Since this requires some files from the original Civilization how do people obtain legal copies of the game? It's not available on Steam or GOG

(Or am I being hopelessly naïve by asking such a question?)

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chocochunks 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You go on eBay or similar site and you pay for a used copy on floppy or CD-ROM. Then using the appropriate tool you back those files up and use them for OpenCiv 1. Cheap, no. Convenient, no. But legal.

If you're lucky you stumble across it in a thrift store that wasn't paying particular attention and assumed it was a puzzle or a board game.

	▲	jstummbillig 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So: Yes, hopelessly naive.

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hdgvhicv 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I still have the floppies and manual in a box in the attic. Bit of a hoarder in that way I’m afraid.

Question then is do I need to find a floppy drive to obtain the files or can I get them elsewhere.

Of course who knows if the floppy’s still work. I remember having problems with my Star Trek 25th anniversary floppies around 1996ish, and today it’s 30 years later.

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caminanteblanco 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean from a legal perspective, original media is the only recourse. But if we expand the options we're willing to avail ourselves of, there's a lot of high quality backups online.

So far as I know, Take-Two Interactive is extremely lenient, especially since they don't offer any way to purchase Civ1 or 2

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j16sdiz 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Owning the original game does not automatically grant you right to make or use in derivative works.

	▲	wtallis 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not exactly, but under US copyright law there is a limitation of exclusive rights that grants the owner of a copy the right to make an adaptation provided "that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner". Unfortunately, the law doesn't specify what "adaptation" means, and I'm not sure the concept of an "essential step" stretches to cover modifying your program to run on a new OS decades after its original host platform has gone extinct. Regardless, making such a modification for personal use only would be hard for a copyright owner to win a lawsuit over even if they could find out about it. But publicly distributing your derivative work like this is definitely violating the original's copyrights.