I NEED OPPINIONS FROM YOU ALL ON RE-USING IDEAS/MAP/OTHER THINGS FROM A CANCLED GAME.

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So, long story short. Due to PC crashing and not saving backups properly. I had to sadly cancel Legacy Saga. That includes the un-finished VX Ace original and the remake on MV.

I have since started work on a new game, but I don't want my old work to go to waste. What do you all think about me using maps and other things from said canceled game?

It has it's own thing and story. I just thought about sprinkling in stuff from Legacy Saga here and there.
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
I mean, as long as it's stuff you made yourself you can literally copy and paste it in every game you make if you wanted to without caring what people think (works for games like fifa and paper mario!).

If it wasn't stuff you made, then no you cannot add anything from another game into your new one, even if the resources you're grabbing were from a cancelled or abandoned game.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Resources that have been purchased are probably okay to re-use, but, I would recommend referring to the terms of use to make sure? If somebody made resources specifically for that game, though, I'd tend to agree with Mirak. Using them in a different game would be using them in bad faith at best.

*Edit: Or, well, I guess you can ask the author of said resources if it's okay to re-use the stuff!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
No clearly you must make everything over from scratch for no reason even though you have perfectly good unused assets

Tons of modern games are made from reused assets from games that DID get released. Games in a series almost always reuse all kinds of things, including music, sound effects, environments, voice lines, menu graphics, spell animations, and so forth. For example, a bunch of monster models are reused across several modern Final Fantasy games. Almost the entirety of Majora's Mask was ripped wholesale from Ocarina of Time. Games that aren't in a series but are still made by the same developer do the same thing - for example, compare the monsters, menus, spells, game engines, fonts, and sound effects in Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom and La Pucelle.

If professional developers who charge sixty bucks for their games can reuse stuff that they've already sold you, why would you even feel the need to ask about your free game making use of stuff that you made for a cancelled game?
My most recent project re-used a ton of assets from the canceled project that preceded it, to the point where I can't imagine I'd ever continue the canceled project unless I started it again from scratch. When you're working as a small-scale indie, most people aren't really going to care if you re-use stuff. As any art teacher will tell you: "Every draft thrown into the trash is a step towards a completed work."

Failing that: you can just remember Pokemon has been using the same base Pokemon models and rigging since 2013. The biggest franchise in human history is recycling assets, so you might as well, too.

author=Marrend
If somebody made resources specifically for that game, though, I'd tend to agree with Mirak. Using them in a different game would be using them in bad faith at best.

*Edit: Or, well, I guess you can ask the author of said resources if it's okay to re-use the stuff!

You can usually work something out with the original creator in this scenario. Smaller creators especially tend to be pretty flexible with this kind of thing and want their work to be seen rather than rot in an abandoned project file forever.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
It can depend on what you include in "other things" you plan to recycle. If you've made everything yourself and/or used publicly available assets, then you SHOULD reuse them. Hell, you don't even need the game to be canceled to reuse them, as noted by Sgt's Pokemon example. It's already been noted that assets commissioned from others don't fall under the same lax ruleset, but that's something you're gonna have to work out with the original creators themselves.

Also, don't feel obligated to tie it to Legacy Saga. You can literally just copy/paste the map from Legacy Saga to your new game and call it a day. If you're concerned about players seeing this and recognizing the map from Legacy Saga, then there are things you can do to cover it up, such as giving it a new tileset, rearranging B level tiles, etc. Even a simple tint change can give the same map a radically different look and feel to it.

Don't let the imaginary stigma from ignorant gamers fool you: Recycling assets is the sign of a smart developer, not a lazy one.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I once watched a sequel to a B-movie that reused an entire four minute long scene from the previous movie, totally unchanged. Not even as a flashback or anything. It was set in a different city, more than a year later. They just reused the whole bar scene and hoped the audience wouldn't recognize it.

That was pretty corny, but only because the previous movie had in fact been published, and it was a pretty long and memorable scene designed to establish the setting.

AAA-movies do the same thing sometimes with stock footage but nobody cares or notices because they just use 2 second clips of unmemorable things like reaction shots. Not entire four minute long scenes.

https://www.looper.com/59948/movies-caught-reusing-footage-movies/
Like 90% of all I do in my games is just built upon the hollowed out shell of one or more of my abandoned projects. The last 10% will be scavenged to some future project when my current game is inevitable abandoned.
I might just straight-up copy paste some bosses from my old project to my new one.
Ok ya'll lol, sorry for the late replies to all of this. Real life happens sometimes lmao, but here we go! And also if I didn't reply to your comment, it's because I felt that I answered/replied to it from another persons comment. Nothing personal, I promise.

author=Mirak
I mean, as long as it's stuff you made yourself you can literally copy and paste it in every game you make if you wanted to without caring what people think (works for games like fifa and paper mario!).

If it wasn't stuff you made, then no you cannot add anything from another game into your new one, even if the resources you're grabbing were from a cancelled or abandoned game.


Yea, it would be stuff made by me. As in maps, story ideas, features and what not. Stealing stuff from other games isn't cool.

author=Marrend
Resources that have been purchased are probably okay to re-use, but, I would recommend referring to the terms of use to make sure? If somebody made resources specifically for that game, though, I'd tend to agree with Mirak. Using them in a different game would be using them in bad faith at best.

*Edit: Or, well, I guess you can ask the author of said resources if it's okay to re-use the stuff!


As far as resources go... like characters and stuff like that. It's minimal at best, this game has a whole new cast. Now, some generic sprites for like town NPCs will be used again. Same goes for monster sprites, some of those will be re-used. I didn't commission anything specific for my past game.

author=LockeZ
No clearly you must make everything over from scratch for no reason even though you have perfectly good unused assets

Tons of modern games are made from reused assets from games that DID get released. Games in a series almost always reuse all kinds of things, including music, sound effects, environments, voice lines, menu graphics, spell animations, and so forth. For example, a bunch of monster models are reused across several modern Final Fantasy games. Almost the entirety of Majora's Mask was ripped wholesale from Ocarina of Time. Games that aren't in a series but are still made by the same developer do the same thing - for example, compare the monsters, menus, spells, game engines, fonts, and sound effects in Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom and La Pucelle.

If professional developers who charge sixty bucks for their games can reuse stuff that they've already sold you, why would you even feel the need to ask about your free game making use of stuff that you made for a cancelled game?


I wasn't seeking permission per say (I know you didn't word it that way) but rather curious on the communities thought on it. Like do you guys (in general) see it as lazy or what not. Now I won't be making a carbon copy of my past game, I just plan to sprinkle in maps and story elements here and there.

author=Sgt M
My most recent project re-used a ton of assets from the canceled project that preceded it, to the point where I can't imagine I'd ever continue the canceled project unless I started it again from scratch. When you're working as a small-scale indie, most people aren't really going to care if you re-use stuff. As any art teacher will tell you: "Every draft thrown into the trash is a step towards a completed work."

Failing that: you can just remember Pokemon has been using the same base Pokemon models and rigging since 2013. The biggest franchise in human history is recycling assets, so you might as well, too.

author=Marrend
If somebody made resources specifically for that game, though, I'd tend to agree with Mirak. Using them in a different game would be using them in bad faith at best.

*Edit: Or, well, I guess you can ask the author of said resources if it's okay to re-use the stuff!


You can usually work something out with the original creator in this scenario. Smaller creators especially tend to be pretty flexible with this kind of thing and want their work to be seen rather than rot in an abandoned project file forever.


That's a really fair assessment, I must say... after reading all these replies. A ton of mainstream games I play more or less make a living off of re-using resources. Oh, thanks for the amazing quote "Every draft thrown into the trash is a step towards a completed work." I love that!

author=Red_Nova
It can depend on what you include in "other things" you plan to recycle. If you've made everything yourself and/or used publicly available assets, then you SHOULD reuse them. Hell, you don't even need the game to be canceled to reuse them, as noted by Sgt's Pokemon example. It's already been noted that assets commissioned from others don't fall under the same lax ruleset, but that's something you're gonna have to work out with the original creators themselves.

Also, don't feel obligated to tie it to Legacy Saga. You can literally just copy/paste the map from Legacy Saga to your new game and call it a day. If you're concerned about players seeing this and recognizing the map from Legacy Saga, then there are things you can do to cover it up, such as giving it a new tileset, rearranging B level tiles, etc. Even a simple tint change can give the same map a radically different look and feel to it.

Don't let the imaginary stigma from ignorant gamers fool you: Recycling assets is the sign of a smart developer, not a lazy one.


Yea that was a worry of mine, I'm not going to lie. Like "Oh hey, that map looks familiar. That's boring, why did they do that? Should I even play this?"

Yea, so far for the maps I did use, I made some changes to how I first made them. One for example, a town. Not only did I add another half of a town. I used different tiles (though, same layout.)
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