[OT?] Graphics, perspective, and copyrights

[farina00]

Recently - see the golden age thread - I temporarily put away my 3d engine
in order to quickly come up with a "retrogame", a 2d rpg. For both the
projects, I am using Ultima VII graphics.

First: ultima VII's perspective is weird, so I am trying to fix them manually.
For now, I just need to flatten them as if they are facing the observer.
It's all but easy! It involves many tricks in photoshop.
Did anyone ever attempt to something like that?

Also. I am going to release the game free over the internet. Do you think
I am going to have issues with EA? Keep in mind that yes, the original
graphics is Ultima VII's, but it will be quite different in the end.
Where's the line between making brand new graphics and heavily
changing something else?

[SB-X]

I don't know what you mean by flatten them as if they are facing the observer (FF6?), but I've posted here before about converting U7 screenshots to a more "normal" U8-like isometric view. All I had to do was rotate right by 45 degrees (in RGB mode with blending).

[farina00]

Something like FF, check this early screenshot:
http://www.lalista.org/editorshot1.gif

As for the isometric view, yes: that's no problem at all. Yet, when I decided
for what kind of perspective to go, I noticed that isometric would have
had some of the problems of real 3d, and some of the issues of "totally
flat" graphisc. So I decided to avoid halfways an moved to the kind
of graphic... of that screenshot : )

[drcode]

Something I once read about copyright:

If you take someone else's book and change every word, you're still technically violating their copyright.

On the other hand, if you're alone on an island, and write a book completely on your own, then even if that book turns out to be exactly the same as someone else's, you haven't violated anything.

[farina00]

Good. I am going to code on an Iceberg in the free waters of Groenland

[Trevor_Clim]

andrea, how did you exactly this PERSPECTIVE-CORRECTION like on the screen you posted?
i tried some in photoshop, but nothing looked so good like your ones.
can you please explain a bit more detailed how you did it?

[farina00]

Well, let's say that each image has it's way to be treated, but basically
there are two kinds:

one just need to be rotated, 45 degrees. This is good for extremely small
objects, like plants - flowers - etc.

The others (Walls, plants etc.) has to be treated as follows:
Split the image into two pieces. The first is the "top" - for a palm it
may be the foliage, for a wall, the upper side, and so on. The second
is all the rest. This rest has to be skewed (edit->transform->skew) by
45 degrees, and reattached to the first part manually.

Look at this self-explanatory image
http://www.lalista.org/explain.gif

I hope this will help a fellow exulter : )

[Trevor_Clim]

thank you Andrea! that helped
(i develop a fantasy RPG like ultima 7 with my team since december 2001 and perhaps i use some graphics of u7 for some eastereggs )

sorry for my bad english^^