We've always felt that, as Japanese puzzles go, Sudoku is highly overrated and Slitherlink is the one that should be on the back page of the paper every day. We often go through phases of being addicted to a particular puzzle, and those phases usually pass after a while, but that doesn't seem to have happened with Slitherlink. So we thought it might be a good idea to put it on our site and let other people make up their minds about it.
There will be a new one generated each day, but be warned that the hard puzzles can take a while (thank goodness we added a pause button).
This is also our first SVG puzzle, the Java/SVG combination worked so well for the games room we didn't see much mileage in continuing with the Canvas versions. Hopefully there will be some more to follow.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Legalities of online games
Several people have asked if the content on Game Pixies is legal, surely taking someone else's game without their permission and publishing it online breaks some laws? The answer is unfortunately complex, and while we have been granted permission for some of our games, so far we have relied on the fact that no one has taken issue.
It might seem naive to think along the lines of "if it isn't hurting anyone, what is the problem?", but there is also some business sense for publishers and designers to let us do what we do. For a start we provide free advertising to a highly targeted audience. We also provide extremely high quality advertising, not just some static text but a playable version and we are always happy to introduce people to a new game. It is no surprise to us that people have tried games on our site for the first time only to promptly declare they are off to buy it the next day.
Sadly we have just been asked to take down a game, but not without good reason. Knizia Games has just sold exclusive electronic rights to Through the Desert to an undisclosed company. I hope the other company does a nice job of it and bring this great game to more people. It is also promising to see that the online board game market is getting this developed. We wish Through the Desert the best of luck, so long, and thanks for all the great games.
But while we are saying good bye, it is interesting to take stock of our legal position, and some may find it surprising. According to this article there are no copy protections on games. A game's name can be trademarked (and almost always is) and its artwork can be copyrighted, but the ideas and mechanisms of playing a game are not offered any protection at all.
This means that we are under no legal obligation to remove the gameplay, we must simply stop using the name as we already use our own artwork. However, we have removed the game completely because we aim to work with game designers and publishers and can hardly do this if we act against their wishes. This is our first contact with Knizia Games and so it is important to us, hopefully we can now work with them to bring a larger audience to some of their other games, Mr. Knizia has designed many truly excellent games after all.
It might seem naive to think along the lines of "if it isn't hurting anyone, what is the problem?", but there is also some business sense for publishers and designers to let us do what we do. For a start we provide free advertising to a highly targeted audience. We also provide extremely high quality advertising, not just some static text but a playable version and we are always happy to introduce people to a new game. It is no surprise to us that people have tried games on our site for the first time only to promptly declare they are off to buy it the next day.
Sadly we have just been asked to take down a game, but not without good reason. Knizia Games has just sold exclusive electronic rights to Through the Desert to an undisclosed company. I hope the other company does a nice job of it and bring this great game to more people. It is also promising to see that the online board game market is getting this developed. We wish Through the Desert the best of luck, so long, and thanks for all the great games.
But while we are saying good bye, it is interesting to take stock of our legal position, and some may find it surprising. According to this article there are no copy protections on games. A game's name can be trademarked (and almost always is) and its artwork can be copyrighted, but the ideas and mechanisms of playing a game are not offered any protection at all.
This means that we are under no legal obligation to remove the gameplay, we must simply stop using the name as we already use our own artwork. However, we have removed the game completely because we aim to work with game designers and publishers and can hardly do this if we act against their wishes. This is our first contact with Knizia Games and so it is important to us, hopefully we can now work with them to bring a larger audience to some of their other games, Mr. Knizia has designed many truly excellent games after all.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Getting into the swing of things
We have been running gamepixies for nearly two years now. There was very little progress in the beginning - it took a few months to produce our first version of Set! - and it was quite a while after that that we finally came up with a name. There were various reasons for this, like deciding on how the clients were going to work and how the server was going to work, which languages we were going to use (and there was a lot of disagreement on that front), but mostly we just not getting any time to code because we were cycling across Europe at the time.
Thankfully we did settle down, about 6 months ago, and we have been able to do much more work since. A lot of this has been behind the scenes improvements, such as switching our graphics to a persistent document model (which is why the games room has an SVG mode) and rewriting the servers in the same language that we use on the client. But there have been some very visible additions such as the new games and even an AI.
It finally looks like this work is really paying off, we are seeing more people visit the site, and adding new content is getting much easier. So much so that we can now announce a new game, "Through the Desert", which is exciting for us not only because it is one of our favourite board games, but also because we started work on it less than a week ago.
May there be many more to come.
Thankfully we did settle down, about 6 months ago, and we have been able to do much more work since. A lot of this has been behind the scenes improvements, such as switching our graphics to a persistent document model (which is why the games room has an SVG mode) and rewriting the servers in the same language that we use on the client. But there have been some very visible additions such as the new games and even an AI.
It finally looks like this work is really paying off, we are seeing more people visit the site, and adding new content is getting much easier. So much so that we can now announce a new game, "Through the Desert", which is exciting for us not only because it is one of our favourite board games, but also because we started work on it less than a week ago.
May there be many more to come.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
No Thanks!
We are pleased to announce a new game on our site: No Thanks!
This is another game that is traditionally used as a filler, because it is easy to learn and quick to play, but despite the very simple rules it has some surprising depth. It is an excellent game for long journeys as there are few pieces and you can explain how to play in under a minute.
This is another game that is traditionally used as a filler, because it is easy to learn and quick to play, but despite the very simple rules it has some surprising depth. It is an excellent game for long journeys as there are few pieces and you can explain how to play in under a minute.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Lost Cities AI
The first AI player is complete and ready to play. It isn't very smart, but it can get lucky so don't expect to win every round (just most of them).
To play against the AI just join the games room and create a new Lost Cities game as normal, after deciding how many rounds you want you are now asked if you want to play the easy AI or a human.
It is quite common in the games industry to strengthen the AIs by letting them cheat. Sometimes they are given unlimited resources, or knowledge of the other players that they just shouldn't have, or just better "luck". We don't think that sort of behaviour is suitable on our site, which is why we would rather present you with an AI that couldn't think its way out of a wet paper bag than provide you with a challenge for all the wrong reasons.
We have some ideas for improving the player, medium AI might make an appearance soon.
To play against the AI just join the games room and create a new Lost Cities game as normal, after deciding how many rounds you want you are now asked if you want to play the easy AI or a human.
It is quite common in the games industry to strengthen the AIs by letting them cheat. Sometimes they are given unlimited resources, or knowledge of the other players that they just shouldn't have, or just better "luck". We don't think that sort of behaviour is suitable on our site, which is why we would rather present you with an AI that couldn't think its way out of a wet paper bag than provide you with a challenge for all the wrong reasons.
We have some ideas for improving the player, medium AI might make an appearance soon.
Monday, October 8, 2007
In the works
Here at code pixies we get a lot of feature requests for our games site, whether it is little things like "can you please make it work" to big things like "can you please make it work".
One of the things we have never been asked for the most is computer opponents to play against if there isn't anyone else around. We want them and we are working on them, first for "Lost Cities", and then maybe for "Hey! That's my fish!".
The initial opponent is going to be pretty silly, but hopefully we will one day attain mastery in our field and produce an opponent that is almost competent. So if you see "AI" just remember that in our case it stands for artificial idiocy and try not to lose.
One of the things we have never been asked for the most is computer opponents to play against if there isn't anyone else around. We want them and we are working on them, first for "Lost Cities", and then maybe for "Hey! That's my fish!".
The initial opponent is going to be pretty silly, but hopefully we will one day attain mastery in our field and produce an opponent that is almost competent. So if you see "AI" just remember that in our case it stands for artificial idiocy and try not to lose.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Lost Cities in the Games Room
It isn't quite as good as having a completely new game on our site, but it is nice to have all our games together, so Lost Cities has been moved into the Games Room to join "Hey! That's my fish!". The most important change is that players will now get email notifications when it becomes their turn - at last!
In the last post I mentioned that Safari should be getting SVG support, and its true, the version 3 public betas work nicely. There were a few other issues with Safari, but they have now been worked around, which means our site now supports it. We would still quite like someone to donate us a Mac though.
Over the next few months we should be working on some more games, one of which is even slightly original.
In the last post I mentioned that Safari should be getting SVG support, and its true, the version 3 public betas work nicely. There were a few other issues with Safari, but they have now been worked around, which means our site now supports it. We would still quite like someone to donate us a Mac though.
Over the next few months we should be working on some more games, one of which is even slightly original.
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