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Adventure Reboot taken down


Byte Knight

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Is it me, or is this version that much harder than the original? Just finished a level3 - easy difficulty game and it took me 20 minutes to finish! The bat in this version seemed more of a menace than I recall in the original and there was no getting away from the dragons at all if bitten; i.e -none of that 'pause' after a bite that allows a second to try to get away. I'm not complaining, I think this version is awesome. Too bad some kind of agreement couldnt be made for this to see an official/approved release - it is that good (IMHO).

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Thanks to Curt getting involved, he was able to create a working relationship between Ron and Atari, who wound up giving him guidelines (on content, etc.) that he had to follow for his version.

 

Yes, IIRC they didn't want *any* images from the original to appear in my 5200 Adventure II game. Very late in the game, I think Curt convinced them to allow me to use the bat. But I already had a nice troll and despite the nostalgia, I hate that bat. :) There were other rules.

 

But a bit of developer trivia, Adv II was originally going to have the entire map of Adventure 2600 hidden in it as the "fifth kingdom". I believe most or all were whipped up by Raccoon Lad at one point. In fact if you check out his site, you can see he had an isometric version of Adventure's map as well. Well anyway, those simple "Adventure 2600" blocky screens compressed down so small (from 960 bytes to 50 bytes IIRC) that they didn't take much memory. But Atari didn't approve, so that memory went into the nice tower & bridge screens and other uses. One of the reasons AdvII took so many years to finish is that I simply quit working on it during that year (2004 or 2005?). Then it took me that much longer to get back into the project.

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Yes, IIRC they didn't want *any* images from the original to appear in my 5200 Adventure II game. Very late in the game, I think Curt convinced them to allow me to use the bat. But I already had a nice troll and despite the nostalgia, I hate that bat. :) There were other rules.

 

But a bit of developer trivia, Adv II was originally going to have the entire map of Adventure 2600 hidden in it as the "fifth kingdom". I believe most or all were whipped up by Raccoon Lad at one point. In fact if you check out his site, you can see he had an isometric version of Adventure's map as well. Well anyway, those simple "Adventure 2600" blocky screens compressed down so small (from 960 bytes to 50 bytes IIRC) that they didn't take much memory. But Atari didn't approve, so that memory went into the nice tower & bridge screens and other uses. One of the reasons AdvII took so many years to finish is that I simply quit working on it during that year (2004 or 2005?). Then it took me that much longer to get back into the project.

 

Great job on Adventure II - I'd play it more if it wasn't for those damn controllers... I bought a 5200 just so I could play your game. It still amazes me that Atari would care that much about a game for an obsolete system. You must have had mixed emotions - mad that they would interfere but happy that they even noticed. I would think the "new Atari" would want to work with home-brewers rather than against them in order to keep interest in Atari's old titles alive.

 

Just curious - how many 5200 Adventure II cartridges have been sold?

Edited by Byte Knight
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You're mistaken on a few things.

 

OK, remember this with copyrights. If a copyright is not renewed within 29 years time it becomes public domain.

 

That's not correct, and regardless the copyright was granted on 1984-05-14. So it's still well within the 29 years. The duration for copyrights are:

 

Since 1978: 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation whichever is shorter.

Between 1964-1977: 95 years from publication for works published

Between 1923-1963: 28 years if not renewed, 95 years from publication for works published, if renewed.

Coprights prior to 1923 are no longer valid.

 

Since they started doing this 6 months ago Atari is going to have a problem.

 

Started doing what 6 months ago? You misread that. They've used Adventure before that, including on several collections and the Flashback 2. Everything is up to date on trademark and copyrights. What Curt was stating was they moved to more heavily using and enforcing their classic IP in general.

 

 

They may have a case with trademarks but nothing with copyrights. Just a thought.

 

They have a case with both for anything still a valid trademark, including Adventure.

Edited by wgungfu
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OK, remember this with copyrights. If a copyright is not renewed within 29 years time it becomes public domain.

 

That's not correct, and regardless the copyright was granted on 1984-05-14. So it's still well within the 29 years. The duration for copyrights are:

 

Since 1978: 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation whichever is shorter.

Between 1964-1977: 95 years from publication for works published

Between 1923-1963: 28 years if not renewed, 95 years from publication for works published, if renewed.

Coprights prior to 1923 are no longer valid.

 

Also keep in mind that copyright varies from country to country. The things listed above are for the US. Additionally some of those time limits don't even start ticking down until the original creator is dead.

 

Copyright is broken. That's all I'm going to say about this. (Otherwise I'll spend a few hours typing up one hell of a rant. ;))

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Hey guys,

 

I'm the one who made this game. As far as what happened.. there wasn't actually a literal "cease and desist," rather, there was more of a friendly suggestion to take it down. I thought about it and decided it was in everyone's best interest to do so.

 

Virtually everything in the game was new; everything was built from the ground up. However, I've decided to change around the maps of the game to brand new designs, and I will be changing the title of the game to "Dragonduck Chronicles." Essentially, it will be an entirely new game, with a new title, new levels and everything. The only thing that will be akin to "Adventure" on the 2600 will be the unprotected underlying gameplay elements. I also coded a new engine which minimizes bugs and makes the bat less erratic.

 

All of the artistic and coding work that went into this won't go to waste. Heck even as a new game at least it'll provide some new challenges and content that players haven't seen before. It probably won't be released for a while, at least not until I finish the Xbox Live Indie game I'm working on.

 

 

 

Incidentally, the best way to go about doing "remakes" of other games is to get the copyright owner's permission before doing any work. It's simple and precludes any issues over copyrights and so forth. I recommend anyone doing so when they want to remake a game.

Edited by slash000
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Kudos to you. It sounds like you're making lemonade out of a lemon of a situation.

 

I played the reboot some time last year, but I didn't stick with it for long. I love Adventure, but I've been there and done that. Your planned new level designs make it a much more interesting proposition to me!

 

BTW, your XBL Indy game looks terrific!

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Hey guys,

 

I'm the one who made this game. As far as what happened.. there wasn't actually a literal "cease and desist," rather, there was more of a friendly suggestion to take it down. I thought about it and decided it was in everyone's best interest to do so.

 

Virtually everything in the game was new; everything was built from the ground up. However, I've decided to change around the maps of the game to brand new designs, and I will be changing the title of the game to "Dragonduck Chronicles." Essentially, it will be an entirely new game, with a new title, new levels and everything. The only thing that will be akin to "Adventure" on the 2600 will be the unprotected underlying gameplay elements. I also coded a new engine which minimizes bugs and makes the bat less erratic.

 

All of the artistic and coding work that went into this won't go to waste. Heck even as a new game at least it'll provide some new challenges and content that players haven't seen before. It probably won't be released for a while, at least not until I finish the Xbox Live Indie game I'm working on.

 

 

 

Incidentally, the best way to go about doing "remakes" of other games is to get the copyright owner's permission before doing any work. It's simple and precludes any issues over copyrights and so forth. I recommend anyone doing so when they want to remake a game.

 

 

Sounds great, looking forward to seeing the new version. :)

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Virtually everything in the game was new; everything was built from the ground up. However, I've decided to change around the maps of the game to brand new designs, and I will be changing the title of the game to "Dragonduck Chronicles." Essentially, it will be an entirely new game, with a new title, new levels and everything. The only thing that will be akin to "Adventure" on the 2600 will be the unprotected underlying gameplay elements. I also coded a new engine which minimizes bugs and makes the bat less erratic.

 

Great name! It's a cleverly coded tribute to Adventure without using Adventure in the name. Can't wait to try it!

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 months later...

Does anyone still happen to have the zipped installer for this game (or anything that can be attached to an e-mail, for that matter)? The link above doesn't work, and probably hasn't for a long time -- I'm afraid I've found this thread rather late!

Psst! Hey, buddy! Over here, in this dark alley, in the shadows behind the dumpster! I got what you're looking for right here! ;)

 

A Nameless, Faceless Stranger

 

(with an avatar, d'oh!)

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  • 4 weeks later...

At least the developer is continuing. Freecraft kinda died and then forked into several other projects. I say it's better to start defensive when remaking a classic. If you're not obedient consumers then you're a target for lawsuits you can't afford (even if you can win.) "IP on your creativity!" says the corporate giant.

 

I'm pretty good at coming up with humorous analogues to game titles. If anyone needs ideas just ask.

 

A Boy and His Blubber

Arthritic World

World of Wortcraft III: The Cold Beer

Evercrust: Champions of Nobath

Lawyer Suit Larry 3: Paranoid Patty in Pursuit of a Restraining Order

Golden Ass: Donkey Rider

Shinbarney 2: The Silent Furry

Dog Hunt

Ultimate Hoekworld: The Stimpyian Abyss

Yoshi's Cooties

50 Bytes: Gameplayproof

The Elder Snores IV: Oblivious

Meat & Plastique IV: Clouds of Spleen

Hard Steerin' II - Drink Harder

Super Pitiful

Wired Bear and the Dope Gang

Shin iMesh Tensei: Digital Spyware Download

Tetanus 64

Slaves to ASCII: God of Bloodshot Eyes - Chapter II: Daunting Interface

Altered Breasts

Oh No! More Americans

Re-Volting

Hentai of the Tentacle

Maniac Manson

Sam & Max: Get a Room

Trammps - Deadly Disco

Advanced Surgeons & Cysts: Heros of the Lance

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Parking Meter

Shallowbane - Buffbots of Oblivion

Pasta Dragoon Orza

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  • 1 year later...

The current "Atari" has no connection to the original. They bought the legal rights to games, trademarks, and logos, but they never did the work creating all this stuff or producing any of it. It's someone's else's work. One of the many reasons they have no idea what they have or how to use it. Shutting down homebrew games that could infringe on their games profitability and cause money losses is like shooting a pistol at the moon. They alienate some of their market, and lose potential profit. If they were smart, they would work WITH the fans. A company can let others do work they are passionate about more or less for free, and rake in most of the profit. Let's face it, the fans and such know what they are doing much more than Infogrames/"Atari". The current "Atari" barely uses the property they bought, another huge potential money loss, and their weak quality/quantity efforts like the Flashback are insignificant to say the least. The mainstream audience has no time to look or even laugh at the flashback compared to Playstation 3 or Xbox.

 

"Atari" is alienating it's niche market of classic gamers, and their biggest potential target is not getting a quality product. The 30-45 or whatever old mainstream consumer that has some nostalgia and memory of Atari is not likely to be impressed with a machine that is inferior to one made in 1977. "Atari" would not continually feature paddle only games with a joystick if they had the slightest idea of what was going on. So far, most everything they have done is typical, predictable, and headed for going out of business. Plus, they don't want to give you anything. Hello, it's almost 2012 in this post. 40 games? Gimme a break. There should be a hundred games to sell something like this. Can't make a cartridge port, don't want people uploading via USB, emulation rather than running real games,etc. It seems like they won't let Kurt do the things he wants to do, namely make the Flashback better.

 

If you notice kids today playing browser games, a good guess of around 80% of the gameplay is Atari 2600, many have only slightly better graphics. "Atari" is totally snoozing on exploiting the phone games/browser games market. They could probably go for copyright infringement type of pursuits with many of the current games as a secondary thing to making games too, but you don't see them doing that. The current "Atari" is much more hopeless than in 1994, when the real Atari wasn't advertising, losing money, going down to black and white game manuals, but still making a quality product. The only good thing they have is Nolan. But he can't do it all by himself, evidenced by Uwink's not making it. I think without a lot of changes and help, without a lot of listening, they are doomed to failure.

 

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"Yep! Zwackery hit the nail right on the head. Atari still makes money from Adventure through compilation discs and the Flashback machines. They can still prove they could potentially get physical losses from a little Flash game. They could also claim it is devaluing their brand -- the nicer graphics on "Reboot" makes one not want to play the version in the compilations, and therefore Atari loses out on some market share.

 

Atari has a vested interest in that, which is why that title specifically gets "picked on" -- they still produce it! "

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