The Game-Maker Archive — Part 15b: The Easiest Lifting, Act II

September 13, 2010

by Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne

Previously we discussed Felix Leung, who did a pretty good job of co-opting familiar properties and filtering them through his own fairly advanced understanding of Game-Maker to create original, often bizarre, conglomerations. You could say that he crossed the line in places, and then danced back over it, and then tied the line into a sheepshank, but it’s easy to understand his method and reasons. This next fellow is a bit more brazen, and therefore a bit more puzzling.

In 1994, a fellow from Vallejo known variously as C.H. and Viper decided to grab everything in sight and call it his own — but then, at the last minute, to give it just enough of a bewildering spin to make it memorable. His first port of call, understandably enough, is Gregory Stone’s Nebula.

Shorty Da Pimp: Aliens Stole My Hoe!

Shorty Da Pimp claims to be a demo of an upcoming 30-level masterpiece. In its distributed form, Shorty consists of five levels (only two of them actual platformer maps), all lifted verbatim from Nebula. There may be a few new items and monsters scattered around, but the background tiles and geometry are unchanged.

That’s sensible enough, for a designer’s first game; you take the provided gameware, and you alter it just enough to make it your own. That’s part of the learning process. It’s how everyone I know codes HTML. You’d expect the designer to keep the game private, and only release something he was proud to call his own, but hey. Youthful indiscretion and enthusiasm, right?

For the protagonist, C.H. strayed a bit further and sampled the character sprite from id Software’s Commandeer Keen. So… okay, in 1994 that must have taken some serious work. The guy was willing to spend that much time ripping and tweaking a highly recognizable character sprite, but he wasn’t willing to design his own background tiles or even level maps? At least the guy knows what he wants when he sees it.

At this point it would be easy to shrug Shorty off as random clutter. But then comes the twist: a sprite edit has turned Keen’s helmet into an afro, and given him a good shot of melanin. According to the story, aliens have “done stole [Shorty's] Hoe. And i’m countin’ on ya to get my hoe back.” Furthermore, due to a malevolent alien power, whenever Shorty gets injured he turns pale and screams “I’m white!”

if i get my a#$ beat i’ll stay white 4 eva.. now i’m countin’ on ya to guide me safely through da aliens crib.. and bring my hoe back to me, and keep me BLACK!

A more noble mission I have yet to hear.

So there we have it. Nebula, plus a sprite edit of Billy Blaze. And yet the framework takes the game on a weird tangent to the left, across what probably should be a tired line of racial comedy but which in context is just inappropriate enough to be inexplicably charming. I don’t know what I’m talking about, and I’m probably digging myself into a hole here, so — oh, look. The next entry should help me there.

Ballie D. Plumber Episode 1: Ballie in D. Pipes

About six months later, C.H. has taken to calling himself Viper and has somewhat raised his ambitions. Although he’s still using the Nebula tile set, he has designed six new maps of his own (only four of which really count). If you spend the five dollars to register, the game promises two further episodes filled with lava levels, space levels, and even more.

For the enemies, he has broadened his range and borrowed sprites from two of, er, my own games. His Dark Octopi are actually the protagonist from my Octolris, and his Underlings are monks from the stonehenge stage of my Sign of the Hedgehog. I guess that’s okay, though. At the time I wrote to complain, and he just added my name to the credits. I figured it wasn’t worth pressing the issue. It’s not like he was basing the game around them or anything.

The protagonist, such as he is, is wholly new: a small, unshaded blue sphere with a face. Yet to balance the slight originality, the story and premise are substantially lifted from RSD’s Pipemare. The largest difference is some slightly puzzling innuendo.

As the Plumber of the Story it SEEMS That one day you have got a call from a girl about some infestation in someones pipes. You go down to the house address she gave you. Armed with Wit, a Real ROUND Body, and laser eyes you prepare to venture down into the deadly depths of the plumbing pipes to check on the problem…

Overall the game comes off like a side-scrolling Pac-Man crossed with a bad porn movie. It doesn’t quite have the charm of Shortie Da Pimp, but it does show a bit of creative growth for our young Cliffy in training.

Again, whereas Viper may lack a shred of originality or shame it’s easy enough to understand what he’s doing. His kind of creativity means taking stuff that impresses him and tossing it all together like a collage. And hey, to some extent that is the creative process in a nutshell. If he can refine it, he can go far. If he can’t refine it, he’ll probably be doomed to a career in a boy band. In the final act of this chapter, we will explore a truly bewildering example of creative lifting.

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