Homebrew or Commercial or Hacked?

[newcoleco]

A game programed from scratch by someone at home is named "homebrew game".
A game programed by a company for commercial purpose is named "commercial game".
A commercial game modified by someone at home is named "hacked game".

But Coleco Space Invaders ... it's an homebrew game? a commercial game? an hacked game?

I know it's a port from arcade game Space Invader but it still a commercial game, right? or an homebrew game? or it's an hacked game?

[NE146]

Well it's defiinitely not "hacked" :roll:

I'd say it's a homebrew port of a commercial game :)

[nesman85]

its a "commercial" game.

[gamingguy]

It's neither of these three. It's an Illegal Game. The person creating the ported game does not have authorization from the copyright holder to create the game.

If he first go authorization, then it'd be a Commercial Game sold for profit.

[digitalpress]

It's a homebrew. To me the definition of a homebrew is a game designed by someone out of love for the system, not because it's their job to do so and certainly not for money - regardless of what the title is.

[newcoleco]

if it's an homebrew game, why it's a commercial game name?

[digitalpress]

EZ. Because renegade homebrewers call games whatever they feel like calling them. If you're gonna make a game that looks and sounds like something that's already been done then you don't fear the repercussions. As such, why not just go all the way and call it what you want?

What would you call "A Better Pac-Man"... is that a commercial game too? What about Ventrra's "Boring Donkey Kong"? And what's in a name, anyway? There's an Atari 2600 "Star Fox" and a Super NES "Star Fox".

Yep. I stand by my vote.

[nesman85]

ahh, i wasn't familiar with the game, i was assuming that it was just a normal commercial game and that the question was because he was asking what a port should be called.
i see the situation now, and agree with joe.

[ventrra]

Definately a homebrew. Being the hacker mentioned in Joe's post above, I can tell you that there's a world of difference between hacking a game and programming it from scratch :( .
The names seem not to matter over much on most projects, after all, there are clones of games availiable for various computers with names like "Pac-PC", "Champ Pac-Em", "PC-Bert", etc.. Generally, this seems to go unnoticed or ignored by most companies. This lack of noticing seems to go doubly for game systems that no one cares about anymore from the companies point of view.
Unless a company (or whomever might own the name or whatever) comes along and specifically tells me that I can't call my game something, I'm not going to worry about it overmuch.

[opcode]

-_-

[ManekiNeko]

Perhaps there's some jealousy there. Your conversion of Space Invaders has been better than anything Dan Bienvenu or John Dondzila released. I'm not saying that just to boost your ego, either... it's a simple fact. It's got smoother gameplay and graphics than any other ColecoVision homebrew I've played.
I don't get too hung up on copyright law, although I know some people do. If you credit your source when you make a conversion of an ancient arcade game like Pac-Man or Space Invaders, that's good enough for me. I consider it more of a tribute to the company that made it than anything else, especially when the game is excellent.
Finally, it's important to note that many, many companies released Space Invaders clones in the late 70's, using the same hardware and programming without giving Taito credit for their work (much less any profits from these games). The biggest surprise here is that these weren't just fly-by-night companies, but big industry players like SNK and Konami as well.
Dan, I appreciate that you're making ColecoVision games and helping others to follow in your footsteps. You need to cut Eduardo a break, though. He does excellent work and that effort should be encouraged, not belittled.

JR

[sniperCCJVQ]

I think Daniel's intention was not to bash on Opcode's work (which it's excellent by the way). Daniel already did his Dacman in the past because the Atarisoft Pacman wasn't available at the time.

It just try the make a difference between what a homebrew, hack or port was.

I think it's point of view for "homebrew" it's a totaly new game concept never seen before on ANY system. What it's frankly quite difficult today because almost everything in the game world has been try.

[slapdash]

Part of the problem is that we're mixing categories here...

First, there's commercial vs homebrew, and Eduardo's game is a homebrew, because it's a hobbyist making it, not a company. Easy.

Second, there's original vs hack vs copy. Some homebrewers are releasing games that were never sold before -- these are copies. Some homebrewers are changing graphics and other things -- those are hacks. Other homebrewers start from scratch and write their own games -- those are originals (even though they have snippets of code copied from other sources, though this is a bit of a gray area depending on the amount of borrowed code). Note that some commercial releases are hacks, and many pirated games are hacked as well. Hmm, perhaps "pirate" should be another category above...

Lastly, porting can be an amalgamation of the above... Perhaps whole blocks of code can be copied, more likely some code will have to be hacked rather than simply copied (due to display and control differences), and there will also be lots of original code as well. Some ports come out of code, some are recreated from scratch just observing the gameplay (there's a story of the guys porting Pitfall II which explains why some versions have extra rooms; one guy did a code port, one guy recreated). It's sort of a continuum, and most ports will fall somewhere in the middle.

I'll give an example... I'm not sure of the specifics here, but let's say that both arcade Space Invaders and the Colecovision use the Z80 processor. This would mean that Eduardo could pull large chunks of the "artificial intelligence" code out of the arcade version, and just copy it for the CV version. He can copy the graphics too, but he'll probably have to change the display routines, which will either require hacking or original code, depending on how different they are. If he puts in a menu to pick which SI game you want to play, that's all original code. In this example (which I don't know if it reflects reality or not), he's used all three methods to complete his port.

Phew! Does that make sense?

[opcode]

I'll give an example... I'm not sure of the specifics here, but let's say that both arcade Space Invaders and the Colecovision use the Z80 processor. This would mean that Eduardo could pull large chunks of the "artificial intelligence" code out of the arcade version, and just copy it for the CV version. He can copy the graphics too, but he'll probably have to change the display routines, which will either require hacking or original code, depending on how different they are. If he puts in a menu to pick which SI game you want to play, that's all original code. In this example (which I don't know if it reflects reality or not), he's used all three methods to complete his port.

In fact SI uses an i8080, which is binary compatible with Z80. Your assertion is mostly accurate. But it would have being a lot easier if the "pull large chunks of the artificial intelligence code" part is completely true. I find it an oversimplified statement. The screen layout has changed, positions on screen have changed, the sound wasn't part of the program, RAM amount was a problem, etc. All these things has an impact on code logic. In fact it took me just 2 days to create the entire opening sequence, but the conversion process took almost a full year.

-_-

[digitalpress]

@Opcode... and ManekiNeko: I'm QUITE sure that Daniel didn't mean anything malicious by his question. I'm usually pretty keen at picking up on these things, and I know Daniel very well. I'm sure he's trying to qualify the difference between these terms as WE relate to them, not knocking anything that anyone else has done.

Daniel has been VERY supportive of ColecoVision developers, I'm sure he's on your side!

[opcode]

-_-

[newcoleco]

I hope my english skill will be enough to answer to all the messages.

Some of you misunderstand me (i'm sorry). I just asked a simple question.

Ok, I use Space Invaders port for my example but it means nothing. I just wanted to clarify the concepts of homebrew, commercial and hacked games.

I think we have the responsibility to define the various concepts clearly. There is a FAQ somewhere with all the difinitions? I don't hink so.

Using commercial titles for my project is something I don't want to. I'm affraid of troubles... and the last thing I want is Coleco programmers like Eduardo having troubles. For example, I didn't continue my Spectank project because I didn't find who have the copyrights of Exidy's game Spectar and no one was able to tell me who have the copyrights right now. I hope Eduardo will release more than one game for the ColecoVision game system. In fact, we need more Coleco programmers.

Doing my best to release new Coleco games, demos, and programming tools...this is what I have done. My Coleco web page is not perfect and you can critric the fact there is no programmer's manual and missing informations. What is missing in my Coleco web page is what you can do to help new Coleco programmers to continue this dream : to keep the coleco alive.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Daniel B.

P.S.: It's my second try to post a reply here.. the first time I take too long so the message disappear.

[NoahsMyBro]

I've been spending a lot of time over the last couple of days reading up on all of the ugliness erupting concerning Randy / Hozer Video. The whole situation has saddened me a bit, and I've found a lot of it very distasteful.

It looks to me as though this thread was in danger of degenerating into something bad, and that has already been avoided (Phew!).

BUT, in case I'm misreading things myself, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, to all of you personally involved in this, PLEASE bend over backward here to avoid any misperceptions/misunderstandings/etc... Before publicly calling anybody on anything, make sure you know and clearly understand exactly what each person said/did/intended.

A small quote I noticed over at AA in the Hozer Video brouhaha pointed out that the world could very much use a little more niceness lately. I visit these forums to hang out with nice people and avoid thinking about the crap going on in RL lately. Let's work toward that goal.

I'll go back to lurking now.

[ManekiNeko]

You're right, Noah.
I apologize, Daniel. You've been very important to the ColecoVision game design scene, and you deserve more credit for that than I was willing to give you.

JR

[newcoleco]

@ManekiNeko ... and everyone : I don't feel mad or sad about your reply here. It was probably my error. I use the Eduardo's project Coleco Space Invaders in my question simply because it was the first example I found (in my mind). I'm really sorry.

@NoahsMyBro : don't worry. everything's ok!

[newcoleco]

Ok now! Can we answer my question?

We need a final answer to define clearly at least all the following concepts :

public domain : ??
commercial : ??
hacked : ??

homebrew : ??
prototype : ??
port : ??

For me, the answer will be THE reference... something to write in a FAQ. And someone talked about the first definition of an homebrew game... i want to read it.

[Aswald]

I guess it would depend on the technology used.

If the programmer simply programmed an identical-looking game from scratch, then it's a homebrew, albeit of a commercial game, even if it's a perfect reproduction.

If he used some chip or other that actually emulates the game, it would be emulated. If he from there changed some of the code, it might be a "hack," or just plain altered.

Unless you use emulation, it is impossible to actually "hack" a game on another, non-compatible, system.

So Daniel Bienvenu's "Bejeweled" is not a hack, but rather a homebrew port of an on-line game to the ColecoVision. John Dondzila's Space Invasion and Star Fortress are also homebrews, and it's obvious of what games. If CV Space Invaders was done from scratch, then it's no different from Space Invasion; it's just much closer to the arcade version.

The legalities involved would be tricky; unless the games are in the public domain, then all 4 of the games mentioned are technically illegal- it's just that the ColecoVision is such an outdated system, and the programmers can only make a few copies (how many CV owners are out there still compared to, say, X-Box owners?), and most arcade games are available on-line via emulators (MAME), that it's doubtful anybody is going to care. Unless they seriously need to get a life.

[newcoleco]

Thanks for all your answers!

Next time i will use one of my project for the example...

I forget one concept to define :

clone ??

And, conversion = port, right?

[slapdash]

We need a final answer to define clearly at least all the following concepts :

public domain : ??

That means that the copyright has been released from/by the author. This doesn't happen very often, but Jay Smith put the Vectrex stuff into the public domain, and Jamie Fenton put Robbie Roto into the public domain. Note that they still retain copyright in these cases, but allow copies to be made (they have put conditions of not-for-profit however). Other things become public domain by copyrights expiring, but there isn't any software yet that's old enough for that to happen.


commercial : ??

Made by a company rather than a hobbyist. Obviously, the line blurs occasionally (think of some of the cassette-based games for the VIC-20 and other computers, or the Bally Astrocade.


hacked : ??

Simply other code that has been modified. Still can be a fine line if you start with something else and modify it until it has mutated into a different thing altogether... You were hacking all along, but ended up with something original. How much code do they then have in common? I have no idea where the dividing line should be...


homebrew : ??

The opposite of commercial. A hobbyist-written game.


prototype : ??

A commercial game that was not released, or is code that comes from before release. You can probably use the term for hobbyist stuff too, but it won't carry the same weight. Usually with hobbyists you'd say "demo" or "pre-release" or "alpha" or "beta" instead, even though those are also legitimate terms in the commercial industry too.


port : ??

This is when a game exists on one machine and you make it for a different one. Now, usually this requires some "officialness", since if I try to write Space Invaders for my GP32, it's debatable that it's a "port", because I don't have the rights to do it. Of course, I would consider Eduardo's version a port because he's looking at the original code, and even using it. Generally though, it applies more to commercial works than homebrews.


I forget one concept to define : clone ??

A clone is like a port, only the definition is broader... I might change things about the gameplay in a clone, but in a port I wouldn't do that unless I had hardware/software restrictions that forced me too. I mean, if I'm porting Space Invaders, it had better be at least somewhat like the original game, but if I'm writing a clone, I might decide to uses images of world leaders and call it Face Invaders. No one would call that a port... But clone also implies that the gameplay is similar to the original. Again, there's some gray areas in between -- how far away from Galaxian from Space Invaders -- at what point did it cease being a clone and become a new game?


And, conversion = port, right?

I would say so, yes. I'm not coming up with any examples of where one is not the other... But, maybe these could be used to specify the method? Conversion would be code-based, and port observation-based (see my prior note for the Pitfall II example)?