Regarding Jazz Jackrabbit 3
 

I've searced and read the info about JJ3 and its unfortunate demise. My question is was there ever an initial beta release of the particular game?

Yes. An early test demo was released to a few people, one or more of whom could obviously not be trusted and leaked it onto a few other people, who then leaked it onto a few more... the point is, it's illegal to distribute.

Okay thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if there was a beta release or not. Guess curiosity got the best of me... again. :p

So people are still ilegally distributing it?

I must aquire a copy!

I mean, er, terrible, terrible behaviour.

The beta was leaked, and improved on by people.

You could try looking on Google for the work.

i did't do it! * points to Nimpie :D *

Another conspiracy! :D *get wacked*

There was never a public release. The beta release that people talk about was used as a demonstration for World Tree Games to present the game to publishers. Also, as far as I understand, the game had not reached beta stage yet. I'm guessing this release was somewhere around pre-alpha.

Yeah, there's not much to the game and what is is really buggy and/or incomplete.

The screenshots look good enough.

I have never had Jazz3Demo ;O

be happy with that NinJazz

Yes, there is a demo. :P

(warez)

[Warez edit. You know this is disallowed. You get a subwarning. - FQuist]

I downloaded and tried Nimrods JJ3 online beta work and it looks great from what's ready. Sad that the whole project is death now, as the Jazz community needs something new to get more visitors and members..

The project could be saved if the main site (and resource centre) for Jazz Jackrabbit didnt have a ban policy on a potentially legal game. You provide one link to it and boom its removed. (Yes, Im talking about J2o/JCF)

The only illegal part of it is the engine, but it can be changed with a few edits to make it a "Mod" for Unreal or Unreal Tournament. This way, it would be legal.

The only other things I can think of is maybe the names and charactors are copyrighted, but I hardly think Epic would care if you used them on a freely available mod for there own game (Unreal).

Its not like you see Rare sue people over Perfect Dark mods for UT, or the owners of the James Bond copyright for many James Bond mods for Unreal.

Either way, if you wanted to continue it, you will need some good coders, and a lot of community support.

But currently it is not a mod for UT, so it's still illegal.

By the way, Mark Rein stated that he would have "no problems" with a JJ UT mod.

I've got it running as a Mod for Unreal Gold :) Although I need to work on the GUI, right now I'm using command line.

Perfect.

That is, if you enjoy multiplayer. The JJ3 MP experience at current state is highly under whelming.
Single Player, however, is excellent

@Nimrod: I am not a good programmer, so I can't help with this project. But do you think that you will ever manage to get this project in good state again with your team? That's the general thing I wanted to ask..

He said UT2004, specifically.

It's not "potentially legal". Maybe in some dream world with pink fluffy clouds and jackrabbits happily hopping about there, but not in this real world.

It's really, really, quite simple, if you care to look at the law even for the tiniest bit. If the creators of JJ3 do not wish it to be distributed, which they have stated they DO NOT, it cannot be distributed legally. Leaked unfinished things do not become 'legal' to distribute because they were leaked before they were published and copyright was requested (if someone leaks Madonna's newest album a month before it was released, does it become legal to share her album with all your friends since it wasn't published yet?), they stay illegal since any work is automatically copyrighted by US law.

The wording of section 102 is significant mainly because it effectuated a major change in the mode of United States copyright protection. Under the last major statutory revision to U.S. copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1909, federal statutory copyright protection attached to orginal works only when those works were 1) published and 2) had a notice of copyright affixed. State copyright law goverened protection for unpublished works before the adoption of the 1976 Act, but published works, whether containing a notice of copyright or not, were goverened exclusively by federal law. If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and and the work was, in fact, "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain. Under the 1976 Act, however, section 102 says that copyright protection extends to original works that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Thus, the 1976 Act broadended the scope of federal statutory copyright protection from "published" works to works that are "fixed."

United States Copyright Act of 1976

This took me five minutes of research. Please do inform yourself before making odd claims and acting on them and heaving rhetorical slurs at this site's administration.

If you want to spread your JJ3 mod, here's how to go about it:

1. E-mail its creators or a contact person of them (Dodrill?) that you've made a mod that does include the engine, and is thus not illegal to spread even with its creators' consent.
2. Ask them if they still do not wish it to be spread.
3. Rejoice, or give up.

Why do I say this? Because they have stated they do NOT wish it to be distributed, and they have actively opted to not allow it. But perhaps they can be convinced with this new situation. You need to actually try, however.

*Stands up and applauds FQuist*

I spoke to Nimrod about this, and it seems his idea is for an UT mod based on JJ3 but using completely original content. This would not be illegal or a breach of copyright. It would be illegal to include data from the JJ3 demo in the mod, but if all artwork, characters, levels, and sounds are original work, it would be fine.

Edit: To clarify, the content in the link that Nimrod posted is still illegal and warranted FQuist's edit. The eventual goal would be to create a version that includes no content from the JJ3 demo. As of now, though, this does not exist, and the current version (using the Unreal engine and JJ3 skins/artwork) is still illegal to download or possess.

So Nimrod's idea of a UT mod wouldn't actually have anything to do with this JJ3 demo. It'd be along the same lines as Piet's Razz Arena or Bagger's Jazz3D fangame.

I guess so, but the ideas would all be coming from the JJ3 Demo which is not "legal" to pass on, it gave a good idea of how JJ3 should be, and can be easily reproduced on any version of the Unreal Engine.

Lark and Overlord both made good maps for the Unreal Engine that can be used in JJ3, theres also 2 good Multiplayer maps in the JJ3 Demo, and if we could get permission from whoever made them to include them in our own JJ3 Mod it would be good.

Also, does US Copyright law apply to people not from the US? (Or would the local version come into force?)

I believe either works are protected under the copyright of their country of origin, or there is a similar international copyright law.

There is a similar international copyright law, and I take usually the extra rules of the country of origin are respected to some extends, too, although I need to research that (it's a rather complex mechanism)

International copyright law:

Copyright must be granted automatically, and not based upon any "formality", such as registrations or systems of renewal.

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

It would be much harder to make a patch liked program that will work like a mod for JJ3, but it's not impossible for sure. I still can't see why Epic don't distributes the JJ3 demo to the public, same for the JJ2 source code..

I believe the problem with JJ3 has to do with copyrights. They needed a yes from all owners of JJ rights to distribute it freely, which they don't have. That's how I understood it.

And I'm happy they don't give out the source code for JJ2, for a reason I stated a thousand times already.

The discussion about the JJ2 source code grew big last time. I still think that it's a big improvement for the community if we where able to make a 1.25 though.

The question is IF it is an improvement or if it screws up JJ2. I'm for a script language instead.

If we have or haven't got the source code. Hackers can always make cheat programs to mess up JJ2. Not that it's important to have the source, but it will make a lot of fun for programmers that can fix the many glitches that are still into 1.23..

...and ruin any old custom levels that make use of these glitches.

If there were more such levels than Team Battle v2 and Assassination.

Those game types are not very important and you can still use them into TSF if there ever will be an 1.25..

Or make an actualy game mode like Team battle...

That's another good solution. But in my time on JJ2 I only saw 2 servers playing this game type..

JJ3 demo compared with todays graphics sucks to bad they couldnt redo it. Now it looks really old sorta like doom 1 almost just more angles lol...

Eh?

So you have [ilegal] acess to the demo?

Quite frankly I think its good enough to sell to todays auidience, the graphics may not be so spiffy, but the gameplay would shine through.

And leik jj2 looks leik teh space invaders only liek wit mor colurs leik lol
With today's graphics it'd be a really good looking DS game.
JJ3 had graphics better than most N64 games.