Brief History of RockBot/RockDroid & Future of UpperLands

This Article tells the time before RockBot was invented.

**NOTE: this articles is a Copy-Paste from this post.**

## Early Years

Rockbot has started when Capcom decided to launch Megaman 9 only for the new generation of videogames consoles, at that time, Playstation 3 and XBox 360 and not for the Playstation 2. Feeling that was a missed opportunity, as I already had made some tests with the open PS2 SDK and knew the console could handle it, I started to build a game engine that would allow me to play that game on PS2.

First passed the stops of configuraing the SDK on my Linux machine, using a network cable with a boot cd to run the app via network so I would see the terminal outputs, I started to develop the port, using sprites from Megaman and tilesets from RPG Maker. because it didn’t even had jump or gravity, so the sprites moved to up, left, right and down like an old RPG.

After a while, my wife asked, “since you are developing all, why don’t you create your own megaman game instead?”. In that day, Rockbot was born. The game was placed in a kind os paralel universe from Megaman, happening in Japan, at same time, but in a different city.

At this begginings, Rockbot was indeed just a variation of Megaman, after all, the idea was to be a lookalike, and I knew Capcom not only was friendly to games using their property, but also allowed the use of their assets, so that was not an issue then.

However, even as Rockbot was heavily inspirated from Megaman, I alredy had the idea of making something different, with things like allowing coop play.

For that, I created Beta, his old brother, that would be an incomplete prototype, with some structural problems, stronger, heavier and larger.

story would explain why the game physics for him was different. The idea was he would take less damage, have shorter jumps and moved slower.

Development proceeded, adapting colors and resolution to the limits of the NES, and with focus to run on the computer during this development stage.

Soon, we reached some friends and my late brother, so fetch ideas and concepts for the 8 stage bosses.

With the given time, we created more bosses and evolved the game graphics, that were still largely based upon Megaman.

With the evolution of the code, the game got ports to systems such as Nintendo DS, Windows, Dingoo and others.

## Current Days

A big shift happened during 2019. Google decided, because users flagged the game in the play store, that the game was trying to trick users into thinking it was a Megaman one, just when it was reaching its popularity peak. The worst part, is that at the time, we only had a few tilesets that were not original work, but because people saw something similar, they automatically give for granted, it is a direct copy, you simply can’t explain to them that inspiration is not copy. And still, we were acused of being falsifiers.

After a while, I decided to redesign the game, calling it for a while of RockDroid, but then returning to Rockbot once things calmed down. We removed several elements that were used as “proof” from ill-intended people, that the game was a copy; like lifes, other games tributes, used chibi characters, changed the stage select and menus style. And with all that there are still people that say we copy things because we use balls to indicate the player HP. This is just fracking sad.

Everthing new that make into the game now will have a filter, should-not-look-alike-megaman. I know most people would like it to remain as is, but I don’t have the energy, time or will to fight bad people that just want to hate the game and see us in jail (seriously).

## Future

Rockbot 1 is done, in terms of gameplay. I won’t add any cutscene, enemies or change the stages. Maybe I could release one or other bug fix, if important.

Focus now is to finish development of Rockbot #2, that is becoming close to launch (as in months), missing create enemies, adjust artificial intelligence and review stages.

Unless someone with deep pockets appear, or someone that manages to give us all art assets and designs, there will be not a Rockbot #3, I just don’t have interest in doing that. If someone wants to create a new game, go ahead and use the editor (available in Windows and Linux versions) and just go ahead. It is there exactly for that.

After that, my focus will move entirely to Project Firefly and I won’t do any more updates for Rockbot games. One day I need to just consider them good, even if I know there are bugs on it. The idea of Firefly is very different, a kind of MetroidVania with Dizzy – exchange of items to proceed into the game. and will use it’s own style, avoiding thus any comparison with other games, in a way it will be, yes, a paid game without we worring about that.