |
As a besides, this is the story of checkers champion Tinsley and his battle with the computer. The Chinook program was derived from a chess engine, I believe.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/marion-tinsley-checkers/534111/ |
david bennett (Dpoly)
New member
Username: Dpoly
Post Number: 8
Registered: 4-2017
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - 11:29 am: | |
Just to be clear, I have no plans to ever sell Polygamo or any games built from it. Making and selling software product is my day job; this is for fun and making a contribution. I'm hoping other people with similar interests will help too. Perhaps an existing chess engine could be adapted, but I don't think I'll be the one doing it.
I would like to keep Zillions alive too, especially for its superior AI and chess-playing. It's seriously hard to write a good AI, especially given only the information in a ZRF file. Zillions' UI is too old to be worth maintaining (who does MFC these days?) but it wouldn't be hard to port it to something newer. However, that's up to Mark and Jeff. |
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