GP2X Question: Using Sprites Ripped From Other Sources

[iatneH]

About 2 weeks ago I started working on my first game for GP2X. I'm still quite far from done, but at the moment since I suck horribly at pixel art, I am using sprites and backgrounds from a few commercial arcade games. To be entirely technical, this was done without permission from the original owners, even though I downloaded the sprites from another webpage (again have not yet given credit, but I doubt the webmaster received permission from that company anyway), and the backgrounds were taken from the company's own website.

So my question is, prior to releasing the game, will I need to replace the copyrighted graphics with original works? Or will it be enough leave them in but add a visible credit to the original copyright owner?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Dzz]

About 2 weeks ago I started working on my first game for GP2X. I'm still quite far from done, but at the moment since I suck horribly at pixel art, I am using sprites and backgrounds from a few commercial arcade games. To be entirely technical, this was done without permission from the original owners, even though I downloaded the sprites from another webpage (again have not yet given credit, but I doubt the webmaster received permission from that company anyway), and the backgrounds were taken from the company's own website.

So my question is, prior to releasing the game, will I need to replace the copyrighted graphics with original works? Or will it be enough leave them in but add a visible credit to the original copyright owner?

Thanks in advance!

The copyright owner owns the copyright (the right to copy / distribute). That means you can't use them unless you have their permission, either explicitly given or implied by some sort of published license agreement. It doesn't matter where you got them.

As we all know, people often ignore intellectual property protections if they are inconvenienced by them, and the morality of doing that is an individual decision each of us makes. I would say that the odds of you getting severly punished for it are pretty low, but you might take some heat from people who support the right of creators/owners of code/art/music to decide how their creations are used.

If your use is something like one icon used for example as a parody, it might fall under something often called "fair use". But if you're just using a bunch of art because you can't be bothered to make your own, that is not allowed legally. As I said above, it's pretty unlikely you'd go to jail for it though!

 

[synkro]

no

 

[iatneH]

Damn.

Well, thanks for the replies! Good thing I asked. But this means the game will look totally crappy now Plus I'm going to have to spend a lot of extra time redoing graphics. Especially explosions and backgrounds which will look like utter shit

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

Why not ask if someone on this board could help you out ? There must be someone here who has the talent. There is a piece of software that generates explosions for use in games here

 

[iatneH]

Wow, thanks for the link to the free explosion generator, that takes care of a big chunk already

I'll see how my own work turns out, and for the moment I'd rather not ask someone to make art for me since my code is really messy and I probably won't be able incorporate new stuff into it easily
The code is ugly and not very scalable either... I'll be laughed at for sure when I am done and I can release the game and code...

 

[Epicenter]

Wow, thanks for the link to the free explosion generator, that takes care of a big chunk already

I'll see how my own work turns out, and for the moment I'd rather not ask someone to make art for me since my code is really messy and I probably won't be able incorporate new stuff into it easily
The code is ugly and not very scalable either... I'll be laughed at for sure when I am done and I can release the game and code...

What's going on that's so complicated you can't use different graphics? You added those, didn't you?

 

[iatneH]

Yeah I did, but I wasn't forward thinking enough to make global defines for frame width and height for every sprite, so if the final sprites end up being a different size then I have to go through and check each value individually.
I DID do it for the explosions though (at least one of them) so I was able to incorporate a new one from that free site in just a few minutes

Ah well... I'll just keep going and see what I can change. Thanks for all your help!

 

[Epicenter]

Yeah I did, but I wasn't forward thinking enough to make global defines for frame width and height for every sprite, so if the final sprites end up being a different size then I have to go through and check each value individually.
I DID do it for the explosions though (at least one of them) so I was able to incorporate a new one from that free site in just a few minutes

Ah well... I'll just keep going and see what I can change. Thanks for all your help!

If you are using SDL you can just drop new graphics files in the place of the old ones regardless of size. They'll show up their full size. It's a bad practice as it will probably screw with any sort of surface-based collisions and well, it's just not a good idea for any sort of organized programming. If the game is so closed-ended right now, though, I'd just go back to the drawing board for a lot of it.

 

[hitbyambulance]

just as a side note... i don't really have any desire to play the stock/default 'Beats of Rage' because it uses KoF sprite-rips... i have to use other, original art in order to play it.