Creatures Caves

If I'm not mistaken "ideas" can't actually be copyrighted. I'm pretty sure only implementations of an idea can be claimed (then again this probably varies country to country, and perhaps even by medium). So they could maybe claim the manner in which the ants were coded, but not the idea itself. And that makes sense since nobody has ever had a truly original idea in their life. Everything is a derivation of the world around us, and most things build upon the existing ideas of others. Hence all my rambling about innovation.

It's pretty gray though especially when it comes to art, and I'm by no means a copyright lawyer. Most people just go by the 50% rule. If it changes more than 50% it's not yours anymore. That's my motto. And let's not even get started on whatever GULA covers CAOS code and whether implementations can even be claimed as IP since the language itself is property of the Creatures series...

To answer your question, there are a near infinite number of ways to code the ants, but why re-invent the wheel? And the actual mechanism that controls how the ants behave in and out of water is pretty straightforward. Sure you can reword it several different ways in CAOS, but at the end of the day they are either dying or living. KILL OWNR/KILL TARG. That's either there or it isn't. And the code that detects the water can only be written a few different ways, each time checking RTYP 8 and/or 9. That's it. It's no magical innovation. The only thing that changes is where you put your DOIFs and ENDIs, and how you target the agent itself.

I say as long as you're giving proper credit to the original author's work, you're good to go.

"Hey there I modified these ants to live underwater. Huge thanks to _____ for making the original fireants! Check them out here[insert link]!"

I can't imagine any sane developer freaking out and attacking you for that. It would be different if they were monetizing the ants, because your "superior" water-loving ants might shut them out of the market, but that just isn't the case here. They receive no benefit but credit, and credit in this case is not lost.

I see it happen all the time in modding communities for other games. In fact I've seen people dig up old community member's work and update it for new patches when a new release breaks it but the original author is MIA. They just credit the original author and move on with life. See Space Engineers and their conversions from DX9 to DX11 for great examples, or Starbound's Creative Mode mod. That's been usurped and updated about 3 times now...always linking back to the original work and giving credit where it's due. In some cases the original mod authors have officially given the jobs over to other people because their lives are too busy or they don't play the game anymore.

It's all fair play and under the understanding that whatever is good for the community and fun for the players, is the right thing to do. After all, isn't that why we create?

And THANK GOD they weren't afraid to do so! Some of the mods they updated have been the best and most popular mods of all time. I would shudder to think what damage would occur in the community if they had the possessive beliefs I've seen espoused in ours (not referring to you, but to previous skirmishes I've had on these forums about this issue. lol)

But it's up to you and I don't pass judgement for your decisions. If you go to code it yourself, great! You'll learn a lot. If you want to modify it and give out credit, I see nothing wrong with that. Whatever you feel is right, is right for you. Just be sure to give credit where credit is due.