I'd suggest you clone something else than Tetris, since the Tetris Holdings LCC's only purpose these days is to hunt and shut down clones. Maybe a Zuma (yeah I know it's not *the* original, but I can't remember the name of the real one) or a match-3 clone is a better idea?

Hehe yeah...

I don't know what they want, really. It's still my opinion that The Space Game is a clone and Harvest isn't. The two games were created with different intentions. If they think The Space Game is a better game, then that's fine. Casual Collective had the opportunity to see a finished game and refine it, which we couldn't... since we weren't cloning a game 

Hehe, two man babies register to bash me, I feel sad now.

Opinion! 

Competitions forum split - Good!
Projects forum split - Good!
Creative forum split - OK.

"What's the problem?" No problem really, but I have a suggestion. The Competitions forum used to be organized with thread icons, with competition having its own icon. I think the Creative forum would work better with a similar solution. In other words, a special thread icon for "art," "audio," and so on.

Why? Because I like when I find a cool thread "by mistake." I know for sure that I wont bother to check the "audio" sub-forum every day, for example.

I like "quotation" marks.

On Kongregate their game description says:

A RTS that is a cross between Harvest Massive Encounter and Vector TD!

Though I must say: it's totally not the same game. The key ingredient of HME, the energy management and overloading, isn't there at all. (Another game that is sort of the same game, but in slow motion, is Settlers. Man I love Settlers 2)

And even though this probably totally sucks for you personally, and you do deserve credits and cold cash, I don't think it's all bad. I do believe that the world will be a better place if people steal eachother's ideas. It becomes a process of iteration, where good ideas inspire others to do new and creative things. If we get a wave of HME-like games, and even a new TD-genre, I'll be thrilled!

It sucks on the "another wasted opportunity" level. Can't say I blame CC for making it, I only wanted them to credit us in some way. That mention on Kongregate is really nice (and it seems it's quoted from JayIsGames, so I guess we're mentioned there too... which isn't so surprising, considering JIS is a reseller of H:ME).

We (Oxeye) are quite good at starting new projects and quite bad at monetizing on old projects, though getting Harvest on Steam is a step in the right direction. I think that's how IndieGamer defines "amateurs", hehe 

Can entities move in any direction, or only along the grid?

I'd do like Eclipse suggests, a graph representation. It sounds like some really fun coding, actually

Re Rudolf:

Yeah... I'm currently working on a game that is similar to Faery Tale Online's concept. But I had already worked on the project for a while when I first noticed it here at Tigsource. So I decided to do like you... to never play the game and continue with my own style instead. It was a "oh crap" feeling when I read the FAQ on his site, though

Like you said, Dyson is similar to Galcon by coincidence, in the way Hollywood makes twin movies (The Prestige and The Illusionist, for example), and such situations will keep popping up.

Anyway, Harvest appears to be on Steam, and this is just a Flash game. Is it really possible that a Flash game, even a popular one, can make more money than a game on Steam? It sounds unlikely to me.

The guy who made this game, Heli Attack 3, wrote on the IndieGames that he had made $20,000 just by getting paid from flash portals to have the game on their sites. I think Casual Collective made a lot more on Desktop TD, but it's hard to say how much they'll make on "the space game," though.

Anyway, it doesn't feel so bad any longer. It's more of a lesson learned. Like I said earlier, it would've been nice to get some recognition from the CC team, but I'm not gonna go all Squidi about it.

A little birdy told me Dyson was a lot like Galcon.

I don't want to buy Galcon to find out.

Thoughts from people who have played both?

Heh, yeah... when thewreck once asked what Dyson was like I told him "it's like Galcon but without the silly *poff* explosion sounds." I didn't think of it as a clone though, because there were interface things in Galcon that Hao should've stolen in that case (multi-planet select, for instance).

Kinten: your comment was approved Maybe because you didn't include any links of any kind.

Arrgh... I commented on Casual Collective's blog, but my comment was put on hold to be approved. It took some while, so I thought they maybe hadn't noticed it yet, but now they've approved some other guy's comment. In other words, they are giving me the silent treatment! My post wasn't even inflamatory, ranting or bashing, I was just pointing out that I had wished that they had told me about it.

I want this situation to yield something positive for me too, but I can't figure out how to do that.

EDIT: The thing that upsets me the most is that this kind of behaviour is like some tiny kind of EA.

The Casual Collective has raised $1 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners in seed funding.

And they're well-set too. Source

Sucks when people take a commercial game and release free competition to it

This post & raising a fuss about it elsewhere is only going to promote theirs even more. Fight fire with fire IMO - clone yourself ASAP (if you're able to) and get it out there before theirs is too well known

Yeah, you are right. I want people that are playing their game to know about ours, not the other way around

I feel really stupid because we had the chance to make an iphone version last summer, but I was too bored (or burned out actually) to get the thumb out of my ass.

That's totally shameless.

A Nitrome/Squidy style front page post calling them out would serve them right, I think...

Haha, I had forgotten about that. Those were the days

Cymon: Heh yeah... Well, here it is, http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest

Just "th" as in "think" or "faith"

Hehe ok... To me, with a Swedish toungue, it sounds really close to "Phallus" :D (which is "Fallos" in Swedish).

I'll try the game some day when there's an extra hour, and stop this nit-picking

I will not take any legal action, the games are not THAT similar and he hasn't used any Harvest content (which actually CAN be copyrighted). It's just that... somebody made a flash interpretation of Harvest without giving us credit, or even letting us know.

As Alex says, the flash game is quite well-made and has a lot of features. It's also funny because we talked about being cloned while we were making Harvest (like back in 2007), since we were public about the development and having open beta tests. What we said was, "well, this game is a lot harder to clone than it appears at a glance". What we based that on was how the game handled the massive amounts of energy sparks and enemies at the same time.

This problem would be apparent to anybody developing in flash. I mean... if you're trying to clone the game using C++, you may not discover that it's a problem until it's too late, but in flash you know you can't handle those entities already before you begin making the game. In other words, you need to re-design the game to get around the problem, and that is what David Scott has done successfully. He's using a energy grid with "routers" instead of energy sparks.

In that sense, he has taken a game idea, adjusted it for his needs and released it. That happens a lot in the world of game development. It just startled/shocked me a bit when a friend linked me to the game.

Yeah... well... it just feels weird. Like... they're probably gonna earn more money when they put the game on Kongregate, Candystand, Mochi etc, than we have. Although, that's our fault, I guess.

What I'm trying to say is that this is not a tribute game. It's a commercial game. David Scott thought to himself that "this game could be earned money on," not that he wanted to show his appreciation to us.

EDIT: thewreck had a good point on IRC. We should be glad that it's possible to clone the game. It's just not another TD game

Harvest has been cloned by the Casual Collective (makers of Desktop TD and Flash Elements TD). I feel kind of upset now, but I guess it'll pass. You find their version of the game here:

http://www.casualcollective.com/games/The_Space_Game

Ooooh
I looked for a link for "other sizes..." Guess I need to visit DeviantArt more often.

Thanks guys. I've made a wallpaper out of it with several resolution sizes to choose from here if anyone's interested.

It's my wallpaper now Although very stretched... my res is 1680x1050 

Is the "Th" in "Thallos" supposed to be pronounced as a "F" or a "T"?