Frictional Games Forum

I'm terribly sorry, but I've got some bad news.
I'm stopping my work on Alien Within.
However, there are some things that must be clarified:
The main reason for me cancelling this project is not the legal problem with Fox copyrights, at least, not the main one. Actually, the thing that ultimately forced me to make this decision was all the fuss about the originality (with this I mean the genuineness) of it all. Let me explain:

I first started working on this four years ago, while I was at college. I wrote a fanfic story based on the alien world, since I am a big fan of the movies (or at least I used to be, as I have started to hate it since all of this).
A year ago or so, I wanted to make something cool to put on a friend's website, and I thought that creating a fangame with this story that I had would rock; so I put together a 90 mb demo on two weeks. The demo used prerendered 3d videos and stills, lasted 15 minutes, and used the RPG maker engine, pushing its capabilities to make some short of myst style game. Even if it was a bit rushed, the thing looked pretty good, specially for a two weeks deadline. Some people where impressed by it.
Most people, however, said that the game had no merit at all since I was basing it on alien, some even called it a "bad joke".
I didn't give in, thou, so I started looking for a better engine and polishing the story. I found adventure maker, that was perfect for my idea (a myst style game), so I started re-making all of my work. I worked pretty hard on improving the 3d sequencies, and made several attemps on modelling Aiko's head until I got satisfactory results.
Again, some people were very impressed but most people acused me of plagiarism.
And then, penumbra came along. I was quite excited to find an engine that could make my original idea on the project come true, and again, I worked hard on it, I modelled all of the charaters' heads, I started creating bump maps... However, this time things turned ludicrous and, for each positive opinion, there would be twenty stating that it would be foxed and that it wasn't my idea.
I don't mean just this forum, even some people really close to me argued quite strongly about it, demanding me to stop.

Many people said to me almost the very same thing that Little Viking did:

Ok, Alien monster is not mine, but hell! The story and characters in Alien Within were mine! I created these characters and wrote what would happen to them, and apart from the alien itself, I didn't copy a damm fragment from the plot of any of the movies! (I wonder how could Little Viking be so sure that my story was "a reworking of another one", since I didn't give a single plot detail).
It is quite funny thou, since almost every character is modelled after some friend of mine. Sam Smith preserved his name into his character, even my brother and I are there too! I didn't know my face was a property of Fox enterntainment...!
However, since I was starting to get upset with all of the "you are copying alien" thing, I changed the script, substituding the xenomorph with my own creature, and calling it "Monster Within". Showed it to some people that did not know the previous work, and they said that it was a copy of alien; when I asked why, they said that beacause both Monster Within and Alien where "about a monster in outer space".

And that's it, I got tired of it already, so I'm using my work on Alien Within (character models, mainly) in my own genuine project. I've been working on this for a while, also, but set it aside to work on Alien Within until today.
The story is my own registered creation and was awarded at a narration contest, and I'm turning it into a short CG movie.
I posted some pics on page #4 of this thread, look for the post that is identical to this one.
The images are old (2 years old to be precise), and I'm remodelling all of the work shown in them. I'm probably not showing anything else until it's finished, but I hope you like them, thou.

One last word to all of the people who have supported me in this forum while I was working on Alien Within. Thank you. Thanks. I really appreciate what you have done. I hope I can make it up for you with my new work.


OLD POST:

Hi there!
I've been working on this project since early beggining of 2005, but I didn't find the right tools to achieve the kind of game that I wanted to create; but now, penumbra goes modable this Wednesday! And since it plays a lot like the idea I had, I'd like to create my game under its engine and tools.

There are only a couple of things that will keep me away from finally making it, but I hope they will be implemented on later stages of development:

-The posibility of modding enemies (since it has to be aliens)
-The posibility to play video sequencies between rooms or levels (Avi, mpeg... My game relies heavily on FMV storytelling)

So I ask the penumbra team: could those two things be possible in the future?

Wow! that looks great

And yeah, enemies will be moddable in the future. Videos will most probably be supported, I say probably because I have not yet investigated how easy it is to decode video formats and copy it to a texture, but I do not think it should be all too hard.

Thank you for your fast reply! That's some great news!

I think I have some ideas for the video thing:

I don't know much about coding, but I think most "do it yourself" programs just call the video by executing a comand, however, the programs I know were 2d based, so I can't tell if they decode the video in a texture or rather have some short of built in video player.
I'm pretty sure that Adventure Maker, for instance, does not decode at all, since you have to include the codec you used for the videos in the installation when compiling the game. I think it works basically like a powerpoint slideshow, so if you take the game to a computer that has not the codec, you'll need to install it. The advantage is that using this system you can compress the video and save much space, the disadvantage is that it has to create an installation wizard that includes the necesary codec (or you indicate where to get it in the download page).

Should I understand that the story slideshow at the beggining of the penumbra game is rendered as textures on a polygon?

If so, I got another idea based on 3d studio max:
I remembered when I wan't to make an animated TV, you use an avi video and then it renders it as a regular bitmap texture, changing to the next frame when rendering each frame of the finished animation. I heard penumbra can animate ANY texture. If so, a video can be created that way, much like a GIF image, the audio would be played as a game sound. That way you don't need to decode.
Having videos on textures would be great, as we could have animated screens a la Aliens vs Predator.

I hope all of this helps, as I think that fmvs can give a lot to the experience (if I wasn't so busy with either my work either this project, I would render a video with the intro of Penumbra. It would be cool!)

@terminento: Be careful with that project, since it's a perfect candidate to be foxed.
Apart from that, the artwork looks great ( i'm quite a fan of Aliens myself )

Looks great, but as H-K said it runs a risk of being taken down due to copyrights. Aswell as there being a game out of the same nature.

A game following the style of Alien would be awesome though, if you were to take an approach to it instead of Aliens style. (yes there is a big difference there)

Well, as you can see, I edited my post so that it is CRISTAL CLEAR this is not original Fox work, that no money comes from it, and that I'm not the owner of the rights of the original movies: Fox is.
AND in order to make things clear, from now on, the same paragraph included in this threath will be added to all of the artwork, WIP screenshots, trailers, and of course the finished work.
In fact, even in the early development stages, with other graphic engines, I added a similar warning at the begining of the demos (even when they weren't going to be released), check the atached screenshot (sorry for the tiny size).
All rights and ownerships are being acknowledged, and references to real, commercial Fox games are being done.

Even though you went to all those lengths it is still their respective property and simply using the Alien and names (while acknowledged by you) They don't like people using their ideas.

It's just like people getting in trouble in the MMORPG game City of Heros, They created their own characters in the mold of real characters and got in big trouble. Big companies don't care if you don't make money... they still don't like it.

I'm all for it, I just feel like you will get an email telling to to stop and delete the content.

This is taken from the FOXED article H-K posted:

"The term foxed or foxing originates from 1994 when 20th Century Fox ordered a game programmer Justin Fischer to cancel his Aliens-based total conversion project of Doom. Fox's justification was that he had violated their franchise copyright, and they felt the mod would be unfairly competitive with their own upcoming officially licensed Aliens game."

So I assume 20th Century isn't gonna like this mod either.

Sorry, I didn't add the screenshot, here you have it atached to this reply. Now, to the serious things.

Point one, as far as I know, Justin didn't EVER made it clear that it was not his property IN THE GAME ITSELF. I know this because I got his mod back in the day and he didn't warn it IN-GAME.

Point two, I have no news of any upcoming Alien game, so I don't see why would this compete with them.

Anyway, should they have any problem I'll be glad to solve all their questions and discuss about it.

And thanks for caring, Nate!

Sorry if I'm coming off as being mean, its not my intention. I just don't want to see a mod maker get in trouble with the law. It's stupid that companies attack individuals who are simply paying homage to their products. It's all in the name of greed. Good luck though! And again sorry if I came across as being rude.

Don´t worry Nate, I got it alright from the very start, you didn't sound rude at all.
In fact I really apreciate that you care so much about the legal trouble.
Really, thank you, and thanks for wishing me luck!