Lockjaw - How come the Tetris Company doesn't go after it?

Simple question: The Tetris Company is known for strongly defending the Tetris copyright. How come Lockjaw is able to get by without any problem?

 

LJ is too insignificant for TTC. Also tepples doesn't make any money with it.

 

I figured it was because it's not actively developed any more.

 

Pretty much this, IMO. There are far more popular unofficial Tetris games out there. Lockjaw is more a Tetris tool than a game which is ever going to get mainstream popularity.

 

And what about Heboris?

 

Heboris is no longer actively developed either. In a way, you could look at both of them as having already been crushed by TTC.

I think your original question is more pertinent to NullpoMino.

 

My real question is this: I have a high quality, extremely configurable falling blocks game I would like to release to the community for free. What other actively developed falling blocks games are there out there, and how did they avoid the ire of TTC?

 

Nullpomino has a horrifically confusing and unintuitive interface, and won't ever be mainstream popular in it's current state because Tetris n00bs won't be able to figure out wtf they're doing without poring over setup guides and readme files. Therefore it isn't a threat to the likes of Tetris Friends because their main market there is playability and being friendly to casual gamers.

Blockbox is a decent alternative though it is still a bit buggy and prone to random aspects of it breaking. It got a C&D notice from TTC a year or so ago, and I have no idea what has happened with that since.

 

So pretty much my choice is make the game unplayable for the mass audience or get the bone from TTC?

 

is this hypothetical

 

solution re: this then. make the game easy to use but obscure it w/ one of those weird wheel things you had to use for old d&d games and shit

 

lol, i am amazed how well TTC FUD is working.

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i hope you are not serious.

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but if you really have good game and afraid to release it, just give it to me and I will release.

 

People rarely actually get the bone from TTC. Most fan-games seem to get ceast & desist stuff before any proper lawsuits. Just release, get the C&D if it gains any popularity, and then stop publicly developing and releasing it.

 

I have been hosting TGM clones for years now and they have yet to send me any C&D.

If it's free and you're not using any copyrighted assets (like graphics and music) then I say you have little to worry about...

 

No. I have been working on it for the past 6 years on and off as a personal hobby. It has undergone about 3 different fundamental overhauls and is now in a very good place. I have never been in a rush to release it, but I think it's at a place where it's time to release a beta. I've done a feature freeze (which I'm trying really hard to abide by) and going back and polishing off everything. If I continue to work at this pace, very soon I'm going to have a highly polished single player falling blocks game that I think the community would really enjoy.

It is highly configurable, renders in OpenGL with vector graphics (so the screen size can be changed without distortions), has a clean and easy to use interface, and is designed with eventual multiplayer in mind. It is fully skinable.

Right now it can be configured to near-perfectly emulate the gameplay of many other popular falling blocks games out there. As an experiment into the capabilities of my engine, I have successfully emulated TGM1 perfectly, and emulated TGM2 nearly perfectly. The scoring algorithms for TGM2 aren't exactly right, but are very close. Before the version I mentioned above is released I believe TGM2 will also be fully emulatable.

It's configurations are in human-friendly XML. Nearly everything about the game is configurable, and it is astoundingly easy for power-users to design their own level systems for training or for sharing with each other for challenge.

 

I'll post up a video of the gameplay in a few days. I have really enjoyed working on the project and used the resources from this site extensively in designing it. I would really like to give it to everyone here, but not at the risk of personal liability.

 

http://www.tetrisconcept.net/wiki/TGM2

You've seen this, right?

 

Yea. My game can do all of that except for the M-Roll conditions; the M-Roll appears every time. I just have one more feature to implement which will allow the M-Roll to appear conditionally.

I also don't yet have double-sized mode implemented. I have invisible and monochrome, but double size takes a little bit more work to do.

 

I've also implemented a few new moves (that can be disabled by the level system):

Hard-shifts: Like a firm/hard drop, except to the left or right.
Flips: Rotate 180* immediately.

 

You already have someone highly interested in your project .