Leftley wrote:

The Dragon Warrior games, on the other hand, have clearly defined gameplay. Sure, it's simplistic gameplay, but in making a game based off of them you've got a proven gameplay concept behind you.

Indeed it is a proven gameplay concept-but also a worn out one, unless you are a die hard rpg fan. On top of that, too bad the people who made the dragon warrior games didn't give any consideration to how hard it would be for me fifteen years later to make an online replica of a dragon warrior style party system....arg. So many hours of my life wasted on figuring out how to make it work...

LexyBitch wrote:

The games themselves can be good. The fact that they EXIST is what sucks.

Think of it this way: someone (or several some people) made the Dragon Warrior series. They went to school, they studied computer science, they had some ideas, they brainstormed with others at their company, they worked their asses off, made personal and creative sacrifices, and ended up making something neat. This is their art, and in some way, it represents their dreams. The people who made the Dragon Warrior games worked hard, and they can look at the DW series and feel proud of their accomplishments.

Now, some joker comes along. Takes their ideas. Takes their icons. Adds some original things to it. This joker has done about a 10% the work they did, and ended up with 110% of the accomplishment (figured mathematically, 100% of what they had plus 10%). The phrase "standing on the shoulder of giants" is what you would use to describe this.

Of course, some artists are flattered by fan writers/designers... I can't say for certain that the people responsible for Dragon Warrior or [game/series x] don't feel this way. But unless you know for certain... you have NO RIGHT TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAM WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION.

If I ever get my magnum opus fantasy series published, I hope everyone here reads it... but if I see anyone making a game based on their twisted version of my art, I'll... well, I'll cry. Then I'll hunt them down and kill them, slowly and painfully, and the world will be a better place.

LOL LEXY. I've read a few of your posts before and snickered to myself, but this one is just hilarious. First of all-you may be considered a brilliant coder, but I've never seen a game of yours that I wanted to play for more than 5 minutes (if that). I tried that world of lexyquest game that you are making, and it lacks any originality or anything that might make someone want to play it. If it had dbz icons, I would have mistaken you for another newbie coder who doesn't know how to make something fun. You criticize people who make their games based on other games that have existed before. Question: Have you ever played a single player game for an older console, or computer and said to yourself "hmm...this might be kind of fun to play with other people..." Byond was made to Build Your Own Net Dream. People who make games based on previous games are not stealing their ideas or their hard work-they are saluting them by making an online version of their games that will probably never be made by the original developers anyway, so that people who enjoyed the original can play it with others.

You used Dragon Warrior as an example. First off, Dragon Warrior 7 is being released in the United States in a few weeks by Enix. I bet you that the developement team, story writers etc for that game were completely different than the original people who made the first Dragon Warrior Games. Does this make this game a cheap rip off? No. Enix is simply giving gamers more of what they want-all be it they are making quite a nice chunk of change from it. I'll use DWO as an example in this case as well, because it is the only dragon warrior game I see played a lot on byond. Silk Wizard made DWO. He had nothing to do with the original team that made the first dragon warrior. He is making an online version of a great game-and to preserve the feel of the original games he took hours taking screenshots and ripping the original Nintendo graphics. He could have easily used RPG maker tiles or made his own, or even ripped the graphics from the Super Nintendo Dragon Warrior games. It's obvious that he copied the graphics, and it is the first thing anyone notices when they start to play. Now, we all know that there is no conceivable way for him to have ripped the coding from the original games as well-so obviously he had to learn for himself how to make the game like dragon warrior. Instead of using a combat system using verbs etc or copying the one in the libraries, he made his own. He put in the original dw music. He even has made a working (although somewhat buggy) party system, exactly like the old games. All these ideas are obviously not original-but that is on purpose! He is certainly not a joker-I've tried to code a little myself, and it's hard (at least at first). There are no combat systems or quest systems in the demos, tutorials or libraries for him to have used, so he obviously programmed it all himself. With his skill he could probably make a totally original game that would be as immensly popular as DWO is. Right now, I think that it is safe to say that DWO is the most popular game on byond. You can claim this is due to fanboys etc, -but I've seen people in the game who play it A LOT and they hadn't even played dragon warrior before. No joker could have made a game like that-even if it is blatantly copying others. That leads me to conclude that if silk ever made a game that was totally original-not based on any other games or stories-that it would put your jealous ramblings to an end. There are tons of other great game designers who happen to be making fan games that could also make a great original game as well-Ebonshadow, who made DBZ spar for example.

So, basically, I think that you, Lexy, should 1. Stop criticizing other game DESIGNERS (not coders) until you make a game that can stack up to those that you make fun of. 2. Play some other games to see what others have done before you criticize them and realize that even though you may be a respected coder in the byond community-you can't really put down a game that you haven't even played. Why don't you go try out some of those fan games right now and play them for awhile. At least play DWO for an hour to get to some of the quests, try Street Fighter RPG and look at them as not some loser's copy of a great game, but as someone's hard work at making an online version of a game that a lot of people want to play.

LexyBitch wrote:

A few points.

1. I have played DWO for about an hour. I thought it was fun, but it goes against my principles to play it, so I stopped.

Okay, at least you have played the game. I can't understand why you wouldn't play it just because it is based on another game...but oh well.

2. Yes, I have played a game and thought, "It would be fun to play this online with multiple people." That game was called Diggers. I made a game called Miner League, inspired by (but not copied from) Diggers. It had very similar gameplay, some similar conventions, and of course, the same basic theme. But I did not try to pass it off as "Diggers Online." That's the difference. This game, and many others that I have made in the past, had upwards of 20 people online at once, and I still have people paging and e-mailing me asking me when I'm going to bring it back.

Pretty much you've done the same thing that silk did-but didn't package it the same way. I've never heard of Miner League-but a lot of people have heard of dragon warrior. You are still taking the basic design concepts of that game, and making them your own. If the game design had been terrible, you never would have remade it-same thing with DWO-if dragon warrior had sucked, it probably wouldn't have been made. Just because you package it differently doesn't mean that you aren't doing the same basic thing the silk wizard is doing.

If I announced today that tomorrow night I'd be testing Elysium or Through A Glass Darkly, I'd have so many people coming in, I'd have to go to invitation only.

I think that dwo has had upwards of 45 people in a server at a time-all wanting to play the game because it is fun-they aren't hung up on "copying."

3. BYOND is called Build Your Own Net Dream. Exactly. Your Own. Dragon Warrior is NOT Silk Wizard's dream. He shouldn't mess with it.

You're wrong. Dragon Warrior Online is Silk Wizard's dream. He obivously wanted to play an online Dragon Warrior game, and so made one. As it turns out, many other people wanted to play one as well.

4. World of LexyQuest is designed to be incredibly simple and straightforward, to avoid the code collapse that most of my games undergo, and to give me a showcase game since most people here now don't remember any of the above games. If you want to see my complex, intricate, original, revolutionary, detailed, huge online RPG... wait a few years. That's how long it takes to make one of those. The point of WOLQ isn't that the game engine provides a lot... it's that it provides almost nothing. It's designed to be an empty framework in which people can roleplay. Once the engine work is done and the debugging is more or less complete, the out-of-character chat channel will be phased out and more support will be put in for parties and player organizations. The glass is half-empty, yes... but a half-empty glass is more interesting than a full one.

You have a point here. I've been waiting to see a huge massive scale rpg on byond-hopefully yours will be what I and a lot of other people are waiting for.

5. The makers of DW 7 are most likely different than the makers of DW 1, yes... but you miss the point. Among other things, Enix has a legal right to make new DW games. The people who put their hearts and souls into DW 1 made that sacrifice by working under a company, in order to get some portion of their vision made and into the public's eye. Silk Wizard, or whoever made the so-called "Dragon Warrior Online" does not have that legal right. He's simply trampling where he doesn't belong.

Silk Wizard doesn't ask a subscription fee to dwo, although I bet if he did he could actually make a lot of money. I'm sure that even though he isn't making money off of it, it could be considered copyright violation in some way-you don't need to show me the exact law or anything. However, I will point out that at the Enix website, the forums there are typically buzzing with talk about dwo. Even the Enix employees assigned to moderate these boards have commented on it. Besides, I'm sure to make DWO what it is Silk Wizard has poured his heart and soul into it as well.

LexyBitch wrote:

How is Miner League different from DWO? Ignoring the legal and ethical concerns, everyone who played Miner League played it because they liked Miner League... very few of them had ever played the game that inspired it, Diggers... by calling his game "Dragon Warrior Online" and using Dragon Warrior graphics, Silk has (to use one of my favorite phrases) "stood on the shoulders of a giant." His game will automatically get a certain amount of recognition and acclaim, just because he calls it by something someone's familiar with. His game is better quality than most fan games on BYOND, but some of his popularity and exposure is still because he's riding someone else's coat tails. It's easy to build a 200 story building, if someone else built the first 190 stories, you know?

If he used the exact same game design and used different icons and not called it dragon warrior-then he would be doing the exact same thing that you did with Miner League. I'm sure that people don't play DWO for hours on end due to the fact that it is a dragon warrior game. Obviously, that is where a lot of the game's initial popularity came from-but it was the design that made it stick.

Second of all, if Enix is aware of the fan games and tolerates them, that does change things a bit... it effectively removes the legal objections. Not, however, the moral, and more importantly, the artistic ones.

I can't understand what you mean by moral objections...how is making a fan game morally wrong? Artistic objections-As stated before, you took the basic gameplay concepts from one game and made your own game with them-I don't see how that is different. Oh well. I've had enough debating for one day. Basically, I just think that you should look at the reasons why people like Silk Wizard make fan games, and why people like to play them, instead of looking at them as blatant ripoffs because the coders can't think of an original game to make themselves.

This thread wasted a whole half-hour of my life :o)