GeneRally International Forum

Just a friendly reminder to all authors, who haven't yet posted in The Official Permissions Thread to do so. I'd also like to stress again, that a readme file containing permission details is most welcome with every released work. Just ask LongBow.

To all new to the forum and all who don't know what I'm talking about, you're welcome to read this discussion thread and the official one for info.

egamad wrote:...Just ask LongBow.

Damn right

BTW, what about my ideas in my previous post?

LongBow wrote:I have a couple of suggestion...

...a lot of words...

Your idea about this Permission Facebook ( ) is in a long term very responsible, and it would definitely be a life saver in case of a forum crash. But someone would have to gather all data and arrange it to a some kind of scrapbook, and of course update it. I wouldn't mind being that person, but I'd appreciate some ideas on how to easily extract the required data without too much handiwork.

Of course, if someone volunteers and has an idea how to do it well, he can do it instead, it would be appreciated.


And I also agree with your other idea about posting in the name of other people. Of course it would have to happen just as you described - you would have to have some written proof and send it to one of the admins and he would then be best to post the permission himself.

egamad wrote:And I also agree with your other idea about posting in the name of other people. Of course it would have to happen just as you described - you would have to have some written proof and send it to one of the admins and he would then be best to post the permission himself.

Yes, it sounds like a good way of doing it.

egamad wrote:Of course, if someone volunteers and has an idea how to do it well, he can do it instead, it would be appreciated.

Well, I made a rough sample of how the book could look. The pics can be replaced by simply copy/pasting the content of each authors permission post but I somehow think the pics are better even though the book would have a larger file size.

About the idea about posting in the name of other people I need some feedback from the admin and/other mods. I need to bring this to their attention.

maybe excel sheet with columns would be enough (and easier for updating).

Ivo Porč wrote:maybe excel sheet with columns would be enough (and easier for updating).

That would also require a lot of manual work and with that possible mistakes/errors while making the sheet.
Copy/paste and screen shots are much better since they are "error free".

Nicely done, LongBow, but as you said it needs some further polishing.

And just a thought - why not simply save the web page as a html? It saves text and all formatting, avatar pictures, etc.?

egamad wrote:And just a thought - why not simply save the web page as a html? It saves text and all formatting, avatar pictures, etc.?

Of course...how I couldn't think of that. I think this is the best option. Now we just need to clear things out on how the things should be done.

There has been a big UPDATE in The Official Permissions Thread. I urge all who have posted there before, to take a few minutes and edit their posts.

Please read through the thread again carefully as there are a lot of updated things to make the permissions even more uniform and transparent. The Competition permissions have been broken down to 2 categories, one for cars and one for tracks. Also the Distribution of modified addons has been updated.
Also read the rules, as some issues that were previously in a grey area are now covered there. The rules now state that everyone is obligated to give you credit for your work, so please edit that out of your posts. Also Haruna Say, your issue with borrowed cars are now covered in the thread rules.

As you see, there are quite some changes, so I repeat, read through the thread again and edit your posts ASAP.

And to all who haven't yet posted in The Official Permissions Thread, I urge you to do so, as it is very important if you want your GR creations to have a long life.

I disagree with those changes, because some of us only want to allow certain modifications even with crediting, so you could end up with a blanket "NO" where people had said "YES but with reservations" before.

I can see your point, Luke, but there has to be a certain form maintained. In the long run, the best option is a readme file. In there anyone can describe their permission to the smallest detail. But here we need to lean towards simplicity and uniformity and sadly it's a bitter tradeoff for detailed permissions.

One thing this forum also offers is a PM, and even if there is a "NO" in one category, everyone may politely ask the author for permission. It might help in some occasions.

But if you have any idea how to make it work, please share.

Maybe an "only minor alterations" option? This would be defined like this:

Tracks: SafePits, AI line change, checkpoint change
Cars: Repainting, new physics

Or something like that.

There has been a lot of "behind the scenes" work done recently regarding the Book of Permissions, as we named it. More then a month passed without any entries or updates to the new form. So I just want to say that if you have intended to make/update your sheet but haven't gotten around to it, now is the time to do so, as the Book is practically ready to be launched.
It's just a couple of minutes (or not even that much) work to ensure your released material is properly copyrighted. It's well worth it in the end. It's a shame really to have only 20 entries with so many authors, especially if you don't include readmes with your releases.

This is my last post on this subject (for some time at least), I promise. If you do decide to enter your permission status, you can read all about it HERE.

Sorry for double posting (if it still counts, since more than a year between posts ), but I would like to remind our forum users of this one particular thread - The Official Permissions Thread. For all of you, who do not know what the thread is about, please read the first post of it. For all of you, who know what it is about, but are too lazy to make an entry, feel free obligated to do it now.

The thread has not seen any new entries for a while now, but there are quite a few new (and old) members, who have not yet contributed their posts. I also urge all members, who have posted their permissions before 13.1.2011 and have not yet updated their posts to the new format, to please do so.
One more thing I would like to ask of everyone is to stick to the code provided in the first post. You may not realise you're making a mess for no reason, as the permissions are stored offline in the official format only. You're just making my job harder than necessary.

Please, take a few minutes of your time and ensure your creations to have a future.

TL;DR - The Official Permissions Thread.

The permissions setup needs to have a "add pitlane limiter" YES/NO option for competition usage of tracks.

A. a moderator should know, where to post. Moved to permissions discussion thread, keep these things in mind next time, please.
B. I think limiters can be considered as ''standard attributes'' like checkpoints (similar component), no major change (or e.g. re-validation of so far stated permissions) needed IMHO.

A: I must be blind, looked for this thread, didn't see it, so posted in the other thread.
B: Perhaps, but I'd separate it just because people are funny and may want their regular checkpoints unchanged, but allow pitlimiters to be added.

I would, for convenience' sake, keep the format as it is now. Like Ivo said, speed limiters can without a doubt fall in the "standard attributes" category. Keeping a line between simplicity and descriptivity was the most difficult thing when assembling the form, let's not over-complicate things when not necessary. Besides, including a readme with one's tracks is still the best way to go, and you can describe your stance to infinity there.

Few things I want to say:

1. In the end of the 1st post of The Official Permissions Thread there's a link to this thread, which is broken. It leads to gene-rally.com instead of forum.generally-racers.com. Could this be fixed by someone?


2. I know that egamad said that he wouldn't like to change the format anymore, but I would like to add there a section, on which authors would list the works that were released without a readme file, so that people would know, for which works author's post in the permission thread will apply and for which works they will have to find a readme file to see the correct permissions for sharing and competition usage. Now the 1st post of The Official Permissions Thread states that "if there is a readme file released with any author work, the possible permissions in that file override authors general permissions for that work", which means that people should make sure that no readme file exists for the work one wants to use before they can rely on these general permissions. If there would be a list of works released without readme, those, who would like to use something, would know immediately that, if the work is on the list, then it can be shared without a readme in the way stated on these general permissions, and if the work isn't on the list, then one has to find and keep the readme intact before sharing.

I think that the list could done by adding following kind of section in the end of current format:

6: Addons released without readme:
CARS: Either names of all cars released without a readme or ALL, if all of author's cars have been released without a readme, or NONE, if none of author's cars have been released without readme (in other words; NONE, if all of author's cars have been released with a readme).
TRACKS: Either names of all tracks released without a readme or ALL, if all of author's tracks have been released without a readme, or NONE, if none of author's tracks have been released without readme.
SOUNDS: Either names of all sounds released without a readme or ALL, if all of author's sounds have been released without a readme, or NONE, if none of author's sounds have been released without readme.
PALETTES: Either names of all palettes released without a readme or ALL, if all of author's palettes have been released without a readme, or NONE, if none of author's palettes have been released without readme.
OTHER: Either names of all other addons released without a readme or ALL, if all of author's other addons have been released without a readme, or NONE, if none of author's other addons have been released without readme.

For example: Trigger Happy wants to organize a competition, in which he uses my car Onewheeler and my track Dortuyi, but he doesn't find readme files for them from his computer, even though most of my works have readme files. So, he is wondering, whether he has lost those readme files or whether there was readme files at all for those addons. Then he could come here to see that with Dortuyi there originally wasn't a readme file intact, so he can share it without readme. But my Onewheeler was released with a readme file intact, so he then knows he has to download it again to get the readme before he can share it.
The list would be a great help in this kind of situations.

That came to my mind, when I was thinking, how people could easily be sure, for which addons these general permissions will apply, especially in cases, when some of author's addons have been released without a readme and some have been released with a readme. (Like in my case: general permissions apply only to 3 of my tracks, which were released without a readme file, but doesn't apply to a big part of my GR works, which have readme files.)

So, what you think about this, egamad and others too?


3. There's still way too few posts in The Official Permissions, even though many authors do not include readme files with their addons. If you haven't included a readme file with every addon you have released, GO IN THE OFFICIAL PERMISSIONS THREAD AND POST YOUR PERMISSIONS THERE! (Unless you have already done that.)

I'd like to ask you something regarding conversion of GeneRally tracks to another platform - Grand Prix Manager 2. Now since GPM2 is another game does the restrictions for distributing modified tracks apply for use in other games such as GPM2?

Yes, I would think it does since you are modifying the addon for use in another game.

Guess I can't use this (it does look good however):


In GPM2 forums some tracks are not made at all and I thought that adapting GR tracks for the GPM2 enviroment will be good with this cross platform.

puttz wrote:Yes, I would think it does since you are modifying the addon for use in another game.

No, one needs a permission for such conversion. Author's rights don't end by leaving the GR-space.