[Elektro-Omega]

Last week in university we were given a brief to create a basic game from complete scratch (basic concept to a working product). My initial thoughts and I'm still hoping to do this, is to use 68K assembly for the Sega Megadrive.

I asked my tutor the legal implications regarding disassemblies and told him that when it is assembled it effectively creates the final build. He said (understandably) that anything that could be questionable on the legal front would not be possible due to it coming back at the university or the student.

So my question to you Retro, If I was to create a very low level game from scratch using the 68K assembly language, but used a disassembly as a reference point (such as offsets etc). Would this be legal? I personally can't see why not because asm code functions are effectively the same (although some changes depending on the architecture)

Also, if I am asked how I found the knowledge to create a game, I imagine if I reference the disassembly that would be incredibly bad (once again, the legal issues), but would I be able to reference documentation on here or on Sega Retro, or should I steer clear of that (once again because of the legal issues)? Or should I search online for the homebrew documentation?

Probably a tedious question but I'm very curious regarding how to do this.

Cheers

[Caitlin]

Legal issues should not be a problem if you list documentation here as a reference but not an actual disassembly. I don't know why you'd want to, as the documentation here that I've bothered to read is incredibly arcane and difficult for me to wrap my mind around, and I usually find similar things easy.

I don't think you have to worry about legalities if you study the inner workings of a disassembled 20 year old piece of software but fail to list it as one of your references.

[Elektro-Omega]

Thanks for the reply Katelynn,
I was just making sure that nothing bad would turn around at the uni, me or here.

I'm thinking of doing a basic platformer but I'm gonna study the disassembly and documents as much as I can and hopefully I can make something working.

Once again. Thanks for the quick reply.

[Sik]

Using the disassemblies even just for reference is illegal. Also beware what documentation you reference, never cite the official documentation because it has a pretty obvious "CONFIDENTIAL" in the first page.

In any case, why go with the MD for a project like this? I bet you'll waste lots of time just to get the basics working and you'll hit the deadline extremely quickly. I'd stick with a higher level and more modern environment for this.

[MarkeyJester]

I have to agree with Sik here, if you have a short time period (deadline) to get your game made, best not go with a MegaDrive game.

Of course, it's a good thing to attempt it if you have a lot time to waste, and I'd certainly be interested in seeing what you make of it =)

[Elektro-Omega]

Fair enough. I was really hoping to do this as a discovery project myself aswell as trying to wow the tutors but what you said is very true.

It's only a mini project and with I think 8 - 9 weeks left I doubt I could get anything running with my limited knowledge.

Plus the legal issues, I didn't think referencing the disassembly would be illega,l but if there is any chance it is that rules out my chances of using it. I didn't even know there was original documentation, let alone it being confidential. I was hoping to root around to see if there is any homebrew stuff / documentation available. But as you rightfully said, I'd probably be overscoping and I should probably stick to a higher level programming language.

Thanks for the help everyone.

EDIT: Grammar Improvement

This post has been edited by Elektro-Omega: 20 January 2011 - 11:15 AM