A historic Amiga on sale!

[IFW]

Yes I am very clear and strict with my opinion on criminals robbing game or otherwise authors.

Unfortunately it is not about you letting it to happen as you think. I wish it was that easy. It does happen if you are not rich and/or does not live in the same community/region/law territory with the one you are dealing with.
Ripping off authors from Slovakia or any other foreign country is very likely unless they are based as well in the publisher's country.
The temptation to rip them off is just too high for any company.
About 25000-50000 gbp was needed to even start a case in the UK against an UK company many years ago. Lawyers are not allowed to take surefire cases for free, you have to settle the expected cost of the legal proceedings in advance (at least it worked that way a decade ago).
Persistence does not help, money does. The problem is you do not have that kind of money when making your first game.
And if you don't get paid for your first game you don't have that kind of money anytime later either.
A vicious circle.

I am not going to take any of my words about those criminals back.
They are criminals period, belong to jail and should be fucked in the ass big time, unless they enjoy it, in that case just be beaten to death.
Or both.
You may have a problem with masochists though



note: evil wizard grin not found

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by IFW
Why should anyone worship someone who possibly ripped off dozens of amiga game creators....?

HEar hear.

Just because he gave permission to a site to host some games for leechs to download, doesn't get him any kind of respect to me.

Metin7: As long as the game is FUN I don't care much about the rest, unlike today's kids. So I might enjoy Hoi

[IFW]

I am sure you will Akira, though I am crap at it yet, way too hard - at least for the first time.

[kolorabi]

Originally posted by IFW
The temptation to rip them off is just too high for any company.

I can not agree with this. Sure, there are a lot of bandits around (though I think the industry has matured somewhat), but to say that any game developer from a "less wealthy" country can just pack in the bags and give up because they will never get paid seems a bit too simplistic and negative to me. If that had indeed been the case, then all those eastern european companies would simply not have survived. If Croteam hadn't gotten any income at all, would they still be producing games ten or so years after Football Glory? I doubt that very much.

I understand you have bad experiences with the industry, but it's not all doom and gloom.

[DrBong]

Originally posted by Metin 7
By the way, Dr. Bong, nice avatar. Brings back memories of the good old Zzap! 64.

Thanks Metin! Good to see that you haven't totally lost interest in the Amiga despite your bad experiences in the past.

To answer your question, I actively use Amigas and so do many others here. Some people use real Amigas, some emulate, and others do both.

[Amiga1992]

Ohh I forgot to answer that very important question!

I actively use my A1200 (030@50, 32MB RAM, 1GB HD) for games and for some work (DPaint CANNOT be matched). No emulation for me, because (sing with me boys... at least everyone except andreas )

Nothing Beats the Real Thing©!

[IFW]

Originally posted by kolorabi
I can not agree with this. Sure, there are a lot of bandits around (though I think the industry has matured somewhat), but to say that any game developer from a "less wealthy" country can just pack in the bags and give up because they will never get paid seems a bit too simplistic and negative to me. If that had indeed been the case, then all those eastern european companies would simply not have survived. If Croteam hadn't gotten any income at all, would they still be producing games ten or so years after Football Glory? I doubt that very much.

Actually you are spot on: most of those companies in fact did not survive or defunt or work for ridiculous money that you wouldn't accept as your monthly wage, let alone for a complete commercial game.

The team you mentioned is just one example and I guess they in fact had a good lawyer and the finance right from the beginning. Most startups do not.
Or they just have the income that keeps them going and enough for daily expenses but nothing much more, but they prefer doing games instead of say packing bags in a factory... It could be that if you are in Croatia you do not have much choice, and even ridiculous money is better, than nothing at all.

Just think of the real ClickBoom guys (coming from similar circumstances): they kept on working for years for pittance money and no money at all sometimes, because they couldn't do anything else useful in their life anyway due to non-existant employment and wages in their area.

How about creating the game "White Viper" for a couple of C64s?

Or having worked there I have inside info on Novotrade and their financing related to say e.g. such a small company as Sega... (not to mention much earlier titles for say Epyx, Andromeda etc) All I say is you'd feel insanely embarassed in the name of the guilty ones.
Do you know "Ecco the Dolphin"? Right. Do you know what sort of money the company had from one of the biggest selling games ever? Do you know how much money the guys who made it had from it? Do you know why the last time I heard from the lead guy he worked on sound synthesis and said he'd never write any game ever again?
I do and I hope he changed his mind since that

Or the guy who did "Cyborg Justice" (?don't remember correct title, but something along those lines robots beating up each other) by Sega that was surely not an all time bestseller, but certainly did worth more, than what you pay a month for an average programmer in the US?

Actually if you just refer to Metin who is not from a poor country at all, but instead simply faced the "temptation problem" coming from a different legal area than their publishers... They used to work on for many years until giving up in a hope that at least once they get paid. Afair the only financial success they could account in this sense was getting monthly payment for some game towards the end.
The last thing that dies is hope

I never said to pack and give up. But the paid ones ( we don't know that yet for real) are unreasonably less than the unpaid or badly paid ones. And that gives a nice insight into the conscience of the moneymen involved with the games industry a few years ago, and it seems old habits just don't go out of fashion even now...
It is possible that Ubi simply don't care as they know they will never will deal the guys again so it is not intended rip-off just the result off the company plugging all their resources that should have been assigned to deal with Cauldron. Does that make them any better...?
I say that yes, if you are from either a less wealthy country or can't properly represent yourself legally in the publishers country you are more than likely to get ripped off. You see even companies like Ubi feels tempted to do it if they can and there goes your very high profile publisher that shouldn't allow any sort of mud slinging paint their reputation. Yet they did it. Why? Because they could and couldn't care less about some poor guys from Slovakia babbling on their unvisited site about not getting paid. Nobody would believe them, and even if some does, they couldn't care less either. It is always "somebody else's problem" if you know Douglas Adams.

[Shatterhand]

Ugh... it nearly makes me cry reading those stories. It gotta be really hard to work for so long in something you love so much, then see someone else making money with it and not see one dime of it. It's really absurd what some people do because of the fucking money. It really piss me off.

I have only played a HOI demo in a The One's Coverdisk, and I really enjoy playing it. I remember it was a very long level, I even thought it was actually a full game! I also remember it was extremely hard, but very enjoyable.

Clockwiser is a game I really love. Since the first time I saw the intro of that game I instantly fell in love.

[manicx]

(DPaint CANNOT be matched).

Oh yes it can. Brilliance is faster, better and more effective !

Originally posted by IFW
Actually if you just refer to Metin who is not from a poor country at all, but instead simply faced the "temptation problem" coming from a different legal area than their publishers... They used to work on for many years until giving up in a hope that at least once they get paid. Afair the only financial success they could account in this sense was getting monthly payment for some game towards the end.
The last thing that dies is hope

Amen bro. Never give up hope and never lose the faith in yourself.

About the issue: imagine three guys of 19 years old, total Amiga freaks having a truly fun time developing a game, believing they are creating a classic and believing they are at the start of a glorious game developers career. One day the shit hits the fan and before they realize the publisher is actually a son of a *&^%$#@ that publisher has already made his money with the game. We were in no position at all to start an international legal fight with a US company in California, in a Californian court of law and in front of a Californian judge. We may not live in a poor country, but we did not receive any money while creating Hoi and still lived with our parents.

So when shortly after the drama the AGA Amigas came out, we decided to release a special Hoi AGA Remix to the public for free and start creating Clockwiser. We didn't think that the drama would repeat itself, but it did.

All in all, we did truly enjoy Hoi's and Clockwiser's success around the world, reading positive to raving reviews in magazines around the world. That part of the game was an unforgettable delight and really supported our belief in ourselves. That part has actually been worth more than any money from the publisher, because it formed our self-esteem as it is now.

Cheers,

M7

www.sevensheaven.nl
www.metinseven.com

[IFW]

Amen too

Feel free to describe those *&^%$#@ criminals in any colourful language you like

Forgot to say that in that time even telephone costs could be simply prohibitive to reach the guys. You are spending hundreds of dollars just to get hold on some lowlife scum, who obviously doesn't want to speak with you - but if you are younger you may believe for a while he is really just very busy...
After a few phonebills and making even more cost for yourself or your team you stop calling that scum.
While folks from the US may find this strange in Europe phone prices were/are (some places) normally high, only recent ip telephony and liberating the markets made the prices drop.
So that time you could easily pay many dollars per minute for international calls, plus connection fee normally 1 minute. Even just to hear a monkey machine taking the phone a few times did cost $$$.

I think this is the case for the guys from Slovakia, int calls are probably still the same price there.

I guess Metin can comment on this aspect as well

[fiath]

And people wonder where all the innovation in new games has gone...

Originally posted by Shatterhand
I have only played a HOI demo in a The One's Coverdisk, and I really enjoy playing it. I remember it was a very long level, I even thought it was actually a full game! I also remember it was extremely hard, but very enjoyable.

Thanks man! If you play the Hoi AGA Remix with the unlimited lives option on, then prepare for an adventure, with 4 huge levels and one wacky psychedelic finale.

Clockwiser is a game I really love. Since the first time I saw the intro of that game I instantly fell in love.

That really warms my heart. I animated that intro and wanted to try giving personalities to simple shapes like a cube. Ahh, those good ol' DPaint days. Nowadays I'm a real Max fan. Did you know that DPaint's Daniel Silva was one of the base creators of 3D Studio?

[7-Zark-7]

Just straying slightly off-topic, but reckon here's as good a place as any for it! I was glancing at the current "GAMES-TM" issue available here,(Supposedly an Oz version-probably just the game release & prices are probably the only differences), & in the "Retro" section saw an article about System 3,(With their C64 hits),& an interview with Mark Cale about System 3/Studio 3's history & current work on Last Ninja 4.

Now I was a huge fan of the System 3/C64 games,but I had a real hard time reading the so-called interview. I'm not sure what made worse reading, the obviously ignorant twit of an interviewer or Mark Cale! Basically you're left with the impression Mark Cale was personally responsible for virtually all of their greatest releases,(International Karate Last Ninja series,Myth, IK+,Vendetta, Turbocharge etc.),with very scant mention made of any of the true geniuses involved,(eg:Archer Maclean, John Twiddy,Mev Dinc,Hugh Riley,Peter Baron Bob Stevenson, Chris Butler etc just to name a few!). From memory,I think only Archer Maclean,Rob Hubbard & the musician for LN3 got any mentions at all. Apart from a brief mention of getting "most of the original team", together for Last Ninja 4 you'd almost be left wit the impression Mark Cale was a one-man band for all those C64 classics! Give credit to the real creators Mark Cale!

[IFW]

I don't know what happened, but probably they've fallen out with each other, the guys went for other companies and Vivid Images was founded as well.
Their game "First Samurai" is a pun on "Last Ninja".

Originally posted by IFW
Feel free to describe those *&^%$#@ criminals in any colourful language you like

I guess that would make me the same lowlife as I consider them to be.

Forgot to say that in that time even telephone costs could be simply prohibitive to reach the guys.

I guess Metin can comment on this aspect as well

The phone costs were among the problems we faced indeed. I remember our programmer Reinier van Vliet had a bought a fax from his money from Thalamus (one of the few nice publishers we encountered), and we've sent a truckload of faxes to Hollyware (Hoi publisher). In the end the faxes became more of a slanging match. Hmmm ... this is a nice anecdote to add to the Hoi Saga story.