Cipher Game Engine changes hands

#21 Here's my question.

Ok, maybe this guy ripped off a lot of look-and-feel stuff from the GG site, and he's trying to compete directly with them.

Still.

Look over the licensing information -- it looks pretty open-and-shut, 'buy the license and you get this graphics engine'. I doubt that it's quite as general-purpose as Torque, and I can't imagine that it would have anywhere near the incredible netcode quality -- but for simpler games, I see this engine as something like the Reaction engine. Is this really a bad thing?

The engine *can* produce some pretty wicked graphics. For $100, it's a great deal. I own Torque and I still might buy this, just because. Well, I would if I had a snowball's chance in hell of seriously going into game design any time soon.

I'm not worried. This is excellent -- another premium engine for $100, what's not to love? Now, if this guy was/is seriously targetting GG's distribution model, or the way it sells games, I'd say fine -- bring out the legal sharks, such as you can afford, and have them chomp his bits and peices into kibble and bits, because I think he would be a serious threat to the overall good of independent games in general. The market cannot support two GG's; not to be overly cynical, but still isn't exactly a given that it can support *one* GG.

So, ok -- this guy's website pisses me off, too. It pisses me off that he's obviously targetting GG's audience and market share. But the engine looks seksay as dammit, and the good news is that it wasn't made by him, so that ups my confidence in the quality of the product.

Honestly, people that are serious about game design probably won't mind spending $200 and having BOTH engines at their disposal. It's a steal either way.

#22 http://www.synapticsoup.com/corp-people.htm

seems rik heywood was part of synaptic soup.

-Justorama

#23

Quote:Now, if this guy was/is seriously targetting GG's distribution model, or the way it sells games, I'd say fine -- bring out the legal sharks

That's probably one aspect you can't stop anyone doing - Unless you have patents on something aka ebay.

Interesting point you make wrt to the size of the market. I certainly wouldn't start a game on certain genres given what I've seen in development.

I must admit 2 engines doesn't sound that bad. Besides, I'm reluctant to pour too much scorn on the guy - the ideas I have for most things, games included, owe more than a lot to stuff that's already been done. I guess there's a line you cross, but...

#24 personal feelings and the merits of the engine aside (it is rather decent), if you do not defend business assets you lose the right to do so later.

what I don't understand is that it takes longer for someone to copy someone elses work than do it yourself, unless you are a child or a fool, that's the usual rule. Why use the same fonts in the ads? in the website? Does GG use a common open source framework? (zope?) Rik is a member of the industry, having worked for several heavyweights, I would assume he attends shows, knows how to partner, I would think that he understands sales and marketing at least from an observational standpoint, and would therefore understand that Amazon's success (for example) is not because of the way the website looks, I would also assume he knows the indie dev industry is a rough trade, it's really odd to think that the best he could come up with is a blantant ripoff.

Nonetheless the facts speak for themselves.

Perhaps he is banking on the fact that some devs are out to make a game instead of being a part of a static community, and doesn't mind pissing off the 'camps'? He has to know this would get back to GG.

or he may be taking a play from the big boys and infringing, looking for a buyout.

I don't even understand how synaptic soup went under, why do companies have lethal burn rates before they sell anything? How is one senior partner different than 3?

and what's with the business model anyway?, as Jeff Tunnel has pointed out, GG does not depend on it's SDK sales, but rather it's games. Is Rik sitting in a house somewhere making a grab for mortgage payments in a last ditch effort to make money out of cipher?

I don't see anything here that really makes sense, the whole thing is really odd to me.

need coffee.

-brad

#25

Quote:Is this guy an SDK owner? IF we was stupid enough to blatently rip of GG's site like that I'd bet money he'd take code from Torque and put it in his engine.

Since he is a member here, I also had the same thought.

I would never purchase that engine now. I could spend years building a game with it, only to find out that I have become hit with a copyright suit after release.

If he can rip off a website and stupidly advertise with it, who knows what else he might be stupid enough to do.

-Jeff

#26 How long has this engine been out? Plus this guy is also doing a Dev Snapshots like on GG

#27 Would be funny if he was selling Cipher and using Torque. :)

-Jeff

#28 I bet he just uses torque for the code, plus his profile was interesting:

On GarageGames...
Forums: Rik Heywood has created 0 threads and made 0 posts on the forums.
Resources: Rik Heywood has submitted 0 resources
posted 0 resource comments
And has recommended 0 resources
Marketplace: Rik Heywood is associated with 0 companies
Is involved with 0 projects
And has posted 0 Help Wanted Ads

sorta not being involved in anything even thoughe he been a member since May. But he just visited the site this morning: Jun 04, 2003 at 10:39 PDT . Hes hiding his e-mail adress and he currently has no skill written down, tale about one man of mysterory =) .

#29 http://www.rik.org/articles/emailrik.html

His email

#30 good searching

#31 totally random link

I started typing jibberish and this is what popped out...

#32 it was already dicoverd by Mr. Turner.

#33 I wonder if his site will have full body text searching?

:)

#34 wow two posts up, I must be blind :)

#35

Quote:
Quote:

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Is this guy an SDK owner? IF we was stupid enough to blatently rip of GG's site like that I'd bet money he'd take code from Torque and put it in his engine.

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Since he is a member here, I also had the same thought.

I would never purchase that engine now. I could spend years building a game with it, only to find out that I have become hit with a copyright suit after release.

Quote:
I bet he just uses torque for the code

What stupid assumptions. Ok, the guy copied the GG site. But that's about all you can say he did wrong! I'm not saying copying the site isn't a bad thing...still no reason to accuse him his engine is a ripp-off too. It isn't. I wanted to buy this engine quit some time ago, but it was too expensive back then. It was at a time when I only had Torque for 3-5 months I think (and if you check you'll see I'm one of the first around here to have bought the engine). At that time the engine was already better then Torque graphics-wise. Any accusations about copying engine code is stupid.

Anyway, the guy needs to change his website. He defenetly needs to. Other then that, we should all be happy. This engine beats Torque in many (mostly graphics) ways, but Torque beats back with solid networking code and a lot more (not to mention the publishing deal)

Torque is not a religion... its ok to try other engines and see whats best to suit your needs (I'm saying this becuase some are getting really fanatic about this)

#36 It's possible for a gifted programmer to make a (really) bad decision on site design. I would be surprised if the site doesn't change a bit. Well, if this is a serious undertaking that is.

I would be interested in an informed review of the engine... has anyone actually bought it? There are no links to demos at the moment... and no header files/API docs for viewing either.

-J

#37 Honestly I think many people here are going overboard.

If you look at the HTML source of both sites, they are quite different, and in ways beyond simple search and replace. I'd say it is fairly unlikely he took GG's HTML source at all.

Yes, the design is similar, but I've seen more than a few sites that used a layout similar to this before GarageGames. As one example, take a look at www.flipcode.com... If you discount the black/grey color scheme, you'll notice the layout is quite similar to GG and cipherengine's, even including the developer snapshot screen in virtually the same place.

Flipcode has been around a lot longer than GG.com and the layout hasn't changed since I can remember... If anyone can make a good strong argument of how exactly cipherengine.com is more a ripoff of garagegames.com than garagegames.com is of flipcode.com, I'd love to hear it.

Note, of course, I'm not accusing garagegames.com of 'ripping off' flipcode here, I'm just pointing out that the are a number of established site layouts for these types of sites and just because one site looks superficially similar to another doesn't mean any direct ripping-off occured.

#38 George,

I think the cherry on top was that banner... which has since been removed on the site, and the file on the web server has been changed too (see above)...

The engine looks very good from the outside looking in.. and Rik is an articulate and experienced developer. Perhaps he was just in too much a hurry with the site, I really don't know.

-J

#39 Note: In the above I'm talking specifically about the site layout and such. Obviously there are some ways in which cipherengine.com was directly influenced by garagegames.com, such as the $100 license, but so what? It is fairly common for a newcomer in a market segment to price at a level similar to the competition -- $100 is just about the perfect price for such an indie engine. Would anyone argue that garagegames.com should be the only business that can license an engine for $100 because they did it first? Seems silly to me.

Personally, I think some healthy competition in the indie engine space could be a good thing. Perhaps it will get all parties to do things that are too often currently neglected, like create good, useful exporters for more than just Max (not that I'm blaming anyone specifically here, this seems to be almost a universal flaw for all engine developers).

Anyway, just for some background of where I'm coming from, I'm a torque and reaction engine licensee (so I'm not anti-GG), but I'll probably license cipherengine to have a look as well, it certainly looks to have some neat stuff.

#40 Joshua,

Granted, he obviously did take a certain amount of, um, inspiration from GG.com, but IMO it doesn't come close to being a complete ripoff. The talk of sending lawyers after them (granted this wasn't anyone from gg.com who has said such a thing) just because they are using the same business model as garagegames.com sends shivers down my spine.

As you may have guessed, I'm quite opposed to business process patents. With all due respect for what GG.com has built here, taking game engine licensing (which has been around a long time) and mixing it with electronic distribution (which has been around a long time) isn't,(IMO) quite novel enough that they deserve an unlimited monopoly in the market.