I know it is illegal if you port from one game to another and put that up for download, but is it okay if you port in your own game? since you do own it, and yes I realize just owning it doesn't mean its yours. And on a related note, are there any behemoths in FO:NV

As long as you don't distribute it you're fine.

hooray, but are there behemoths?

No, there are not. Inherent differences between FEV strains on either coast mean only DC gets behemoths.

Technically, he could distribute it, but only if the resources being used from Fallout 3 are in New Vegas as well.

So if he was to say, add SM Behemoths into the game from Fallout 3, he could not do so. Only way around that is if he was to make the model and textures from scratch.

Then it's not "porting", is it...?

hey I got another question, if I release a mod, but it doesn't have the resouses from NV in it I just tell people to copy and past from F3 will that work?

It would work (and should be fine legally as they already have them on-disk, but I'm not a lawyer), but you're going to get support questions out the wazoo.

Far better (if more painful) to recreate everything from scratch just to be sure. Or hope that a future DLC adds in what is missing and then use that ESM as your master.

What Bethesda's stand is on that I don't know, but from a technical standpoint, yes it would work.

In what sense do you mean porting? Like... converting the PC to console?

Or making FO3 inside New vegas with all of NV's new features?

If the ladder, you can not only do that, but also distrobute it.... As long as it is merely a mod and you don't actually take content that is only in FO3 (If you want Behemoths, or anything else that is in FO3 but not NV, you have to re-create them yourself). If you take content directly from FO3 and put it in NV, it would be copyright infringement.

Last I heard it was 'okay' after all you're not releasing closed resources, but rather pointing people in the direction of how to gain the resources from an existing install to use with your mod. AKA doing it in the comfort of your own home where it's legal, or if where it would fall under infringement, no one would know.

In neither option can they tell you're doing it, and in most places if you do something that for your own use. It's legal.

I guess the confusion is over his (mis)use of the word "porting"...

"port from one game to another"

As in transfering resource from FO3 to FONV, for example, a mod that contain something from the FO3 game files which is not in the FONV game files. This violates the EULA. So in that sense it is 'illegal' (although not an entirely accurate description). But, if you do not distribute it or make it available for others to download, and only do it for your own use, no one can police it (thus making it...."legal", but again, not an entirely accurate description...).

Fortunately, many resources from FO3 can be found in the FONV resources, even if a player cannot find/encounter/utilize these resources during normal game play. So a number of FONV mods have simply "unlocked" (also not quite accurate description....) such contents.

The issue with publically distributing content from another game has nothing to do with the EULA. It's simple cut-and-dry copyright law and there's no vague interpretation or technicalities involved. You do not have the legal right to distribute the resources. Pointing a mod at the resources you or your user has legally acquired copies of is unquestionably legal as far as copyright is concerned, but may be against the EULA.

What is amusing however is that the supermutant behemoth meshes DO exist in the New Vegas assets. What is missing is the textures. So the question I have which sort of ties into this is, what if you created your own textures? Would it then be legal to use the already existing assets with your textures to bring supermutants into the game? I see quite a few unused meshes including creature meshes complete with the animations and skeleton.nif

Now I have not looked in game yet but even the mirelurks, nukalurks, and mirelurk hatchlings are there

Also creatures from the DLC are in there as well. As I said, most missing the textures but with the meshes, how hard could it be to whip up new textures for these bad boys?

You can use assets present in the New Vegas files. Whether or not they are actually used in the game proper doesn't matter. So you could use the behemoth mesh provided you supply your own texture for it.

of course, this I realize but what do you think Beth/Obs view of this would be if it were released as a mod?

No, I am sorry, but it's not "cut and dry." Aside from the primary purpose of establishing liability limitations, EULA is also used to assert control of content by copyright owners beyond the scope of copyright laws. We've witnessed this in the numerous locked threads about a certain utility that I will not name, which is intended to facilitate the conversion of Morrowind assets for use in Oblivion (not the public distribution of these assets). This utility is outlawed by Bethesda, according to Bethesda lawyers, not because it is in violation of copyright laws, but because it is in violation of the EULA.

This is from the Bethesda blog:





Now that sounds exactly like the Bethesda lawyers....

Alas, I don't think there is any point in continuing this conversation, since the vast majority of such discussions in the past have concluded in locked threads on this forum. I don't think anyone will disagree that the OP's question has been answered?



Unquestioningly acceptable--recall how many FO3 mods were re-textures of creatures and guns.

I really never looked deeply into the MMM assets but did he not have to distribute edited copies of bethesda meshes in order to have skin variants? I just reinstalled a fresh copy FO3 in order to facilitate some of the work I am doing on Ling's so i do not have a local copy of that mod, but to my understanding a single mesh cannot point to multiple textures in order to appear different in game. In other words, a blue radroach, for example, cannot share the same mesh with a yellow radroach because they use different skins.

Still legal, because the mesh already existed in FO:3. You're just making a copy of an existing mesh and giving it a new texture. You're not pulling that mesh in from another game's resources and then distributing it.

Please read my post again. What I said was cut and dry is the illegality of distributing copyrighted content. I specifically said that linking to content existing on a user's computer is a different animal. Sorry if my wording "legal as far as copyright" was misleading.

Yes, but 99.99% of those were based on the original texture and in this case you can not use any part of the original texture not as an overlay not as a base not as a guide to creating the new texture -> the Texture would have to be 100% original from scratch !!! -> what alot of people forget is that just because you alter something it does not suddenly belong to you ! and this applies to re-textures as well.

So while a ton of the FO3 Critters did make it over they are sans their textures so every mod that used these creatures and their re-textured variants are NOT allowed to be ported over without question mods like MMM and my own SSP-Creatures are not allowed to port over ANY of their Beth Altered Re-Textured Creatures period its not going to fly, which leaves any creature overhauls and extensions to basically be forced to start from scratch as it applies to creature variety.

And creating a Creature Texture from scratch is a pain in the A$$ this is especially true for creating the Normal Map.

The best case senario for the Behemoth is to re-purpose the SM texture which can be fairly easily re-applied to the Behemoth's UV Cords in either a proper 2D Image Mamipulation Prog or even with most 3D applications with RTT and Projection capabilities.

... if you want a textured behemoth, why not just take any nightkin as a template and make it 5 times bigger?


As for the "legality", EULA, copyright, etc etc etc... the meat of the "you can't port assets amongst our games" thing has to do with Bethesda not wanting people who have not purchased the one game whose asset is "ported" to get that asset "for free", (which I don't think is not really smart: a good part of the success of games like the newer Elder Scrolls and Fallouts is due to the modding community). God forbid someone gets an armor .nif from Game X in Game Y without paying the $50 bucks for Game X.

The way I see it, transferring .nifs and textures from one game to the other makes for more interesting and varied mods, and keeps the public interest not only in the franchise, but the dev. company and other games released by the dev. company as well.

Yes, conveniently ignoring the whole "Licensed content" ground we've gone over dozens of times before. Whether or not handing out Fallout 3 files would drum up more interest in FO3, if Bethesda okay you to reuse textures/parts they may have sourced from third party content suppliers in games they don't have a license for using it in, they will get in trouble.

Also, again, delusions of grandeur- whilst the modding community drums up a decent amount of publicity, sales would not drop by a great deal if FO4/TESV simply didn't support modding, and it's hardly such a lynchpin of their business strategy they should bend over to please us. Extra sales of the PC version to console owners who now want to try mods would be pretty much the only thing affected.

I, for one, would definitely be a lost sale if that were true.

Well, if a random person on the modding board makes a statement that they would never ever buy a modless TESV, then I guess that's concrete proof sales would plummet!
I don't know if you're aware of the concept of taking a representative sample of the market; you are not one.

Regardless, you'd still buy it. See Left4Dead2, see Starcraft 2, see every game in recent history people have said they totally wouldn't buy because of some problem compared to previous games- you played gamesas games originally because you enjoyed open-world RPGs, and the modding was a bonus. If they took away modding you might grumble, but you'd eventually capitulate, because it'd still be an enjoyable open-world RPG.

vvv Dear christ not again.
It's legal from our user end, however Bethesda wouldn't allow it to be discussed on the forums and would request it be taken down from Nexus because it transfers content they licensed for use only in one game (FO3) to another (FONV). Since Nexus is effectively 'the unofficial official FO:NV modding site' then Beth have to address stuff like that on it. There was (and is) a project to convert Morrowind to Oblivion, Morroblivion, that everybody thinks it was Cease & Desisted and declared illegal simply because it got taken down from Nexus, even though development is still ongoing and Bethesda haven't said a word to them. This simply goes to show very few people know the first thing about what they're talking about, sadly.