This morning I noticed Flight of The Amazon Queen supposedly was released on the App Store, according to this article:
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Free+iPhone+Games/feature.asp?c=12969 (Scroll down to the bottom of the article)

Unfortunately the app already has disappeared at the time the article was written. Anyone lucky enough to play around with it before it was removed? Also, out of curiosity, does anyone have any insider info on why it was removed, let alone whether it makes use of ScummVM at all (since this isn't mentioned anywhere)?

   

Er... you can download Flight of the Amazon Queen for free and play it with ScummVM (from Cydia) on jailbroken phones.

The reasons that ScummVM won't be released to the App Store have been discussed in the past, just search the forums (the main problem is Apple's EULA).

Concerning this release, that article mentions it was released from "iPhSoft", which seems to be pointing to clem's website for the game:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0200586/videogames/fotaq/index.html

(according to this link: http://www.apptism.com/apps/flight-of-the-amazon-queen)

If it was ever released, it was probably removed by Apple themselves due to issues with their EULA.

   

From the description it's undoubtedly using ScummVM.

It probably got yanked because ScummVM is still using private frameworks (Core Surface), which is a no-go for releasing your app on the app store. Although in that case you'd expect them to catch that early on in QA and it should never have been available.

I wonder where the source is at.

   

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Originally posted by md5
Concerning this release, that article mentions it was released from "iPhSoft", which seems to be pointing to clem's website for the game:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0200586/videogames/fotaq/index.html

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Originally posted by sev

quote:

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Originally posted by md5
Concerning this release, that article mentions it was released from "iPhSoft", which seems to be pointing to clem's website for the game:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0200586/videogames/fotaq/index.html

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That is disappointing in fact. Clem did not discuss it with anyone.


Eugene

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Originally posted by joostp
I doubt clem was behind this release. More likely some journalist just put the 1st Google hit for Flight of the Amazon Queen as a link for more information, since "iPhSoft" doesn't seem to have a website of its own.

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quote:

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Originally posted by joostp
It probably got yanked because ScummVM is still using private frameworks (Core Surface), which is a no-go for releasing your app on the app store. Although in that case you'd expect them to catch that early on in QA and it should never have been available.

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First thing I've heard of this. Were they charging for it, or a free download?

To the above poster: I very much doubt CoreSurface will be made a public API. Apple's stance so far has been that everything needing fast graphics should be using OpenGL ES. There's been some efforts to convert ScummVM to use that instead of CoreSurface, but not too much yet.

If that's in place at some point, we could probably release bundled games like this, as well. The EULA mainly blocks us from transferring game data to the phone through whatever method, when it's already bundled it should not a problem. The only remaining issue then is to be able to autosave at any point in time, which I've no idea if is an issue with the engines of the freeware games.

   

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Originally posted by Vinterstum
First thing I've heard of this. Were they charging for it, or a free download?

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FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=310406639&mt=8

I am from iPhSoft and, as ScummVM fans, we are happy to bring it to the AppStore.
We will work with ScummVM team in order to bring as many games as possible to the iPhone and iPod touch.
This game isn't free anymore, in order to support the game developers.

Besides of making this "Apple Approved", this version features several improvements from the current Cydia ScummVM version, mainly: Full Screen, Better colors and Better in-game controllers.

Last edited by KingLir on Tue May 05, 2009 6:55 pm; edited 2 times in total

   

quote:

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Originally posted by KingLir
FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:
(...)
This game isn't free anymore, in order to support the game developer.

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quote:

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Originally posted by KingLir
FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=310406639&mt=8

I am from iPhSoft and, as ScummVM fans, we are happy to bring it to the AppStore.
We will work with ScummVM team in order to bring as many games as possible to the iPhone and iPod touch.
This game isn't free anymore, in order to support the game developer.

Besides of making this "Apple Approved", this version features several improvements from the current Cydia ScummVM version, mainly: Full Screen, Better colors and Better in-game controllers.

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Originally posted by md5

quote:

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Originally posted by KingLir
FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:
(...)
This game isn't free anymore, in order to support the game developer.

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Did you actually get permission from John Passfield or Steve Stamatiadis to gain money off a game classified as free/public domain?

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[quote="Vinterstum"]

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Originally posted by KingLir
FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=310406639&mt=8

Interesting! Could you post a link to a patch generated against stock scummvm sources?

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[quote="KingLir"]

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Originally posted by Vinterstum

quote:

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Originally posted by KingLir
FOTAQ is back on the AppStore:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=310406639&mt=8

Interesting! Could you post a link to a patch generated against stock scummvm sources?

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We need to do a lot of work in order to bring a good quality code to ScummVM. We will publish it on our site, which should be up in a few weeks.

I am in touch with sev on this and will be more than happy to work together with you also, Please send me a PM with your MSN/Skype/Google talk.

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Sounds *bad*. This is a GPL violation. The full modified source code must be released. As a compromise, I might accept it if you immediately pull this from the AppStore and work on making a version not using any ScummVM code, although that would be really a generous compromise, given that the harm is already done and people have copies of this work which violates our copyright.

KingLir, please contact me via email (my address is fingolfin@scummvm.org), so that we can discuss how to resolve this. Note that it is not sufficient to talk to Eugene/sev alone; many more people hold copyright on parts of ScummVM. If you don't release the source, you would have to get permission from every single one if you wanted to keep the source code closed.