Re:creation - a top down action adventure about undeads [hiatus]

[eXpl0it3r]

To be serious: All in all just a very nice advertising and you had zero effort yourself. I mean what danger could result from this? Even if he keeps posting stuff, he just makes your gifs more famous.

One problem is, that he also promised to make it free for all 9gaggers. So if some people then find the real game they might feel entitled to get the game for free, which may result in a shitstorm or just negative "reviews".

Plus whatever the person keeps saying might put Elias or the game in a wrong light.

[Elias Daler]

Thanks for the support, guys!

Obviously not cool, maybe you should add watermarks or something  in the future which makes it harder to just copy and claim it as your own.

Yeah, I thought about this, maybe a very small watermark may be helpful. Something like (Re:creation made by @EliasDaler). Even if the gif is not stolen, but just reposted somewhere, people can find the game easily without asking people what game it is.

I can only imagine that you have very mixed feelings about this, since it got so much praise(which is nice) but the praise is directed at the wrong person(some attention seeking whore on 9gag).

Yes. Honestly, I'm quite shocked at how many people got hyped about the game. I didn't think that it was that attractive to so many people. I'm a bit worried about people saying that it's a rip-off of Link to the Past and I hope that it doesn't look that way in reality.

Good job, I seen all images from first one (I found them on your imgur album which you made) and game has made really great progress! Can't wait to see finished version.

Thank you!

Damn. The watermark is a good idea. Maybe make the watermark a link to your site/devblogs/etc just in case someone does steal it again without looking too hard.

Yeah, see the note about watermark above.

Also, looks like there is a report option, although I haven't used 9gag, so I don't know how effective it is.

Yes, I reported it, but it doesn't even let you explain why you think that it's a copyright infringement. And there's no option to contact the mods or the guy who posted gifs, so not much I can do.

Sorry to hear about the theft, Elias. Why on Earth would they be claiming to be developing and promise other stuff that they obviously cannot deliver? I mean, he "just read a lot online to learn how to make this", which understates and undermines how much involvement this game obviously requires!

Yeah, I have no idea why he does this? I can understand (but, of course, don't support) people who steal and sell games claiming to be their creators... at least they get some profit, right?
In this case, the OP gets literally nothing. Just some sweet karma, I guess? :S

Did you post on his thread as well making your own thread?

Yes, I made some comments there, made my own thread, but they didn't get much attention.

Wow, internet is sometimes so ridiculous...

While I was shocked at the first time, I now - 5 mins later - think that you pretty much benefit from that. I mean 3k comments and they are mainly positive. Wow.

Yes, I'm very glad about the comments. So many positive ones, so many people saying that they'd play it. Feels very nice and I didn't expect that one gif could make so many people interested.

To be serious: All in all just a very nice advertising and you had zero effort yourself. I mean what danger could result from this? Even if he keeps posting stuff, he just makes your gifs more famous.

I think you should see it like that: People will remember the art-style and the gameplay-mechanics. They will not remember and at all they do not really care WHO posted the gifs.

I completely agree with what eXpl0it3r said about this.
And here are some examples of OP acting stupidly:



Free promotion is great, but just imagine people who hear about the game for the first time and then associate it with dev acting like a edgy teenager. 

UPD: I've made a reddit post about the issue.

[Ungod]

That was indeed an oversight of mine. The reason is, that I didnt see those comment myself.
If you are lucky, most other people wont read them either and just take a short glace on the gifs.
(I dont know what the 9gag community is like).

Anyway, I totally understand your distaste about that stuff, I just try to find positive aspects - and I think there
are some.

[Elias Daler]

Sure, I think that I didn't lose much and people may remember the game when they'll see it next time! 

[Brax]

As Ungod already mentioned, you can have benefits from this - free advertisement. But you do need to continue bashing the thief until people realise he stole it.
Not much you can do, but to continue what you are already doing - grab a megaphone and yell that he stole your artwork. Post on all social media you are using, get as many people as possible to know that and share.

The thief can't keep his charade for long. He doesn't have access your game, and will be unable to fulfill his "promise" to 9gagers.
The people who expect the free game must know that they have been lied to. Even after that, if they have the audacity to ask for a free game, they won't have any solid basis for that request, because you haven't made such promise, so all their "complaints" are invalid. 

Besides, people who want your game for free will try to pirate it anyway.

[Elias Daler]

As Ungod already mentioned, you can have benefits from this - free advertisement. But you do need to continue bashing the thief until people realise he stole it.
Not much you can do, but to continue what you are already doing - grab a megaphone and yell that he stole your artwork. Post on all social media you are using, get as many people as possible to know that and share.

Yup, I think the thread on reddit may help. I've also found out how to contract 9gag mods, so maybe this will help too.

The thief can't keep his charade for long. He doesn't have access your game, and will be unable to fulfill his "promise" to 9gagers.
The people who expect the free game must know that they have been lied to. Even after that, if they have the audacity to ask for a free game, they won't have any solid basis for that request, because you haven't made such promise, so all their "complaints" are invalid. 

Yep! And I think that calling him out will scare him from continuing to lie.

Besides, people who want your game for free will try to pirate it anyway.

Yup. And I plan to do what Anodyne's developers did: put it on torrent trackers myself. It doesn't mean that the game will be free, but at least people won't have to download buggy versions or viruses!

[Sub]

Damn, people can be such jerks.  It reminds me of when people would IM the guys who created Super Meat Boy asking for help with a bogus support problem, edit the conversation to make the developer seem like he was an asshole, and then post it on reddit / social media. 

On the bright side, I think this is indicative of you creating something that is worthy of attention, so at least there's that. 

[Elias Daler]

Damn, people can be such jerks.  It reminds me of when people would IM the guys who created Super Meat Boy asking for help with a bogus support problem, edit the conversation to make the developer seem like he was an asshole, and then post it on reddit / social media. 

Ha-ha, yeah, I remember that. It was so stupid and absurd, it was hilarious. xD

On the bright side, I think this is indicative of you creating something that is worthy of attention, so at least there's that.

Yeah, I'm very surprised to find out how much attention this game could possibly have and how much people it attracts. I don't expect much, so this is very flattering.

[Ruckamongus]

Hey man, I haven't been following this thread on SFML forums for a couple months, but I saw your post on Reddit just now. People are really shitty, and I'm so sorry you've got to go through something like this. I hope things work out for you and this doesn't discourage you from continuing this awesome project and your blog posts (I really appreciate them, especially the Lua stuff!). Best of luck, Elias.

[Elias Daler]

Thank you! In fact, this encouraged me more, because of all the support and positive feedback I've got. I'm really blown away by the response. It makes me want to work harder, which is especially great considering the improvements about the engine I've made. I'll post more info soon.

[Elias Daler]

Working hard on all kinds of stuff, but I want to share it all in a big blog post once I'm done with huge chunk of work that I've planned.

For now, take a look at how animation progressed... I made the last iteration yesterday, quite happy with it now! (arms changed, and legs too!)

[SpeCter]

Even though the animation in the last one is definately the best I still like the second one the most(only the helmet seems weird)

[Elias Daler]

Even though the animation in the last one is definately the best I still like the second one the most(only the helmet seems weird)

It looks pretty okay when you see it like this, but it felt too boring in the game. That's the most frustrating thing, ha-ha.

[scionOfBytes]

Hi, Kaylors from Reddit. Really looking forward to the release of this game. How far along are you?

[Elias Daler]

Hi, Kaylors from Reddit. Really looking forward to the release of this game. How far along are you?

Hi. I'm really far away. From some gifs the game may have given you impression that I have most of the things done, but the truth is: I haven't. It's just that I have some basic systems done and I'm pretty good at polishing and hiding unfinished stuff.


So, I'm almost finished with most of the engine (blog post will be coming, yeah) and I want to start working much faster. I really want to focus on the game itself, because from the looks of it, the main mechanic is what grabs people's attention.

I have to make combat and recreation feel great. I have to make some awesome and funny cutscenes. I have to do a lot. And I want to do it faster, which means that I won't do polish and won't do much art. This, unfortunately, means, that I won't have many gifs to show, because I don't want people to see my ugly throwaway art.

But! I will talk about the progress and maybe I'll still show something interesting from time to time.

In recent weeks I was not only refactoring the engine and making new tools, but I also started to fix a lot of things that were broken and some of them I've rewritten from scratch. For example, I rewrote recreation sequence in Lua and it's now much less buggy, the code is easier to understand and modify.

I also had combat and house entering/exit broken. It was all fixed with much better code: I now use events more often and I made lots of entity states reusable, so, for example, hero, archer and enemy with sword have the same AttackState! (Written completely in Lua, btw).

Working on gameplay elements felt really great. I think I didn't have so much confidence about the game for a really long time. So now I want to really make things happen. I feel like most of the tools are in a very good condition and it seems like I've finally figured out how to make stuff! (Action lists and events were an incredibly powerful addition).

So yeah, I hope things work out and I don't get stuck again!