Prosper The Dark Lord Beholder (formerly Eye of the Beholder 4)

[Takis76]

So if I understand correctly, the guy is using pirated software to steal assets from other games and then claims it's ok huh.

No pirated software is here. Everything including graphic programs, programming languages game engine and assets have all their licences.

 

[Takis76]

Had a bug where all turn left and right buttons became not working. Of course, it made game unplayable.

Dungeon is pretty short and a lot of things do not work. Like I said, alpha version.
There is no even character's death and you are constantly crushed by closing doors. I'm not a stranger to latter, but damn, they close almost immediately.

Gargoyle from Hexen.

Yes I know this demo was a Frankenstein creation for testing the engine functionality. You never die in traps because this demo was for developers. I will remove it and it will not cause you any problem.
People criticized this demo a lot but I never put it for profit because it was not ready and just was a technical demo for developers and graphic designers. It have lots of bugs.

 

[Takis76]

This is a parallel universe thread where Cleve was born in Greece.

You mean Clive Barker?

 

[santino27]

This is a parallel universe thread where Cleve was born in Greece.

You mean Clive Barker?

He means Cleveland Mark Blakemore

 

[Morblot]

Why are the controls reversed and also lower for character 3? What kind of number is 3 anyway? Whose mana bar is that? Why is there a pile of skulls in the corner? What kind of mad genius design is this?

 

[Takis76]

Why are the controls reversed and also lower for character 3? What kind of number is 3 anyway? Whose mana bar is that? Why is there a pile of skulls in the corner? What kind of mad genius design is this?

What controls are reversed? You can move the party with W,S - A-D and Turn with Q and E and with normal arrows. The third player is lower because is behind. The skulls are at the base of pedestal, if their eyes glow there are monsters or secrets near.
The party shares a mana pool.
There are new rules and there will be full detailed manual for interface and all new things you will see and they look alienated now.

 

[Viata]

Why the party shares a mana pool?

 

[DavidBVal]

Why the party shares a mana pool?

Communism?

 

[Takis76]

This is a parallel universe thread where Cleve was born in Greece.

You mean Clive Barker?

He means Cleveland Mark Blakemore

Ok. My game have no relation with Grimoire.

 

[Takis76]

Why the party shares a mana pool?

Communism?

Hehe. You ask a lot for now. The rules have changed. About the mana pool is not final yet. Maybe I will make changes and make each player have their own mana.
But according to the class of each character, the level,the abilities and skills, each character will consume more or less mana, which forces the player to balance the party and think if the characters who wants to do lot's of magic, will sacrifice mana for the characters who wants to do more healing spells. So you will need to think before waste too much mana for spells because you will need mana for healing in each battle. After the rest the mana pool refills.

 

[Nyast]

Your game is still a mish-mash of old-school dungeon crawlers in terms of graphics. Changing a few pixels here and there does not mean you can claim it's not "stolen" anymore. I can clearly still recognize assets from other games, from the items of Eye of the Beholder ( ex.: potions, colors slightly changed but otherwise pixel identical ), to the magical runes at the right on your screenshots ( clearly stolen from Ultima Underworld, proof: http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/images/6/64/Runestones.jpg

The forest tile assets are still Eye of the Beholder's. Changing some pixels and colors makes it a derivative work, but that still can't be considered an original work and you'll still be in trouble if the copyright owners come knocking on your door.

What I don't understand is, since you went over the process of getting an artist to remake the assets, why did you remake them near-identical to EOB ? Why not just go for a completely different style ( not just changing some colors ) that's clearly different ? Tons of games are doing that just fine. Look at Grimoire.

 

[vlzvl]

You are mixing a lot of incompatible styles. Low-resolution pixeled viewport with high-resolution skulls, numbers, gold coins etc. along with different portraits styles (one is obviously a weird transformation of an old EOB portrait), all together in that "UI" that makes Grimoire looks like state-of-the-art.
Game window, licenses and such is the least of your problems man.
My opinion:
Tell that artist of yours to fix your terrible UI first and forget all this nonsense about walls, licenses, WOTC, Dungeons and Traps and such crap.
Also, there are tons of commercial items you can buy nowadays like walls, potions and runes. Just buy them with a commercial license and save yourself from endless replying.
Personally i like your assets but jesus, fix that maddening incompatibility of styles and forget about the stupid game window up-left.

 

[Takis76]

Your game is still a mish-mash of old-school dungeon crawlers in terms of graphics. Changing a few pixels here and there does not mean you can claim it's not "stolen" anymore. I can clearly still recognize assets from other games, from the items of Eye of the Beholder ( ex.: potions, colors slightly changed but otherwise pixel identical ), to the magical runes at the right on your screenshots ( clearly stolen from Ultima Underworld, proof: http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/images/6/64/Runestones.jpg

The forest tile assets are still Eye of the Beholder's. Changing some pixels and colors makes it a derivative work, but that still can't be considered an original work and you'll still be in trouble if the copyright owners come knocking on your door.

What I don't understand is, since you went over the process of getting an artist to remake the assets, why did you remake them near-identical to EOB ? Why not just go for a completely different style ( not just changing some colors ) that's clearly different ? Tons of games are doing that just fine. Look at Grimoire.

The forest is not from Eye of the Beholder was designed from scratch from an artist from a freelance website with name upwork. The runes are not from Ultima they are true type fonts.
Few icons have changed in the newer versions. I know there are some commercial items to purchase like icons or spells and I am already have but not walls the walls were designed from artists from scratch.
But I wonder why do I am trying to convince you and giving you so much report. I will not care about your opinion anymore you are an illogical chaos.
If any copyright owner will knock my door, I know what I will do because all artists who designed all of these graphics when the final version of my game will be realeased they will have given their licences to me.
About the interface if you believe is terrible, Is very functionable and easy to use and enjoy to play.
If you will not like my game in generic you have the right to not play it at all.

 

[vlzvl]

If you will not like my game in generic you have the right to not play it at all.

There was not a question of whether i play or not your game, it was just a honest feedback, which you are still unable to receive after so many years of developing that.
Good luck.

 

[Takis76]

You are mixing a lot of incompatible styles. Low-resolution pixeled viewport with high-resolution skulls, numbers, gold coins etc. along with different portraits styles (one is obviously a weird transformation of an old EOB portrait), all together in that "UI" that makes Grimoire looks like state-of-the-art.
Game window, licenses and such is the least of your problems man.
My opinion:
Tell that artist of yours to fix your terrible UI first and forget all this nonsense about walls, licenses, WOTC, Dungeons and Traps and such crap.
Also, there are tons of commercial items you can buy nowadays like walls, potions and runes. Just buy them with a commercial license and save yourself from endless replying.
Personally i like your assets but jesus, fix that maddening incompatibility of styles and forget about the stupid game window up-left.

Which game window? The dungeon viewport?

 

[Takis76]

If you will not like my game in generic you have the right to not play it at all.

There was not a question of whether i play or not your game, it was just a honest feedback, which you are still unable to receive after so many years of developing that.
Good luck.

I respect your feedbacks and thankyou very much. My mistake was to present my game with the Eye of the Beholder's original graphics. (I was intented to present the game engine most at first not the graphics).
When some more finished demo will be ready with total replaced graphics I will send some message to some of you to play it and give your new opinion. (I had explained in the past, all of these graphics were placeholders for the purpose of the programming of the game engine).
Someone said about incompatibility of graphic styles. (Different designers are drawing the graphics and maybe some few graphic looks different in style I will fix and this).
About the interface which some people say it as terrible, I have to say is very functionable and convinient, it have enough space to add more gadgets and for players to do more interacts (Things you haven't seen yet, about spellbook, crafting, player inventory, towns, shops cities, dialogs - I am expecting even more criticism about them too).
I am going far beyond the "Eye of the Beholder" this game will be something between Lands of Lore and Eye of the Beholder but in interface. As a game is complete new and it will have the spirit of the old nice pixel art retro rpg.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Man this thread is going places (well, place I guess; there’s only one retardoland).

 

[Nyast]

The forest is not from Eye of the Beholder was designed from scratch from an artist from a freelance website with name upwork.

So it's a total concidence that you can find the same pixel patterns from Eye of the Beholder assets into your "brand new art, totally remade from scratch, promised" game ?

I'll let everybody judge:

Left is a screenshot of your game from last page and right is from Eye of the Beholder 2. I looked at the ground pixel patterns, and you sure did a lot of work by swapping some lines from brown to green and vice versa. Good job ! Be proud !

There are tons of similar patterns everywhere but I've already lost enough time with a pathelogic liar such as yourself.

 

[Takis76]

Maybe the graphic designer tried to create an identical floor by looking the image.I don't know. The both samples are not exactly the same. But you are very funny to try to pass the graphics through the microscope.
As a pethologic liar I am, Why do I need to care?
The forest is not the same and the designer drew it by hand.

 

[Nyast]

You are beyond clueless. You have no idea of copyrights or what is derivative works. Even if you did not strictly copy the assets, re-creating it from scratch to be nearly identical is STILL copyright infringement. For fucks sake.

 

[Takis76]

I am not care. Call the WestWood to sue me.

 

[DavidBVal]

It doesn't look like a copy to me, tbh. It's similar, likely inspired, allegedly derivative, and not very exciting. But it's not the same, I don't think it's enough ground for legal action.

EDIT: posted before seeing that ground pattern. he should probably change it :D

 

[Viata]

I hope that excuse works when they knock at your door, mate.

 

[Nyast]

I'm not claiming there is a case. No company would sue an amateur that hasn't caused harmed / generated money.

If he tries to sell his "game", that will most likely change. The industry is full of naive developers receiving cease & desist letters from copyright holders. Lots of mods have been shut down because of this.

His luck is that Eye of the Beholder isn't currently an active franchise, but you never know when a publisher could decide to revive it ( Baldur's Gate 3 ? hum hum ) and jump on the case.

Also, the reason I'm bothering replying is becaues the guy is lying. He bumps this topic saying he got ride of the placeholder art, it's no longer stolen, it's all legit, and the first thing I see is the same foreset tileset from Eye of the Beholder, the runic alphabet from Ultima and inventory items from EOB. I'm pretty sure more elements of the interface are from other games too, they ring a bell, but I can't put my finger on it.

If the guy was honnest, had simply explained from the beginning that this was all placeholder for development purposes and that he'd eventually replace it by original art, I wouldn't have a problem. In fact I'd be supporting him. But here he comes back and every time it's the same lies, the same behavior, the same attempts at playing the victim and placing the blame on everybody else cause "he's not understood". Well, I'm not buying that.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I am not care
I am not there
I am not legally anywhere

I steal of you
You try for sue
Oh me, whatever will I do?

I am in bother
(Lawsuit fodder)
All for all, typical modder.