Topic: 2007/04: Super Kid Icarus (Super NES) - JonLeung

[JonLeung]

Oh.  If you had voted that you "weren't fooled and didn't like it", I had taken that to mean that you didn't like the maps themselves, rather than that you might not have liked the game had it existed.



Maybe I should have a poll as to which joke was best.  I liked this one the most, but I would wager that other people liked Link's Awakening Advance the most.

[JonLeung]

Well, here we go.  Time to explain the processes...



This is the mock-up image of a possible "Kid Icarus DS" that started this idea:



It's from KENNETHFEJER.COM, where I stumbled upon more than once, lastly when I was looking for sprite artists to create the bosses for our "other" project.



This is Pit, and Pit "superfied":



A keen eye might note that the colours of the "Super Pit" are the same as those used in the Pit from Kenneth Fejer's "Kid Icarus DS".  Though I never did end up using Pit in this...



This is how Medusa looked like on March 30, 2007...I simply looked up "Medusa sprite" on Google and got a screenshot of Medusa from one of the PS2 Castlevania games:



Not that it matters much, but the colours on Medusa didn't push the image over 256 colours.  But I decided that it didn't look right (too many unique "tiles", etc.) that I had to do something else.  I considered pasting Snake Man stage tiles (from the Genesis version of Mega Man III in Mega Man: The Wily Wars) overtop of that image, but that didn't work at all.  On the last day, I settled on giving the NES Medusa a "makeover" which was really just an enhanced palette.  The eye was originally Vitreous from The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, but that was changed to look more like the original eye.  However, the colour of the pupil is the same as that of Vitreous.



This is Medusa, and Medusa "superfied":





This is how the title came to be:

+ =

And the the colours were tweaked a little more and skewed to give us the final title:



The title was the second-last thing I worked on (the last being Medusa), so I didn't have much time to try to create something from scratch.



And finally, there were a number of phases for each map:



1. Bergles's or Rick Bruns's original map

Though I had hoped to have some time to make all-new stages, time constraints meant I could only make a remake.  I started with the maps of Kid Icarus that are already available.



2. The corrected Bergles map or the enemy-purged Rick Bruns map

Bergles's maps aren't all properly aligned, and there were other anomalies.  Rick Bruns's maps were more accurate, but he left the enemies on them.  Maps from both of them were used, and Revned's Tile Slicer/Splicer was really instrumental in correcting all of the tiles.



3. The tile-replaced map

The trickiest part of this project was finding the right tiles.  I used graphics from any console game, so long as it was technically superior to the NES.  This meant many Super NES and GBA tiles, but also Genesis and Neo-Geo tiles.  What I ended up with here was something that looked more like a Super NES game (but with a bright pink background).



4. The manually fixed/tweaked map

There were some fixes that had to be done; in many, you'll see that corners were rounded.  I also found some oddities that I missed in the previous steps, and these were cleaned up, too.  World 2 seemed to be cursed, I kept going back there to fix things.



5. The complete "Super Kid Icarus" map, with background

I was down to the final week by the time I was selecting backgrounds.  I kept thinking that we needed more Super NES and Genesis games, particularly platformers, mapped out.



6. The final map, with header, footer, and border

Using a similar format as our Super Mario Bros. 3 maps, there are coloured borders per world, a single-pixel wide black border around the map, and a header and a footer.  That's pretty much it.



And now Kid Icarus is the most-mapped series here on VGMaps.com...150% of its series (3 out of 2 games) has been mapped!  Kind of...  >_>

[marioman]

What games were the backgrounds from?

[ReyVGM]

God damn... those Kid Icarus DS mockups look REALLY nice.

[JonLeung]

Hmmm...

Looks like I'm going to have to have a talk with someone about this:
Super Kid Icarus by Flip Industries

Looks an awful lot like mine...

EDIT: Yup, someone just got an angry letter.  Why don't fan-game makers realize the joy in creating a game is in the actual creation of the game?  Ripping off someone else's work - most especially without permission - defeats the purpose of that.

Irony?  At least I mentioned Nintendo, not like Flip Industries's lack of mention of VGMaps.com.

Granted, the level design is the same as the original game - it's just a tile replacement - and the splicing was handled nicely by Revned's Slicer/Splicer (see, I give credit where it's due) - but there was still effort in making the custom sprites.  It wouldn't've hurt them to mention me or VGMaps.com in the first place, and now we have a big mess.

[Trop]

This is why newgrounds has all kinds of disclaimers.

[JonLeung]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, Trop?

Anyway, no response yet from Flip Industries.  I'm really wondering what they could say.

I just can't get over how they can go ahead and make a game out of those maps, with only a couple tiles changed, and not have ever had it cross their minds to have asked me about it or mentioned VGMaps.  Seriously?

Of all the tiles anyone could have chosen to replace the original NES tiles, the odds of them choosing the same ones as me, well, it's just not realistic to think it was a coincidence.  They lifted mine, pure and simple.  Maybe not maliciously, but again, my point stands, couldn't they have said something?

I haven't edited the first post to fix the thumbnail image in the original post, because even though editing shouldn't change the post date, I don't want anyone to think I edited the contents of it until this all gets cleared up - if it ever does.

On the face of it, most people won't care.  I just hold out hope that there's someone that can say, "hey, good job, too bad someone else couldn't respect your work enough, but whatever, you did good" or for Flip to say "hey, sorry, we messed up, maybe we can work something out".

What do I get instead?  People accusing me of seeking attention and a "troll" when they clearly haven't acknowledged my claims.  I shouldn't care what people like that think, but come on, that's far from necessary.

EDIT: So when I post a comment on Flip Industries's comments page, it gets deleted.  Surprise, surprise.  Real mature...

[Trop]

I meant newgrounds has statements about giving credit when using other peoples work in your work.  They don't discourage it, they just kind of lay out etiquette guidelines before hand.  You want us all to spam the hell out of Flip?

Speaking of stealing, the Castlevania Crypt just up and lifted the Castlevania 4 maps I made from here.  It irked me at first but then I noticed they didn't take the N64 Castlevania models I made since they're apparently too snooty to list the N64 Castlevania games at all.  I figure they're holding their noses are in the air because they've got sticks so far up their asses.

[JonLeung]

Speaking of stealing, the Castlevania Crypt just up and lifted the Castlevania 4 maps I made from here.  It irked me at first but then I noticed they didn't take the N64 Castlevania models I made since they're apparently too snooty to list the N64 Castlevania games at all.  I figure they're holding their noses are in the air because they've got sticks so far up their asses.

Unless Revned gave them permission, I noticed they took his Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night maps too.  I guess there's no shortage of emails to write...

I meant newgrounds has statements about giving credit when using other peoples work in your work.  They don't discourage it, they just kind of lay out etiquette guidelines before hand.  You want us all to spam the hell out of Flip?

Well, no, I can't really ask you to "spam the hell out of Flip".  I'm glad if you guys want to defend me, but that sounds malicious the way that's worded.  You can certainly say your take on things to him or wherever their Super Kid Icarus game is mentioned if you want, but that would be on your own initiative.

I do really wish they would respond to my emails, though.  Their silence is pretty damning in itself.  Especially since it's now been a couple days.

I think that this is taking up too much of my time, and in the end I'm as nameless as Flip Industries is, to the average person on the Internet.  It's probably too late to get anything out of it because everyone who's seen the game has already played it and probably moved on.  What I will probably do, as closure, is to rewrite the email I sent to Joystiq as a permanent post or page here on VGMaps.com, but supplement it better with screenshots and links.  What I wrote to Joystiq (who unfortunately still couldn't write against Flip Industries' reputation) was proof of where these maps came from, including:

1. this very thread, confirming the existence of my maps since 2007, and how its age and availability precede Flip Industries's game
2. how the maps are made by tile replacement from other games, which is mathematically improbable that Flip Industries could do the same
3. how I have the work files, further proving #2.

I wouldn't share all my work files, of course, but I could much better develop #3 by saying that I can easily tell you which game each tile came from, something I doubt Flip Industries could do.  Namely, because they didn't choose the tiles themselves, they just took mine, pure and simple.  Of course, I'm not going to spill all the beans at once, but to a trusted news site, I'm sure I could answer a good amount of questions about the tiles, and Flip could be posed the same ones at the same time and inevitably fail.  Hopefully I can improve on #1 (as if it needs more) with web caches that I hope date that far back.

Once I have that all written up, then I could have my peace, and if anyone ever says "hey, check out Super Kid Icarus by Flip Industries", I could just send them one link and be done with it.  Again, most people ultimately don't care, but as long as I have my say, I'll be happy.

It would just be easiest on everyone if Flip could just respond to my email and we could just work something out, but they've decided to be silent about it.  Which makes it easy for me, I guess, as I certainly have lots to say that they can't refute or counter, I just have to organize it now.

[JonLeung]

UPDATE: I was just about done reorganizing my various proofs of the origin of "Super Kid Icarus", when I finally got a response from them.

Sounds like there may be a chance to work something out, in a hopefully civil manner.

You will likely hear about it somewhat soon.

[Revned]

Unless Revned gave them permission, I noticed they took his Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night maps too.  I guess there's no shortage of emails to write...

I honestly don't care. It's not like it belongs to me, and I mapped it mostly for myself.

[JonLeung]

Yeah, I guess in that case, that's not so bad.  It's not like they've edited it or (mis)used it for some other purpose.

I just wonder what happened to, you know, asking first.  The world would be a happier place if everyone at least considered what everyone else thought.

[JonLeung]

Unfortunately, I'm not so sure things can get worked out when Flip Industries doesn't wish to reply again, even when I'm trying to be reasonable and giving them a chance to negotiate finer details.  Things may get ugly real fast here about all this.

[TerraEsperZ]

Let's hope the board doesn't start being invaded in some sort of retaliation. People can be such babies when they get caught red-handed.

[JonLeung]

Tell me about it.

A couple of my posts on random sites about this have been followed up by people accusing me of being a "troll" and an "attention-seeker".  And without any justification.  Now I don't want to be presumptuous that these posters are directly related to Flip Industries, but it seems odd to me - extremely odd - that people who say they don't care what I have to say are so vehemently opposed to what I said.  That's a contradiction right there.  And given the silent treatment Flip Industries is currently giving me, the (im)maturity level is consistent with those posters, in any case.  I hate to tell people to "grow up", but really.

When Flip Industries did contact me back the one time they did, they sounded somewhat reasonable back then.  They said they wanted to talk.  They said they weren't doing anything out of malice.  They said they wanted to know what I wanted.  But then after I told them I wanted VGMaps.com to have a mention, they didn't respond after several days.  I had made it clear that if they wanted to discuss and negotiate, we could do that, but they're not saying a thing.  I sent a couple more emails since then, STILL giving them the benefit of the doubt.  (Perhaps Flip Industries is more than one person and the person in charge of the graphics stole mine without anyone else on the team knowing?)  I'm all like, "look, we can do this amicably, just put my name on there, I won't get in your way if you continue to promote it."

Guess what?  I'm only human, so I only have a limited amount of patience.  They could have said, "look, we're looking into it", but they didn't even do that, so they're not stalling, they're blatantly ignoring me.

Sorry, Flip Industries.  You had your chance.  Actually, chances, plural.

Do I really want my name associated with these people?  They're liars, they've stolen my effort and time, and they can't be bothered to send a reply.  I gave them multiple chances, and the benefit of the doubt, and they still want to be jerks about it.  No - pretty sure I don't need my name mixed with them.

As I said to them, I'm not out to specifically damage their brand (me being too nice again, maybe), but if I make further effort to say the truth, I can't guarantee what that would do to Flip Industries' name.  Some sites may have trouble publishing anything against peoples' reputation, but I have no qualms about speaking up for myself when I know that I'm in the right.

So that this doesn't turn into a downward spiral, I'll have to be sure of what I want to say and lay it all out as plainly as I can.  Then I'll have my peace.  Yes, it could soon going to reach the point where I've spent more time fighting them than it took to make the maps of the game, but it's a matter of principle - people shouldn't disrespect others' work.  And if I can make it harder for people to do that without consequences, then I feel I'm making the world a little better, even if it's an iota of difference.