My post was a warning, and you are in your rights if you chose to ignore it. I wanted to tell you that by releasing a GW clone, you are in danger of facing a cease and desist by Bizzare (although some other people seemed to though think that I was attacking you1; this was not the case).

While you are still free to ignore the information I gave you, I still want to answer your posts. I hope you'll forgive me for such an offense.

Quote:Original post by ehudros
I think there are a few problems with bizzare's claims:
first, they did not invent a new concept here - far from it. games like these have existed long before they came out with geometry wars. the only thing they can claim ownership of is the unit's graphics.

IP != concepts. Concepts can't be (c) anyway.
Moreover, the Bizzare IP is not just about the graphics or about gameplay, it is about graphics+gameplay. This is what makes their game an original game. Since they did 2 versions of it, they created an original work that can be easily recognized, and thus fully qualified to become an IP.
Now, your game claims to be a GW clone. That's IP stealing, and there's no way to convince me about the rightness to do so. And you'll have hard time to convince a court too.

Quote:Original post by ehudros
Secondly, there is no PC version of the game available, so I don't believe i will affect their sales in any way (no one buys an xbox just for geometry wars).

* First, you don't know their short term plans.
* Second, I suppose that this claims work for any exclusive content, not "exclusive content that is easy to clone". So far, I have yet to see a clone of an exclusive XBox360 AAA title.
* Third, how many % of the XBox360 owner don't have a PC? True, PC gamers won't buy an XBox just to play this game - but what about PC gamers that already own a XBox?
* Fourth, read again my previous post and really imagine that same situation could happen to you. You develop an exclusive game, and someone else clone the game and release it on another platform. If your target market owns both platforms, will they buy your game or get the free one (considering that both games are equivalent)? Will you issue a "great! fantastic job!" to the guy who stole your idea and gave it to the public for free, while you are expecting to make a leaving of this idea?

Quote:Original post by ehudros
Although I have a lot of respect to bizzare for their work, I do not believe their claim is legit and therefore believe that releasing a free game on a different platform is totally alright.

It is not legal - thus it can't be alright. You unilateraly decided that it was alright, but "alright" is not a legal valid term. If it is really alright then I suggest you to contact Bizzare and to ask them for a formal agreement. Should not be difficult to do, but I'm pretty sure you won't get the answer you want - and you know it.

You have the time to make a great clone, so why don't you spend this time on the creation of an original game?

1: in fact, I don't know what people thought after reading my first post and to be fair, I don't care. I understand that defending indy studios that makes money for a game is unreasonable behavior, because no one here wants to earn money from the games they produce. Money is teh ev1L. All of us are at least very interested in game development, and we'd like to make a living of it, but we all have the same opinion: games should be free, as well as game platforms, because it costs us a lot. No matter that some other people are actually spending years to make great games, they should be released for free. In fact, they should also work for free - that's how the world should be. Everything should be free. And we shouldn't have any bindings like laws and so on. They are pure BS, they restrict our freedom, and I no longer can kill my neighbour if he steal my car. Well, since everything is free, is is allowed to steal my car because, hey, it is not even my car. In fact, he is not even my neighbour because his house is free too. So it is my house. And my house is his house. Of course, I built my house, and it took me years to do so, but that's not a problem at all! Now, there is a small question that turn in my head: why should one make a difficult work if he is not paid to do it? I guess that this is why I have these 3 tons of putrefacted garbage at the corner of the street.

(edit: the day I'll be able to spell correctly will be the Armaggedon. Sorry for the inconvenience [embarrass]).

Regards,

[Edited by - Emmanuel Deloget on October 2, 2006 1:02:02 PM]

Quote:Original post by ehudros
I'm sorry if my reply seemed rude, and I did not mean to diregard your claims.
However, even after reading your second post, I still do not think I should stop developing my game, as I still think no real damage is done here. a lot of time and work has been put into this, and if I get a cease and desist request from bizzare I would simply change enough gameplay /grpahics elements so it would no longer be an issue.

I'd like to see this.

Quote:Original post by ehudros
Meanwhile, I am simply showing this to the community to get feedback and improve my coding exprience.

Fair enough. While being very pedantic about the legal issues, I still want to try your game [grin]

Regards,

what a joke

Quote:One often repeated comment is that Geometry Wars is merely itself a clone of Robotron. The only real similarity between the two games is the 'two stick' control method - and a control method alone makes neither a game nor a brand.

:)
man the simularities are far more than that, geo wars is basically a robotron ripoff plain + simple, thats not bad but denying it is.

concerning the game --
well done, it started in fullscreen mode so thats a point off
also controlling the spaceship is pretty difficult

nice beiong only ~500kb to download

Very pretty. Two things though, the "Gravity well" guys are way too easy to kill, and you should add the option to change the resolution, and to enable antialiasing, if possible

FPS: 95-100

AMD Athlon 64 3500+
1 GB RAM
GeForce 7800GT

Quote:Original post by ehudros
What does people have against full screen? ;)

I have a lot against it when there's no visible way to choose a resolution.