Welcome to the Creatures Wiki! Log in and join the community.

Difference between revisions of "Creatures Development Network"

From Creatures Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(→‎History: (changed financial director to BDD - can't even remember who that was at the time!).)
Line 11: Line 11:
 
* Applicants had to pay £10 to get in - [[Lisa de Araujo]] claimed this was a requirement of it being a contract as all contracts have "consideration" (a thing of value), but others disagreed (notably [[slink]], who claimed to have signed a contract with Cyberlife without that clause)
 
* Applicants had to pay £10 to get in - [[Lisa de Araujo]] claimed this was a requirement of it being a contract as all contracts have "consideration" (a thing of value), but others disagreed (notably [[slink]], who claimed to have signed a contract with Cyberlife without that clause)
 
:[[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]]: I disagree as well. I think the future addons are sufficient consideration.
 
:[[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]]: I disagree as well. I think the future addons are sufficient consideration.
::Lisa: Well, I was only the messenger. I was told this by our financial director who in turn was told this by our solicitors. I suppose the solicitor could have been wrong, but it wasn't my place to speak to them, much less argue the point!
+
::Lisa: Well, I was only the messenger. I was told this by our business development director who in turn was told this by our solicitors. I suppose the solicitor could have been wrong, but it wasn't my place to speak to them, much less argue the point!
 
* Developers only got 20% of the profits - not even 20% of revenue; some wondered exactly how costs would be decided
 
* Developers only got 20% of the profits - not even 20% of revenue; some wondered exactly how costs would be decided
 
* Cyberlife had the "first right of refusal" on all addons - only if it decided not to accept the addon would people be allowed to sell it themselves or distribute it for free. Indeed, that right was not even in the contract, only in Lisa's interpretation; the exact wording was:
 
* Cyberlife had the "first right of refusal" on all addons - only if it decided not to accept the addon would people be allowed to sell it themselves or distribute it for free. Indeed, that right was not even in the contract, only in Lisa's interpretation; the exact wording was:

Revision as of 23:09, 8 February 2005

Cdnbutton.jpg

The Creatures Development Network (aka CDN) was a knowledge base, forum, and support resource for third-party developers on the Creatures series of games. It no longer contains separate forums - these have been merged into the general community site - but it does provide free copies of all tools created by Cyberlife/Creatures Labs for the games, as well as much information of use to those wishing to modify the game.

History

Cyberlife had been promising that they would provide a proper software development kit from the beginning of 1998. It turned out that their original concept was to have a small group of 20 contracted developers. Cyberlife would provide each developer the tools to create addons to Creatures 2, free of charge, and in return they would be able to sell the developer's work on their website. A form with a contract was put up on 15 September 1998 for people who wished to apply for this program.

However, many regulars of alt.games.creatures actaully read the contract and noticed a few "minor flaws" in it:

  • Applicants had to pay £10 to get in - Lisa de Araujo claimed this was a requirement of it being a contract as all contracts have "consideration" (a thing of value), but others disagreed (notably slink, who claimed to have signed a contract with Cyberlife without that clause)
GreenReaper: I disagree as well. I think the future addons are sufficient consideration.
Lisa: Well, I was only the messenger. I was told this by our business development director who in turn was told this by our solicitors. I suppose the solicitor could have been wrong, but it wasn't my place to speak to them, much less argue the point!
  • Developers only got 20% of the profits - not even 20% of revenue; some wondered exactly how costs would be decided
  • Cyberlife had the "first right of refusal" on all addons - only if it decided not to accept the addon would people be allowed to sell it themselves or distribute it for free. Indeed, that right was not even in the contract, only in Lisa's interpretation; the exact wording was:
Clause 4.2
The Developer hereby assigns to CyberLife all rights in the Work wherever subsisting.
Clause 6.1
CyberLife shall have the entire control of all aspects of the Work and, in particular, the sole discretion as to whether to publish the Work
  • As the above clauses suggest, after an addon was accepted there was no set date for when it would be published, and they might be distributed either singly or in groups at a price decided by Cyberlife.
Lisa: Please don't shoot the messenger (again!). I was told what to say and where I replied in my own words, they were reviewed by my superiors before I posted. As you no doubt know by now, I am not a lawyer and don't even play one on television. ;-)
  • The developer was personally and completely responsible for any damage done by the addons, not Cyberlife.
  • Cyberlife was able to terminate the contract at any time if they felt that not enough had been done by that developer, at which point the right to use the tools was removed.
  • Cyberlife had very clear rights over anything produced with the tools.

The whole commercial aspect of it was disturbing to the Creatures Community. As Ping said:

I only ever made stuff for C1 because it was available to anyone who wanted it, and anyone who didn`t want it didn`t have to Download it. But now, if people will be Making COBs and Cyberlife will be selling them in packs, where`s the fun any more?

Alexander Laemmle left the community at this time, possibly in reaction to this.

In the end, Cyberlife acknowledged that such contracts would have been better suited to developers with which they had a prior relationship and the CDN was reborn as an open-to-all (registration required) knowledge base of articles, basic tools and newsgroup discussions. More advanced tools, such as the Genetics Kit could now be purchased individually.

Other CDN developers, such as Chris Double continued to create a range of free tools. Developers who wanted to sell their creations could contact CyberLife and enter into a contract less onerous than the one initially proposed. Chaos Development were the first to take advantage of this and released their complete new world for Creatures 2 ... Montu

Creatures 3 saw the introduction of the Creatures Evolution Engine which offered increased flexibility in creating add-on worlds, in addition to a complete CAOS controlled user interface and file access in the form of PRAY and catalogue files.

By the release of Docking Station the discussions were web based and many new Metarooms were being developed ... including a complete remake of Creatures 1 inside the Docking Station engine.

Eventually all the tools were released as free downloads when Gameware bought up the ashes of Creature Labs in May 2003 (see history).

External links