Help Wanted! (mars mission era considered)

[Rbuck]

Hello, I need some advice.
I thought of making the LEGO (tm) Mars Mission product series into a wesnoth era.

However:
- is it legally ok to do this, or do I need special permission?
- if so, do I need permission to make it or to propagate it?

If I have the green light:
- can anyone point out Mars Mission 3-D computer models suitable for posing and rendering, or
- does anyone know how to choke the sprites out of LEGO's CrystAlien Conflict?

[Dixie]

This is sadly not ok since the chosen theme is copyrighted. You -could- keep the theme but change the era/races/units names, though, but some words like "LEGO" and probably "CrystAlien" must absolutely not appear or it won't be tolerated on Wesnoth's forums and add-on server. You can still develop it independently and distribute it by your own independent channels at your own legal risks, though.

[Dugi]

is it legally ok to do this, or do I need special permission?

It is not legally okay to do this, and you can't get a special permission for that. LEGO is a trademark and their products are copyrighted. You simply can't use any copyrighted material in Wesnoth (sometimes it is questionable what is copyrighted or not, but this certainly is).

If you just used some LEGO software to create sprites, it would be probably okay, because Photoshop is copyrighted too and you can use pictures made with it freely. But it does not have a feature to make sprites, and screenshots are probably copyrighted as well (they usually are). You'd have to rename all things probably as well, even if you made the sprites legally somehow.

[Rbuck]

Ah.

But I can still use the basic idea if nobody uses anything copyrighted.

[Dixie]

Yes, I guess so.