RGB Classic Games Forum

MrFlibble wrote:

MrFlibble wrote:Hmm, both ModDB and IndieDB offer a Win32 port

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

Further to the question of freeware status of the registered game. Jeremy Scott's Win32 project uses a registered data set accompanied by the following readme:

Abuse Windows version 2.00
------------------------------------

This is the retail version of Abuse's data files, with the Win32 executable.
Many thanks go out to Jonathan Clark and Dave Taylor for granting me
permission to redistribute the retail data set.

Thanks also to Justin Cassidy for helping with the testing, and to everyone
at the Abuse message board (http://www.abuse2.com) for invaluable feedback.

It REQUIRES DirectX7 or greater. (Just install DX8 or later to be safe)

It should play exactly like the DOS version, except in Windows.

Networking will ONLY work with other Win32 versions for the time being.

Good luck. Email me with any questions... Don't blame me if it screws
up your computer.

--Jeremy Scott
scot4875@uidaho.edu
http://www.uidaho.edu/~scot4875

The same version is available at SourceForge (the page is called Abuse 2 because Jeremy Scott worked on a project with this title, but it was never completed). Earlier versions of Abuse-SDL (Wayback Machine copy) also included a registered data set as a separate download with the same readme as the Windows port. The data was apparently later merged into the main download of Abuse-SDL.

It seems that Jeremy Scott indeed had permission to distribute the registered data, as the following passage from Dave Taylor's post may refer to it:

Dave Taylor wrote:I guess he figured that proximity to public domain seeps into other things, or that time somehow erases ownership, or that licenses to some people to distribute it for free means anyone gets a license to distribute it for profit [emphasis added]

If this is indeed the case, this means that only Jeremy Scott and possibly the authors of Abuse-SDL have the license to distribute the registered data.

It is interesting that even though the EA/ORIGIN shareware demo version 2.00 has the editor disabled and actually contains one level less than the previous shareware releases, custom levels can still be loaded with the -f command.

What is more, all shareware versions load and allow to play levels which are explicitly marked by the authors as designed for the registered game. It might be that the game replaces registered-only items with stuff found in the shareware version, as suggested by the file SHARE.LSP: This seems to replace registered weapon pickups with shareware weapons.

The -a command launches entire add-ons.