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[slembcke]

Ok... I'll bite on this too. I also feel at least slightly involved. Night Sky is using Chipmunk, my physics library.

Whoever it was that mentioned that the physics in Trundle was very similar, you are not far from the truth perhaps. Trundle also uses Chipmunk. In fact, I emailed back and forth with him about the time this happened. Apparently somebody from Nicalis (though to be fair, not Nifflas himself) emailed him and chewed him out for a number of things like the graphical similarities. Sure, Ok, I can understand that. They even went as far as to say that Mobile Bros should not have used Chipmunk because Night Game was. You know, the freely available, open source library that I've easily spent a couple thousand hours writing. The one I gave away that Nicalis didn't (and probably won't) pay for. I don't care if it was just used as a one-more-thing-that-makes-your-game similar excuse, I am personally insulted by their accusation that anyone cannot use my library to do whatever they want.

You'd also be hard pressed to claim that Mobile Bros isn't giving anything back. They have been actively involved with the Chipmunk physics and Cocos2D communities. They developed an open source library Chipmunk Space Manager which helps bridge Chipmunk and Cocos2d that I guess many in nthe Cocos2D community use. Nicalis on the other hand... I actually emailed them a while back. I saw that he had been using Chipmunk in a blog post. I mentioned that I really enjoyed Knytt and that I was looking forward to playing Night Game when it came out. I also asked how Chipmunk was working for them, if they had run into any problems or had any feature requests. Nobody ever responded to it (despite their rather friendly contact page). I figured that they might at least respond with something or a thanks for all your hard work.

My personal opinion on the matter: Sure Mobile Bros is not very original, but any good game idea is going to turn into a genre eventually. Aren't we as indie developers the same people that get upset that Tetris Holdings are such jerks? Also, Nicalis did not invent silhouettes, gradients, rolling ball games, physics puzzles, or ambient music. I've seen these all before. Heck, I've even played a game with silhouettes over gradients with ambient music in a game featuring a black rolling ball as the protagonist. To be fair, it had pixel art and wasn't a physics puzzle game. If people are claiming that the combination of these elements is somehow original then I'm confused. Likewise, it's a bit of a stretch to claim that Nicalis's use of a wheeled platform, spinning obstacles, or things hanging from chains constitute original puzzles either. You also can't claim that the use of "tiled" level design was Nicalis's idea either. It's not like Mobile Bros copied the Night Game levels because nobody really knows what they look like yet.

Heck. I'm a terrible game designer and a worse artist. Our first game, ScribBall, used hand sketched graphics because that was the only thing we could do consistently enough (drawing like 5 year olds) to make it look like a style. It worked pretty well too as a lot of people really liked the style, citing that it really looked like it was drawn on paper. At least in the art and level design departments, we are always looking for ways to use some other skill we have to make up for it. For our second iPhone game, Twilight Golf, we used dynamic shadowing to cover up our awful art skills. The levels themselves are just mashups of Danc's free textures. Without the shadows, the levels all look flat, uninteresting, and crude. (Danc's art itself is great, our ability to utilize it is not) With the shadows, they look fairly fantastic. It gives them a ton of depth and hides our crude editing pretty effectively. We hired an artist to make the sprites and the splash screen.

Here is a serious list of ideas that we had for a platformer that we wanted to make:

• Silhouettes over clouds or space or something - I'd seen this style before and it looked nice
• Single screen levels/puzzles - Easier to implement than large scrolling levels and works fairly elegantly
• A rolling ball protagonist - For simplicity, though it was more Metroid inspired
• Physics puzzles - Having written a physics library this was a bit of a no brainer
• Ambient music - It's hard to go wrong with this

Sound familiar? Believe it or not, this was like a year ago before I had even heard of Night Game. Probably a good thing we didn't make that game. Instead we made Twilight Golf. The only differences we made to that list were using sprites over a dynamically shadowed background, and a shooting ball protagonist instead of a rolling/jumping one. Are we ripping of Night Game too? I mean it's not black over a gradient granted, but it's still darkly themed.

[deathtotheweird]

But the way I see it is the guys at Mobile Bros see a few screen shots or a video, and then alt tab into a copy of Photoshop and try to recreate what they see. It looks like they take also take various gameplay elements and put them in as well. This is vastly different from a game like Feist (which announced earlier than NightSky I believe) that has a gradient background, and silhouette graphics, and a character that resembles a ball (even though its a fuzzy ball with legs).




This is a very very similar style, yet looks vastly different. If you compare the looks of NightSky and Trundle it just looks like a blatant ripoff/clone. Like they tried to make it look as closely to NightSky as possible.

I think the 'fact' often spouted that black silhouette graphics and colourful gradient backgrounds will inevitably all look the same is bollocks. You can use this combination and come out with vastly different results (nightsky vs. feist) yet the company at Mobile Bros didnt do this, they opted for the cheapest and easiest way.

It's good to hear that Mobile Bros are helping out those open source communities. But doesn't change the fact they are people leeching off the ideas and work of others, without really giving anything back to the gaming community (other than some the open source work you mentioned) but cheap clones and knockoffs.

[slembcke]

Without giving anything back to the gaming community? Who is this "gaming community"? The way I see it, there is the game development community, and the gaming community. What do game developers give to the gaming community other than games exactly? If you are trying to claim that game developers should only be giving the gaming community something entirely original, then how do you reconcile that there are pretty much no entirely original games out there? Honestly, is Night Game that original of a game? It looks really great and well done, but I wouldn't exactly call it original.

So it's all good and all that they are giving back to the open source community and all, but they are bastards for making a clone of Night Game. What are your thoughts on open source clones of games? Frozen Bubble is a very well done open source Bust a Move clone. Are those devs also leeches and are "not giving anything back to the gaming community"?

To compare the screenshots of Feist and Night Game, I'd say the only difference is that Feist uses bloom to make the game look softer.

Other than the scale, they look a bit more than similar now.

[deathtotheweird]

There are ways of making clones without coming off as a cheap hack looking for a quick buck. I've seen it before and I've seen it done well. They make money off their cheap and lazy clone jobs. That is their only purpose. You can't compare them to Frozen Bubble who is cloning a game and making it for free and open source at the same time. I still don't think it's okay to clone a game so blatantly though, it's a little less offensive when they aren't making a business off of it. Mobile Bros ripped the idea, intending to make a profit. That is infinitely more of a dickish move than making an open source freeware clone.

I'm also showing a little bias because I am a big fan of Nifflas, which is another reason why I dislike this clone business in regards to NightSky. But also because NightSky isn't even released, you have to have some sense and respect of copyright law slembcke, don't you think so?

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Slembcke, it comes across that you're mad at Niclas for not crediting you, and for suggesting that Mobile Bros shouldn't copy their choice of physics engine. As a result, it comes across that you think they deserve what's coming to them, because you're more pally with Mobile Bros.  

Feist has a lot of differences. It has unique character, different type of gameplay, and none of the same imagery other than silhouettes. Patapon doesn't share any imagery either, nor does Limbo. Trundle is clearly a horrible rip-off intending to capitalise on the act, and it's not the first time they've done this.

I think Frozen Bubble is a typical lame clone, but at least it didn't steal art assets directly.

This isn't about Night Game being original, it's about Trundle intentionally stealing art and design.

[nikki]

Trundle is clearly a horrible rip-off intending to capitalise on the act, and it's not the first time they've done this.

I was under the impression Trundle was a freeware game as in free beer 
could be unconfirmed though.. 

O gosh well her it is: trundle-a-free-game-you-need

but at least it didn't steal art assets directly.

show me one art asset thats directly stolen, just 1.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I'm sure that the pegs in their peggle clone were lifted directly, and there's no doubt that all of the objects in Trundle are based on objects in Night Game.

Even if this game is free, they are probably intending to sell their other games off the back of this title.

Nikki, exactly why do you encourage plagiarism?  
Would you be happy if someone copied your work?

[deathtotheweird]

Yes Trundle is a free game but they said they intended to sell level packs later on. And even if it was free wouldn't make it any less of a crappy ripoff.

And by lifted directly I don't think he meant that they took the original pngs and copied them into Trundle. More like what I said earlier, it would be easy to imagine them alt-tabbing through photoshop while looking at photos and videos of nightsky.

[nikki]

Nikki, exactly why do you encourage plagiarism? 
Would you be happy if someone copied your work?

I'm not really encouraging plagiarism, I think -as stated a few times- it's just how culture ,in general, works. person A has a good idea, person B borrows/steals/shares that and does something with it. I just don't see the point at all to be against such a thing.

To me it's like the first one inventing the wheel and then angrily trying to prevent others to copy his idea, that i think just stupid corporate politics.

and your second question:
I would rather see everybody in this world so creative and original they would rather all be creating their own very original things, but thats a pipe-dream. And yes if someone would copy/borrow/hommage/clone my work i would (and this stuff happens ALOT in art-schools) be happy about it, I'd feel flattered and slightly pitty the one doing the cloning. The only thing that pisses me off is when people doing this cloning get praised as is they are the original inventors (this too happens alot in the Art world) and the original creators are forgotten about. But thats abit besides the point.

understand that i can see its a 'ripoff' i mean you have to be blind to not see that, I just don't see so much problems with it. I fore one think that guy that just posted here (who wrote the chipmunks physics library) is the truly inventor here*, all those physics rolling gooey, bridgebuilding physics games ALL heavily borrow from the simple demo's that go with such an open-source package.

I have yet to see a game that goes past the simple demo's that guy made

*) offcourse i understand that ALL those calculations are actually very old, as in BC old, and also very many times cloned, copied and borrowed.
If the Arabs would not have stolen them calculations, we (the west) wouldn't know about Pythagoras, because it all was lost in the Middle Ages.
So i think Plagiarism is a good thing for mankind.

[slembcke]

Slembcke, it comes across that you're mad at Niclas for not crediting you

No, most people that use Chipmunk don't credit me in any way. They aren't required to. You're absolutely right that I'm ticked that "they" (probably some PR guy, no clue) are making claim to Chipmunk. That others shouldn't be able to use it to do something similar. I was also more than a little disappointed that they completely ignored me when it seems that Chipmunk has become a pretty vital part of their development. You claim that Mobile Bros isn't giving anything to the gaming community but they are giving something back to the game development community. I am not buddy buddy with them, I've answered their questions on forums and responded to to emails from them. Heck, I've never even used the library that they made because I don't use Cocos2D.

I think Frozen Bubble is a typical lame clone, but at least it didn't steal art assets directly.

Seriously? Style is not art, and you cannot steal (or copyright) a style. The fashion and music industries know this all to well. Crap, if somebody had patented boy bands they would have made a ton of money in the late 90's.

I'm also showing a little bias because I am a big fan of Nifflas, which is another reason why I dislike this clone business in regards to NightSky. But also because NightSky isn't even released, you have to have some sense and respect of copyright law slembcke, don't you think so?

I do personally, our games are not particularly derivative. I'd like to be know for doing something that is at least sort of fresh. Also, I think you overestimate what copyright laws cover however. I could be underestimating it as well. Seems like it depends on who can hire a more expensive lawyer. While making a game so similar in style to Night Game was probably not a great idea on the part of Mobile Bros, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal.

[Christian Knudsen]

It's one thing to stand on the shoulder of giants. It's another to stab them in the back.

[deathtotheweird]

Technically, lawsuits have occurred where someone's style was copied.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/663_FSupp_706.htm

But I think Trundle's resemblance to NightSky is more than just a copy of styles. I'm not saying it's legal or illegal though, not really up for me to decide. But I am saying that it is cheap and underhanded.

[slembcke]

understand that i can see its a 'ripoff' i mean you have to be blind to not see that, I just don't see so much problems with it. I fore one think that guy that just posted here (who wrote the chipmunks physics library) is the truly inventor here*, all those physics rolling gooey, bridgebuilding physics games ALL heavily borrow from the simple demo's that go with such an open-source package.

I have yet to see a game that goes past the simple demo's that guy made

*) offcourse i understand that ALL those calculations are actually very old, as in BC old, and also very many times cloned, copied and borrowed.
If the Arabs would not have stolen them calculations, we (the west) wouldn't know about Pythagoras, because it all was lost in the Middle Ages.
So i think Plagiarism is a good thing for mankind.

Pretty much. While Chipmunk is 100% written by me, few of the ideas it uses are particularly original. It's solver uses ideas from Box2D, the spatial hash and SAT based collision primitives were written after reading articles off the internet. The major organizational units used (bodies, shapes, a space/world) were influenced by what I saw in other engines. Even things like filtering collisions by layer bitmasks or group identifiers was not a unique idea, though I did come up with them independently. All I did was learn a bunch of math and algorithms well enough to make it efficient and arrange it into an API that people seem to like.

Trundle's second level started off with a walking robot that looked suspiciously similar to one of the Chipmunk demos:


The real inventor here is a guy named Theo Jansen. A kinetic sculptor that came up with that mechanism. Not me or the other physics library writers who also all have a demo of one of those.

I have an old tutorial for Chipmunk for creating a dune buggy like vehicle with shocks called Moon Buggy. I've seen a number of iPhone games that quite clearly took that tutorial code an ran with it without making even significant graphical changes. One of them is even named Moon Racer . Often when I tell people this, they get indignant and think I should be upset about it. I'm not because that's exactly what I wrote the tutorial for. Heck, I got a pretty fun contract job out of one of them to make the dirt bike in the game more responsive and make the rider into a ragdoll. I did a bit of a facepalm when I saw the complete and sparsely edited Moon buggy tutorial code in their finished game though. Complete with the verbose comments explaining what each line and function did.

[nikki]

Since i'm Dutch too I once saw one of his 'strandbeesten' in the real in Amsterdam he's very cool with his pvc and coke-bottles
for people wondering what that guy (Theo Jansen) does video on TED

the thing I just don't get in this discussion is how people on the one hand can get all high and mighty about game-design being an art. Even much better that the fine-arts (because it that much more crafty and skilled  ) but on the other hand have something against this 'borrowing' While that's one of the basics of the Arts... (as far as i know..)
Well i don't know.

edit: btw, very cool to 'meet' the maker of the Chipmunks library, how do you do? , nice to meet you. Your very influentual in the game-design business i've heard.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Several people have pointed out already that there's a difference between taking inspiration and building upon design foundation, and flagrantly duplicating some-one else's work for nefarious purpose.

[nikki]

I had to look up a few of your terms, cause of my non-native-englishness

flagrantly:These adjectives refer to what is conspicuously bad or offensive. Flagrant applies to what is so offensive that it cannot escape notice.
nefarious: extremely wicked or villainous; iniquitous: a nefarious plot.against divine or moral law.

and just for fun  :
duplicate:   1.  To make an exact copy of.
             2. To make twofold; double.
             3. To make or perform again; repeat: a hard feat to duplicate.



So i understand you have some Moral problem with this. that's good for you.
You also see a very extremely wicked or villainous activity where other's don't, that could become interresting.
I've got a question for you then.

Hayden Scott-Baron where exactly does taking inspiration end, and building upon design foundation begin ?
And on a side note: Why? Says who? How is that relevant?

[slembcke]

the thing I just don't get in this discussion is how people on the one hand can get all high and mighty about game-design being an art. Even much better that the fine-arts (because it that much more crafty and skilled  ) but on the other hand have something against this 'borrowing' While that's one of the basics of the Arts... (as far as i know..)

I guess I'm with you on that one that I find it a bit odd that people are so up in arms. Games are sort of a collision between art and computer science. There is what you are talking about in the art world which I've head from many sources, and then there's the computer science folks who scream up and down that you shouldn't be able to patent algorithms/ideas because ideas should be free.

Again, I would still promote that the style/atmosphere of Night Game cannot be owned, nor the fact that it's a physics puzzle game. Trundle has completely different levels, puzzles, and presumably controls. Honestly, if Night Game was out now to be able to compare, I'm sure there would be no competition which is the better game. Nifflas is a terrific artist and designer. Even his teaser video looks more polished and smooth than Trundle. Who really cares if the latest craze is silhouettes, vampires, or bell bottom jeans. Ideas are pretty worthless compared to people who can make ideas work, and I think Nifflas is doing a terrific job of taking some good ideas and putting them together in a way that works.

Hayden Scott-Baron where exactly does taking inspiration end, and building upon design foundation begin ?
And on a side note: Why? Says who?

Furthermore, when do ideas become common enough that it is Ok to use them? The Twilight author didn't need permission to use vampires as a basis of her book. She just made them sparkly or whatever and now every 16 year old girl wants to be in a bad relationship with a vampire. You can call the books lame, but you can't really claim it's lame because its about unoriginal ideas about vampires.

[Valter]

Furthermore, when do ideas become common enough that it is Ok to use them?

Not when the idea in question has only been used once before by a project still being worked on, that's for sure!

Profiting from material you don't own (including ideas) is illegal. That's why you get stickers on all your movies and even candies marking them as "not for resale".

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I find it especially offensive when ONE project has clearly taken all its inspiration from another ONE project, and doesn't seem to have anything to add. If you're building on someone else's work, you should be able to say so proudly unless you have something to hide.

[slembcke]

I find it especially offensive when ONE project has clearly taken all its inspiration from another ONE project, and doesn't seem to have anything to add. If you're building on someone else's work, you should be able to say so proudly unless you have something to hide.

You keep saying that, but how could they take all their inspiration from Night Game? It's not even out. How could they possibly know what the controls are like or what the levels are like? They must have made their own levels, come up with their own puzzles and control schemes. How is that not adding anything?

Do you really also get upset when walking down the cereal aisle and see generic brand cereals? Do you really know which company first started making blue jeans or do you just buy whichever is the best deal? It's not like any jeans manufacturers are adding anything to the design. They are all exactly the same. Did you know that the company that sells kleenexes invented the material that is used in them, or that the company that sells band aid's actually invented the idea? Do you ever buy knock off brands? With brands at least, people usually just get upset that they are paying for the brand and not the product. I somewhat fail to see how this is very different. Nicalis's brand of silhouetted physics puzzle platformer is the high quality original, Trundle is the generic version. It might not taste as good or get you as many friends in high school, but it sells to a section of the market that Night Game isn't.