HTML Patriarch [v0.17] [Oranos]

[UnwrappedGodiva]

I was surprised to discover that since version 0.13 the images are not included in the main game archive anymore, but are distributed as a "fan patch".

I understand that the goal is to avoid copyright issues, but I do not think that it helps at all. It could even have the opposite effect because the way this is done confirms that it is willful copyright infringement. This can expose the developer and all contributors to treble damages, depending on what country/state/jurisdiction would handle the case. It is usually much better to feign ignorance or to claim fair use than to give some proofs of willful infringement.

Here are a few facts that would expose the developer and other contributors to greater legal risks:

• Contrary to what is stated in the introduction ("I do not endorse the use of copyrighted gifs or images or any "fan patch". Patriarch is a text game only."), the game is unplayable without the fan patch. Some important elements of the game such as the energy level, threat level or city level are only available as images. If the game is supposed to be playable without the fan patch, then these mandatory images should be included in the main game (not in the fan patch) or the user interface should be redesigned so that the game can be played without these images.
• The HTML file contains 3926 references to images (<img src=...>). If the game is supposed to be text-only, then these links should be removed from the HTML file. They may be added back by a patch, but these links cannot be in the main game if it is supposed to be text-only.
• One cannot claim that all these links were added as placeholders to be filled by some random fans, because the announcement of the v0.15 release was followed less than two minutes later by the , including around 200 new images for which the links were just added in the HTML file. It would be very difficult to pretend that they were developed independently of each other.
• It was stated several times here (the last time was two days ago) that the full game includes all images. Several comments and even the Changelog entries up to v0.13 refer to fixing images, etc.

I understand your wish to reduce your legal exposure, but I think that the way the game is currently packaged is just making things worse for you. It would be too easy for a copyright holder to use these facts against you to claim that you were aware of the copyright infringement and that the statements about the fan patch were just some hypocrisy.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I see two options to reduce your legal risks:

• If you want to have a credible claim that the game can be played without the fan patch, then all links to the images from the fan patch should be removed from the game. The images that are part of the user interface should be included in the main game, or the user interface should be redesigned without them. Make sure that the game is fully playable and can be completed and enjoyed without the fan patch.
• Alternatively, put all images back in the main package and do like most other games do: give credit to the original models and offer to remove any content that a copyright owner may not be happy with. Some games such as "Sluttown USA" include a credits page accessible as soon as you start the game, with direct links to the Twitter/X profiles of the actresses as a way to give something back. Other games such as "Gateway" or "College Daze" have one or several pages in which the names of the models are revealed as they are encountered in the game.

 

[koreanblackpanther]

Where is the hospital? I heard that the school principal is hospitalized, but I can't find it.

 

[OranosDev]

I was surprised to discover that since version 0.13 the images are not included in the main game archive anymore, but are distributed as a "fan patch".

I understand that the goal is to avoid copyright issues, but I do not think that it helps at all. It could even have the opposite effect because the way this is done confirms that it is willful copyright infringement. This can expose the developer and all contributors to treble damages, depending on what country/state/jurisdiction would handle the case. It is usually much better to feign ignorance or to claim fair use than to give some proofs of willful infringement.

Here are a few facts that would expose the developer and other contributors to greater legal risks:

• Contrary to what is stated in the introduction ("I do not endorse the use of copyrighted gifs or images or any "fan patch". Patriarch is a text game only."), the game is unplayable without the fan patch. Some important elements of the game such as the energy level, threat level or city level are only available as images. If the game is supposed to be playable without the fan patch, then these mandatory images should be included in the main game (not in the fan patch) or the user interface should be redesigned so that the game can be played without these images.
• The HTML file contains 3926 references to images (<img src=...>). If the game is supposed to be text-only, then these links should be removed from the HTML file. They may be added back by a patch, but these links cannot be in the main game if it is supposed to be text-only.
• One cannot claim that all these links were added as placeholders to be filled by some random fans, because the announcement of the v0.15 release was followed less than two minutes later by the , including around 200 new images for which the links were just added in the HTML file. It would be very difficult to pretend that they were developed independently of each other.
• It was stated several times here (the last time was two days ago) that the full game includes all images. Several comments and even the Changelog entries up to v0.13 refer to fixing images, etc.

I understand your wish to reduce your legal exposure, but I think that the way the game is currently packaged is just making things worse for you. It would be too easy for a copyright holder to use these facts against you to claim that you were aware of the copyright infringement and that the statements about the fan patch were just some hypocrisy.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I see two options to reduce your legal risks:

• If you want to have a credible claim that the game can be played without the fan patch, then all links to the images from the fan patch should be removed from the game. The images that are part of the user interface should be included in the main game, or the user interface should be redesigned without them. Make sure that the game is fully playable and can be completed and enjoyed without the fan patch.
• Alternatively, put all images back in the main package and do like most other games do: give credit to the original models and offer to remove any content that a copyright owner may not be happy with. Some games such as "Sluttown USA" include a credits page accessible as soon as you start the game, with direct links to the Twitter/X profiles of the actresses as a way to give something back. Other games such as "Gateway" or "College Daze" have one or several pages in which the names of the models are revealed as they are encountered in the game.

Fair points all around. I don't anticipate any legal reprocussions to the game. There are hundreds of games using images and I'm not aware of any copyright cases. I'm open to being wrong on that point though.
The bottom line is I don't distribute any images when I release the game, which hopefully will make monetization platforms more likely to platform my game. I did this when I got kicked off patreon to help my chances in the future.
Writing code in such a way that other people could easily add images or allowing the community member adding these images pre-release version of the game is not illegal to my knowledge. There's a big difference between making distribution of images by others easier and distributing those images yourself.
That's my reasoning.

 

[OranosDev]

Where is the hospital? I heard that the school principal is hospitalized, but I can't find it.

It's an event, not a location. You can check the story walkthrough in the sidebar for the exact steps to trigger it.

 

[bfor147]

How to open pregnancy?

 

[lan1967]

How to open pregnancy?

in the Settings one need to turn on that option. Then walk to Nova Clinic in Financial Quarters.

 

[lan1967]

Would be amusing to get kimberly's mother content.

 

[AnonKitten]

I was surprised to discover that since version 0.13 the images are not included in the main game archive anymore, but are distributed as a "fan patch".

I understand that the goal is to avoid copyright issues, but I do not think that it helps at all. It could even have the opposite effect because the way this is done confirms that it is willful copyright infringement. This can expose the developer and all contributors to treble damages, depending on what country/state/jurisdiction would handle the case. It is usually much better to feign ignorance or to claim fair use than to give some proofs of willful infringement.

Here are a few facts that would expose the developer and other contributors to greater legal risks:

• Contrary to what is stated in the introduction ("I do not endorse the use of copyrighted gifs or images or any "fan patch". Patriarch is a text game only."), the game is unplayable without the fan patch. Some important elements of the game such as the energy level, threat level or city level are only available as images. If the game is supposed to be playable without the fan patch, then these mandatory images should be included in the main game (not in the fan patch) or the user interface should be redesigned so that the game can be played without these images.
• The HTML file contains 3926 references to images (<img src=...>). If the game is supposed to be text-only, then these links should be removed from the HTML file. They may be added back by a patch, but these links cannot be in the main game if it is supposed to be text-only.
• One cannot claim that all these links were added as placeholders to be filled by some random fans, because the announcement of the v0.15 release was followed less than two minutes later by the , including around 200 new images for which the links were just added in the HTML file. It would be very difficult to pretend that they were developed independently of each other.
• It was stated several times here (the last time was two days ago) that the full game includes all images. Several comments and even the Changelog entries up to v0.13 refer to fixing images, etc.

I understand your wish to reduce your legal exposure, but I think that the way the game is currently packaged is just making things worse for you. It would be too easy for a copyright holder to use these facts against you to claim that you were aware of the copyright infringement and that the statements about the fan patch were just some hypocrisy.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I see two options to reduce your legal risks:

• If you want to have a credible claim that the game can be played without the fan patch, then all links to the images from the fan patch should be removed from the game. The images that are part of the user interface should be included in the main game, or the user interface should be redesigned without them. Make sure that the game is fully playable and can be completed and enjoyed without the fan patch.
• Alternatively, put all images back in the main package and do like most other games do: give credit to the original models and offer to remove any content that a copyright owner may not be happy with. Some games such as "Sluttown USA" include a credits page accessible as soon as you start the game, with direct links to the Twitter/X profiles of the actresses as a way to give something back. Other games such as "Gateway" or "College Daze" have one or several pages in which the names of the models are revealed as they are encountered in the game.

Are you aware the site you're on? What loser types 1600 words of misinformed nonsense about shit on a pirate porn forum?

 

[bfor147]

in the Settings one need to turn on that option. Then walk to Nova Clinic in Financial Quarters.

I did it but it doesn't work

 

[bfor147]

You could turn this space into a Milk farm, but you don't have any cows... You should get some slaves for breeding before attempting this... how do i do this

 

[dd_tran]

Anyone know how to start the amber breeding scenes?

 

[UnwrappedGodiva]

Fair points all around. I don't anticipate any legal reprocussions to the game. There are hundreds of games using images and I'm not aware of any copyright cases. I'm open to being wrong on that point though.

I think that you are right: I am also unaware of any copyright cases for independent adult games. DMCA takedown notices usually result in the developer giving up instead of going to court. To be honest, the risk of going to court for creating or distributing a game that includes some copyrighted adult images or videos is ridiculously low. But my point was that in the unlikely case that a copyright holder would go after you, the "fan pack" is actually making things worse than if the images were distributed as part of the game as in the pre-0.13 versions.

The bottom line is I don't distribute any images when I release the game, which hopefully will make monetization platforms more likely to platform my game. I did this when I got kicked off patreon to help my chances in the future.

Patreon is annoying. As you can read from other developers here, even some games without images were banned because they mentioned some sexual relationships between close relatives (incest). The worst thing is that a game can stay on Patreon for several months and you think that everything is fine... until they decide that it violates the community guidelines and then from one day to the next you loose everything without warning.

Writing code in such a way that other people could easily add images or allowing the community member adding these images pre-release version of the game is not illegal to my knowledge. There's a big difference between making distribution of images by others easier and distributing those images yourself.
That's my reasoning.

Sure, but unfortunately the game is currently not playable without images, so it would be difficult to argue that the game and the fan pack were developed totally independently of each other. You may be able to escape the direct copyright infringement but you could not avoid the contributory infringement.

So in summary, I understand your point of view but I still think that it would be safer to follow the same track as most other games instead of claiming that you do not endorse the fan pack.

Are you aware the site you're on? What loser types 1600 words of misinformed nonsense about shit on a pirate porn forum?

Thank you dear troll, your misinformed nonsense made my day.

 

[fulcrum]

....i feel like atrium 2.webp should be replaced with some other sluts...

 

[OranosDev]

You could turn this space into a Milk farm, but you don't have any cows... You should get some slaves for breeding before attempting this... how do i do this

Get brood mares from meatlocker, kink needs to be toggled on

 

[OranosDev]

I'm releasing v.0.16 of Patriarch for the top pixiv tiers August the 16th, for the second tiers the 23rd, and for the public on the 30th. As always leave suggestions and potential bug fix suggestions here or in the ⁠suggestions channel of the discord. Cheers!

 

[Hjibr]

cant pay off lolas dads debt because the guy is already gone

 

[mattius77]

So it turns out I liked this game more than I thought I would.

As a random aside: Is there such a thing as an HTML editor that would allow me to edit the script (for example dialog, and, er, character descriptions......) of the game without worrying about potentially interfering with the actual game code if I wanted to do a "find-replace all" thing? Like, if I wanted to change the 'college' to a 'high school' or 'prep academy', could I do the change-all thing and not worry about accidentally renaming asset files? (Change a menu option like "Go to your office at college" but ignore "office-college.jpeg") I'm sure this question is more appropriate for a different thread, but I'm a novice at this sort of thing so I don't know what I don't know.

 

[OranosDev]

So it turns out I liked this game more than I thought I would.

As a random aside: Is there such a thing as an HTML editor that would allow me to edit the script (for example dialog, and, er, character descriptions......) of the game without worrying about potentially interfering with the actual game code if I wanted to do a "find-replace all" thing? Like, if I wanted to change the 'college' to a 'high school' or 'prep academy', could I do the change-all thing and not worry about accidentally renaming asset files? (Change a menu option like "Go to your office at college" but ignore "office-college.jpeg") I'm sure this question is more appropriate for a different thread, but I'm a novice at this sort of thing so I don't know what I don't know.

I'm glad you like the game. It's a html file so you could open it in a text editor like notepad++ and search replace whatever you want. Some names are used for flags though, so if you search replace something that is used in a flag you could break the game. Anything that's labeled with a $ before it should not be changed.
You can search for college then go through all the instances of it just to make sure none of the entries is a flag. In that case you could safely change all that aren't labeled as such.
Also when you see [[xxx|yyy]] that's a link to another scene. The first part "xxx" is safe to change, but not the "yyy" part.

 

[OranosDev]

cant pay off lolas dads debt because the guy is already gone

When you kill Marquis you discover Lola's dad's debt in his desk if you haven't already gone down that road, enabling you to still finish the lola content.

 

[Fred the Red]

So it turns out I liked this game more than I thought I would.

As a random aside: Is there such a thing as an HTML editor that would allow me to edit the script (for example dialog, and, er, character descriptions......) of the game without worrying about potentially interfering with the actual game code if I wanted to do a "find-replace all" thing? Like, if I wanted to change the 'college' to a 'high school' or 'prep academy', could I do the change-all thing and not worry about accidentally renaming asset files? (Change a menu option like "Go to your office at college" but ignore "office-college.jpeg") I'm sure this question is more appropriate for a different thread, but I'm a novice at this sort of thing so I don't know what I don't know.

I'm glad you like the game. It's a html file so you could open it in a text editor like notepad++ and search replace whatever you want. Some names are used for flags though, so if you search replace something that is used in a flag you could break the game. Anything that's labeled with a $ before it should not be changed.
You can search for college then go through all the instances of it just to make sure none of the entries is a flag. In that case you could safely change all that aren't labeled as such.
Also when you see [[xxx|yyy]] that's a link to another scene. The first part "xxx" is safe to change, but not the "yyy" part.

I habitually mess around in HTML games I play (usually to remove grinds) but tend not to talk about it because not every Dev likes it but as Oranos seems to be cool with it:

You can just edit the HTML with Notepad++ or whatever is your editor of choice and search-replace terms at your leisure but character and place names are used in the folder, file and passage names so if you just do the search-replace it will produce errors. What you can do is, i.e. search-replace all instances of 'college' with 'university' and then search-replace all instances of '/university' with '/college' and '|university' with '|college' to point the code back to the folders/images. Do it with case-sensitive on for College/University and college/university to be on the safe side. Same with names, but note that the new place or people names you use must be unique.
Similarly, if you want to age up all 18-year-olds to 21 you can't simply replace all instances of 18 with 21 or it'll break everything, and because there are many ways to express someone's age (18 years old, are 18, older than 18, 18th birthday, 18-year-old etc.) you have to search-replace all those phrases. At least those are only used in text so you don't have to do the reverse search-replace. Be careful with replacing any instances of 'is 18' because that's used to compare variables in the code.

Speaking of, there's various spellings of 'x-year old', 'x year-old' and 'x-year-old' in the game, would be nice to settle on one for consistency imo. I think x-year-old is grammatically correct but don't quote me on that.