I've seen some of the Solitaire Club topics and I've noticed that alot of people would like to use sprites (rip) from existing games, and on the top of that, find others who can help them code.
I agree that finding others to help you code when you're not familiar to most people, and haven't even started coding yet, is kinda pathetic. But I just don't think the idea of 'ripping' sprites from other games should be so disliked. I've been using Clickteam products since Klik&Play and today I use MMF2, and I still suck extremely hard at spriting anything. If you put good use to ripped sprites, they can make very successful games, but the only reason that you don't see too many successful games with ripped sprites is probably because the makers were newbies who just ripped something to do it all faster. I feel like the only person who's actually ripping but still putting tons of effort into my game.
I just want to hear everyone's opinions, and at the same time introduce myself. Im the administrator from http://www.martin2k.co.uk/forums.. Nice to meet you
I dont like ripped sprites, i can understand what your saying but its very hard to get passed the idea that what you can actually see on screen is the work of somone else, and not part of the dev team. I imagine that ripped sprites put to extremly good use would be accepted but it would have to be really really good for people to drop the barrier and allow themselves to overcome them.
i personnaly suck at coding and always appreciate help and examples, but what i and most bad coders do is offer credit to those that have helped along the way, most sprite rippers just grab and this is a large part of the problem. Another major factor of peoples dislike is the reuse of the same sprites over and over, ie. Sonic, Mario, zelda and anything anime.
If you really suck at spriting, why not try editing sprites? people will often realise but accept the fact that you have tried. When i first started spriting i would use a rip, study the pixel art and then edit as i saw fit, this inturn gave me the skills to create my own sprites.
It seems that most games with ripped sprites are from people who are new to the community that don't yet know how to put together a decent game, though there are a couple of very good games that have used ripped sprites. They do have an unfortunate image, but it's true that having ripped graphics doesn't necessarily mean a game is terrible.
Ripping sprites is all well and good so long as you put the effort to make them look exactly like they did in their original game, otherwise it looks weird. Also it's a bad idea to mix or resize any ripped graphics.
If you're good enough or using simple enough graphics you can edit or add your own to the ripped graphics to make the game a little like your own. Like most new sonic fangames do nowadays.
Asking for help isn't pathetic, it's how you learn. Well... so long as you actually try to understand what people are doing for you. Most people will direct you towards tutorials anyway so it's easy to look at the events to help.
Not all clickers have a coding background so it's not always already worked out in their heads to be converted to event form.
A good percent of clickers choose TGF or MMF because they know nothing of programming and would prefer to avoid it altogther.
I can't understand why people make fan games. Surely the game would be just as good (if not better) with original characters in rather than other folks' ones.
The whole thrill of game making for me is to make something original, so fan-games would literally be no fun to make.
Fan games do serve their purpose. For example, If I wanted to make a Mario game, I'd probably use ripped GFX; simply because the original idea was for a Mario game.
Now, If I made a generic platform game, then used Mario sprites cause they were easily avaliable; it wouldn't be the same thing.
In that context, I think it's alright. The problem is that newb typically go the second way, and ruin good fan games for everyone by flooding the market with complete crap ones. (Mario Blue Twilight for example is a VERY fun game, it's obvious the author of it went for the first approach explained here).
Boothman, how does something original with ripped sprites sound? Just wondering because I've googled the net for Zelda Online games and I have only found one crappy abandoned side with someone attempting to make on in VB (Visual Basic). Zelda Online is thereby original, while the sprites are from the original Zelda. It does sound like a fangame, so I do call it a fangame, but it sounds truly original to me?
It was free for a long time, then they decided to go pay after it being around for 3 years. After numerous account wipes, 90% of the players walked away, and the game never recovered.
That's a shame to hear. The only kind of economical benefit I would find to my liking would probably be adding an ad to my webpage, like Google Ads, as it makes you easier to find on Google aswell. I also hear that donations can be rather generous.
I'm done with my project today. Also my girlfriend convinced me that I should find someone to help me sprite instead of using Zelda sprites, so I will give this place a try to search for spriters (and possibly a coder to be partners with, it's rather lonely to code by yourself), and hope it went better than last time.
Lol.. Nah, I can't afford taking that chance. A sprite artist could be poor and not willing to co-operate, and there's always the possibility of that the project will be put down no matter how good it feels and when you think about how the whole engine will work, and I think other's would agree with me.
Yeah.. Thing is.. I don't know many MMF/TGF people who know what they're doing. I mean hell, I'm managing a whole MMF/TGF (and VB) forum with a decent amount of hits, but we're all a bunch of inexperienced people and have been since 2002 (the moment I got there).
It would be awesome to get to know a spriter who's really good at spriting.. I only know one decent spriter but he's been off the business due to school and our timezones suck coz I'm 6 hours ahead of him (evening for me = school for him)
I don't mind 'em if they're in a good game, and if they are resized, they are resized so that the pixels stay even. Like enlarging it by 145% looks awful. 200% is alright, even 1600% is ok. Make sure it's a multiple of 100.
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