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TieTuesday streamed the demo right after finishing his Uranium run, and the sheer relief in his voice that it was actually good was palpable. One of the devs was in his stream chat and Tie was quite liberal with his praises, as well as a few suggestions to make it even better.
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Feb 28, 2017 17:28
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Ethereal Gates does look good from the demo, but on my computer at least, it suffers from the same laggy, stuttering issues that Uranium did. Is this just an issue with the toolkit/RPGMaker?
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Feb 28, 2017 18:08
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Johnny Joestar posted:i could never decide what i hated more about uranium. the awful balance or the high amount of awful-looking pokemon that seem to miss the aesthetic that makes canon pokemon look good.
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Feb 28, 2017 18:16
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StupendousMan posted:Ethereal Gates does look good from the demo, but on my computer at least, it suffers from the same laggy, stuttering issues that Uranium did. Is this just an issue with the toolkit/RPGMaker? from what i understand it's definitely something to do with rpgmaker or whatever not playing nice with a lot of recent computers Nihilarian posted:Reminder that Uranium was in development for 9 years yeah 
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Feb 28, 2017 18:25
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So why wasn't Uranium given a C&D order? Seems like Nintendo would have been doing the world a favor.
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Feb 28, 2017 19:32
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get that OUT of my face posted:So why wasn't Uranium given a C&D order? Seems like Nintendo would have been doing the world a favor. I think it was. I remember there being talk of evil Nintendo taking down Uranium before SuMo came out anyway. It's just that SuMo came out, like, two weeks later so the Pokemon fandom had bigger and better things to care about.
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Feb 28, 2017 19:37
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get that OUT of my face posted:So why wasn't Uranium given a C&D order? Seems like Nintendo would have been doing the world a favor. It was. There was some whining because it happened just after AM2R and people were so upset that Nintendo was ruining everything by C&Ding a masterpiece!!! and then SuMo came out and nobody cared anymore.
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Feb 28, 2017 19:38
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uranium was definitely given a C&D order, i remember it not being too long after it came out
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Feb 28, 2017 19:39
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During Tie's playthrough, he even notes more or less the exact time that it is given the C&D. Honestly, though, C&D's one of those things where even if it's a Good Product (which Uranium isn't), if you're too public about it or the media makes it too public, someone's going to drop a hammer on it because of how draconian copyright law is. People make a fuss saying "they should buy the product instead like with Megaman vs Street Fighter," but you can't always take the Valve approach to these situations. Granted, the internet being the internet, once it's released, assuming at least a few people with hosting services picked it up, the tapes can be circulated forever long after the C&D.
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Feb 28, 2017 20:58
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Unknown Quantity posted:During Tie's playthrough, he even notes more or less the exact time that it is given the C&D. Honestly, though, C&D's one of those things where even if it's a Good Product (which Uranium isn't), if you're too public about it or the media makes it too public, someone's going to drop a hammer on it because of how draconian copyright law is. People make a fuss saying "they should buy the product instead like with Megaman vs Street Fighter," but you can't always take the Valve approach to these situations. Granted, the internet being the internet, once it's released, assuming at least a few people with hosting services picked it up, the tapes can be circulated forever long after the C&D. Technically you can go to projects and officially give an endorsement as well, but that's a lot of hassle and has a chance of backfiring, so it's a lot easier just to send out a form letter.
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Feb 28, 2017 21:04
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Not just copyright, but trademark (hey look, Pokemon is in fact a registered trademark with every IP agency on Earth) has to be vigorously enforced or you lose it. It's one thing to be a Pokemon ripoff, it's another to actually say you're ripping off Pokemon and slap the name on the finished product. No IP attorney will dare advocate letting that alone if you have the resources to do so. Even if you do not pursue the claim to the ends of the Earth, issuing the C&D satisfies the legal requirement that you defend your trademarks.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:21
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ImpAtom posted:It was. There was some whining because it happened just after AM2R and people were so upset that Nintendo was ruining everything by C&Ding a masterpiece!!! and then SuMo came out and nobody cared anymore. Except the Uranium stans, who still insist that the only reason it got C&D'd is because Nintendo knew Uranium was better than their lovely 7th generation pokemon game  Johnny Joestar posted:from what i understand it's definitely something to do with rpgmaker or whatever not playing nice with a lot of recent computers Specifically, RPGMaker XP is optimized for - as the name would suggest - Windows XP. It was released in 2005 and yet is what a lot of fangame creators use because it's both easy to acquire and has the most content released for it. In particular, there's already a premade Pokemon Asset Pack floating around there which is most assuredly not legal but also impossible to really stamp out. As suggested by being a 12-year-old product, a lot of the hacks and workarounds people use to get their game to work don't quite... gel with newer systems. Or older systems, depending on the circumstance. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:29
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"they could have just endorsed it" is an incredibly stupid idea. It's technically correct but ignores the fact that Gamefreak/Nintendo don't want to deal with the possibility of people complaining at them because they missed a fakemon named Coksuker or one of the NPC's is wearing a swastika. Or, just for example, not talking about any specific hack, they don't want a game where the PC's mother dies in a nuclear hellfire at the start to represent the Pokemon brand.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:37
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It is completely about the copyright, unfortunately. Write to your senators about how lovely those laws are if you want this to change anytime soon, and also burn down every lawyer's office you can find.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:41
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Nihilarian posted:"they could have just endorsed it" is an incredibly stupid idea. It's technically correct but ignores the fact that Gamefreak/Nintendo don't want to deal with the possibility of people complaining at them because they missed a fakemon named Coksuker or one of the NPC's is wearing a swastika. Or, just for example, not talking about any specific hack, they don't want a game where the PC's mother dies in a nuclear hellfire at the start to represent the Pokemon brand. It's an argument more levied towards things like AM2R, which are just top to bottom faithful recreations of an older work with newer technology. In the case of something that takes the name and goes in Unpleasant Directions with it (such as Uranium) - or really, any directions that aren't "the original game license" - the risk is far greater than the reward for the company. It's far better to nuke that poo poo from orbit, possibly cannibalize what you can from it in the future. (For example: would Super Mario Maker have even existed if Nintendo didn't realize how many people got cheap schadenfreude from watching people play Kaizo?)
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Feb 28, 2017 22:51
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Johnny Joestar posted:from what i understand it's definitely something to do with rpgmaker or whatever not playing nice with a lot of recent computers RPGMaker doesn't play nice with anything. It's just inefficient in general. If you're on XP itself, chances are you're on an older system and whoops, you can't run some games well anyway! Then there's the fact a lot of games use RPG Maker's encryption. I bet that some of you can squeeze better performance out of this game by decrypting the assets. Tallgeese fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 22:51
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Nihilarian posted:"they could have just endorsed it" is an incredibly stupid idea. It's technically correct but ignores the fact that Gamefreak/Nintendo don't want to deal with the possibility of people complaining at them because they missed a fakemon named Coksuker or one of the NPC's is wearing a swastika. Or, just for example, not talking about any specific hack, they don't want a game where the PC's mother dies in a nuclear hellfire at the start to represent the Pokemon brand. As I said, it's a ton of hassle and can backfire. Not sure why you seem so angry about it?
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Feb 28, 2017 22:53
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It's not actually about copyright at all, actually. Copyright can't be lost if not defended, and it only applies to specific instances anyway, not general ideas, terms, or names. Trademarks, on the other hand (like the Pokemon trademark, or the trademarks on the various actual-pokemon in Uranium) can in fact be lost if not defended. Copyright comes into play if someone were to try to redistribute an actual Pokemon game, or to try and modify an actual Pokemon game. Trademark comes into play when someone uses a brand name or other trademark in a product or marketing campaign or what have you. If this was called Purse Daemons: Uranium, lost all of the trade dress like Pokeballs, and didn't use anything which was identifiable as an actual Pokemon, it would not have been as vulnerable to a Cease & Desist or other legal action by Nintendo. They probably would still have issued a C&D because let's face it that's still a Pokemon game, but there'd be at least some legal defense to it. Either way, everything here is a trademarking issue, not a copyright issue. Fake edit: Actually, the visual design of the actual-Pokemon is probably copyrightable, and using them without permission violates copyright, so that is actually a copyright issue. But that's just because they were dumb enough to actually include actual-Pokemon. Nintendo still would have to issue them the C&D even if the 'dex were entirely original because they have to be able to show courts that they have enforced their trademarks when they discovered violations of them.
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Feb 28, 2017 22:56
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Let's be honest. How many people would have heard of or cared about Uranium if they had just made a "Pokemon-like" game instead of a Pokemon game? I'm guessing the number would be far lower than it is now, which is why none of these people ever consider not including trade dress.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:04
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Which only proves, of course, why they had to protect that trade dress. And why the law requires you make some effort to do so lest you lose it. At a basic level, there's no community property for something like a trademark. It's not yours, there is no reason for the owners to give it away in many instances, so stop getting shocked, absolutely shocked when you do try to use it and get slapped.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:10
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At this point, it honestly seems smarter and easier to just make your own IP? Like, tweak the battle system a little and change the capture method, but it sounds much easier than dealing with all the legal nonsense. Obviously that would take much more effort, but let's be honest. Uranium could use some more effort put in. Especially when you get down to 95% done and then have the C&D hit you. Yes, you lose out on that instant recognition that Pokemon carries, but that's not really your recognition to have in the first place. Because Pokemon isn't yours. Plus, then you'd have a way to make some actual money off of it from sales and marketing. To clarify, I'm not saying fangames themselves are strictly bad or that Uranium would be worth buying in any form. I'm just saying that if you're going to put in a 9 year development time, put it in to something that won't be shut down at the finish line or something you can turn an actual profit on.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:24
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MillennialVulcan posted:Ethereal Gates is another fan game that's being worked on. There's been a demo out since late 2015 I think? They're expecting to release sometime this spring iirc, but they've gone mostly offline to avoid any pre-emptive C&D strikes from Nintendo. I'm not an experienced Pokemon player, but I gave it a whirl and it seems like it has a good spirit to it and flows pretty well progression wise. The new pokes are pretty solid designs. TieTuesday did a hitbox stream of EG and, after having suffered through Uranium all the way through, ended up gushing over how many things just the first couple of hours the demo got right.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:37
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Arcade Rabbit posted:At this point, it honestly seems smarter and easier to just make your own IP? Like, tweak the battle system a little and change the capture method, but it sounds much easier than dealing with all the legal nonsense. Obviously that would take much more effort, but let's be honest. Uranium could use some more effort put in. Especially when you get down to 95% done and then have the C&D hit you. Yes, you lose out on that instant recognition that Pokemon carries, but that's not really your recognition to have in the first place. Because Pokemon isn't yours. Plus, then you'd have a way to make some actual money off of it from sales and marketing. Somehow I don't think the creative talents responsible for Barewl are exactly up to the task of creating their own Pokemon-killer IP.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:42
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Like I said, Uranium probably wouldn't be worth buying in any form. But some of the other games we've been talking about like Quartz and Ethereal Gates? Might have been worth trying out. At least then Nintendo wouldn't be able to stop them.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:14
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Arcade Rabbit posted:Like I said, Uranium probably wouldn't be worth buying in any form. But some of the other games we've been talking about like Quartz and Ethereal Gates? Might have been worth trying out. At least then Nintendo wouldn't be able to stop them. EG, maybe, but Quartz is absolutely Baro's personal fanfic with the serial numbers filed off. It's endearing in its sincerity, but if he had the time to polish it, he'd probably come to the conclusion he should just do something entirely different. Like possibly a game where the player's goal was to inflate the sun, instead of the villainous goal.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:35
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I think people are missing the point when they're saying "well, why don't they just make their own IP?" These are freeware games, and the developers aren't interested in making their own IP - they're interested in making a Pokemon (or whatever franchise) game, because they like the setting and want to put their own story in. The small developers that actually make their own IPs generally charge for their games, since they can due to actually making money off an owned IP is is significantly more clear cut violation of the laws. Some companies tend to be somewhat lenient of freeware as well, though Nintendo is not one of them. And yeah, copyright laws are an utter mess, and massively favor large companies over anyone else. A Marvel comic popped up early last year with artwork blatantly stolen from another company's IP - a company that is notoriously litigious about going after anything that even seems to be a violation of their IP. In a shocking twist they did not, in fact, go after Disney for the violation despite it being far more clear cut and blatant than 90% of the stuff they do go after.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:59
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Lord Koth posted:And yeah, copyright laws are an utter mess, and massively favor large companies over anyone else. A Marvel comic popped up early last year with artwork blatantly stolen from another company's IP - a company that is notoriously litigious about going after anything that even seems to be a violation of their IP. In a shocking twist they did not, in fact, go after Disney for the violation despite it being far more clear cut and blatant than 90% of the stuff they do go after. Attempting legal action against Disney is something akin to taking on a Metal Gear with a butter knife. Though at the risk of derailing this thread again, I am curious about what this particular issue was.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:04
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LAY-ZX posted:Attempting legal action against Disney is something akin to taking on a Metal Gear with a butter knife. Though at the risk of derailing this thread again, I am curious about what this particular issue was. Oh, I'm fully aware of why they didn't go after Disney. It's just an excellent example of how lovely the laws are - they don't actually protect the ones who need it the most (not that GW specifically really needs it), smaller companies, from larger ones, because certain companies can and will just hold it up in court until the smaller one is bankrupted by legal fees. Even in a case of a massively blatant violation.    Note that though I picked pictures with physical versions of what was ripped off, in reality what the artist did was not even bother to draw them - they found online models and blew them up. Best illustrated in that second picture, where the circular symbol in the upper right is the actual door - they blew up the major portion of the model, but didn't bother with that separate part of it. Also why there seems to be just empty space directly on the other side - there IS nothing there, because it was a picture designed to only be seen from a single side.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:23
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Holy poo poo, they even left the Tau emblem on there. Shameful.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:44
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KataraniSword posted:EG, maybe, but Quartz is absolutely Baro's personal fanfic I actually meant Prism, but was tired and got the name's mixed up in my head. I admit, its really the 9 year development thing that gets me. You spent 9 years of your life working on this, and this is what you have to show for it. Dubious internet praise from an echo chamber. Hurray? But I'm the kind of guy who starts hobbies with the idea of making money off of them in the long run anyway, so eh. Different values, I guess. I would be interested in hearing if the people involved wanted to go on and make an actual game next.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:53
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Arcade Rabbit posted:I admit, its really the 9 year development thing that gets me. You spent 9 years of your life working on this, and this is what you have to show for it. I mean, I have a staircase handrail that took me over a year to make, because it spent 11 months sitting on the floor of my garage waiting for me to get back to it. I fully expect that there were years in there where very little happened with Uranium.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:07
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I mean, I have a staircase handrail that took me over a year to make, because it spent 11 months sitting on the floor of my garage waiting for me to get back to it. I fully expect that there were years in there where very little happened with Uranium. This. I've had projects go for months without working on them. Hell, Awful Emblem has technically been around for almost 4 years now but there can't be more than 2 years worth of work on it. We took a lot of breaks.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:16
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senrath posted:Let's be honest. How many people would have heard of or cared about Uranium if they had just made a "Pokemon-like" game instead of a Pokemon game? I'm guessing the number would be far lower than it is now, which is why none of these people ever consider not including trade dress. And honestly when I put it like that, I'm surprised no one's tried. 'Agni Prana, feat. Roger & Nancy.'
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Mar 1, 2017 02:32
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Rangpur posted:I like to think there would be a market for a competently put together one, but a lot of that depends on the franchise, I'd assume. You could probably get a Breath of Fire fangame funded on Kickstarter if you just renamed it 'Agni Prana,' because the only things that stay constant throughout the series are: dude who turns into a dragon sometimes; girl with wings on her back; furries. They tried that with megaman. Didn't work out.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:42
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A lot of it probably has to do with accessibility. Pokémon, as of 2017, just came off a 20th anniversary with a highly successful mobile game and a new set of main series games that capitalizes on the fact that the game had reached this milestone. Pokémon is as popular as ever and if anyone wanted to a game like Pokémon, there are games to scratch that itch. Compared to say... Earthbound. That series isn't as lucky as it had a botched marketing in the West and languished in obscurity until Ness appeared in Smash Bros. A planned sequel went through development hell for years until it was finally developed for the GBA close to the end of its life cycle. As a result, people who wanted the Earthbound experience had to create their own versions while also putting unique spins on it to keep it distinct. Undertale probably wouldn't have been as popular or even existed if Earthbound was more popular. Even then, Undertale was distinct with its game mechanic of having bullet hell sequences in battle screens and that whole "Everyone can be spared" gimmick. Zuzie fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 02:42
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Alternatively you could just try to slide under the radar like Phoenix Games. Notable works include Animal Soccer World, Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys, Dalmatians 2, 3, and 4 (which are all the same game on different consoles), and Legend of Mulan. They preyed on the tears of children whose well-meaning grandparents got them the cheaper game. Try to pick out all the characters blatantly stolen in this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4sMwSWoSJY
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Mar 1, 2017 02:44
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Zuzie posted:A lot of it probably has to do with accessibility. Pokémon, as of 2017, just came off a 20th anniversary with a highly successful mobile game and a new set of main series games that capitalizes on the fact that the game had reached this milestone. Pokémon is as popular as ever and if anyone wanted to a game like Pokémon, there are games to scratch that itch. AM2R is kind of the exception to prove that rule: Metroid's basically only popular in America, historically botched and fumbled by its main developers, left to languish in "failed franchise hell", yet not only were fanworks given the kibosh, but the popular (in America) spinoff by a third party was essentially told to take a hike and go gently caress itself.
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Mar 1, 2017 03:05
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cirus posted:Alternatively you could just try to slide under the radar like Phoenix Games. Notable works include Animal Soccer World, Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys, Dalmatians 2, 3, and 4 (which are all the same game on different consoles), and Legend of Mulan. They preyed on the tears of children whose well-meaning grandparents got them the cheaper game. Oh yeah, dingo pictures. A buncha german animation knockoffs
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Mar 1, 2017 03:11
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cirus posted:Alternatively you could just try to slide under the radar like Phoenix Games. Notable works include Animal Soccer World, Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys, Dalmatians 2, 3, and 4 (which are all the same game on different consoles), and Legend of Mulan. They preyed on the tears of children whose well-meaning grandparents got them the cheaper game.
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Mar 1, 2017 03:12
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KataraniSword posted:AM2R is kind of the exception to prove that rule: Metroid's basically only popular in America, historically botched and fumbled by its main developers, left to languish in "failed franchise hell", yet not only were fanworks given the kibosh, but the popular (in America) spinoff by a third party was essentially told to take a hike and go gently caress itself. What spinoff was this?
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