Haunted Halloween 85

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DRW
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by DRW »

tepples wrote:I'm told some people think this game is a ROM hack of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari/River City Ransom/Street Gangs by Technos, possibly because Donny looks a bit like Kunio. Is there a reliable way to search for common code in two 6502 executables in order to conclusively rule this out?
Just tell those people they're idiots.
So, because the graphics style of one character is similar means that it's likely to be a hack? Hence, if he looked differently, they wouldn't think it?

And if you actually made a hack of "River City Ransom", the characters have to look like that and couldn't be replaced with different graphics altogether?

The gameplay is different. There are no similarities in the physics. Graphics are just pixels and have nothing to do with the code. End of discussion.
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by FrankenGraphics »

I think some people might be more used to the idea of romhacks than the existence of new-made games for the NES, even if there's sometimes awareness that there's something called homebrew. Homebrew itself is ill defined. I think it's likely the same people probably don't know what makes up a game at a detailed enough level that they're equipped to make out the differences between hack and all-new software, or they might even be under the impression that all homebrew are more or less hacks. So they draw conclusions on the first visual reference they see that match with something within prior experience. If there's such a similarity, then there you have the confusion. Which is a shame.

I wouldn't take such allegations too seriously, but i think it might be a bit of a problem unique to post-market NES development (as opposed to for example c64 where homegrown software is bread and butter, or web/pc software which they'd take for granted anyone with the proper skills can do). Maybe rspecially when some retro gamer celebs unintentionally have been hard at work to muddy the waters.
calima
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by calima »

A hack that wanted to obfuscate it being a hack may employ a number of techniques, making any perfect proof impossible. Just let them think what they want, they'd discount a live challenge-response of your access to the source even.

Coffee Crisis is a TMNT hack, and Creepy Brawlers is a Power Punch 2 hack according to these folk. Little Medusa will be called a Kickle Cubicle hack. That's just how the game plays.
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DRW
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by DRW »

And my game is a "Kung Fu" hack.

Yeah, the problem is not to find a way to disprove their statement. The problem is that their accusations have no basis in the first place.

Did they find any similarity in the game physics? Then you might try to disprove them with factual knowledge.

If no, then why do they accuse the game of being a hack? Because of the graphics of the main character?
So, when you change the graphics to a Mario sprite, the game has suddenly retroactively become a "Super Mario Bros." hack?

The thing is:
A homebrew can have similar graphics as another game and it can have completely different graphics.
And a hack can have similar graphics as its original game or it can have completely different graphics.
Both things can have both kings of graphics.

Therefore, judging the homebrew/hack status of a game based on its graphics is stupid and doesn't deserve a justification in the first place.

If this is the only reason why they think it's a hack, then there is no reason to think so.

Explaining it to them would be a waste of time. Because if someone bases his hack assumption on the graphics style alone, he's one of those idiots who couldn't be convinced by code analysis anyway since he knows jack shit about coding.
If he knew even a tiny bit about coding, so that he would understand your reasoning, then he wouldn't have made the accusation in the first place.

So, I don't understand why you even asked for an actual way to disprove the claim. Instead of simply asking for the best and easiest and fool-proof way to explain to stupid people that the pixels in the graphics are totally interchangable and say nothing about the origin of the game.
My game "City Trouble":
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/Eee0yurkIW4
Download (ROM, manual, artworks): http://www.denny-r-walter.de/city.html
tepples
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tepples »

I guess the more general question is "What NES games are based on the same engine, and how can one tell?" but I'll take that to a new topic. Another interesting question that may go to a new topic is "how can the programmer of an NES game get a code review from someone else to find Daily WTF-worthy bad practices if they exist?"
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Not that it says that much either, but a chr dump would at least be able to show in a visual way that tiles have been structured differently. Shiru’s space checker would show some differences in how code and data is structured.
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by M_Tee »

I'd say a short, easily accessible Youtube video that explains in a very clear way (with visual examples / walk along with a small portion of the code) a single, unique point of the coding (such as the double-buffer CHR-RAM loading) would be beneficial to other coders, curiously entertaining to potential customers, and would serve the function as a single link that could be thrown someone's way to prove that the game is coded from the ground up. (as in, specifically made in a "this is how I solved this one problem/this is how this one aspect works…" way–not, "this is not a hack, see" kind of way, because the latter wouldn't be professional.)
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pubby
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by pubby »

I mean, are people actually arguing over whether HH85 is homebrew or not? Or was it just an offhand comment from someone who was mistaken and had no ill intentions?

It's the latter, no? I find it bizarre to think people would actually argue against the creator on such things.
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