I was thinking of creating a script that plays similar to BattleMail Kung Fu! In the game you challenge a person and choose 6 attacks and blocks from high, medium, low. Afterwards you wait for another person to accept the challenge and do the same. Afterwards you are treated to a nice display of Kung Fu Fighting! Of course i plan on recreating the Kung Fu using text. The mail part is going to be replaced by a web interface. I have a few questions though
1) Would you like to see this happen?
2) Would i have any copyright issues with a game similar in game play?
3) How excited are you about this project?
Sincerely,
Aleeious
BattleMail Like Game
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Jackolantern
- Posts: 10891
- Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:00 pm
Re: BattleMail Like Game
1. I am always excited to see people work on their projects. I also think this is a great choice, because it sounds very doable in just a few weeks or maybe a couple of months. Many people (including myself) often set our sights far too high.
2. No, there is no copyright issue. It was proven in court in the late 80's that gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted nor patented. The only things that copyright cover are specific names, places, etc., and actual source code. For example, you can't make a plumber named Mario. That doesn't mean your game can't star a plumber. Your plumber can even be a side-scrolling game that stomps mushroom enemies. You can't call the world The Mushroom Kingdom, however. It also means you can't copy and paste Javascript from someone else's web game, because their source is copyrighted. But copyright does not protect the gameplay mechanics, or general feel of the game.
3. It sounds cool! I would obviously get more excited about it once we begin to see concrete progress on it, of course
2. No, there is no copyright issue. It was proven in court in the late 80's that gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted nor patented. The only things that copyright cover are specific names, places, etc., and actual source code. For example, you can't make a plumber named Mario. That doesn't mean your game can't star a plumber. Your plumber can even be a side-scrolling game that stomps mushroom enemies. You can't call the world The Mushroom Kingdom, however. It also means you can't copy and paste Javascript from someone else's web game, because their source is copyrighted. But copyright does not protect the gameplay mechanics, or general feel of the game.
3. It sounds cool! I would obviously get more excited about it once we begin to see concrete progress on it, of course
The indelible lord of tl;dr