I built it myself. It is in the form of a Fireworks extension. I lay out the levels inside of Fireworks and export both the art and the level as a package.
Please post when you do, I'm just getting into cocos2d now trying to learn game development. Any tips/resources you can share? I'm working through this book http://www.learn-cocos2d.com/
I was an early contributor to Cocos2d, Riq was always looking for a good level editor and produced his own eventually (http://www.sapusmedia.com/levelsvg/) but it was a bit limited. I'm sure he'd be interested in your work, have you reached out to him?
Knowing nothing about Fireworks, in what language did write the plugin?
It's kind of hard to drag the items, I have to zoom all the way in and try and move the items like 10 times before I get it right. Also make them drop down like they do when you hit play, because it's way to hard having to try and line them up when creating structures, due to the dropping of items making them very unstable.
There's no infringement here, the pigs look different and there doesn't seem to be any stolen art or something. So Rovio probably couldn't do anything anyway.
I've talked about this a few times on HN, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. It's armchair litigating. Rovio could absolutely file a case against this developer. How far it would go would depend largely on the judge in the case. You can bet that Rovio would, if they decided to, file with a court that historically rules in favor of their position. This would mean that, at a minimum, this developer would have to retain counsel and pay the thousands of dollars it would cost to get the case dismissed (not a slow process). There would be depositions, discovery, inquiry, and a slew of other bullshit that comes along with being sued.
You see, this is how the game is played. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. It's not even a matter of what the rules say. It's a matter of who has the bigger bank role to pay for attorneys that are good at playing the game.
I know because I've been in this scenario. Prior to the plaintiff filing suit against us, everyone said the same things:
"They don't have a case!"
"This is baseless, it will be thrown out!"
"What a stupid premise, they'll get laughed out of court!"
This was not from one or two people, and not from laymen. This was from virtually every attorney I talked to (6 of them). We're now 3 years in to the suit and the judge seems content to extend the trial date in to the year 2012. The courts are in the business of having people in court. Never forget it.
We make a concerted effort to reduce legal fees by coordinating with our attorneys to do whatever footwork we can. On bad months, it will cost us $7k-$10k. On a relatively idle month, $2k.
A parody is constitutionally protected free speech. Yes, they can sue regardless, but I think your leverage is higher in that scenario. I am not a lawyer. I hope the creator has spoken with one in case.
It's not free, they charge you 30% for the privilege of violating you tenderly at their whim.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
It's also not free as in GnuBeer either, since as a general rule they generously decline to explain the reverses in policy (pet theory: it is based on the retrograde motion of Sirius the dogstar, since Apple is clearly controlled by the reptillian lizard-people from there)
Note that that only applies in the US; not every jurisdiction recognizes the right to parody, and the Apple store may choose to enforce the lowest common denominator, or any other capricious policy they choose.
Also, the constitution does not mention the right to parody. It doesn't even exist in the section of US code describing fair use (17 USC 107), just in the history of case law surrounding fair use. Parody gets interpreted by the courts as part of the test to determine fair use, and not always in favor of the parodist.
It depends. If you are parodying X while making a comment about X, that's probably in the clear. But if you're parodying X while making a comment about Y, that's problematic. See Penny Arcade's difficulties with parodying Strawberry Shortcake while commenting on American McGee's take on games.
They didn't make any attempt to litigate it, because, as I understand it, a lawyer told them it was not a good idea (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2003/04/21):
We are, of course, talking to our lawyer about all this stuff. Readers have referred us to many sources in an effort to clarify our position legally, sites like Chilling Effects act as clearing houses for data useful in situations such as this. Also, interesting cases have been brought to our attention - for example, Aqua’s song “Barbie Girl” was contested by Mattel, and Aqua still came out on top (as it were). In darker news, Matt from MacHall send this interesting bit - check page 3, “Dr. Seuss Enterprises Vs. Penguin Books.” To my mind, that precedent doesn’t mean anything good for us.
I clicked on this, forgot about it and looked at the tab a while later. I only realized I was looking at old comics after a couple of fairly confusing minutes, wondering about the odd art style and why on Earth they were back to playing Phantasy Star Online, but effortlessly integrating the "fact" that there's a new EverQuest expansion coming out that is similar to the previous ones. I guess that one is a timeless fact.
Thanks for all the great feedback. This is a side project that I had been sitting on at 90% completion for months and finally got it out.
As a side note: I need to remember to not publicize newly launched apps until they have been indexed by the app store. It might not show up in the app store search until tomorrow.
The level design and artwork are done simultaneously inside of Fireworks. I have an extension which attaches metadata to objects to use in-game. I also rely on states and pages to correspond to animations and levels respectively. I.e. all of the levels of the game are "compiled" from a single fireworks doc with 20 pages, each page corresponding to a level.
That is great! It's definitely one of the most clever and unique uses I've seen of Fireworks. Hopefully, someone from Adobe is reading so they can recommend it as an article on the Fireworks Developer Center (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks.edu.html).
Yeah it is a great game, you need to think in a broader fashion than angry birds. It is kind of like the difference between protecting something vs attacking it a la computer security; protecting takes more forethought.
The UI needs some work. Running on an iPhone 3GS, it felt very laggy, many of my touches didn't register correctly.
Tap to rotate is an odd concept, and combined with the lagginess above, I was always moving when I wanted to rotate, or vice versa. Maybe two fingers to rotate?
Move the advertising. Having it right on top of the playing field caused me to accidentally click it when trying to move around a block, taking me completely out of the game.
A better visual distinction between blocks I'm allowed to move, and blocks I'm not allowed to move would be nice, I spent a few minutes of the first level trying to move the block that was already there.
@ghempton, if you're still reading these comments, it's likely you're passing a iOS 4 or 5 message without checking to see if the message is received.
I ran into this recently with a number of simple startup checks, e.g., if the device is a high-res ([UIScreen scale]) or if it's an iPhone vs. iPad ([UIDevice userInterfaceIdiom]).
This explains a lot. If my thumbs were 1/3 their present size, moving the blocks around on my iPhone probably would have been a lot easier. I recommend increasing the area you can touch to "grab" a block by at least 50%, and adding some sort of visual indicator of the position and orientation of the block outside the thumb-occlusion. Other than that, it's a great game.
Having it right on top of the playing field caused me to accidentally click it when trying to move around a block, taking me completely out of the game.
But possibly earning some cash if it is cost per tap. I sometimes think people who show advertising on their websites and/or apps must love tablets and phones because it is so easy to accidentally tap on an ad. I've done so many times, even though I'd normally never click an ad.
The idea sounds great! I don't have an iDevice to test it, but hell with testing, I believe my fellow HNers, and I want to wish you good luck from Turkmenistan!
I don't have an iOS device to play on it but this looks great! I think this will attract Angry Birds lovers and haters alike. I imagine you'll have competitors if this takes off, so it's good that you built a real game and not a simple novelty app.
I'm growing overly tired of the success of Angry Birds, seeing it on Hipmunk.com, as a special Roku box, pushed on the Chrome Web Store, etc. so this is very welcome. Congratulations on the launch!
126 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadI will open source it eventually.
Also, are you available for freelance work? contact me at ob.ahmed[@]gmail[.]com
Knowing nothing about Fireworks, in what language did write the plugin?
Great iphone PR resources:
List of the top sites to contact -
http://www.altiapp.com/2011/09/ultimate-list-of-free-iphone-...
Nice presentation on mobile-app specific PR:
http://www.slideshare.net/triplepoint/pr-101-for-iphone-game...
Your story has legs - worth maybe hitting TechCrunch and the other big boys as well - good luck!
I guess their search index is not always up to date.
I've talked about this a few times on HN, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. It's armchair litigating. Rovio could absolutely file a case against this developer. How far it would go would depend largely on the judge in the case. You can bet that Rovio would, if they decided to, file with a court that historically rules in favor of their position. This would mean that, at a minimum, this developer would have to retain counsel and pay the thousands of dollars it would cost to get the case dismissed (not a slow process). There would be depositions, discovery, inquiry, and a slew of other bullshit that comes along with being sued.
You see, this is how the game is played. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. It's not even a matter of what the rules say. It's a matter of who has the bigger bank role to pay for attorneys that are good at playing the game.
I know because I've been in this scenario. Prior to the plaintiff filing suit against us, everyone said the same things:
"They don't have a case!"
"This is baseless, it will be thrown out!"
"What a stupid premise, they'll get laughed out of court!"
This was not from one or two people, and not from laymen. This was from virtually every attorney I talked to (6 of them). We're now 3 years in to the suit and the judge seems content to extend the trial date in to the year 2012. The courts are in the business of having people in court. Never forget it.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
It's also not free as in GnuBeer either, since as a general rule they generously decline to explain the reverses in policy (pet theory: it is based on the retrograde motion of Sirius the dogstar, since Apple is clearly controlled by the reptillian lizard-people from there)
Also, the constitution does not mention the right to parody. It doesn't even exist in the section of US code describing fair use (17 USC 107), just in the history of case law surrounding fair use. Parody gets interpreted by the courts as part of the test to determine fair use, and not always in favor of the parodist.
We are, of course, talking to our lawyer about all this stuff. Readers have referred us to many sources in an effort to clarify our position legally, sites like Chilling Effects act as clearing houses for data useful in situations such as this. Also, interesting cases have been brought to our attention - for example, Aqua’s song “Barbie Girl” was contested by Mattel, and Aqua still came out on top (as it were). In darker news, Matt from MacHall send this interesting bit - check page 3, “Dr. Seuss Enterprises Vs. Penguin Books.” To my mind, that precedent doesn’t mean anything good for us.
As a side note: I need to remember to not publicize newly launched apps until they have been indexed by the app store. It might not show up in the app store search until tomorrow.
The UI needs some work. Running on an iPhone 3GS, it felt very laggy, many of my touches didn't register correctly.
Tap to rotate is an odd concept, and combined with the lagginess above, I was always moving when I wanted to rotate, or vice versa. Maybe two fingers to rotate?
Move the advertising. Having it right on top of the playing field caused me to accidentally click it when trying to move around a block, taking me completely out of the game.
A better visual distinction between blocks I'm allowed to move, and blocks I'm not allowed to move would be nice, I spent a few minutes of the first level trying to move the block that was already there.
Otherwise, I love the concept.
Love the idea, though. :)
I ran into this recently with a number of simple startup checks, e.g., if the device is a high-res ([UIScreen scale]) or if it's an iPhone vs. iPad ([UIDevice userInterfaceIdiom]).
But possibly earning some cash if it is cost per tap. I sometimes think people who show advertising on their websites and/or apps must love tablets and phones because it is so easy to accidentally tap on an ad. I've done so many times, even though I'd normally never click an ad.
You need to explain why the pigs took the eggs. Maybe you do in the game.
Wise not to mention them, from an afraid-of-well-paid-lawyers point of view.