Lucius had conversations with Bethesda, they said that they aren't interested in re-releasing and never gave an explicit permission to use assets, somewhere on old forums there was even thread with quotes from mails.

Could we get an update?

Lucius, if you're reading this could we just get a screenshot or something? Just throw me a bone dude. Not trying to be impatient but I visit the XLengine page maybe twice a day hoping for an update.

An open letter to Lucius:

Lucius, I don't know what difficulties are forcing your silence right now but it is my personal fear that it may have something to do with Blood's EULA. Within that agreement the end user is forbidden to decompile, hex edit, or read the output of Blood's exe. in any way. I hope I'm wrong, if not, then here's something else you should consider:

Monolith/Atari never owned and never will own it's own private copy of the build engine. They licensed it (as did several other companies) and any modifications they made are the strict property of whoever the build engine belongs to- 3drealms if I'm not mistaken. The build engine itself is now open source, it would be illegal for them to enforce any prior licensing stipulations.

I know I've been on and on about the end user's agreement at other forums you frequent, I hope you can bring yourself to ignore those posts, as they were based on an inacurate understanding of EULA practices.

zZaRDoZz

He should be ok. Those EULA provisions against reverse engineering are illegal in most sane jurisdictions as they are considered anti-competitive: they would prevent other vendors from making compatible products in some cases.

This definitely has nothing to do whatsoever with Lucius' silence. Even if somehow legalities became an issue, they wouldn't affect the entire project, only the particular game in question. And if any legal issue were to cause any problems with the project, there would most definitely be an announcement.

The reality is no more sinister than Lucius waiting until he has something more substantial to say than, "Still plugging away at the XL Engine as (limited) time permits."


I'll see if I can get the ball rolling on that. The work currently being done doesn't lend itself well to screenshots, but maybe a blog post would be a possibility.

Be patient, I don't think Lucius will be done for quite a long time, so in the meantime go make some re-textures or some fan art for your favorite XL games, so we can all have something to look at in the meantime

I understand and I'm not trying to be one of those guys that spam "I want it done now!" or anything like that. It's just frustrating when you're such a big fan of something and there's nothing to go on and you're for the most part left in the dark. If I could code I'd help out. If it was a matter of money to get this project done, tell me how much. What I can't get give I'll help start a Kickstarter page for. I guarantee you at least half the people that bought Blood on GOG would chip in something.

And there's so many projects like this that just slowly end without a word and you only find out much later what may have happened.

I'm just anxious and looking forward to a release with tools so the community can really get involved with it.

Just an eta, by the end of the year or something, and that'll due. So long as this project isn't being overlooked by George Brusard I'll be good.

I just want to clarify that delays and lack of outward progress have had absolutely nothing to do with the EULA of any game. I appreciate your concern, zZaRDoZz. I'm well aware of the enforceability of the EULA and what effect is has on this project - that is absolutely none. That said, I'm taking steps to ensure that you guys stay in the loop so concerns like this don't pop up again.