Please calm down , you can’t complain because nobody wants to help you. Also, these assets are not in the public domain, they are copyrighted instead. Good luck with your “project”.
@hahasamian, this community is so awesome that instead of being silly and saying things to make you feel happy they told you exactly what you need to know, Nintendo, Sega and many other companies go berserk to protect their IP’s you just can’t download those models use them in your game and expect Sega to applaud you, even if it’s a fangame is very risky.
How is that you don’t understand that people don’t want to invest time in something that can be THAT problematic?
You came with copyrighted material, saying that don’t know how to animate the models and that need someone to program the gameplay, in other words you need people to make you everything and you’re surprised because no one is on board?
And after people explained with education the situation you still don’t get it. This advice will protect you too!
There is a game called Freedom Planet which is Sonic but with different assets, why don’t you do something like that but in 3D with you own models?
If what you want is to make an homage you don’t need any copyrighted material, take a look at Rokko Chan, is a Mega Man fan game but with custom sprites, and if 3D is too hard you have Paper2D available!
Good luck anyway man, no one is hating you, you’re taking the comments too badly.
Uhh…
Did I not just say I am learning Blender and getting the hold of things?
And Bleeping goes a bit too far, don’t you think? I heard, “If you make a **** game and someone doesn’t like it, they will blame SEGA,” did I not? (That also doesn’t make since BTW. Do you think I’m such an idiot as to put the SEGA logo in for anything but credit?
I think I will create my own models from now on, since I get this for not making them. I will try to be better than this, also I DID do some basic movement programming, but no one cares anyway.
Anyway, I’ll try to lighten up, but this has been my first real experience with the forums. I would like at least no cussing next time, understood?
Decides to see if I can find and report that one post…
EDIT: Finds no report button, looks like there were more than one post that used that word…
Zarko:
I’m not going to complain. does that look like complaining? I’m stating that I’m going to try this alone, and that if something turns out well I’ll post it up for you guys to download. I’m stating that I’m learning animation, and taking more steps to make this more than just some dumb T-poses.
Zac: Sorry I took so long to reply. Please press the “reply” button next time.
I understand. I’ve decided to take a similar approach in my Star Fox 3 idea (A fan-game based on an unreleased game! HAHA!), modeling everything from scratch (note no capital letters. LOL). This started probably because I wouldn’t be able to get models from Star Fox 2 or 1. But now it looks like the whole game will be this way, Arwings, enemy fighters, and all that. Not to mention character models and, for the first time, I believe, complete cockpits and character shots (In contrast to the normal pre-rendered cockpits! This will also allow for other ideas to go well, like taking a cinematic shot inside the Arwing cockpit)!
Would distribution of sprites online (like someone using a sprite sheet taken from TSR and ripping it to Scratch) also be illegal? What’s the line where something becomes illegal? I would like to at least use sprites from Sonic on Scratch fan-games.
Taking any asset from a game, including textures, sprites, models, animation, sounds, etc, and distributing them is copyright infringement. Even if they are packaged in a free game.
I just wanted to stop in and say that this is my favorite thread on the forums.
On a side note, don’t use SEGA IP because it belongs to SEGA, and not anyone else. HTH.
I’ll throw you a bone.
SEGA has both IP rights (Intellectual property - Wikipedia) AND Copyright in the USA and multiple other countries to the Sonic Franchise, Sonic Assets, and hardware built for Sonic, among other things.
If you are serious about making a game you can go : Request a Search Estimate | U.S. Copyright Office and fork over a few hundred dollars to do what is called “Due Diligence” in the R&D world. After you have done your due diligence you will have your answer as to the nature of some of the posts in this thread.
Not just ripped assets, but if you make your own assets on an existing IP and try to use them without permission then that’s also illegal. For example if you made your own Sonic models and assets and released a free game with them it would still be illegal because it uses their design for the characters.
You can make something similar, but you have to change the design enough.
Hedgehogs cannot be copyrighted. Hedgehogs that run in loops (they actually copyrighted this) and collect rings can be though. I’d make a game with a Running platypus, personally. Can you imagine? A fast platypus!
Anything that involves ripping is illegal. There is no way out of this. Those games do not share their models or sprites for free, people reverse engineer to get those stuff to their original non-cooked self and share around. That is illegal. As many people tried to warn you, some companies do not care about how awesome your game is. They don’t like it when you use it. Hasbro is another example. Good luck doing ANYTHING with their MyLittlePonies.
The way hedhehog look might be suspicious though. An almost-sonic looking hedhehog is still dangerous. On the other hand, platypuses can’t be copyrighted due to being too awesome, go for it!
I just wanted to point out ripping asset was black and white illegal and there was no ifs or buts about it. Fan games are general considered copywrite infringement, but it’s still a bit grey since their is a lot of fan games, and you could argue it might be fair use, but not I’m not a lawyer, and it’s still probably illegal.
Also, making a Sonic game is literally a direct infringement of copyright of a company with millions and millions of dollars.
Could a sonic fan game be considered a private study? Maybe? From the fair use wikipedia page "The law, which took effect in May 2008, permits the fair use of copyrighted works for purposes such as private study, research, criticism, review, news reporting, quotation, or instruction or testing by an educational institution.”
It’s a bit like poking an angry bull with a red-hot cattle prod. Does the bull get mad if you only poke it a little? Let’s find out! Together we will make science. (and by together I mean the OP)
Yeah definitely wouldn’t poke the shark, but I don’t think there’s been a legal case yet.
Well no offense but most of the people who could help you don’t want to tangle with SEGA. Nobody * is attacking you with anything. Feel free to make your own Sonic game, but when SEGA hits you harder than you thought possible, don’t cry to us. SEGA is who will be ‘attacking’ you with legal ‘assaults’- not anyone .* And you aren’t the only person **who has been told of this. There is another person obsessed with making a Jazz Jackrabbit game, who has been told countless times that it wouldn’t work out well for him/her. Maybe you could come up with original IP?
(from your other post)
There’s nothing there that’s particularly worthy of discussion. You got movement, jumping, and enemies to work. Congrats. The reason so many are talking about your sonic (this) post is mostly just trying to warn you away from trouble ahead. But go ahead and believe that the community is out to get you. We’re definitely attacking your character and skillset directly. We totally aren’t just telling you what a mindless corporation will do. The only reason anyone has to believe that you aren’t a real programmer](xkcd: Real Programmers) is because at the first sign of adversity - not even from us, *we’re just the messengers *- you blame the community and scream that you’re gonna run back to Scratch. There’s nothing wrong with Scratch, but the attitude that 'nobody enthusiastically said my Sonic clone was a great idea- they all hate me and I should go back to my hug-box’ is not doing you any favors. Making your game in scratch does not protect against a lawsuit. It doesn’t hurt my feelings if you make a Sonic clone (literally a clone). The only way it could ever influence my day-to-day life is if I decided to help you make it. Why? Because I could face legal action against me for violating copyright- and so could you. That’s all anyone is trying to warn against.
That being said-
I hope you make the best 3D Sonic game yet. It really shouldn’t be hard to at least get podium. Welcome to UE4. Feel free to ask specific questions in the relevant sub-forums - they’re all named according to what you should post in them. Just try not to get mad based around the attention your posts are getting.
I would be carefull with that assumption 
is a case I remember quite well as it has happened to many people and I know one of them:
If you would design anything that even remotely looks like an animal paw print… you get immediately sued by Jack Wolfskin!
http://www.onthecommons.org/call-wolves-jack
http://derstandard.at/1254311941527/Tatzenverbot-Jack-Wolfskin-mahnt-Handarbeiter-wegen-Pfoten-Design-ab
(This one is German, but just google translate… )
http://adage.com/article/global-news/germany-perils-protect-brand/139767/
And even if a court should decide that your hedgehog is not an infringement, that wont happen before you spend 100k for lawyers…
And Sega might be very aware to probably losing the case, but will take its chances and sue anyway.
If they sue 10 people and win just 3 cases out of them, it pays off.
Just a small detail. It’s not really about “paying off”, actually companies can loose quite a lot of money on all this if case goes to court, regardless who wins. IP lawers are not there to bring extra profit by taking money away from fans, their job is to protect intellectual property by actively finding cases of infringement and acting on them. The purpose of this is behind details of how trademark/logo etc. works. If you don’t use or protect your IP you can loose ownership over it. It costs time and money for companies to keep all their trademarks. From this perspective, while action of Jack Wolfskin might sound ridiculous, they actually make sense. If a lot of people and companies will be using paws prints as logotypes for products or services, then Wolfskin will simply have a hard time retaining their logo. Anyone could start selling apparel which imitates their brand with a bear pawn logo for example, and in the eyes of the law this would be legal.
I’m saying this just so people would be aware that it doesn’t matter if you are making money of someones IP or not, you can be pursued simply on the basis of using IP without having permission to do so. This is something that matters way more than what ever you are making money or not.
Never said it was I surely undetstand how things work. I wanted to give an example how easy it is to get entangled in lawsuits even with something appearently benign as a simple paw print.
Although it is a bit questionable since a paw print is pretty generic. I think it goes a bit far claiming any paw print as infringement albeit looking different.
What if I make a product that features a pictogram of a cigarette. Would all of a sudden every non-smoking sign be an infringement? 
Honestly, I’m not an IP lawyer or IP engineer, but it’s all about details and specifics of each case. While case with animal paws is rather bizarre, we hear about it mostly because of that. If this would reach court they could even loose the case, but this can actually be beneficial to them in a long run as they are “actively protecting” their IP, or they could actually even win such case.
Just want to highlight again that making/not making money have nothing to do with all this. When it comes to games and their “undefined” legal status, “fair use” of IP for education/personal use/satire and etc. is not going to do much good for you, unless you keep it to yourself and never release or mention it publicly. Eventually we will see mods for games like Skyrim being pulled down for using IP without permission, just give it a time to become popular enough.