Has Anyone Considered "Arcanum Jones?"

I might get flamed for this, but here goes.

Your character is a freelance adventurer/tomb robber for the Tarant University. You go there, take your pick of assignments (scaled to your level of course) and go retrieve the item(s). Upon returning, you would recieve X amount of money for each task completed, with some ultimate quest towards the end. That's the idea in a nutshell.

This seems to me like a workable idea, given that you already have the entire world laid out, dungeons full of monsters, and hundreds of ready-made characters and side-quests. Of course, many of the scripts and such would have to be re-written, and certain characters, situations, and items would have to be changed a bit or even left out, but I can't help but think it would be less time-consuming than starting from scratch and creating a completely new game.

Feedback welcome and appreciated.

 

Again, my view:
1) make an open source engine with simple modding
2) get free 3d models (with animation)
3) make the mod

 

4) Get sued by Sierra for copyright infringement.

 

So how did Chris escape legal hassels over Car-Arcanum?

 

I think the biggest part of it is using the Arcanum modding engine. People wanting to play his mods have to buy the game. Frigo has in other posts, so I assume it applies here too, said that the downside of making mods is having the users need the game - meaning he wants to make "mods" which don't need the game.

If Sierra wants to, they can probably sue Chris, but that wouldn't really benefit them in any way. I mean why complain when someone makes free expansion packs for your games?

If you make a mod not using their engine and stuff they have no reason not to sue.

 

Probably the main reason nobody is getting sued is the fact that the mods are free. If someone decided in their infinite folly to charge even a red cent for their hard work, without proper authorization ... well, it wouldn't be pretty.
Thats probably why they didn't commit to any legal protections or at least a clear go-ahead, just in case someone took it too far, or decided to misrepresent the companies involved. I'd think that if they ever decided to make someone stop, it would simply be a cease and desist, rather than taking your birthday away.

Has anyone ever approched them with the idea of making an Arcanum 2?
Theres enough modders just in this forum that the lot of you could probably create a kick-ass version......

 

Read through some of the older posts. There seems have have been an attempt or two.

The possible legal hassles are a pity, really. There have been a million great ideas proposed for a reworked game but with the possibility of a "Lets-Make-An-Example-Of-These-Guys" lawsuit for modifiying a game that's technically obsolete, I am not going to get my hopes up about there ever being anything like another Car-Arcanum; much less a different game; anytime in the near future.