BrokenMUGEN (engine)

Not to be confused with BrokenMUGEN.

BrokenMUGEN (sometimes referred to as BrokenMUGEN HR and BrokenMUGEN HD) was a series of unauthorized modifications to the WinMUGEN engine made by Vyx circa 2009. The modified engine, as well as its creator, were the center of a large controversy regarding the M.U.G.E.N engine's copyright status. The project was discontinued after the creator received a Cease & Desist order from Elecbyte's legal firm.

Features

 * MENU: 640x480 Pixels 32 bits max
 * DISPLAY FIGHT VS: 640x480 Pixels 32 bits max
 * SELECT SCREEN: 1280x960 Pixels 32 bits max
 * 96 slots with Little portraits HD format 98*58 pixels
 * Bigs portraits HD format 240*280 pixels
 * STAGES:
 * HR compatability 640*480 (indicate hires=0 in the "nameofthestage.def")
 * HD compatibility 1280*960
 * CHARS:
 * LR compatibility 320*240 (xscale,yscale = 1)
 * HR compatibility 640*480 (xscale,yscale = 0.5)
 * HD compatibility 1280*960 (xscale,yscale = 0.25)

Controversy
Purported to be the first version of M.U.G.E.N have full HD support, evidence would later surface that would contradict these claims. The most obvious evidence was that M.U.G.E.N 1.0, which was officially released to the public by Elecbyte only a few months earlier, also supported HD resolution characters and stages. The creator would later claim that development of HD support began in advance of M.U.G.E.N 1.0's release, despite its much lower quality. Through the use of hex editing tools, members of The Mugen Fighters Guild would later show evidence that BrokenMUGEN was, in fact, a simple modification of the WinMUGEN engine, which would have been disallowed by Elecbyte's M.U.G.E.N license.

Following these events, Vyx would later falsely claim that the WinMUGEN engine's license was no longer valid due to French copyright laws governing "abandonware", which would place the engine in the public domain. Were this to be true, this would have allowed him to legally modify, and ultimately sell, the engine. When confronted about Elecbyte's return in 2009, he would later try to justify these claims with the argument that Elecbyte, despite using the same name, was not the same entity that initially released the WinMUGEN engine in 2002 and, thus, their status as the engine's copyright holder was not valid. These ambiguous claims were widely rejected by many members of various M.U.G.E.N communities, including those on the official Elecbyte forums.

In addition to the dubious copyright claims by the creator, the engine itself came prepackaged with various content made by other M.U.G.E.N authors, all of which were never credited, nor did the creators of the engine seek permission from these authors to include their works in the engine.

On November 9th, 2009, Vyx announced that he had received a Cease & Desist order from Elecbyte's legal team, demanding the removal of the BrokenMUGEN engine from his website.