M.U.G.E.N

M.U.G.E.N is a 2D fighting game engine designed by Elecbyte and originally released in 1999. Elecbyte distributed beta versions that ran under DOS, Linux, and Windows. The engine allows for anyone to create characters, stages and other game objects through interpreted text files and graphics and sound compilations and it also supports various types of audio formats such as MP3, ADX, OGG and MIDI as background music during gameplay. The engine allows for the type of functionality found in most any commercial 2D fighting game, such as the Street Fighter games produced by Capcom or the King of Fighters games produced by SNK. Creators of M.U.G.E.N content are from all over the globe, most notably including American, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and French creators.

History
From 1999 to 2001, there were several incremental releases of the M.U.G.E.N engine for DOS. Development of the DOS version ceased when Elecbyte switched to the Linux platform in late 2001. For a time, Elecbyte had posted a request for donations on their site to legally obtain a Windows compiler to make a Windows version of M.U.G.E.N. A number of donations to the Elecbyte site soon followed, as many users would much rather have a Windows version instead--there were problems with using the DOS version of M.U.G.E.N on Windows XP. The new Linux releases added features that the DOS version did not have. There were then promises of a Windows port of the engine, but the development group decided to discontinue the project in 2003, presumably due to leaks made public of a private Win M.U.G.E.N beta that was provided to donators. The Win M.U.G.E.N beta contained a two-character roster limit, locked game modes, and nag screens. A "no limit" hack that removes these limitations was made available in 2004. This Windows version is functionally the same as the last Linux release and is the most widely used version of M.U.G.E.N today. Despite some controversies - modifications made on the actual engine are sometimes seen as an analogue to those made on the creations developed for it, and this is a recurrent topic of discussion among M.U.G.E.N fans (see Fork (software development)). Since development of the engine was halted and no source code has been made available by Elecbyte, there are now some projects in the works to make a clone of the engine from scratch, such as OpenMugen. Some of them present online capabilities, a much sought-after feature. None of these projects are currently complete, though many have high hopes for them. Today, many examples of M.U.G.E.N can be found in combo videos on the video hosting site YouTube.

Legality
The previous license agreements for usage of M.U.G.E.N from Elecbyte have expired and it appears that a new license agreement will never be granted. Thus, any current distribution of M.U.G.E.N has not been authorized by Elecbyte and is technically illegal, although Elecbyte has never taken any legal action; the company has simply disappeared without explanation. Many people chose to continue using M.U.G.E.N despite the lack of a new license. Creations such as characters and stages for use with M.U.G.E.N are not a part of Elecbyte's license, but only the software itself is. So, it is up to the individual whether or not to violate Elecbyte's license by using M.U.G.E.N Elecbyte itself has not made a public statement since 2003, when they stated that the project had "hit a snag".

Most characters and stages are of dubious legality as well, as most are made using sprites and sounds ripped from copyrighted games. For this reason, some standing communities enforced a loose "time-release" rule, whereby they do not allow linking to characters made from recent games. While this has no actual impact on the legality of the materials in question, it has presumably served to avoid any legal pressure from the copyright holders. But some copyright holders, such as Capcom, are said to understand that it is just fanart work and don't care about it.

The work material has two categories: the content of the SFF (sprite format, based on PCX images) and SND (audio format based on WAV) files are copyrighted by the respective owners (like Capcom, SNK, etc); the other files, like CMD (command file), AIR (animation file) and CNS (constant and state definitions, the main file of a M.U.G.E.N character) are copyrighted by the author of the character or the stage. Elecbyte stated that the reason why the code files were text-based and directly processed by the engine in this manner was so that users could learn from each other, yet there has been a great deal of controversy regarding permission (or lack thereof) between coders.

'Warehousing'
There has been debate over the act of hosting the works of content creators (or authors) for the engine without consent from the author, a practice dubbed "warehousing." The matter is similar to hosting roms or mp3's. Warehouses and content 'megapacks' seem ideal for new engine users who are able to obtain a lot of useable content quickly. Arguments have risen against this practice though. First, because the "warehouse" would host all the content they previously downloaded the content users are unaware of original source of the content and miss the patchces and updates related to the each piece of content. The second problem is that many author gain revenue in one form or another by visitors to their sites, be it by advertising banners on their site or merchandising (such as that sold by [Mugen Institute] for their original Dragon Claw character.) The use of "warehousing" has the potential to drop the amount of visitors to the author's web sites, often causing the author to lose revenue and to lose interest in creating and updating content.

Warehouses are also considered by some to be illegal in that they violate certain copyrights pertaining to the code used to create the content, much like hosting a videogame FAQ is considered in violation of the author's copyright unless permission to host is given. The debate ranges from original design by authors as well as derivative works or fan art often mimicking previously released video game characters. A violation of copyright of the original designs would be where the original author has good standing to legally sue if the correct documentation was files before the release of the characters. Typically it is argued that legal action isn't sought for the misuse of most M.U.G.E.N creations because the origin of sprites and sounds has been ripped from commercial games even though the program code is crafted from scratch or templates.

As with most internet content, several points are raised from people to try and justify being able host and edit the creator's content for the M.U.G.E.N engine, though they are still argued against by warehouse opponents:


 * The first is that the engine itself is freeware, and thus covered under freeware laws. In reply, opponents state due to the license agreement obtained by Elecbyte, which in part still applies, M.U.G.E.N itself is actually shareware, and covered under the laws governing such.


 * The second belief is when copyrighted characters or sprites such as those owned by Capcom or SNK are used in the works, the works themselves are a violation of copyright and thus any claims are to be argued as null and void. Although Nintendo has released a statement[] against emulation in all forms, Capcom, SNK, and other sites have not shown any ill will towards those creating content for the engine, despite being aware of the practice for several years. In fact only two groups have stepped forward to ever ask content from their work not be made for the engine: the creators of the Queen of Heart games, and the creators of Melty Blood (in that they wished for sounds and voices from the game itself not to be used with the characters, though this limitation was removed in subsequent installments of the game series by the publishers.)


 * Many sites that use this argument tend to host original characters generated by the author themselves (such as those by [Reu] or [Rikard]), in which case the characters are still copyright of their authors. The copyright on the code itself is a factor here also, though many people misinterpret claims of copyright to cover the sprites or the character concept, which may not be the author's intention at all.

In general, the M.U.G.E.N community is one of the few online game and modification communities to practice such disdain for warehousing.

Trivia
There is no official pronunciation. However, here are some popular examples of pronunciation:
 * moo-jen
 * myu-gen
 * moo-gen

"Mugen" in Japanese means "infinite", therefore the later would be the suggested pronunciation. However, M.U.G.E.N is a forgotten acronym, referring to the days when the engine was ment to emulate shooting games as opposed to fighting games as stated by Elecbyte, therefore the real meaning of M.U.G.E.N is and always will be unknown.