The Last Allience

[beau]

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/tla?version=4

Read this!

Version 4 Below: --------

The Last Alliance

What Is The Last Alliance?

In short, TLA is a real-time strategy game that takes place in J.R.R. Tolkien's Arda during the first three Ages of the Sun.

However, to best answer that question, it's important to know what TLA is not.

TLA is not a commercial game. We are a freeware, fan-based project inspired by pure love for the project. We will make absolutely no profit from this project; TLA offers us innumerable intellectual and emotional profits by itself.

TLA is not a movie-based game. In fact, we feel that the movies, while they are entertaining, have done a lot in the way of making the true Tolkien experience rather bland. Many 'new' fans of Tolkien are only fans because of the movie and these fans lose out on what the more classical fans have: mental images of Arda before the movie. So one of TLA's goals is to shake up the mainstream a bit and introduce new, original thinking when it comes to Tolkien's work.

TLA is not a Lord of the Rings game. Seems counterfactual, true, but in fact TLA encompasses all Three ages of the Sun. The timespan that TLA covers is an astounding 7045 years; by comparison, the events in LotR happen within a single year. So if you know Tolkien's work only from LotR or the Hobbit, prepare to have your mind opened and served to you on a shining, mithril plate ;-)

TLA is not officially endorsed by any 'official' organizations, namely the Estate of J.R.R Tolkien, Tolkien Enterprises, The Saul Zaentz Company, or Vivendi Universal.

Now for what TLA is:

TLA is a celebration of the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the efforts of his son, Christopher and it is to these two to whom this game is dedicated.

TLA is a purist's paradise. We study every aspect of Arda in depth, from language, tengwar modes, and the Lhammas, to historically styled dissertations on the Wars of Beleriand. We do our absolute best to ensure that we accurately portray Arda with our project.

TLA is held together by pure fellowship. The WFG team is made of talented men and women from over fourteen different countries, with ages ranging from 14 to 63 years. We're held together blindly by our respective goals and our passion for making games.

A History of The Last Alliance

In the beginning, there was a modding team. This modding team called itself Wildfire Studios and was founded in January 2001. By May of that year, Wildfire Studios had distinguished itself above other modding teams for its legendary Age of Kings modpack, Rome at War, which is still considered among the best modpacks ever made. In fact, Rome at War was even featured in and distributed with computer magazines.

Then in late 2001, Wildfire Studios began its next project, which was codenamed, "0 A.D." This project was going to be a total-conversion modification for Age of Kings, which set the game in the era from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.. It was during this time, a time when public interest in Tolkien's work was on the uprise from the hype for the first movie, that some members of Wildfire Studios began to conceptualize The Last Alliance. Josef_Bugman, a veteran modder took it upon himself to create The Last Alliance as another one of Wildfire Studios' modpacks.

So Josef_Bugman sought out help from all around the Internet, enlisting many people, and eventually catching the attention of Adam (av_nefardec), who still stays around these days on the project. In the early days of TLA, Josef_Bugman wanted no less than to recreate the New Line Cinema LotR film within Age of Kings. Then, in the first quarter of 2002, Wildfire Studios changed its name to Wildfire Games, to avoid complications with an already existing game development studio.

The first part of 2002 saw little advancement with the project except in the way of building graphics. The reason for this was simple. Both TLA and 0 A.D. were unsure of how they could fit all that they wanted to create into the rather limited scope of an AoK modpack. So in early 2002, TLA became Wildfire Games' first game development project. 0 A.D. soon followed suit, and is now doing very well as an independently developed historical RTS.

The Summer of 2002 was a rough time for the fledgling TLA. Josef_Bugman, whose time for the project was severly restriced by both university and personal reasons was forced to devote less and less of his energy to the project. It was during this time that Josef_Bugman appointed Adam (av_nefardec) as provisional project leader. Adam, by this time enthralled by the very idea of TLA, tried to pick up the pieces of the project and start anew.

Among the first things Adam did to revamp TLA was to induct several members into the TLA team, not the least of whom was Elfthehunter, a senior game designer today on the project. With Elfthehunter and others, Adam set off blindly into the world of game development. We began to write the game's design document, the holy word of TLA, if you will, and we began to generalize the development schedule. Things were going slowly, albeit smoothly.

Then in December of 2002, TLA started the expansion process. TLA went out and recruited no less than twelve new members, among them were conceptual artists, musicians, database programmers, and linguists. Game Design became serious work instead of lax discussion, as the team learned more and more about what game development was all about.

And then in Spring of 2003, a bombshell hit and TLA was paralyzed. Some vistors to the forums pointed out possible legal implications of the development of such a project as TLA. So the first move the team made was to totally generalize itself and bring the project out of Tolkien's world. From this point, the team could more safely chart its course through the murky waters of legality. It was during this time that Adam and Frumpus began to consult various persons associated with the online Tolkien Community and began to take the first footsteps towards a final solution. After more than a month of researched, the ultimatum was reached. TLA walked away from this crisis as a Tolkien purist fan project, and has since never looked back.

After the Spring crisis, TLA became extremely devoted to exploring the works of J.R.R. Tolkien through the various media involved with a computer game. TLA has artists drawing, painting, and modeling renditions of Tolkien's peoples, characters, and places. TLA has musicians exploring Arda through sound and feeling. TLA has research consultants and linguists who painstakingly read through every detail of Tolkien's work to make sure it is accurately portrayed in the game. TLA continues to build in strength and substance everyday with the undying committment and love of its members.

And so for all of us involved with The Last Alliance, the road goes ever on...

There's been some question as to the legal legitimacy of The Last Alliance in the past. This disclaimer will point out how TLA is protected by the United States Copyright Law and why, therefore, it has solid legal ground.

Some things to know about TLA:

Here's the Fair Use clause of the US Copyright Law, Article 1, Section 107.

Quote Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Thus the US Copyright Law protects The Last Alliance as such: (refer back to numbered criteria above)

(1) TLA is not in any way commericial, and is indubitably a nonprofit, educational project.

(2) Tolkien's Work is immensely vast and deep; therefore, it requires much research and is deserving of dedicated scholarship and it is necessary to educate willing fans based on this research to allow the works of Tolkien to be better appreciated.

(3) TLA uses all original artwork, music, essays, movies, etc, etc. But in order to research Tolkien's work to its fullest extent, and to then educate about it, it is necessary to use as much of the copyrighted works as possible, logically.

(4) TLA is not part of the commercial market. We have no intention of marketing this game commercially, of publishing this game commercially, or anything of that nature. The project is much more than a game - it is a community of Tolkien fans who are so interested in his works that they have decided to share their interest with other fans through the medium of the real-time strategy computer game. TLA in no way aims to affect the commercial gaming market. In fact, The Last Alliance strongly endorses commercial Tolkien games, which our fans discuss and promote daily in the community forums.

Thus TLA is protected under the fair use clause of the US Copyright Law, simply because of the nature of the project. This excerpt from section 107 above in particular is of note:

...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Because The Last Alliance is primarily a project of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research, it is not an infringement of copyright, and therefore is legally legitimate.

-The TLA Staff

- Beau Begley - Broduer40

[Lion.Kanzen]

why you use the Trac to this Project?., is Mod or complete new Game? and how that is Related with Wildfire Games?

[kosmo]

I'm not sure if this is non-commercial, as afaik the license used for 0AD allows to sell copies of the game. I'm no lawyer, though.

[sanderd17]

I'm not sure if this is non-commercial, as afaik the license used for 0AD allows to sell copies of the game. I'm no lawyer, though.

Being not-commercial is not dependent on the license. You're just not-commercial if you don't sell the game. Next to that, "non-commercial" isn't part of the exceptions. So being non-commercial has no value here whatsoever. Instead, saying the project is used to learn and study a subject does make it fall under one of the exceptions.

[zoot]

"Saying" that the game falls under one of the exceptions doesn't make it true. It's all about whether a court would believe it. IMO, there is not a case for fair use here.

Show me a teacher who would use TLA in their classes. Or a researcher who would write an academic paper about it. It just isn't believable that these purposes are any major part of what TLA is.

[beau]

I was looking into it, and im going to do a lot of research and im going to collect everything i need to prove that TLA is Non-Commercial & Educational

My Professor actually is interested in using TLA as a Learning Experience and Develop TLA as a Class Project

[zoot]

I look forward to seeing a certified IP lawyer sign off on it

[fabio]

You may want to change the names while still having a LOTR-like theme, see e.g. other games like wesnoth.

[feneur]

I would recommend working with Rogue Republic http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showforum=422 ) rather than TLA, not only because you'd get around any copyright issues (not just including one of the most heavily protected intellectual properties in the world, but also the copyright of the content created by the original contributors of TLA - TLA was never open sourced or anything of that kind, so you'd need the permission of all previous contributors to be allowed to use any of the existing content), but also because it would be easier.

TLA never got much further than the concept stage, so even if you'd get around all the legal issues you'd still have a lot of work ahead of you. Rogue Republic seems to be much further ahead in that regard, and since it is actively being worked on you would not just do work which might get abandoned again once your classes are over, but rather something that will continue to be worked on and useful even after you're no longer able to work on it. Also, I don't know how many you are, but either way, there is a lot of work to even get started, and other things apart from actual coding etc. Even more so when you're doing things as schoolwork as you need to document things etc in a different way, so I would expect that the actual time would be less than 30 hours per week of actual development. Not saying that would be different in any project you'd be working on, just that it would be beneficial for you to not have to begin by designing the game as well

[historic_bruno]

I look forward to seeing a certified IP lawyer sign off on it

And would said lawyer spend their resources to defend us/the project from lawsuits? It's less even about what's legal than how much you can afford to defend. Everything associated with Tolkien's name is huge business and getting bigger, and I doubt we or anybody else could stand against that.

I know we closed the forum, we should also remove all references to TLA from our main site wildfiregames.com, of course we can't stop others from working on TLA, but I would strongly prefer it not be managed on our Trac or website.

[beau]

I would recommend working with Rogue Republic http://www.wildfireg...p?showforum=422 ) rather than TLA, not only because you'd get around any copyright issues (not just including one of the most heavily protected intellectual properties in the world, but also the copyright of the content created by the original contributors of TLA - TLA was never open sourced or anything of that kind, so you'd need the permission of all previous contributors to be allowed to use any of the existing content), but also because it would be easier.

TLA never got much further than the concept stage, so even if you'd get around all the legal issues you'd still have a lot of work ahead of you. Rogue Republic seems to be much further ahead in that regard, and since it is actively being worked on you would not just do work which might get abandoned again once your classes are over, but rather something that will continue to be worked on and useful even after you're no longer able to work on it. Also, I don't know how many you are, but either way, there is a lot of work to even get started, and other things apart from actual coding etc. Even more so when you're doing things as schoolwork as you need to document things etc in a different way, so I would expect that the actual time would be less than 30 hours per week of actual development. Not saying that would be different in any project you'd be working on, just that it would be beneficial for you to not have to begin by designing the game as well

Well if we can work on Rogue Republic then its settled, I can talk to my professor tonight at night school and see if he likes the idea (he will).

[feneur]

Well if we can work on Rogue Republic then its settled, I can talk to my professor tonight at night school and see if he likes the idea (he will).

Talk with the Rogue Republic guys before making any decisions, but I doubt they'd say no to getting a lot of free help

[Jeru]

Hi beau, where do you go to school? Could we get in contact with your professor?