Legally paying homage to a game series you like

naI · Post by **naI** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:47 pm

That cat character is really cool! I think I could even like that look better than the classic Sonic. I'm really interested in seeing your engine become the next major innovation in NES homebrew, tokumaru. Keep it up, I'm rooting for you!

"NES does what SEGAn't remember..."

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:55 pm

Thanks, man. I'll try to dedicate every bit of free time I get to it.

naI wrote:"NES does what SEGAn't remember..."

Nice come back!

Zepper · Post by **Zepper** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:00 pm

- It's a gray area. If you are really worried about that, it might be the same scenario for emulation.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:23 pm

Zepper wrote:- It's a gray area. If you are really worried about that, it might be the same scenario for emulation.

When there's money involved, things start going from gray to black, don't you think? =)

Orsi · Post by **Orsi** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:25 pm

How about Gusty the Groundhog instead of Sonic the Hedgehog

.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:44 pm

Orsi wrote:How about Gusty the Groundhog instead of Sonic the Hedgehog .

Funny you mention groundhogs, yesterday I watched my "The Groundhog Day" DVD I received on friday. Every time they mentioned the groundhog I'd think of Sonic.

HJRodrigo · Post by **HJRodrigo** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 7:21 am

Orsi wrote:How about Gusty the Groundhog instead of Sonic the Hedgehog .

LOL, That is a good name

Post by **tepples** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 7:24 am

"Gusty" and "*hog"? Why not name your cast of characters after Ubuntu releases while you're at it? A little bit of revision and this cat could be a Lucid Lynx.

Doogie · Post by **Doogie** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:39 pm

tepples wrote:
HJRodrigo wrote:I don't follow. What is wrong with advertising or selling?
I agree, but some others might not. GNU-tards are OK with selling copies, possibly bundled with online game server access or other kinds of support, but not with restricting the ability of anyone who buys a copy to make and sell more copies.

(Buying a ROM download doesn't really help boost interest in the original system as much as they boost interest in emulation).

...
Agreed. If you want to make a game that runs in an emulator, make it in XNA Game Studio. XNA runs on the CLR, an emulator developed as part of the .NET Framework.
...

I'd have to disagree with doing that. You seem to be forgetting that the game running on emulator gives it almost complete cross-platform compatibility with todays devices. A NES emulator runs perfect on Playstation Portable, Playstation 1, Xbox,Wii, Nintendo DS, my random phone I bought from China.

Post by **tepples** » Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:05 am

Doogie wrote:
tepples wrote:If you want to make a game that runs in an emulator, make it in XNA Game Studio.
I'd have to disagree with doing that. You seem to be forgetting that the game running on emulator gives it almost complete cross-platform compatibility with todays devices.

XNA runs on PC, Zune, 360, and Windows Phone 7 Series. Java runs on a lot of phones.

A NES emulator runs perfect on Playstation Portable

Not without a jailbreak. Jailbreaks will be patched.

Playstation 1

Not without a modchip. Modchips will be seized at the border.

Xbox

Not without a jailbreak.

Wii

Not without a jailbreak.

Nintendo DS

Not without a modchip. If you ever want to make a game that will keep you interested in development longer than a freeware project can, and you aren't yet a big enough company to qualify as a licensed developer, you need to make one that doesn't need a jailbreak or a modchip in order to deploy it to your customers.

my random phone I bought from China.

A land-line phone runs video games?

As for mobile phones, I live in the United States. In this country, unless one of the big four carriers (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, or T-Mobile) has a phone in stock, only a commercially insignificant number of people will know about it. And they tend not to carry MeeGo phones.

Post by **Memblers** » Mon Apr 26, 2010 3:33 pm

tepples wrote: XNA runs on PC, Zune, 360, and Windows Phone 7 Series. Java runs on a lot of phones.

So someone can write an NES emulator in Java. I have no clue about XNA, seems to be Microsoft stuff so I'd assume it's involves some "trusted computing" type of crap in it somewhere. But the emulated NES game will run on almost anything. There sure won't be any platform-related crap like "runtime version v34.53.645 required", as well has these phones AFAIK having completely different chipsets meaning you have to write music / draw graphics without being able to properly use any special features that might be available on a given device (resulting in the game looking/sounding like crap compared to what else is available).

tepples wrote:
Playstation 1
Not without a modchip. Modchips will be seized at the border.

It's just a normal PIC MCU that can be used for anything, who would know?

Nintendo DS
Not without a modchip. If you ever want to make a game that will keep you interested in development longer than a freeware project can, and you aren't yet a big enough company to qualify as a licensed developer, you need to make one that doesn't need a jailbreak or a modchip in order to deploy it to your customers.

Actually it looks like you can buy a flash cart + a small memory card for maybe $5 altogether. You could probably even reflash the boot memory, epoxy the memory card in, label it, and it's now an original cart made of commonly available materials. Seems pointless to bother with getting Nintendo's approval for something that would only need sell a couple hundred copies to be successful (or whatever ones own metric for success is, I guess).

Post by **tepples** » Mon Apr 26, 2010 5:29 pm

Memblers wrote:But the emulated NES game will run on almost anything. There sure won't be any platform-related crap like "runtime version v34.53.645 required"

NES: "Mapper 5 not supported" "Mapper 90 not supported"
SNES: "DSP1 not supported" "Super FX not supported"

It's just a normal PIC MCU that can be used for anything, who would know?

But if you're distributing copies of your game with a preloaded PIC, you could get in trouble.

Actually it looks like you can buy a flash cart + a small memory card for maybe $5 altogether.

Nintendo has been getting better at getting various countries' customs departments to seize flash carts. And a lot of flash carts don't work on DSi because DSi firmware checks pre-DSi DS games against a whitelist and post-DSi DS games against an RSA signature on the cart.

Post by **Memblers** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:37 pm

tepples wrote:
Memblers wrote:But the emulated NES game will run on almost anything. There sure won't be any platform-related crap like "runtime version v34.53.645 required"
NES: "Mapper 5 not supported" "Mapper 90 not supported"
SNES: "DSP1 not supported" "Super FX not supported"

Yeah that is true, but I'd also say whoever is using mapper #5 or #90 doesn't want anyone to be able to play it on a real NES either, as those are 2 of the hardest mappers to even find. And I'd be very shocked if anyone ever used the SNES DSP chips or Super FX for game development. You can get much better-performing chips these days, though maybe not as well-tailed for the system as those were.

It's just a normal PIC MCU that can be used for anything, who would know?
But if you're distributing copies of your game with a preloaded PIC, you could get in trouble.

Is it a DMCA issue or something? I mean if one wanted to be discreet about it, just make the PIC code-protected it and call it a free bonus LED flasher. I'm sure one of those output lines would make an LED flash in some way.

Yeah it'd be BS, but who's gonna call it? The other solution is including a gameshark-like cartridge with the CD. Those were very handy and clones used to be around for like $5 each, maybe not as common now though. I had a few "Game Hunters" for my friends and I to use.

Actually it looks like you can buy a flash cart + a small memory card for maybe $5 altogether.
Nintendo has been getting better at getting various countries' customs departments to seize flash carts. And a lot of flash carts don't work on DSi because DSi firmware checks pre-DSi DS games against a whitelist and post-DSi DS games against an RSA signature on the cart.

Yeah I'd believe that, I wouldn't feel to comfortable ordering a whole crapload of them at once. I'm sure if you could get them without all the annoying packaging (just the bare carts) no one would notice anything about it.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Thu Aug 19, 2010 3:12 pm

Nice watermark. ORIGINAL CHARACTER, DO NOT STEAL.

Zsy · Post by **Zsy** » Fri Aug 20, 2010 5:34 pm

I like the character! Good luck with your project!

When you finish I'd totally buy a cart!

I'm sure you'll be just fine as long as you don't say "THIS IS A SONIC GAME" anywhere in your game XD