FF7 Workshop-ish Site

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saftle

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I hope that I don't get any hate for this. It is a genuine question, and am wondering how the mod developers and the owners/moderators of this site would feel about this.

I'm a pretty good developer and have pretty extensive knowledge in automating installer builds, and given what Pitbrat has done with his Bootleg setup, I think it would be definitely doable to create a Workshop like website featuring all the mods here, that will automate the install process using a web front end.

Imagine a gridlike website similar to Steam's Workshop that showcases all the mods that are available. Mod information, screenshots, author information, donate button for the authors of that given mod, automatic notification of a mod update etc.

Once a user chooses the mods he wants, it will auto create an installer based on those mods chosen that will possibly download the mods automatically, create the Bootleg profile automatically, and then launch the Bootleg installer in the background. Of course I'm only using Pitbrat's Bootleg as an example.

It will give more credit to the author's, and in all honesty make the whole process a bit more streamlined. It will inevitably also bring more mod developers to the scene as well. Of course the development scene would remain at Qhimm in order to filter out the non-developers and non-contributors.

Something like this will definitely boost awareness of these awesome mods, and potentially show Square-Enix the demand for such a setup.

This has just been one of those projects that I've been dying to do since I ran across these forums, and would love to contribute in this way. Feedback is more than welcome! :)

Edit: Here is my quick thrown together concept: https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/176664/
 
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Would we have anything to worry about if we stick to the strict guidelines of complete original work though?
 
Half of the things here are *probably* illegal or shut down-able. They just don't care enough ATM.
 
I hope that isn't the case because what I had in mind, would essentially generate sales for Square-Enix. Banners linking directly the Square-Enix store, etc.

So far the only Cease & Desists that I've seen were based on full conversions that weren't helping them sell their game.

The Super Nintendo sequel to Chrono Trigger from the website Chrono Compendium, or the Chrono Trigger 3D Remake were both games that would potentially decrease sales for Square. They just started selling their DS port of Chrono Trigger and of course fans would have chosen to stick with the SNES sequel or the 3D remake rather than forking over the cash for essentially the same game.

If everything linked to their store, and required purchases to make the game moddable, I wouldn't think they would see it as a problem.
 
Oh, they don't need a valid reason. It's a good-hearted idea, I'm just telling you what would probably happen.
 
The fact is that they never had a "modding-friendly" attitude nor aggressivness. I guess that's a big decision in the company policies (and it'd need development investisments too). It's unclear if they'd see that as an advantage or a bad choice... Personally, I don't think RPG are best games for modding (at high levels, I mean, though I only know Morrowind to have tried and that's not really the same kind of RPG).
That is, if they are aware of the modding community and decide to react positively, it'd be deeper than just saying "Ok, we allow this website to exist and share mods/modding tools of our games". It would be followed by actual investisment in modding resources (else they wouldn't need to even react).


About the project itself, yeah, I see it as a convenient way to present the tools. The wiki has already a list of tools and download links, but having an automatic installer would surely be a plus.
 
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Personally, I don't think RPG are best games for modding (at high levels, I mean).
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Bethesda would disagree with you. It's crazy the full-conversion mods there are for Elder Scrolls games.

Still, I haven't seen many games come out of Japan with a friendly attitude toward end-user customization. It comes from a culture where it's offensive to ask for salt at a restaurant because that says the cook's way of preparing food was unsatisfactory. I guess it bleeds into other customization factors being interpreted as "I could do better".
 
I think Bethesda is very modder friendly. Actually they purposely pack their games into esp's and make them incredibly easy to mod.
 
As long as it all requires a legit copy of the original, I don't see the problem; it's not too different from what we've got now, only a ton better organized.

My chief concern with this concept is hosting; the bandwidth for such a thing would be crazy expensive.
 
Not to mention all the man hours required to keep track of and maintain such a thing. I also still think they could send us a cease and desist at any time just for what we have here let alone an organized distribution system. They can simply because they can, not because there's a reason to.
 
Watching SE allow bots and RMT to run all over ffxi for 7 years made me a little sick. If something is generating profits for them without any investment (and this site along with youtube definitely is now) they wont bother with it.
 
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I can't imagine a C&D at this point. Mods have been floating around here for at least 5 years, and I don't recall seeing any issues before I came around. If anything, my Tutorial for Bootleg brought in a large amount of attention when it was posted on Kotaku and the YouTube videos started getting all its views. Even after that, we still saw an increase in publicity for the 2012 re-release, but still nothing from SE. I'd imagine sales capitalized some, as many people have messaged me and posted comments about buying the 2012 re-release just for modding it with Bootleg.
 
It's possible I'm just being a pessimist, I just don't want this site to get any negative attention.
 
Perhaps qhimm is more than a mere blip on the radar and the site is monitored - but, so far, everything has operated within the "acceptable limits". I mean...there is an active attitude of keeping things legal here.  I don't even like having this conversation lol.

No Attention, Bad.
Some Attention, Good.
Lots of Attention, Bad. - - qhimm is already the #1 search result for "FFVII Mods" Who knows...I think this ship flies in precarious ground but has a good crew.
SE forums show mentions of qhimm in the 10s of thousands of times.
 
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I think I read, from qhimm, that the goal was to fly just far enough in the radar to be visible, but not appear threatening (my words, not his). Tools are not necessesarily (where's my autocorrect when I need it) threatening because they don't violate any part of their EULA. Mods, to varying degrees, don't really either so long as they contain original content. Total conversions or independent remakes are bad because they either steal characters or code. C&Ds have no legal justification unless one of these two things happens. To my knowledge they have not happened with this site, but there are other projects that were shut down (CT remakes, FFVI sequels) for these reasons.

SE won't (at least we hope) stop us from making small changes to existing elements as long as they are original content that don't violate some other copyright or patent. I think it's safe to make those assumptions, at least.
 
I'm not sure... Doesn't the copyright say something like "Users buy a right to use and play the game but not to modify it in any way"? I really don't know for sure if that's the case with SE's games but I'm think that's a common clause in program merchandising.
 
Doesn't the copyright say something like "Users buy a right to use and play the game but not to modify it in any way"? I really don't know for sure if that's the case with SE's games but I'm think that's a common clause in program merchandising.
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That's a common misinterpretation of most EULAs. In actuality, no company has the right to dictate what order the bytes are on my hard drive. I can modify anything I own as much as I want. The thing is, if you DO modify it in a certain way you would void any warranty associated with the base product. If I modified Outlook to produce false email headers to make it look like I was sending the message from a different location I wouldn't be eligible for tech support if it suddenly stopped working. The actual restriction is "you cannot modify this and distribute it as your own creation". That includes, but is not limited to, reverse engineering or redistribution.

Tools do not violate this because they allow users to make modifications themselves. Code can be copyrighted or classified (which few here will likely ever come into contact with), but disassembly isn't the original copyrighted code. You can't give someone a toaster and sue them for looking at the parts inside. You CAN sue them for looking inside it and using pieces or design in your own invention that you sell as an original work (that's reverse engineering).

Why are mods legal? Because they are acknowledging that they require a certain base to work with. As long as you don't distribute the ENTIRE base product you can freely hand out third-party home-brewed modifications to existing applications.

So why are Dissidia/Crisis Core model rips illegal? Because they are taken from existing copyrighted elements and just squeezed into working with FF7's engine. That's redistribution of someone else's work (ie. plagiarism).
 
Can we have that post stickied somewhere? Or placed on the copyright thread thing?
 
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