Doodle Jump Recreated in HTML5 ...with source | Hacker News Reader

Doodle Jump Recreated in HTML5 ...with source

cssdeck.com

131 pointsgame_man64 comments

It's one thing to make a Doodle Jump-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Doodle Jump, and you've copied the artwork straight from Doodle Jump.

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 you are ripping off. Igor and his brother. Igor is a very nice guy:

http://allthingsd.com/20120823/how-to-become-an-app-store-mi...

It's one thing to make a Pacman-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Pacman, and you've copied the artwork straight from Pacman.

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 you are ripping off. Tōru Iwatani and his friends at Namco. Tōru is a very nice guy:

http://pacmanmuseum.com/history/Toru-Iwatani.php

where did you find him ripping Pacman off? If true (I searched through his sites, but couldnt find anything relevant), this would be like the comment of the month to me :)

Also, just like being a "nice guy" or "an asshole" would make a difference, whether or not its OK to rip someone off...

his comment is nonsensical. it doesn't have anything to do with anything. not sure where he got to pacman.

He is being ironic, since anyone and everyone has ripped off pacman without pacman becoming less of an icon or the creator of pacman poorer.

It's flawed though, which is why it doesn't make sense.

There are tons of doodle jump alikes. In fact doodle jump was a clone of an existing iOS game (papi jump). We aren't complaining about imitating gameplay. Can you show me a PAC man clone that's called "Pac-man" and uses the exact same artwork?

If if called this "HTML jump" and made original artwork, no one would be complaining. It's clear why he copied it exactly. He wants people to be confused or to recognize his work because it rides on the reputation of doodle jump.

If he has created the art in photoshop himself, then no copyright is infringed even if they do look very similar.

As for the name, this will only matter if the original name was trademarked. If not, he can call it whatever he wants.

if it's not copyright infringement, it's trade dress infringement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress

either way, he's in the wrong. and the name is trademarked.

If you're in the UK that doesn't appear to be the case. I'm not particularly versed in copyright law, but take a look at this example where the work was just "similar"

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyr...

It's called "substantial similarity." One of the tests is whether a "reasonable observer" would be likely to mistake one for the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity

It's nice work but the author should've used different assets and a different name.

"The name of the game and images are © copyrights by the respective creators and Lima Sky"

This reminds me of the fair use copyright clause people put on YouTube videos. Just because you acknowledge something is copyrighted doesn't mean you can infringe it.

It's cool that you were able to build it but ripping off the artwork (if you did create that from scratch it's very good because I couldn't tell the difference), the name, and open sourcing it is not good. The developer is still selling this and making money from it and you've just produced a free web version.

Is open sourcing it really all that bad?

I presume anyone with some skill could recreate such a simple game, and there are tons of copies on the app store.

Showing that it's possible to create the game in html5 and showing the source is amazing and very helpful for anyone wanting to create a real game with html5.

Of course, making it look exactly like Doodle Jump isn't the best of ideas, although it doesn't compete with the actual product since it doesn't work on mobile.

I'm not sure. I guess not as the code would be very different from the original (different language/platform).

"it doesn't compete with the actual product since it doesn't work on mobile"

I don't think this is true. Now people have a choice - pay for the iPhone app, or play it on their computer for free. Most people will probably never know about this version but I think it is still a competitor.

The game navigation is very different though. One uses a keyboard and the other tilting of the device.

Since the game itself is not original but rather simply leverages new functionality of a device to create a new game play I would say that their market is therefore limited to those categories of devices (ie. mobile with accelerometers of giros).

The game itself is a clone of XJump (which has open source clones GNUJump and SDLJump).

> Is open sourcing it really all that bad?

Your views on the ethics of open source don't really have any bearing on whether this application infringes a copyright.

> I presume anyone with some skill could recreate such a simple game, and there are tons of copies on the app store.

An independent implementation of a similar game engine would presumably be neither technically difficult nor legally problematic. The problem is that, at least according to many of the comments here, he's copying the game assets.

From a copyright perspective, independent implementation of the same technology is usually OK (see the Oracle/Google lawsuit, the court ruled that Google's independent implementation of Oracle's API was OK). It's direct copying of code and data that requires permission from the copyright holder, even if it's mixed with your own original work (the case here seems to be direct copying of art mixed with original code).

I'm guessing that, from a practical perspective, this whole debate doesn't matter in this particular case, since Google probably doesn't care about this one. They may even have open-sourced the doodle eventually on their own (anyone have information about whether past Google doodles have been open-sourced?)

Mandatory disclaimers:

1. IANAL

2. I can only speak for the situation in the USA

3. I haven't personally seen or played the original, I'm basing my opinion of what's copied or not copied on other comments

> From a copyright perspective, independent implementation of the same technology is usually OK (see the Oracle/Google lawsuit, the court ruled that Google's independent implementation of Oracle's API was OK).

I am not a legal expert, but as I understand it, the Oracle/Google decision was based on the fact that APIs were not copyright-able. However, I believe you are that independent implementation is not a copyright violation, because patents protect technology while copyright protects specific works. If anyone actually knows about this, feel free to correct me.

Fun way to play the game: try just holding the right arrow key down at the beginning. Since there doesn't seem to be a limit on horizontal velocity, it's kinda like you're on multiple horizontal positions at once. You can still fall down, but you if you actually control the horizontal speed somewhat, you can make it pretty far.

I'm not a legal professional but even though the author claims that the "logic and graphics" have been created by scratch, doesn't that make no difference to the fact that he's almost (the movement isn't as nice) recreated someone else's stuff verbatim and is claiming that it's now open source?

Don't get me wrong, it's a very nice job and all, but with just a few drops of creative thought the author could be on his way to creating his own ideas instead of imitating others.

Freedos is a clone of the old DOS systems -- so much so that it runs the old dos programs you may have lying around.

And nobody seems to have a problem with that.

So why should this be an issue?

Mainly because the author of the Doodle Jump clone stated that because he created "the logic and graphics"from scratch he has the legal right to release it as open source. I can't see any evidence to suggest he has the authority to do that.

Also is it possible to compare an OS with a game, isn't that like comparing a human to the Earth? On the one hand we're all made of the basic elements, but on the other we're fundamentally different things.

It's his own work. Of course he has the right to release it as open source. He should however have a nice good old fashioned disclaimer against liability.

Don't you think there would be a problem if Freedos renamed itself to "MS-DOS"?

So, as someone who's planning to implement a game using Canvas, I was annoyed to notice that there seemed to be occasional frame drops despite the extreme simplicity of this script. I went tested on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, and although it used only a small fraction of CPU, it wasn't perfectly smooth in any of them: subjectively, Chrome was the best, Safari dropped frames a bit more often, and Firefox was quite laggy. I added a trivial FPS counter to the JavaScript and the results sort of mirrored my impression - Chrome almost always got 60 FPS but sometimes 59, Safari got 59 more often, and Firefox was sometimes lower - but I'm not sure 59 FPS adequately explains the glitchiness I experienced, especially in Firefox, which was subjectively quite awful.

Anyway, I'd like to learn where this frame dropping is coming from. I'm a real stickler about lag, and even though the effect here is pretty minor (except on Firefox), I find it unacceptable. Maybe I should try reimplementing this in WebGL or even pure HTML with image tags. Though, again, this game and mine are simple enough that all these approaches should be able to run at 60 FPS, the differences in implementation might be enough to push it over the edge and I have to make do with what exists.

Oops! I didn't know the game got HN'ed. I was improving the details adding license info, you can find them there now.

It's still uncool to do that so blatantly, you should at least take this as an opportunity to develop your creativity and use what you've learned to drive something of your own making.

It's a nice job you've done, but I'd like to see you put your skills to use creating instead of imitating.

"I respect the original creators Igor Pusenjak and his brother for their great work."

Uhhh no you don't. This is textbook copyright infringement. You can't copy without permission and then claim you respect them. That's not how things work.

I would argue that this is fair use.

In any case, I'll invoke the maxim "imitation is the highest form of flattery" as an argument. Why do so many people new to game development make (and are encouraged to make) Pacman clones, Snake clones, Tetris clones, Asteroids clones (one is still on the front page with no shouts of "copyright infringement!!!"), etc.? Because they're fun, respected games that are easy to clone with modern tools. This game is no different apart from not having as many people thinking it's a good game.

This platform mechanic is over a decade old (and mechanics can't be copyrighted anyway), the platforms themselves are probably too simple to qualify under copyright. (The alien sprite you might have a better argument for, but that's very easy to change and if I were the author I'd do that not to play it safe but because the standard alien doesn't look very good.) The only thing I would suggest the author really bother changing is adding the word "clone" or "recreated in HTML5" to the title of the project even though that information is already in the description.

Fair use? For your own sake I highly recommend you take a class on copyright law. I don't say that to be mean. Copyright law is both complicated and important. But if you think that's fair use then you risk fucking yourself or your employer.

I can imagine it being successfully argued the other way by a persistent prosecutor. But considering all the fair use tests I think a reasonable interpretation is to let it be. Of course US law and judges are anything but reasonable a lot of the time, and if someone is looking to fuck you over there are plenty of ways to do so. I'd wager there are more than one patents being violated by this game (and the original it was cloned from) for instance.

The other consideration is that the developer is in India, which unless he's doing things on the scale of Dotcom allows him a "come at me bro" attitude if he felt like it. Fortunately he seems like a decent fellow, so it's a non-profit learning exercise of something with a lot of prior art in terms of gameplay, it's not a complete clone, and I doubt it hurts sales of the original (which he links to).

I guess you're in agreement with me otherwise?

This is a good (and free) introduction to copyright law from MIT (4 lectures): http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Samsung lawyer: "We respect the original creator Apple for their great work." ... comes to mind.

Is there a way to restart via the keyboard? From what I can tell, you need to play the game using the arrow keys on the keyboard so it loses addictiveness when you have to reach for the mouse every time you want to restart.

Press the space bar to restart / start the game :)

Even though you are being honest and straight forward about the creators of the game and the copyright they have does not mean you can infringe on it. You still need to ask for permission. I would suggest doing so before you release any more code or updates to this page as you could incur severe legal penalties.

That said, nice work. Hopefully the authors of this game don't mind and will support your efforts or work with you on an HTML5 version of this game. Good luck.

That runs incredibly smoothly in Chrome, far better than on my iPod or phone when I had them :)

Yes it's very impressive, it's almost as smooth on my 2.53 Ghz dual core than it is on my 600 Mhz phone. HTML5 FTW.

Oh the irony.

I don't know what "doodle jump" was, but this thing reminds me about Icy Tower game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icy_Tower

Which itself is a clone of XJump from long ago..

so the whole outrage about copyright infringement is kinda...

...still an issue. being a "clone" is far less offensive than taking someone's name and artwork.

If it was just a clone called "HTML Jump" with original graphics, but the same gameplay, there would be no outrage.

Imagine if app.net called itself "twitter.net" and copied twitter's design exactly? There would (rightfully) be outrage

Unless it used Bootstrap...

Congratulations, I couldn't tell the difference to the original version of doodle jump. I read here that a lot of people are worried, because you recreated a game which is protected by copyright, but I wouldn't worry too much, because you don't earn money with the game and did it for fun. But still, it would be the better choice if you had released it under a nickname instead of your real name.

Stealing someone's name and graphics is OK if you use a nickname?

to be fair, they didn't say it would be ok. they said it would be a better choice. which is probably the case.

I haven't said that it's ok, i just said it would be the better choice to use a nickname, because this would help you to protect against a lawsuit if they try to sue him for any reason. His best option would be to ask the producer if he is fine, when the guy release his open source version of doodle jump. I think they would agree, because he doesn't earn money and doesn't seems to do anything else with it. Also it's a good ad for the product doodle jump and he also recommend to buy a copy of it.

I think there are some difference with the physics.

Congrats on this great exercize. It plays great.

wow! congratulations on the excellent work!! I never knew that one could recreate the whole game with htmk5 and css.

Cool, but it needs some music!

player.isDead = "lol";

That was funny lol

55 comments and I had to scroll to the bottom to find a single comment on the actual code or somebody who had also read it.

There is a bug because I win points "standing still"...

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/k6ejH.jpg

2889 beat that!

edit: 3630 died trying to catch a spring ><

https://twitter.com/SolitaryDesigns/status/23923144911764684...

https://twitter.com/Franceschine/status/239280096173776896 (6560)

https://twitter.com/dingfengquek/status/239445632832643073 (9160)

that tweet is protected but.. OH MY GOD!

https://twitter.com/dingfengquek/status/239451710278483970 (13119) Removed tweet protection.

It's a pretty interesting game to master - the challenge isn't in hand-eye projectile-estimation/control. While that's important, it seems pretty easy to reach a satisfactory amount (as long as one doesn't need to cross the edge of the screen and wrap-around, which the human brain doesn't seem to handle well).

The parameter to optimize, at least at scores of 8k to 13k, is to quickly evaluate the best upward paths to take.

I've tried 5 games, all which ended above 6k, which ended when I hesitated on the path. Curiously, it isn't the situations where only 1 path is available where I lose. It is the situations when two somewhat equal paths exists, and I hesitate. At areas with white blocks, where the jumping height required to reach the next block is maxed, and the next block is horizontally displaced, there's very little time to think.

Hitting springs are the worst, as it changes the screen very rapidly, making it very hard to assess the situation (3 losses to this). The next worst is a series of whites at max height, which results in a high upwards speed (1 loss to this). Last loss was due to dropping a bag of chips.

10514

https://twitter.com/SolitaryDesigns/status/23958498854111232... (17562)

My personal record is 9059!

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