Accurate remake of Pac-Man in JavaScript
shaunew.github.com
shaunew.github.com
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 you are ripping off. Tōru Iwatani and his friends at Namco. Tōru is a very nice guy:
It's unfortunate that IP law is so vague and intimidating. It can easily have a chilling effect on innovation and creativity -- you're afraid something might not be ok, but you don't really know, so you just don't try. For me, that's a red flag in a legal system. Competition, creativity, and education are all great things that deserve clarity and protection, both as an original creator, and as someone adding value with the basis of past work.
While one should respect the law, I do wonder how the GP can so factually and confidently, conclude the project's legal status.
For example, only as recently as April 2012, did Namco Bandai choose to even register the trademark for "Pac-man" in Europe. In addition, Midway Games, who previously owned the distro rights in the USA, filed for Chapter 11 in 2009.
I certainly have no clue as to it's status, but I do know there is often a digression between what a person thinks is illegal, the actual law, intepretation of the law, case law (e.g. precedents), politics of the law, pragmatic issues etc. Hence the reason we have lawyers, that understand these issues better (and even then, they often disagree with each other). There are also degrees of legality (civil, criminal etc) from jay walking, copyright infringement, patents to mass murder and genocide.
Is Wikileaks illegal? Did Samsung illegally create certain Android smartphones? etc.
Is <x> illegal?, does not seem like a simple boolean, for a wide range of values.
The author of this project, is clearly a huge Pac-man fan, does not appear to be profiting financially (released the source on GH), and is generating interest in a product, that could be potentially be capitalized on by the rights holder.
Legality is important, but underneath that is the purpose of law itself. I like the idea of keeping in mind both legality and the intent of the law.
If you are making something cool, that adds value (including entertainment), and does not pretend to be, or detract from those you borrow ideas from, it seems ok to me. You may disagree with my particular idea of fair use - the main point is to promote thought about general morality, and not just condemn on the basis of legality alone.
The previous example, a) it wasn't clear that the author knew it was not right b) the people affected where the type of people who would post to HN.
Let me ask you this, do you see anything wrong with someone creating a hipmunk clone called "hipmunk.co" and use their exact CSS and HTML? It's the same situation. If you see nothing wrong with that, then that's where we disagree.
Edit: there's no reason why he can't provide entertainment and value but just name it something else, and use original graphics. To clarify: no one is arguing against the creation of a game that plays the same. The argument is using the exact name and artwork.
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 creating a Pac-Mac clone is not.
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.
In that case, I was wrong and this game should also be "condemned" by HN :) Thanks.
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.
(I liked the speed though, Pac-Man is too slow.)
I think it's in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttavBa4giPc
Make sure the red ghost passes below your safe spot from right to left. It wants to turn upwards, but it is not allowed to, so it has to keep going. It then circles around back in a T shape.
Make sure you are facing upwards, so that the blue ghost circles the center of the maze.
Finally, be mindful of the scatter phases [2]. A scatter phase will bring the red ghost out of his loop, so you need to lure him back into it. After the final scatter phase you can stay in the safe spot indefinitely.
[1] http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html...
[2] http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html...
[0]http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html
;-)
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/issues. That's what open source is all about, right?
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.
I wonder how he compiles these files into one though ? THis is the main drawback of javascript to me at the moment : having to write everything in one big file.
Also its really helpful for game programmers to learn from.
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.
I feel like I hammered out the most of the critical inaccuracies, and I left out the original bugs because I found it preferable.
However, leaving out the bugs, for example, makes it not accurate. As for the timer, I don't see how you could guarantee the frequency in a javascript VM. It could be similar (by continually testing how inaccurate it is and adjusting the frequency of subsequent iterations), granted, but this is not accuracy (it is emulation). As for memory, etc, many of these older games had "death screens" where a buffer overflows and simple crashes the game, preventing you from continuing past a certain point - that too would be very difficult to accurately model in javascript. The list could go on and on. And this is in no way critical of you, or what you have done - it is simply statement of fact about accuracy!
As an aside, Billy Mitchell (the first person to ever get a perfect pacman score) was one of the stars in the movie The King of Kong.
Again, I think what you have done is AWESOME. But it is not accurate (and likely could not be).
Urghhh... I wish i'd never posted anything now :(