Arduboy is using Games from Hackvision Site on Kickstarter?

[trodoss]

Hi all,

Just thought I would mention something that I saw on Kickstarter. There is a project called Arduboy which is an Arduino-based game system. If you look at the page though… (see: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903888394/arduboy-card-sized-gaming) in the “Free Games” section you will see quite a few Hackvision games listed. My big concern is that I see the names changed on the games and it makes me wonder if/when the code is released if they will be missing the MIT licenses and notices at the top from the original authors.

I tried contacting the author on Tindie, but I have not tried Kickstarter yet. Anyone else had contact with the person/persons involved in that project?

[Michael]

Yep, I’m aware of that. I contacted the Arduboy guy Kevin a couple of times in the past. I told him I thought he should give credit to people who wrote the games and he seemed open to that, but I’m not sure he will. I’m especially proud of my Asteroids implementation, and I see he has taken some of your games, too. I think it is lame.

I know we wrote them as open source games, but he needs to give credit where credit is due. If you wrote a game, then you own the copyright and YOU get to license it. Kevin does not get to license it.

trodoss, I think you should contact him too. I’m with you on this.

[trodoss]

@Michael, I did contact him on Kickstarter.

The Kickstarter was updated and it looks like he gave credit to Hackvision/Team A.R.G., and the games mentioned were titled as they were initially (rather than their derived names) the last time I checked.

What will be telling is if the licences are left in tact in the code when they release their ports. Ultimately the code that I helped write is publicly available and can be used to either enjoy playing the game or create something new. All JOERI or I would ask is that 1) the licensce the code was published in is kept in tact if released so that it stays free and 2) we get at least a mention. I know though that those requests haven’t been honored in other cases. It is what it is though.

The Asteroids code was great and really pushed the limits of the TVOut code. JOERI and I similarly pushed the limits of the Gamby with a game called Dungeons. It will be interesting to see if both get ported to the Arduboy.

[unclesporky]

Hello, I found this page from the front page of the Arduboy kickstarter. So to some extent, the credit he’s given there is working. 🙂 However I agree that it’s a little disappointing to see that the Arduboy’s game library is currently largely supported by work that was already done in the past for other Arduino-based platforms which aren’t receiving the same attention, and perhaps not enough credit.

I just discovered the Arduboy kickstarter a few days ago and I’m pretty excited to try it out in the future. I have experience coding demos for the NES and TI calculators in the past, and I like working within narrow limits like this.

Actually, looking at the Dungeons game you made, that is really awesome! I am incredibly impressed at how readable those sprites are, despite being 8×8 and monochrome. The wizard looks like a wizard should look, etc. Really great job on that. I might try to port that game myself to the Arduboy, with your permission. 😛 I’d like to play it.

I don’t have my hands on a devkit yet or anything. If I have some questions about what the hardware might be capable of, could I ask here, or do you consider yourselves mostly done with Arduino game development? I see that the forum hasn’t been very active for a couple of years. I’m just curious about how limited we might be by the speed of the device – I’ve seen it said that despite being 16 MHz, it’s still going to be vastly less capable than something like the Game Boy. I’m just curious how much less capable. I know it’s missing a ton of ease-of-use features built into the NES and GB for displaying sprites, backgrounds, etc., but some of that deficiency I’m sure I could code myself, if the processor is fast enough to handle it alongside game logic.

[Michael]

Hey guys, I also contacted Kevin via email last week. I reminded him, politely but firmly, that the games are property of their respective owners and licensed according to the way the author licensed it. I told him that I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, but that the way that Arduboy was being presented didn’t quite smell right to me. He responded quickly and added the attributions to the Kickstarter campaign. I thanked him for that.

I’m at Maker Faire in the Bay Area this weekend (showing the Synthino XM http://synthino.com), and Kevin is also here. I have not seen him yet, but my friend did and mentioned Hackvision to him. Kevin said he’d stop by and maybe I’ll seek him out, but really have better things to do with my time (like running my booth!).

I’ll let you know if I talk to him.

[Author]

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