The Fall Of World Of Padman

The Bad News
The website and forums of World Of Padman have been down for a number of months, and the servers have been pretty empty far longer. These days, all this game is good for is having its maps ported to OpenArena, Urban Terror, and Xonotic, while its player models are completely and totally ignored every single time (legal issues I assume, but wouldn't those apply to the maps as well?) So, how does this bit of bad news fare you?

What is (was?) World of Padman?

(Maybe it's common knowledge, and ofc I've heard about it but explaining a bit what kind of game might give some good context)

What is (was?) World of Padman?

It's a Quake 3 mod, which looks kind of like toy story + Quake 3.


I remember distinctively seeing that library and game store map in several Xonotic servers. I don't think there'd be legal issues if someone were to make a World of Padman mod server into Xonotic. There's already all kinds of mods and maps laying around which would arguably bring legal issues if they were merged into the core/default build, but they're not and I believe it's not a problem that way.

What is (was?) World of Padman?

It's a Quake 3 mod, which looks kind of like toy story + Quake 3.


I remember distinctively seeing that library and game store map in several Xonotic servers. I don't think there'd be legal issues if someone were to make a World of Padman mod server into Xonotic. There's already all kinds of mods and maps laying around which would arguably bring legal issues if they were merged into the core/default build, but they're not and I believe it's not a problem that way.

Does that go for the player models too? As far as I know, the only people that could or would import them into Xonotic are Julius and Jeff, but I have never seen them do so. I am not certain that the person that owns the SMB servers could or would be able to do that, even though that individual imported Mario, Yoshi, and Rosalina from somewhere.

If you can port them over them then go for it. But keep in mind, player models might end up being a waste of work as more than half of the players are forcing models to their preferences. That is kind of why there isn't much model modding going on in Xonotic.

The individual at SMB is called Mario. Ye it's weird I know, but you'll get used to it.

If these are Quake 3 playermodels, then the process isn't very straightforward. You somehow need to stitch together 3 seperate animated models into a single playermodel for Xonotic.
Once that's done, the rest is fairly easy (the MD3 format itself works for playermodels).

Someone did this with a Homer Simpson model: http://smb.djstrikes3.com/nxmdls-homer-md3_ALPHA_06.pk3

If these are Quake 3 playermodels, then the process isn't very straightforward. You somehow need to stitch together 3 seperate animated models into a single playermodel for Xonotic.
Once that's done, the rest is fairly easy (the MD3 format itself works for playermodels).

Someone did this with a Homer Simpson model: http://smb.djstrikes3.com/nxmdls-homer-md3_ALPHA_06.pk3

Jeff and Julius are very experienced in this area. They have the homer, jaguar, and monk models on their servers. In case anybody is interested, would you care to explain the process by which a custom model made for Quake 3 can be imported into Xonotic? You only gave the summary of it.

As for World Of Padman itself, it doesn't look like it has much of a future. This is rather odd, since OpenArena, Smokin' Guns, and Urban Terror still have communities (in fact, Urban Terror is doing rather well.)

Jeff and Julius are very experienced in this area.

LOL don't know about Julius but Jeff hmm lol don't think so. More like Jeff paid someone to do it. Mario has/had several models in his packages.

Jeff is very good at finding content on other servers and using it on his own. I can assure you, he didn't create any of these models.
Julius is a talented mapper, I don't think he's done anything player model related though.

I can only give a summary, as I've never done it myself (the stitching models together part gets me, not much of a modeller).
Unfortunately, none of Xonotic's official guides will help here, as the MD3 format isn't really used for player models in Xonotic (the process differs slightly from DPM and IQM, so the guides wouldn't be much use at all, I'm afraid).

I know nothing about players or in-game models, and I like Xonotic ones better than Mario Bros, Ponies, Foxes, etc.

Regarding World Of Padman: some of the official maps are really awesome. Jeff has included some of them in Resurrection server, after some edits of entities to acomodate Xonotic game items. I do not know how he did it, may be with the help of Gnom (owner of "quake dm" and "quake qlive wop" servers).

I know nothing about players or in-game models, and I like Xonotic ones better than Mario Bros, Ponies, Foxes, etc.

Regarding World Of Padman: some of the official maps are really awesome. Jeff has included some of them in Resurrection server, after some edits of entities to acomodate Xonotic game items. I do not know how he did it, may be with the help of Gnom (owner of "quake dm" and "quake qlive wop" servers).

Just remember that all of the shaders that those maps use must have at least zzz in front of their names so that they don't mess up the default ones in Xonotic. Same goes for the ones imported from Quake 3.

Well, I guess we all know why nobody has ever used the player models of World Of Padman. Sounds like it would be easier to import custom models made for Miku Miku Dance (and some of them would fit the style of Xonotic in some ways.)

World of Padman (WoP) used to be my favorite game. I came to Xonotic because of the fall of WoP. I wrote a long post about it.

The majority of WoP maps are for casual playing, but they are very fun. Hectic created a lot of great WoP maps and he's been awesome about copyright. I ported one of my favorites, 7 Colors, to Xonotic. I'll try to port more over in the future.

The official maps have copyright problems though (part of the reason WoP died) so as much as I enjoyed them, I hesitate porting them.

I have no skills for modeling at all so no comments there.

I read your post, BuddyFriendGuy. Yes, it is a very big problem when copyright prevents something from being updated, thus it stays dead for all eternity. People often forget that not caring speaks volumes.

I had been very happy to see some official maps from World of Padman ported to Xonotic by Jeff and others. I love those maps. I also ported a few community-created maps (7colors, and A Long Way) myself.

However, today I realized the company is still around and claiming copyright:

Changes to the game (except for the code) and consequently its individual work of art whether commercial or not, is prohibited without explicit permission by its authors.

This made the copyright area not grey anymore. Lyberta's post reminded me again why this game failed in the first place.

In response to this, I'm removing all official WoP maps from my server.

Yup, proprietary games deserve neither money nor player base.

There are many FOSS advocates in this community, but not many that would take such a hard stance.  Many features were inspired from proprietary games, hell the DarkPlaces engine is based on the Quake 1 engine, which came from a proprietary game.  I don't think it's fair to say proprietary games don't deserve money or player base.

However, I think it would be great to have a collection of open art assets which share a common theme, a collection that could be shared between different games, similar to what WoP was able to achieve, but without the limitations on freedom.

You went off on a tangent regarding the last sentence in the first quote block, but ignored the first two.  Xonotic would not exist without the release of the proprietary Quake 1 source code, which was made by a for-profit company, Id.  In addition, Xonotic has features that were influenced by proprietary games.

I agree that libre software is better for a user's freedom, and I personally choose mostly FOSS software.  I found Nexuiz because I had switched to Linux for my fundamental freedoms.  I'm not as extreme as RMS, but I really appreciate the movement that he started.

You've made a canvasing remark about proprietary games spying on, and taking away users freedoms.  While true for some games, not all proprietary games participate in such malicious behavior, and abuse of their users.  It sounds like you have an issue with Valve/Steam more specifically.

Keep in mind that we have users of all backgrounds in this community, and the extremism may do more harm than good.  Xonotic is 100% GPL, we require all sources, and are very respective of licenses inside the official project.

In regards to OGA, I'm thinking more along the lines of content pack that matches itself in style, giving a modder/mapper the assets to hit the ground running, creating a sub-community or atmosphere within the game.

I very much understand why there's more free software than free artworks. It's simply less affordable for artists to donate their works for free, compared to software developers, who are well supported by the market in their day job.

Few musicians I know manage to do only music full time (conductors, soloists, studio musicians, musical theater folks, and some very lucky film composers). Others, including many in high-profile orchestras, have to also teach. And these are the lucky ones whose second/third jobs are still music related. Most musicians simply cannot live comfortably on just doing music.

Coming back to the original topic of World of Padman -- I can understand the cost behind the high quality artworks, but the problem was that developers were led to believe they were working on a free software project, only to find at the end that the artist was not willing to release the rights on the art. I wish the artist could've been paid through a fund raising, like our money campaign for monster models, with the understanding of releasing the rights.

the problem was that developers were led to believe they were working on a free software project, only to find at the end that the artist was not willing to release the rights on the art

That is really unfortunate, borderline dishonest, if not outright.

Yup, proprietary games deserve neither money nor player base. Back in 2013 when I deleted my Steam account and was searching for libre games, I was surprised to see that there are lots of games with free code but proprietary assets.

LMFAO. You talk about freedom yet you would deny people the choice to choose what they want to use whether its proprietary or FOSS. So what if I want to spend my money on commercial games, programs or high priced hookers. that you can't afford.

Let's try not to get over-excited here. Lyberta didn't really deny people choices, but rather quite generally demonized proprietary software and the principles involved.
For what it's worth, I believe that business oriented decisions only benefit end users where the end users' benefit is also a business benefit. This way commercial games tend to appear pretty and awesome but sadly quite often, upon having a closer look, reveal the primary target to harvest moneys or data (preferrably both) from the target audience. Yet there are some lucky individuals who get paid doing stuff they really love to do and consequentially are very good in doing. I have no doubts truly awesome work is the result of inspiration and dedication, not of the payment received from it. Obviously, getting paid for your work makes life reasonably easier but imho does not necessarily have a negative impact on the quality of the output. This is why I can't agree to generally denying that proprietary games would deserve money or a player base. If something is well made, I am willing to pay for it.

However I like to pay in money, not in data, and this choice is sadly ignored by most game producers.

I have stumbled on World of Padman in 2013 and it had very clear proprietary license on all assets. I have no idea how people didn't manage to read it.

The licenses you saw in 2013 were added later. The discussion around licenses started when the dev team asked the artist to provide info on 3rd-party materials to start clearing the rights (so we could include the artworks in the new release). He couldn't/wouldn't do it. So some said let's fork the game and replace the problematic materials, only to find the artist himself doesn't want his works used elsewhere either.

World Of Padman's Website
Better late than never for me to tell you I suppose... Anyway, though development is still suspended on World Of Padman, it did get its website back. Heck, even its [PAD]Day events are back:


So, how does all of this make you feel?

There were some good people there that I do miss, but I'm very glad that I switched to Xonotic and contribute my efforts here.
I do like the idea of a Xonotic day though.