Hello,

I was wondering if it's legal to use data from Doom source code in my own project.I am finishing up a mod for a game. It uses Dooms random table, you can see it here:
https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM/blob/master/linuxdoom-1.10/m_random.c
"rndtable"

Am I obligated to follow source code license and share the source of mod?
It's just a sequence of numbers, but it's still a peace of source code used for same purpose as well.

Edit: Sorry, did a mistake in title, its not a portion, its entire sequence.

Why would you do something like this In the first place, never mind if it’s legal or not?

There is Mersenne Twister support built into the C++ language. If you're stuck using C, then try this library: https://github.com/ESultanik/mtwister​​

Works good. No patent issues or whatnot.

This random number table doesn't look anything special - it's just all numbers from 0 to 255 randomly shuffled. The kind of thing you could quite trivially create yourself, in other words, and there's no reason to copy from Doom.

21st Century Moose said:

This random number table doesn't look anything special - it's just all numbers from 0 to 255 randomly shuffled. The kind of thing you could quite trivially create yourself, in other words, and there's no reason to copy from Doom.

If you look for certain numbers, they repeat.

254 - 2
128 - 2
1 - 0
166 - 3

So the numbers are not unique in entire sequence.

Question is related to specific set of numbers in their exact order.

Reverse the list and read it bottom to top. ?

Also, I found this.

For a work to be eligible for protection under U.S. copyright law, it must be the product of a minimal amount of creativity. What does that mean for straight collections of facts, such as might be found in lists, personal directories, and other sorts of databases?

If no creativity was employed in selecting or arranging the data, the compilation will not receive copyright protection.

And this for anyone interested in Doom's RNG. It's a cool video for any game programmer/designer.

Thank you for the information!

21st Century Moose said:

This random number table doesn't look anything special - it's just all numbers from 0 to 255 randomly shuffled. The kind of thing you could quite trivially create yourself, in other words, and there's no reason to copy from Doom.

It would make sense to copy Doom's random numbers for compatibility reasons (i.e. a source port that aims for very strict emulation), but in any other case you are only “copying” the general algorithm of using a lookup table containing a random permutation and generating your own random permutation is a simpler and higher quality option than copying one (maybe incorrectly).