Indeed. And this is why it is so important to emphasize that whether CIG/RSI removed CryEngine is, for the lawsuit, a disputed point of fact. CryTek did not say, "yes, we grant that CryEngine was removed with the switch to LY," but rather left room for some fun in discovery. CIG says they removed all coprighted material, CryTek disputes this. This wrinkle is first made explicit in their reply to the MtD. Yes, it's what Derek has been saying all along.
Above is what
Ben Parry claims happened, as I
wrote in this Dec 27, 2016 blog. And my guess is that coming from a company engineer, it's going to come back to haunt them.
It doesn't matter that LY contains CE 3.8. What matters is that the Crytek and Amazon licenses are
DIFFERENT in the eyes of the law. It's like you buying a White box item, vs a retail item. They are the same items, but the latter probably comes with longer warranty, nice box, manuals etc. Also the same as getting a warranty replacement (e.g. from Apple) which isn't the same as the original.
That Amazon built Lumberyard from CryEngine doesn't mean that anyone using LY automatically gets a license to use CryEngine, which is actually being sold separately. That would be like claiming that buying the White box item entitles you to 12 month warranty from the manufacturer, though the White box seller only gave you 90 days.
Besides, they're not even claiming that they didn't switch. They're claiming that they DID switch even though the dispute is that the GLA does not permit them to do so.
And the reason that I say they didn't switch, but are pretending that they did, is because they know that the underlying CryEngine code they built Star Engine with, is similar to what LY is built on. Unfortunately for them, anyone looking at the LY changelog can see that they have deviated so far from CE3.8, that it is inconceivable that CIG were able to switch at all, let alone in under two days. And even if CIG were still on that porting effort since Dec 2016, and more so now with this lawsuit, they can't forge code version control logs, nor the files.
So even if they managed to mask it in such a way that they tracked all the files from the stock CE version, matched them to the LY version and copied over, they would still be busted via their own version control, as well as the fact that LY has changed a LOT of the stock CE files. I know this because I have both stock CE and LY.
Heck, I was able to disassemble their own exe back when I was
posting about CE spin locks.
If you are using files from stock CE, you are on the Crytek license.
If you are using files from LY (derivative CE), you are on the Amazon license.
Look at it this way. Several car manufacturers use the same air bags. You can literally take one airbag from the same manufacturer, and put it in another vehicle that uses the same airbag make and model. However, because different vendors have their own serial and part numbers, which vary from the manufacturer's own original ones, you can easily trace that an airbag from vendor B that you put in your vehicle, does not match the original that came from vendor A. That's how we get into things like generic auto parts, video cards, medicine etc.
Here are excerpts from my thread yesterday.
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/954761797134880769As a dev, I still maintain that CIG have NOT switched to LY, that they are STILL using their custom CE3, while using LY parts (e.g. AWS SDK) which are required by Amazon in order to use their engine.
I remain 100% confident that I am RIGHT, and that they're going to be exposed.
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/954762159891902465The argument that because LY uses CE3 and so the switch was OK, falls flat when you consider that a license to CE3 is NOT a license to LY.
And this is why we have version control repo logs.
Goddamn! I want to be on that discovery forensics team.
Why did this switch, or lied that they switched?
My theory is that they
KNEW the GLA only permitted them ONE game. By switching to LY, they avoid that breach. Except they didn't actually do it.
Also they no longer had to pay Crytek 100K Euros a year for support contract.
UPDATE:Someone on my Discord just pointed that in this Jan 4th, 2017 video @ 2:25, you can see core CryEngine code (GetFlashPlayer) that's not in Lumberyard.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15666-BugsmashersAt 2:25 there's some code on screen, which looks very much like CryEngine code and not Lumberyard. CE uses scaleform UI, which is basically flash. LY does not have this, does not come with a scaleform license, and uses a different UI system. So 2.6 was CryEngine, and not Lumberyard. The switch never happened. Called it. They just cherrypicked network stuff from LY onto their codebase, keeping CE specific stuff, essentially still being CryEngine.
And yeah, if you go as far as 3:26 then it appears that he's editing a customised version of the file CRYENGINE\Code\CryEngine\CryAction\FlashUI\FlashUIElement.cpp
As PederP says, this was part of CryEngine and Lumberyard doesn't have any FlashUI code in it because it uses a different UI. (see repo here for what survives from CE)
And although they've only published a couple of lines for the public to see, the greater point is that it does seem that they're not meant to be using that file any more, if they have switched over to Lumberyard. No doubt that this is why CT are claiming that the infringement might be ongoing.
And if they are still using CE's FlashUI... does that also mean that they must still be using Scaleform? Because that was the subject of the Exhibit 4 document (the one with CR's sig on it) and it's a sub-license to allow CIG to use Autodesk's Scaleform within CE - middleware software that Amazon have dropped - and the license to use was only valid under the terms of the GLA.
So if they're saying they're not under the CE GLA, and if they are still using CE FlashUI with 3rd party Scaleform to display HUD's and Mobiglass (or even just for 2.6.0.0 seen in the video) well this could get even messier yet.
They claim to have switched December 2016, the video was recorded (according to the desktop clock) and published early January 2017.
I hope there's a legit reason for this, but I can't see how this is not as bad as it looks.
More Ben Parry comments regarding The Big Switch
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4943747&viewfull=1#post4943747
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4943734&viewfull=1#post4943734
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4943682&viewfull=1#post4943682
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/259596-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v5?p=4943353&viewfull=1#post4943353
