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

Creatures Development Network

From Creatures Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Introduction

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.
  • 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 claues suggest, after 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
  • 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 avalible 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 acknoledged that such contracts would have been better suited to developers with which they had a prior relationship. In subsequent months, various tools would be released for sale as addons. 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