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Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

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Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#11

Post by themodelplumber »

legohead wrote: post #8

There used to be a playable Tetris in the favicon, which I found from HN[1], but it looks like the website[2] is dead now :( [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3873623 [2] http://favris.info/

There was also a suite of Windows games I played back in ~2003 that occupied maybe a 32x64 window each, and one of them was mini Tetris. As I recall, the developer was Israeli. Anyway it was awesome for playing casually in stealth mode; there were no window decorations and the games were well made. I think one of the other games was pool. I haven't been able to find them since.

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#12

Post by cdubzzz »

bitwize wrote: post #5

Friendly reminder: Tetris is one of the most valuable, and vigorously defended, game IPs in the world. Such aspects of the game as the dimensions of the playfield and the shapes of the tetrominoes are protected by copyrights and trademarks belonging to Tetris Holdings LLC -- and Tetris Holdings is Oracle-tier litigious. Yes, this has stood up in court. Hope you like unfriendly C&Ds from powerful attorneys.

Have they ever actually ended up in court? I was on the receiving end of one of these letters many years back for a clone I was involved with, but we just kept distributing it for a long time and they just sent basically the same letter a few years later. The primary developer eventually stopped the project only because he moved on to other things.

I feel like back then we didn’t find any cases backing up TTC’s claims, but I haven’t kept up over the years.

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#13

Post by zrobotics »

blondin wrote: post #9

amazing op! tetris is one of those game on my need to implement list and never actually finished an implementation :)

Don't let yourself get hung up on doing anything fancy, it's just fun to do. Seriously, just implementing tetris in processing is a fun way to spend an hour, and a great way to remind yourself of why programming is fun. It doesn't involve anything crazy as far as algorithms, but is a fun challenge to do. It's definitely worth it to implement a version, it is just fun to do.

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#14

Post by bitwize »

cdubzzz wrote: post #12
bitwize wrote: post #5

Friendly reminder: Tetris is one of the most valuable, and vigorously defended, game IPs in the world. Such aspects of the game as the dimensions of the playfield and the shapes of the tetrominoes are protected by copyrights and trademarks belonging to Tetris Holdings LLC -- and Tetris Holdings is Oracle-tier litigious. Yes, this has stood up in court. Hope you like unfriendly C&Ds from powerful attorneys.

Have they ever actually ended up in court? I was on the receiving end of one of these letters many years back for a clone I was involved with, but we just kept distributing it for a long time and they just sent basically the same letter a few years later. The primary developer eventually stopped the project only because he moved on to other things. I feel like back then we didn’t find any cases backing up TTC’s claim…

Look up Tetris Holdings, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. The court found 100% in favor of Tetris Holdings, in particular noting the shape of the tetrominoes, the way the tetrominoes spun and fell, and the dimensions of the game board as protectable elements under U.S. copyright law. Since this ruling was handed down, Tetris has applied for and received U.S. trademarks on the tetromino pieces.

The upshot of this is that it is illegal to develop a clone of Tetris. It doesn't matter whether you call it Tetris or not, or whether you use "ripped" or copied assets or not -- the very fact that you have copied Tetris means you are infringing. It may be illegal to develop a video game that uses tetrominoes at all since the tetromino pieces are protected trademarks of The Tetris Company.

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#15

Post by defertoreptar »

bitwize wrote: post #14
cdubzzz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they ever actually ended up in court? I was on the receiving end of one of these letters many years back for a clone I was involved with, but we just kept distributing it for a long time and they just sent basically the same letter a few years later. The primary developer eventually stopped the project only because he moved on to other things. I feel like back then we didn’t find any cases backing up TTC’s claim…

Look up Tetris Holdings, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. The court found 100% in favor of Tetris Holdings, in particular noting the shape of the tetrominoes, the way the tetrominoes spun and fell, and the dimensions of the game board as protectable elements under U.S. copyright law. Since this ruling was handed down, Tetris has applied for and received U.S. trademarks on the tetromino pieces. The upshot of this is that…

Copyright does not protect game mechanics and rules. In Tetris v. Xio, they successfully argued that the game infringed on trade dress.

They claimed that the pieces looked like ones in other games, which in my view is impossible not to infringe on since there have been hundreds of Tetris games with every type of piece design possible.

They claimed that they used tetrominos, and the playfield was twice as high as it was wide, and so on. What Xio failed to point out was that all of these are functional aspects of the game, which means it is not protected by trade dress. Even the original creator, Alexey Pajitnov, has said that he originally tried pentomonoes, but that was too difficult, so he used tetrominos instead. That's functional, not trade dress.

Do you have a source for Tetris's trademarking tetrominos? Perhaps you're referring to their "tetrimino" label, which their own term for what the non-branded world refers to as "tetrominos."

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#19

Post by bitwize »

defertoreptar wrote: post #15
bitwize wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Tetris Holdings, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. The court found 100% in favor of Tetris Holdings, in particular noting the shape of the tetrominoes, the way the tetrominoes spun and fell, and the dimensions of the game board as protectable elements under U.S. copyright law. Since this ruling was handed down, Tetris has applied for and received U.S. trademarks on the tetromino pieces. The upshot of this is that…

Copyright does not protect game mechanics and rules. In Tetris v. Xio , they successfully argued that the game infringed on trade dress. They claimed that the pieces looked like ones in other games, which in my view is impossible not to infringe on since there have been hundreds of Tetris games with every type of piece design possible. They claimed that they used tetrominos, and the playfield was twice as high as it…

Xio did, in fact, attempt to point out that the shapes of the tetrominos are functional elements and not subject to trade dress. The judge disagreed.

The judge also said that while copyright does not protect the abstract concept of a falling block game, he specifically cited the shapes of the blocks and the playfield size as copyrightable.

It's settled U.S. case law. If you develop a clone of Tetris, you are infringing on The Tetris Company's copyrights and trademarks and may be subject to civil and criminal penalties under U.S. law.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SUED, DON'T EVER WRITE A TETRIS CLONE. PERIOD.

Re: Show HN: Tinytetris – 80 x 23 Terminal Tetris

#20

Post by the_pwner224 »

abhinai wrote: post #17

Fascinating! Are there any easy to follow tutorial on how to manipulate pixel blocks (I wonder what the right term is) inside terminals?

If you're referring to the game pieces, the creater probably just used these Unicode characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements
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