This came out in the late 80’s on the now defunct ATARI Lynx. and was part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pak for a while. Original name was “Chips Challenge” (Andrews Adventure is my name)
So far as I can tell there have been a few poorly done clones for iPhone, with only one still available (WebCC, which lacks any animation)
This version will work on macOS, iPad, and iPhone (and maybe later on tvOS). Right now the macOS is only on an M1 or above processor
Written 100% in Swift, for iOS16. (will try to lower that required iOS level)
What I would love to find right now is someone with as much free time as I seem to have, but with a more artistic appitude than me. The graphics are touched up versions from the original game, and I’d like to replace them. Each tile is a 32x32 masked PNG and while there are a few 100 of them, many of the animation frames are duplicates (or mirrored images), and many don’t need to be replaced (like how many ways can you draw a wall anyways?)
each tile is actually only 32x32 (the original Lynx game had really bad 16x16). Originally I’d blown them up to 96x96, but found the graphic interpolation of iOS was more than adequate to still create a nice image regardless of size (within reason). So this app just determines the Tile size based on the device resolution, and the OS does the rest. For example on an iPhoneSE the tilesize is 40 , but on an iPad 12.9 it is 97… so for one it maps 32x32 PNG to a 40x40 image or a 97x97 image (other devices have other image sizes)
I was watching a video about the modern remake the other day and the YouTuber made it sound like some kind of drama happened over licensing the name. He made it sound like the guy who owns the name is a jerk about it and won’t license anything. I’d be careful using art from this one.
Yeah there is a long bit of drama there… and it actually seems like the original author has nothing to do with this original game anymore (plus the art you see above is not FROM his version even). The concept has been licessed, sub licensed, sold, bought over 13 times…
but that is why I’m hoping to find someone that can update the artwork
note : the video you linked is over NINE years old even
and it was Bridgestone the didn’t want to license anything for less than $1 million
@DaveS
It is very easy, when you are a copyright holder and someone else infringes that, how are you gonna react?
When “I” do it, it is fine, when someone else does the same, it’s a shame!
Six years ago I saw opportunities in a revival of a game which was originally created in 1984. After all those years, I thought I could do that. I contacted the copyright holder and they said “No”. I respected their decision despite it being painful.
Stay on the right side of the Law, or accept/pay the consequence!
I have already begun the task (original post in this topic) to replace all the artwork with original designs, the “story” has already been changed… not one lick of code infringes on any pre-existing. no file formats are remotely similar… besides that … I will probably lose interest in a week or two anyways
Why should you lose interest if you have already put much effort into it? You found a solution already for the copyright, changed the artwork and wrote your own story.
If you give up, you will never know if your game will become a bestseller. You are much more creative than I was six years ago. I should have made my own invented game, just like you.
I’m retired… need inspiration/incentetive… who knows I might read some article, and go “Hey! thats neat”… and off I go… or I hit a road block …
Hell. I’ve been working on my Swift IDE/Gui builder for like 7 years now… off and on … and this is not the first time I’ve attacked this game either… but each time I come back to a project I know more than I did before
Got a response from one of the clone developers… basically he stated that only the names, artwork and actual code itself could be copyright… So since I have already changed the names, working on the artwork, and I’ve never seen the original code in any form… I will consider my self good to go
That’s a perfect clean room approach then. Glad it worked out!
Even if you’d seen the code, it’s a long-established principle that you can’t copyright algorithms, only specific expressions of an algorithm, so you can only violate that with any certainty by literally lifting the code as-is. The only fly in that ointment is that someone with $ and decent lawyers can make you miserable defending yourself even if it’s unlikely to ultimately succeed.
Oh yes! I had a Lynx and while having a few games for it, I only played this one extensively. Never made it through all levels, though. Some got exceedingly difficult and frustrating when you had to start all over from a beginning of a level each time you did a misstep. And I found the control pad on the Lynx very bad - it often registered a different direction than I pointed to. So I ended up opening the Lynx and adding a 9(?) pin Atari joystick port to it, so that I could use an external more precise joystick with it. That helped a lot with this game.
I gifted both the Lynx and the games to the Oldenburger Computermuseum a few years ago. The Lynx and the game were still working.
Are you trying to reimplement the original levels or are you coming up with your own?
And yes, if one makes a clone of the game idea, it’s difficult to impossible to claim copyright on your work, because the copyright works on the code writing effort, not on the original idea of it. Been through that myself, and friends, too, in the past.
Spent the last few days drawing new graphics (while some may “look” similar, they are all redrawn as 64x64 sprites) and many are animated (which isn’t shown in this static picture). The main actor (upper-left) is a “placeholder”, I have started a new one, but there are a lot of frames to draw
