Abuse

[AutoAdmin]

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

[jg007]

as stated in the title .

only one thing the text for the game states that it is released as freeware but only the shareware versions is available, have they not realeased the registered version?

[DOSGuy]

Sadly, Crack dot Com is no more. The domain name has been owned by various pharmaceutical and search pages over the years, and both of the company's founders have moved on to other things. Through the wonders of archive.org, the following information can be found.

Is Abuse Public Domain?

The source code, artwork, and shareware levels (1-4) are public domain. This means you are free to copy, sell, or modify it with no restrictions. To get this point across you can do the following:

1. You can write a book about games and include the data on CD with the book. Some people have done this already.
2. You can put the data on a FTP or web site without asking permission to do so. People have done this many times as well.
3. You can make your own game based off of the Abuse source and artwork and sell it as your own. As noted below you can't call the game Abuse or Abuse 2 because the name is trademarked.

Data that is not public domain:

1. The sound effects in Abuse are owned by Bobby Prince (contact http://bpmusic.com). Since we do not own them we cannot make them public domain, but you should not have a problem using them in most cases. Besides they are 8bit 11khz, games these days are expected to have higher quality.
2. The levels with commercial Abuse (4+) are not public domain. We did not make them public domain because some stores are still selling the game.

Crack dot Com is hereby releasing the source code to Abuse to the public domain.

Ownership:

The following are statements of Crack dot Com's ownership. These
items are NOT being submitted to the public domain.

Crack dot Com retains ownership of the Abuse trademark.
Crack dot Com retains ownership of the Crack dot Com trademark.
Crack dot Com retains ownership of the Abuse "retail" data set.
Crack dot Com retains ownership of the Abuse "registered" data set.

The "retail" and "registered" data sets are defined as the levels, sound effects, music, artwork and other data which are NOT common to the "shareware" release of the game.

Licenses and Third Party Owners:

Crack licensed the DOS Abuse rights to Electronic Arts and the Mac Abuse rights to Bungie. Crack is therefore NOT releasing the full data set to the public domain to protect EA's and Bungie's investments in the product.

Sound effects found in the shareware release of Abuse are the copyright of Bobby Prince and are not being submitted to the public domain.

So, what exactly is the status of Abuse? It's not shareware because the registered version is no longer sold. It's not public domain because there are some limitations in the license. Bobby Prince (best known for his work for Apogee and id) owns the sound effects, and the retail and registered data sets aren't being released because distribution rights to the full version were licensed to EA and Bungie. It seemed most accurate, and least confusing, to simply say that the game is freeware.

Now then, EA probably doesn't own licensing rights in perpetuity. If Dave Taylor and Jonathan Clark were smart about it, they probably placed an expiry date on the license so that it would have to be renewed someday. I don't know if the details of the licensing agreements were ever disclosed, but they probably weren't, or couldn't be without EA and Bungie's permission.

As usual, the best hope for getting information, or permission to distribute the registered version, is to contact the owners. Dave Taylor is currently vice president of Naked Sky Entertainment. The reason why I took so long to add Abuse to the website is because I tried to contact either Dave or Jonathan (I'm not at the computer that I sent the email from right now) an email about a year ago and didn't get a response. I may have done something dumb like email one of their old crack.com addresses. At any rate, I didn't get a response, and the uncertainty about the game's status delayed its addition to the site. A number of games that were delayed for that reason have recently been added because, well, I don't care any more! If I can't get the registered version, I'll just add the shareware version for now and work on getting the rest later!

So, I'll see if I can get an answer from Dave Taylor, since I know where his website is, but he's probably a busy man. Worth a shot.

[leilei]

Abuse2 was a fan site, iirc, i think, but i don't know anymore

[DOSGuy]

After Crack dot Com's demise, sequel ideas were exchanged on abuse2.com (primarily set up by Crack dot Com to spread Golgotha source code), but work on an official sequel was minimal, most of it being conceptual. The team for the sequel consisted of very few of the original Abuse developers and members of the abuse2.com community.

At any rate, the legal declaration on abuse2.com is nearly identical to the one included with the source code, so I consider it reliable even though the project, and possibly site administration, seem to have been primarily contributed to by volunteers outside of Crack dot Com.

I've already sent an email to Dave Taylor, and I've just emailed Jonathan Clark. I'll see what I can do about the full version of the game.

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

Pretty cool game! Any news on the registered version?

[watson]

Old topic, but for those of you who haven't checked this out already:

http://abuse.zoy.org/

This website features the SDL port of Abuse for Linux. The latest tarball (version 0.8) includes the full registered dataset, which the original creators allowed to be distributed with Abuse SDL. No Windows or Mac binaries are available as of yet, and the latest release was 2 years ago, so I kind of doubt that this project is still quite active. It might be, but I'm not exactly sure as a lot of Abuse resources and fan sites are now dead. This site here seems to be the only one I can find that is actually still up.

Anyway, if you're running Linux, this should be easy to build. It was easy as pie on my machine. I had to build from source because Abuse isn't available in Debian Wheezy's package repository. (though there is a package for Squeeze)

As for the game itself, it's quite rad and I recommend trying it.

[MrFlibble]

Hmm, both ModDB and IndieDB offer a Win32 port, and also there's this Abuse 2 thing on SourceForge. However I'm unsure if those are license compliant and/or are an actual implementation of the original game from the source code (IIRC there was also some project that added more levels or something).

[MrFlibble]

This website features the SDL port of Abuse for Linux. The latest tarball (version 0.8) includes the full registered dataset, which the original creators allowed to be distributed with Abuse SDL.

Hmm, I can't find any official information about that, save for the very vague statement on the website:

Licensing terms for the data are still unclear but are being sorted out. Jonathan Clark and Dave Taylor, the original Abuse authors, allowed the full dataset to be freely redistributed with Abuse-SDL. Same with Bobby Prince, the sound samples author. However Bobby did not allow modification of the samples.

[Edit]

Hmm, both ModDB and IndieDB offer a Win32 port

That Win32 port apparently stems from this project (Wayback Machine copy).

[MrFlibble]

BTW, I've just noticed that shareware versions below 2.00 (pre-EA/ORIGIN) allow to use high-resolution modes with the -size parameter. By typing

Code: Select all

-size ?

you get a list of available modes:

Here's a sample shot in 640x480:

It is also possible to activate the level editor with the -edit command. Apparently, with the retail version the high-res mode was reserved for the editor only.

The high-resolution mode also allows to double the pixels with the -2 command, e.g.

Code: Select all

-2 -size 640 480

[DOSGuy]

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing this!

I can certainly see why none of these modes were made available in the retail version of the game: the higher resolutions show you too much of the map and let you see what's coming (and reveal secret areas). They're invaluable for the editor, though. They were probably made available in the game for the benefit of the developers and possibly playtesters. They might not have intended to leave that command line option available in the shareware releases.

I'm not being offered seven of the modes from your screenshot. In Abuse 1.05 shareware, with machine=svga_s3 or vesa_nolfb I get:

1) 640 X 480 [Mode 101h]
2) 800 X 600 [Mode 103h]
3) 1024 X 768 [Mode 105h]
4) 1280 X 1024 [Mode 107h]
5) 320 X 200 [Mode 150h]
6) 320 X 240 [Mode 151h]
7) 320 x 400 [Mode 152h]
8) 320 x 480 [Mode 153h]
9) 1152 x 864 [Mode 207h]
10) 848 x 480 [Mode 222h]

With machine=vesa_oldvbe I only get the first four (the official VESA modes). With svga_et3000/svga_et4000/svga_paradise I get "No VESA driver detected. You need to install a VESA TSR." What version are you using to get that list?

[Edit] Never mind, I get the same modes when I use DOSBox SVN Daum. So now I get:

1) 640 x 480 [Mode 101h]
2) 800 x 600 [Mode 103h]
3) 1024 x 768 [Mode 105h]
4) 1280 x 1024 [Mode 107h]
5) 640 x 350 [Mode 11Ch]
6) 1600 x 1200 [Mode 120h]
7) 320 x 200 [Mode 150h]
8) 320 x 240 [Mode 151h]
9) 320 x 400 [Mode 152h]
10) 320 x 480 [Mode 153h]
11) 1152 x 864 [Mode 207h]
12) 848 x 480 [Mode 222h]
13) 1280 X 800 [Mode 226h]
14) 1280 X 960 [Mode 22Bh]
15) 1290 X 960 [Mode 22Bh]
16) 1400 X 1050 [Mode 230h]
17) 1440 X 900 [Mode 235h]

14 and 15 are identical.

[MrFlibble]

With machine=vesa_oldvbe I only get the first four (the official VESA modes). With svga_et3000/svga_et4000/svga_paradise I get "No VESA driver detected. You need to install a VESA TSR." What version are you using to get that list?

[Edit] Never mind, I get the same modes when I use DOSBox SVN Daum.

Yes, I'm using a two or so year old build of SVN Daum.

There's some other interesting stuff regarding the older versions of the game. First off, v1.05 has an "add-on" written in Lisp called Pong. To activate it, you need to run the game with the following command line parameter:

Code: Select all

abuse -lsf addon/pong/pong.lsp

The game is in fact more like Arkanoid, and it's not really complete, but impressive nonetheless. The comments in PONG.LSP state that

;;;; This "game" was written by Jonathan Clark as a demonstration of the
;;;; capabilities of the abuse engine. It is not meant to be a complete game
;;;; and is released strictly for purpose of study only. Any part of this file
;;;; may be used by others and distributed in any form, but it uses some of the
;;;; lisp, sound effects, and artwork from Abuse (TM) which may only distributed
;;;; as a complete package with no files missing or changed.

It is also possible to reconfigure control keys by editing LISP\INPUT.LSP. Some options can be adjusted by editing LISP\OPTIONS.LSP (e.g. turn off switching to a more powerful weapon when running out of ammo, or switching to a newly picked up weapon).

[MrFlibble]

Here are some user-made levels that will run with both registered and shareware versions of the game (at least, they should work with v1.05 and v0.33):

• AV1REMIX.ZIP
• CRAIG1.ZIP
• CRAIG5.ZIP
• CRAIG6.ZIP
• TYLER1.ZIP

More levels are mentioned here but not everything seems to have been preserved.

Crack dot Com encouraged the creation and distribution of custom levels that can be used with the shareware version (as outlined in GAMEDEV.TXT):

Our guidelines on how level data may
be distributed:

1. You may distribute level data if you do not collect
any compensation for it. For instance, you can upload it to an
ftp site or BBS or online service public download area, as long
as you aren't receiving compensation for it.
2. You may submit it to us so that we may consider distributing it
for you. We will pay you profits directly based on the quality
of the work you submit. We will have an answer for you within
five business days of the submission date.
3. If we turn down your data for distribution, you may then either
seek a third party distributor, if you wish to seek compensation
for the data, or you may of course choose to release it for free.

The exception to the above three rules:

You may not publicly distribute any modified or original levels
from the REGISTERED VERSION. You may not distribute any modified
or original artwork, sound, or LISP code from the REGISTERED
VERSION. This includes everything in the REGISTER subdirectory
and levels 5 through 18 under the LEVELS subdirectory. You may
submit modified versions of the above to us to consider
publishing. However, you may not have it published through a
third party if we refuse.

[DOSGuy]

There's some other interesting stuff regarding the older versions of the game. First off, v1.05 has an "add-on" written in Lisp called Pong. To activate it, you need to run the game with the following command line parameter:

Code: Select all

abuse -lsf addon/pong/pong.lsp

Cooool! That was a weird game.

[MrFlibble]

only one thing the text for the game states that it is released as freeware but only the shareware versions is available, have they not realeased the registered version?

So, what exactly is the status of Abuse? It's not shareware because the registered version is no longer sold. It's not public domain because there are some limitations in the license. Bobby Prince (best known for his work for Apogee and id) owns the sound effects, and the retail and registered data sets aren't being released because distribution rights to the full version were licensed to EA and Bungie. It seemed most accurate, and least confusing, to simply say that the game is freeware.

I'm not sure that the game is should not be considered shareware if the publisher ceased to sell the registered version. I think that the licence under which the source code and the shareware game assets were released does not retroactively affect the shareware versions released prior to the source code release. In fact, the press release states that:

Crack would like to thank Electronic Arts and Bungie for agreeing to
donate the Abuse shareware data to the public domain.

Which I understand as the shareware assets (with the exception of sound effects and music) being public domain, that is eligible for any used without permission from original creators/owners. However the shareware releases these assets are included in are not. While EA and Bungie were selling the game, the respective demo versions functioned as such and were not (and are still not) public domain.

As of 2009, Dave Taylor still owned the registered game and the trademark. I assume that he retains ownership as of now as well. Here's a rather detailed blog post of his from 2009 about how someone created and tried to sell and unauthorized iPhone port of the game. Among other things, he says:

And this brings us back to the beginning. We released all the shareware bits of Abuse to the public domain back in the day, but we kept ownership of the Abuse trademark, the registered levels, and Bobby Prince kept ownership of the sound effects.

Taking all this into account, I believe that designating Abuse as "freeware" might be confusing for the end-user. People usually expect from a freeware game to be freely available in its entirety. This is not the case with Abuse.

It should be noted that there is a genuinely freeware version of Abuse, even though technically it is a derivative work. Crack dot Com did not give away the full game but the source code could be used to build one, and the shareware data formed a solid base for what could be the first free game content replacement project called fRaBs. The title stands for Free Abuse (Abuse could not be used in the title because of licensing terms). It is a result of community effort to put together replacements for the missing registered levels, and also enhance the game with new art, monsters etc.

fRaBs was endorsed by Crack dot Com and even hosted for some time on their website. Jonathan Clark mirrored the fRaBs pages on his personal website (the pages have not been not archived though).

I suggest to change the designation of Abuse to an open source shareware game. Perhaps updating the description with the details of the open source license would also be a good idea.