Denial

The artwork of the portraits is incredible. Are you doing those? If so, what tool are you using?

plbyrd wrote:The artwork of the portraits is incredible. Are you doing those? If so, what tool are you using?

Yes, I am doing my own graphics for my game. Thank you.

These are the steps that I do to create images:

1. Find an image that I like from the web.
2. Resize it to 44*88 pixels in GIMP
3. Convert it to grayscale format
4. Edit the image and adjust the brightness/contrast levels.
5. Save it in PGM format
6. Use Mike's Minigrafik PGM import to convert the PGM file to VIC-20 format
7. Use VICE's printer emulation to output the byte data of the image so I can copy-paste it into the program listing in ca65

It can take anywhere from 10 minutes up to an hour to create an image with this process. It is challenging at times because the VIC graphics chip has fairly wide pixels in multicolor mode.

Here are the latest screenshots of my work. Quite often, there will be special items dispersed throughout the dungeons that will help you on your quest. This is one of them. And the game will be user friendly enough to let you know if you've already been to an area where you previously found an item.

Oh no... a magical zone that kills off all the men!
I'm also thinking about getting rid of the rune symbols in green that represent Alignment+Sex+Race+Class and the numbers on that line and use power bars to represent hit points and spell units. I was quite attached to the rune symbols because these were inspired by a dream that I had and said dream was the impetus for my starting to work on this game. But in the end, the rune symbols and the number displays is just causing confusion more than anything.

Ghislain wrote:I'm also thinking about getting rid of the rune symbols in green that represent Alignment+Sex+Race+Class and the numbers on that line and use power bars to represent hit points and spell units. I was quite attached to the rune symbols because these were inspired by a dream that I had and said dream was the impetus for my starting to work on this game. But in the end, the rune symbols and the number displays is just causing confusion more than anything.

I like the rune symbols. Maybe you could make the numbers/runes vs power bars display an option.

The runes make cognitive sense. Just have to be careful with their use to not prevent people from completing the game

I'm glad there are people who like the runes -- they've gotten less than positive reactions. But ultimately, you can't satisfy everybody. Considering the limited amount of screen space the VIC-20 has, I have to cram in as much as possible.

I did make one minor modification--the spell units (depicted in blue) will now be right-aligned. Since there is only 6 characters worth of space to displace hit points and spell units, this will make the display more flexible. And considering that spellcasters will rarely reach more than 999 hit points, there is now more than adequate space to display this information.

About 95% of the programming for the dungeon module is done now. Me and my dungeon writer have finished dungeon #1 and now work has begun on dungeon #2, "The Land of the Zzy-Zzyx" !
Take note of the color scheme of this maze. Each maze can have it's own unique colors.

Basically at this point, I have about 90% of the game engine completed. As far as content goes, 5 cities (out of 20) and 18 dungeons (our of 19) are still to be done.
I think it's safe to say that I'm about 3/4 of the way done now. Only 2 months ago I thought that I was making very little progress and that I'd need another 2 years to finish this project.

I'm also posting updates of Realms of Quest V on my Twitter page:

https://twitter.com/hitfan2000/status/9 ... 0982435840

There's always Rubyogolem for another point of view
I read the game's gonna be over 600K... Impressive!

orion70 wrote:There's always Rubyogolem for another point of view
I read the game's gonna be over 600K... Impressive!

Thank you. A project like this has never been attempted for the VIC-20. Work continues on the dungeons. Here some of the images that I've been working on:
What are people's opinions of my sourcing images from the web and then cropping, making adjustments to a few pixels and then converting them to VIC-20 format? Some people think that as long as they're modified enough, they become your own creations while others consider this to be outright immoral.

1 your use of the pictures to me is a tribute to the classics your borrowing from.

2 the amount of work you put into the transfer is definitely making them your own.

Honestly, my first reaction to hearing the images were picked from Google was slightly negative. But that's probably because I do create art and I would be a little taken aback if I saw someone using it for something else - so I am sensitive to copyright. etc.

There's someone here on Denial who uses a drawing I made for the Mega-Cart as his avatar, and when I first saw that I was like "Hey!", but then I thought about it and I'm okay with it. But strangely, when I see his posts I always think for a second they are my posts because of this (the drawing in question is also similar to my current avatar).

One the other hand, my avatar is from the original Commodore VIC manual (coloured in by me), so perhaps I was being hypocritical.

With a lot of great artists out there, I originally thought it might be nice for you to get someone to draw original art. But after a few moments I got used to your source of images and am fine with it. It's almost fair use - little commercial gain - and you're not going to be selling millions of these.

I am buying your game (full release) when it comes out regardless - so I guess I've reconciled with your source of art!

That image of Dracula in your game is spot on! If the wrong people saw that, you might have problems. Years ago, I set out to create a Metroid remake for DOS/Windows. Nintendo saw what I was doing and sent an EMAIL (yes, an email) to my ISP and my ISP seized everything I had hosted with them. Even non-Metroid stuff. So, it didn't exactly take a judge to intervene. I think hosting providers are so afraid of being sued they bend over backwards to keep them happy.

I emailed my ISP and told them I wasn't distributing ROMS like Nintendo said I was...I was making a fan-inspired game and it was fair use. They eventually unlocked my account if I promised to remove the NES graphics I had.

Anyway, having said all of that....I agree that copyrights are important. No one wants to be ripped off. But for what you're doing, I think you would be fine (I'm certainly no lawyer!). We all know you can't make any real money for this kind of hobby. And, there is 0% chance (IMHO) that you would be stopping any sales to the "Dracula franchise" or any other source you use. But, like I said, it depends on WHO sees your work.

I say run with it. Perhaps some good pixel artist could help you replace questionable images down the road. But for me, it's fair use.

Geez, thanks God my avatar was originally created by some obscure Italian programmer, who is probably happily retired and the grandpa of eleven grandchildren today

R'zo wrote:1 your use of the pictures to me is a tribute to the classics your borrowing from.

2 the amount of work you put into the transfer is definitely making them your own.

There's some precedent somewhere that states that if a work is modified by a certain percentage, that it becomes a new creation. The process that I go through to convert a work to a 44*88 pixel VIC-20 image could possibly fall in this category. But ultimately, fans of the Hammer Horror franchise would instantly recognize that the vampire image that I'm using is of Christopher Lee's Dracula. But that movie poster image translated quite nicely to the VIC-20 that I would hate having not to use it now.

It's my fault though for waxing introspectively on the morality of using a Google Image search to find source material that I can use for a relatively obscure 8-bit game. My "crimes" would go unnoticed if I didn't bring them up in the first place

ral-clan wrote:Honestly, my first reaction to hearing the images were picked from Google was slightly negative. But that's probably because I do create art and I would be a little taken aback if I saw someone using it for something else - so I am sensitive to copyright. etc.

With a lot of great artists out there, I originally thought it might be nice for you to get someone to draw original art. But after a few moments I got used to your source of images and am fine with it. It's almost fair use - little commercial gain - and you're not going to be selling millions of these.

A fair criticism. My intent is not to profit unfairly or to deprive somebody else from earning a living. What I'm doing is flying underneath most people's radar. It would be nice if I could have someone to produce images for my game, but considering the very niche audience, there is no realistic prospects of any compensation. So I have to put in a lot of sweat equity and it's still quite a bit of work to actually convert these images in the first place. Creating wholly original images completely from scratch would at least multiply by 10 the amount of time it takes to produce them.

Actually, a lot of the images that I use did come from public domain sources, like the image of the hospital patient with pockmarks on his face--it is taken from a painting about the black death from the middle ages. I actually prefer the more "cartoony" images like these because they provide nice color contrasts and transfer quite nicely. Photos and realistic paintings tend to look more dithered and I try to avoid these when I can.

cbmeeks wrote:That image of Dracula in your game is spot on! If the wrong people saw that, you might have problems. Years ago, I set out to create a Metroid remake for DOS/Windows. Nintendo saw what I was doing and sent an EMAIL (yes, an email) to my ISP and my ISP seized everything I had hosted with them. Even non-Metroid stuff. So, it didn't exactly take a judge to intervene. I think hosting providers are so afraid of being sued they bend over backwards to keep them happy.

I emailed my ISP and told them I wasn't distributing ROMS like Nintendo said I was...I was making a fan-inspired game and it was fair use. They eventually unlocked my account if I promised to remove the NES graphics I had.

Anyway, having said all of that....I agree that copyrights are important. No one wants to be ripped off. But for what you're doing, I think you would be fine (I'm certainly no lawyer!). We all know you can't make any real money for this kind of hobby. And, there is 0% chance (IMHO) that you would be stopping any sales to the "Dracula franchise" or any other source you use. But, like I said, it depends on WHO sees your work.

I say run with it. Perhaps some good pixel artist could help you replace questionable images down the road. But for me, it's fair use.

I think Nintendo has backed off on fan-made projects that aren't being sold for profit. But there was a recent case where they did have to read the riot act to AtariAge.com when they started to sell physical cartridges of "Princess Rescue" (an Atari 2600 version of Super Mario Bros.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fSO-UTdCI8

It's a fantastic port, especially considering the technical limitations of that console. Because this game was being talked about outside of the Atari 2600 internet community, Nintendo found out about it and no choice though, but to protect their intellectual property here. If the programmer had changed enough of the graphics and music, he probably could have gotten away with it. so while people can't buy a cartridge of the game, they're free to download it.

AtariAge.com has sold cartridges that were adaptations of Lady Bug and other arcade classics. I'm not sure if they had permission to do so, or if these games are considered to be abandonware where the copyright holders probably don't care all that much.

In my case though, I'm not sourcing all of the images from the same place. Would the photographers of the castles that I feature in the game actually recognize their own photos in the way that I present them in the game? I'll probably go back and change the image of the Male Human that is instantly recognizable from Pool of Radiance--which is such an iconic image. I don't want to be too obvious and flagrant, either.