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Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

shaunew.github.com

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Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#42
post #18

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431197 Double standard, HN? At least qxcv sees the light: "It's one thing to make a Pac-Man-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Pac-Man, and you've copied the artwork straight from Pac-Man. Seems certain this isn't an official licensed version. In which case, you should change all those items immediately. It's illegal and it's just not cool. Here are the guys…

>Here are the guys you are ripping off. Tōru Iwatani and his friends at Namco. Tōru is a very nice guy

Do you Tōru personally? He could equally feel the opposite, happy his work is receiving renewed attention.

I'm not sure any of us on HN even know the position of Namco or Mr Iwatani, or for that matter, whether they would be in agreement with each other. In fact, many creative people, do not align philosophically with corporations that represent them.

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#43
post #18

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431197 Double standard, HN? At least qxcv sees the light: "It's one thing to make a Pac-Man-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Pac-Man, and you've copied the artwork straight from Pac-Man. Seems certain this isn't an official licensed version. In which case, you should change all those items immediately. It's illegal and it's just not cool. Here are the guys…

It's not double standard IMO. You don't buy Pac-Man from namco anymore (I hope they've stopped selling it). So, nobody (much less them) gives a damn if it is being ripped off. Doodle Jump, on the other hand, is a game that you can (and millions do, every month) buy from the App Store. If you build a clone of it, the Lima Sky guys might lose some customers. That's why creating a Doodle Jump clone is wrong, but creatin…

People do indeed continue to buy Pac-Man from Namco (http://www.amazon.com/Namco-Networks-40406PAC-MAN-PAC-MAN-Do... for instance, put there as recently as 2010), and the general IP is alive and well. (New games, and a new Pac-Man 3D cartoon is already in production for airing in 2013.) Namco has in the past sent cease & desist or DMCA takedown letters to websites hosting clones of their IP (here's a story of but one, again from 2010: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100730/17081510430.shtml), if you bet they don't care you're going to lose that bet. Besides the original by itself there's also lots of collections that are sold fairly often (every year? at least every few years) that Pac-Man comes with.

If you're arguing that "apparent recent interest by the IP owner" is the moral basis (obviously not the legal basis) for ripoffs, then you have to conclude that this Pac-Man clone, too, is wrong.

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not double standard IMO. You don't buy Pac-Man from namco anymore (I hope they've stopped selling it). So, nobody (much less them) gives a damn if it is being ripped off. Doodle Jump, on the other hand, is a game that you can (and millions do, every month) buy from the App Store. If you build a clone of it, the Lima Sky guys might lose some customers. That's why creating a Doodle Jump clone is wrong, but creatin…

People do indeed continue to buy Pac-Man from Namco ( http://www.amazon.com/Namco-Networks-40406PAC-MAN-PAC-MAN-Do... for instance, put there as recently as 2010 ), and the general IP is alive and well. (New games, and a new Pac-Man 3D cartoon is already in production for airing in 2013.) Namco has in the past sent cease & desist or DMCA takedown letters to websites hosting clones of their IP (here's a story of but o…

Thanks a lot for the info. I certainly didn't imagine, even in my wildest dreams, that an ancient game like Pac-Mac could possibly be still alive and a source of revenue for Namco. Pac-Mac game in 2010? 3D cartoon in 2013 (wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man:_The_Adventure_Begins)? I can't believe it.

In that case, I was wrong and this game should also be "condemned" by HN :) Thanks.

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#46
post #8

Accurate enough to also include the level 256 bug? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man#Split-screen

@anonova that's what i was thinking!!! i skimmed the code but couldnt tell if they included the infamous "kill screen" bug. i was never good enough to ever reach that level in the original arcade version, but my best friend's older brother was: Pac-Man’s Kill Screen – Level 256 [video] http://www.methodshop.com/2012/08/pacman-kill-screen.shtml

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll nitpick right back at you: since JavaScript is not compiled in the software sense, I could only mean compile in the sense of "produce (something, esp. a list, report, or book) by assembling information collected from other sources: the local authority must compile a list of taxpayers." ;-)

Is it therefore accurate to say that the uncompiled source code is compiled in https://github.com/shaunew/Pac-Man/ ?

Touché. I guess so :)

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#49

The creator of this remake gave a talk on it at the houston.js meetup this week. I was thoroughly impressed with how much effort and thought he's put into this project. He said that the Pac-Man dossier was his inspiration and seems to genuinely love the game. For those of you who have criticisms about the game's accuracy, I suggest that you submit a new issue to his github repo: https://github.com/shaunew/Pac-Man/iss…

No — open source is about you being able to take the code and do pretty much whatever you want with it.

Being able to report issues is entirely orthogonal to that. Lots of non-open source projects accept such reports, and releasing something as open source does not carry any implicit promise that the author will pay any attention to such reports.

Re: Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript

#50
post #44

Having recently watched King of Kong ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/ ) I highly doubt the accuracy of these "remakes".

I probably phrased this incorrectly, hence the downvotes. These arcade machines have specific timers, odd hardware characteristics, hard memory limits, etc, that are likely impossible to replicate in software accurately - in addition to the software algorythms they use.

In king of kong, you will hear how a blob of solder in the right location will change the characteristics of the game to invalidate the entry for world record status.

Simply looking at the framerate counter at the bottom you can see that this isn't in any way "accurate". By looking at the github repo, you can even see the author has written about some of the inaccuracies - timing, collision detection, randomization, and bugs.

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