Hey buddy, just to let you know, when someone slurps your delicious asshole it means they appreciate you and what you're doing in a possibly non-sexual way.
I welcome you and all your assets; stolen or otherwise; to this place and hope you will stay. Most new developers tend to set up camp in a joyous place called 'Prosperland' where we can all follow their work as it is created in a central location. I would send a message to the administrators to get your own plot of land in that camp.
Remember that the great Cleve Blakemore also spent many a year in Prosperland finishing up his masterpiece Grimoire. Why shouldn't you do the same?
I think I speak for everyone here (even those that like to make jokes) that this place is a perfect fit for you.
Hello, I am new to this forum and it seems I don't know how is working and what these rewards are. I am interesting about this "Prosperland". I know about this Grimoire game, they program it for many years.
Here I am not a huge company and I have told about my story. I was a fun of the old beholder and I stayed to learn how to program to develope this game. But when I was published my first screenshots of my game, I had the same problems which I am encountering now. The first online publish was in 2008 , 9 years ago. I didn't have experience and I didn't know about all of these copyright complexities. When I was appeared in the first time I believed that I was able to create the next episode of the "Eye of the Beholder" and people were appeared and gave me advices like the one here but with more polite way. They explain me what Dungeons and Dragons was. I was playing Dungeons and Dragons board games and I have the monstrus manual of the second edition and other rare rpg games, but I didn't know what the "Wizards of the Coast" are , also the game was abandoned and if we assume the developement begun in 1996 which many people didn't have internet. Then I discover that, the "Eye of the Beholder" as a game might me abandoned but there are some game rules which are not abandoned and there is a company behind.
So I learn't about the "Wizards" also I search for westwood and I made all research.
I am a big company I am a programmer and which means I don't have huge capitals and I realized I need lots of money to create the game. After all expenses of purchasing the programming language and other tools here, there were and other expenses to develope a game. I was inexperienced. I begun to program the game engine and I used graphics from Eye of the Beholder 2 (EOB2) . But the EOB2 was nice but my Expectations was more advanced.
The EOB2 was nice but very simple, I would like to create a masterpiece and I have started. Using few graphics from original EOB2 would have not a problem, as the game is EOB4 it should have some graphics from the original.
I wasn't used the original graphics directly. I made lots of changes. I have made and research and with this too. If you make a dramatic changes to a premade graphic loses its original. Is not stolen.
Anyway, I used these graphics to make egnine prototyping. I was interesting for wallset only and even the "Eye of the Beholder IV" have lots of new graphics inside.
So I didn't have money to continue the graphic part, but this wasn't stop me to develope the engine. I have created lots of versions of my engine and I have programmed more than 1 million lines of code until see this.
And you haven't seen the "Dark Lord Beholder" is not the same but is similar and I want to keep the feeling as I already say in preview posts.
So I discovered these so called crowd funding websites. I made a research about what crowd funding is. Initially I was discovered the Kickstarter, but Kickstarter allows only people from USA , Australia and some few Europian countries and not Greece. I dissapointed and I search for other website and I discovered the indiegogo, is similar and large like Kickstarter and I created one campaign but I wasn't launched yet, because I will need to do marketing research and present my game to the public. So I packed up everything I was created including the supposed stollen graphics and I created one Facebook fun page. WIth the purpose to advertise my game with less expenses. The fun page collected 850 likes and followers and you can see it here: facebook.com/darklordbeholder
The links was as eyeofthebeholde in 2008. So many people appeared because I was created one cover of the game manual and I put the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" logo and some pople asked me if I have the rights to use this logo. But I was used this logo with naive mind. I didn't have experience and seeing the logo to many board games, I didn't know that it wasn't allowed to use the logo. Many people got ungry and insulted me and criticized me, but the strange was, never the "Wizards of the Coast" ever complained. People are strange. So I find these "Wizards of the Coast" , I contact them and they told is not allowed to use their logo. So I removed the logo. They didn't have any problem with the name(The Title) of the game, because the title wasn't theirs. But to be sure and don't have much trouble I changed the name and I created my own logos.
I had purchased and domain name with name Eye of the beholder 4 and I left it. Even I had and website and I left it. I have wasted and some money for this "Eye of the Beholder IV". But I didn't want to stop or discontinue my game for a reason of a logo and a title. Titles and logos changes. So I change them and create my own. So not any trouble from "Wizards" even people still have trouble. As I said I don't have money to pay for graphics so, my marketing strategy was to present the game to people, to see if they are interesting and do some roughly marketing research about how many people would be interesting if I was launched an indiegogo crowd funding campaign.
I posted jobs in freelance websites to see how the graphic design costs. One very rough calculation was about $200000. One guy from Petroglyph games told me, I will need at least 1 million dollars.
I asked them to create the "Eye of the Beholder IV" together and they will sell the game as Petroglyph games. They didn't say no and they like the idea very much, but they develop so many games and their graphic desingers are FULL.
So I left alone. I found and Frank Klepaki. He doesn;t have the notes of the original score, but if I will give his some notes he can create the score of the "Eye of the Beholder 2" as a tribute for the good old days and I will put his credit.
The game engine goes very nice. Some "Wizards of the Coast" trouble was solved and Petroglyph games do not have any objection. They say create graphics and finsih your game.
The only problem was the money. I launched one experimental campaign with another site with name fundanything. The problem with indiegogo was if the campaign will not be succesful and the goal fund will not reached I will not able to re-open the campaign but I will need to create a new one as a part too and deduct the amount of money I would raise. But I need to advertise first and experiment with crowd funding in generic.
I had one backer with the Fund anything but the site went to maintenance mode and the campaign was stoped. So the first attempt of the crowd funding was failed. But I need to advertise and present the game to people.
So I changed the facebook page , the title of my game, people also complain about only 2 players in the party. I changed and the engine, I increased the game resolution to fit the interface 3 players and things have much improoved.
I removed the Dungons and Dragons logos, I created my own, I will use my own rules and everything seems to be ok.
The new version of the game "Dark Lord Beholder" the demo is not ready YET, so people still seeing the 'Eye of the Beholder IV" demo. And the problems about the title and graphics continues. But people do not know the whole story but is boring to explain to any new stranger you see and say the same again and again.
People said I am using stolen graphics, they told I am creating a vaporware and other stupid things. I know everything are in the program and is a part of the process.
If I was a huge company and I have huge capitals I couldn't have any problem now.
Also I don't want to abandon my masterpiece.
Thank you