The Mugen Fighters Guild

Off-Topic => All That's Left => Hall of Fame => Topic started by: JustNoPoint on June 30, 2004, 03:19:01 am

Title: Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on June 30, 2004, 03:19:01 am
http://www.shinmugen.net/dev/index.php?showforum=15

What is our course of action for this?
Do we make posts explaining the same thing?
Why not just make a sticky somewhere redirecting to Mugen Dev for discussions on this subject.

I am not totally thrilled with the idea of promoting this hack in the least but I guess desperate people do desperate things and there is no way to stop it.

And I cannot lie that some part of me wants to see this thrive as well. It is kind of a torn feeling of realizing I may have to let go I suppose.

Anyway what say the staff?

EDIT: @ XG is it okay to link the site outside of Dev?
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on June 30, 2004, 03:27:08 am
Why DEV promotes this version and not the previous one?

Easy. The Elecbyte1 version clearly altered the program modifying the names of the creators, thus Elecbyte is not credited as the original creators.

Rou Hei's version keeps Elecbyte's name intact, and only unlocks modes that are already included in the executable. We believe that Rou Hei's work is in the "gray area" while Elecbyte1's ones is clearly negative from all points of view.

Plus, I invite the rest of the staff to look carefully the "history of winmugen" posted at DEV, where we clearly state why we promote this version.

And last but not least, our effort is to "control" in some way the alterations made to the engine. It's unavoidable that people is hacking the engine. However, if we promote and support an unlocked version, this could refrain other groups tryinf to hack the engine, and who knows, attaching a trojan in it.

I would like to hear your opinion about this, but I expect you will fully agree with our decission.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on June 30, 2004, 03:37:25 am
Yes I know I am having trouble letting go. I am very happy I got to donate it makes me feel not as guilty.

I do not think you are trying to control and I read the history thoroughly.

I do think this will benefit the point of mugen and the community. An engine to create the best fighter.

This is a very remarkable thing and a very tragic thing to me at the same time. I will need time but I will support this for the reasons I stated above.

Also you may have replied before my edit. Is the link a Dev exclusive (do you want it posted elswhere or do you want links to your forum.) If only links to the forum get ready for many many new members :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on June 30, 2004, 03:57:02 am
All feedback must be done through DEV, so it's ok to spread the news about the hack, but please add the link to the special area in DEV.

The idea is to have a common knowledge base for winmugen's data. Things may go bad if everybody starts posting questions, bugs and requests in multiple forums. Plus, having DEV as the only reference point will keep Rou Hei's inbox safe.

And last but not least, DEV may serve as a gateway for other people to help Rou Hei in his work.  Having all possible help and resources scattered in multiple places won't help in any way the evolution of winmugen.

Rou Hei is a busy man and he cannot waste time surfing through multiple forums in order to gather feedback, plus his english skills aren't very good :)
Title: Re: Well
Post by: Sepp on June 30, 2004, 11:07:33 am
This hacking stuff would surely not have VANISHED if this had not been done.

Look at the Elecbyte1 case. The only things the previous seek-and-destroy policy achieved was slowing its distribution down a bit and "everybody" using it, but "secretly."

Sure, we could of continued this charade for another two years. But, ugh.

Personally, I think it was about time we came clean. Feels much better than persecuting everyone who talks about some kind of WinMUGEN while we have been using one or the other version ourselves for ages.

Furthermore, Rou Hei has the added bonus of Noble Purpose, which is extremely fortunate. I know of other hacking attempts (none of which came so far), and believe me, most other persons would be on a World Promotion Tour by now, Gloryfying Their Greatness.

Yuck.


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I am having trouble letting go.

It's not like this was easily decided over night. Okay, it was, but after 2+ years of more or less discussing. So, yeah.

We had "all" gotten entirely to accustomed to being elitist bitches. Time for some more sharing.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on June 30, 2004, 06:19:55 pm
So where would this be best posted at? There should be a locked sticky somewhere linking to the WinMugen board on Dev with what XG said above quoted.

I would think Mugen Discussion would be the best place.  
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on June 30, 2004, 07:23:33 pm
Waiting for a yes/no/maybe/later/never from Loona.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on June 30, 2004, 07:24:44 pm
i'm glad somebody finally has the guts to put the thing on the table. It's time we stop the general hyprocrisy: Everybody is using this winmugen. So why don't we officialize it? I definatly agree with dev.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 01, 2004, 06:49:39 am
I still have to check Dev and the topic(s) there regarding this - being busy with exams hasn't left me with that much time for forum affairs, which is why my visits over here have been rather brief recently, sticky to section like this one, Site feedback, seeing how the new Junk section's doing, checking (and eventually moving if necessary) some topic that catches my eye through the main page, trying to patch the recent gaps in the staff.

Later today I'll be checking out Dev for the first time in weeks, and gather more information on this topic - I'll most certainly need to, because after the Elecbyte1 WinMugen banning spree that took place by XGargoyle's hands without previous warning, which lead to an emergency update of the rules to cover this new problem, I'll really need to find some clear differences between the 2 cases... this'll most certainly take some explaining if we go ahead with a more tolerant take on the subject, considering last time lead to a loss of people who could be assets to the community, like Fuchikoma/Shiroi Kaze...

Edit: Finally read about it at Dev - I think my comments on it would also work well as replies to XG's post on this thread:

Why DEV promotes this version and not the previous one?

Easy. The Elecbyte1 version clearly altered the program modifying the names of the creators, thus Elecbyte is not credited as the original creators.

They also clearly stated in the documentation and site that that was a hack (they spelled it "haq"(ed), but I doubt there's any major difference in meaning...) and that they weren't Elecbyte ("Elecbyte1 isn't Elecbyte") - that left it rather clear that tweaked Elecbyte's work, instead of doing it all from scratch...

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Rou Hei's version keeps Elecbyte's name intact, and only unlocks modes that are already included in the executable. We believe that Rou Hei's work is in the "gray area" while Elecbyte1's ones is clearly negative from all points of view.

All points of view?...
In a way, the Elecbyte1 hack did restrict the use of the beta for testing, since it did little more than remove some annoying words from the screen - it was pretty much un-usable for actual play, and that's what lead to people's rejection of it in places like MGBR's portuguese section, where "damage control" was a lot slower than it was over here or at Dev - after a while, when some newbie brought up the subject, everyone's comments on it were unfavourable due to the 2-character limit and locked modes, praising only its convenience for testing characters, as it was unnecessary to open and close Mugen several times to test a character while programming (apparently one could keep open both WinMugen and a text editor window - for the coding - and every time you saved a change in the text editor, all you had to do to check on its effects was to make sure the hack would load the character again, probably by leaving Arcade mode and returning to it again).

The options now available in Rou Hei's version make it a lot more appealing for the average user due to the extra unlocked stuff.
He quite reasonably claims he'll quit working on that if Elecbyte returns with a version of their own, but people would be naturally inclined to switch to that anyway should that return take place - and would pretty much also be the case with the Elecbyte1 version had they unlocked that many features...

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Plus, I invite the rest of the staff to look carefully the "history of winmugen" posted at DEV, where we clearly state why we promote this version.

I did - but the differences don't seem that great to justify such completely different attitudes on the subject... Rou Hei's initiative to show what he changed in the code may be helpful for others to make their own attempts though...

Should Elecbyte find out about this new hack (so far it seems unlikely, unless they've secretly kept an account at Dev for some time and happen to drop by one of these days, or perhaps many months from now) and tell Rou Hei to stop, would this reflect on that new section of Dev's?...
With the renewal of the elecbyte.com domain name for another year, how can we be sure that's not a possibility?...
Considering Dev's completely opposite attitudes regarding the subject at different times still within the validity of that domain name, I think it's reasonable to ask about this...

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And last but not least, our effort is to "control" in some way the alterations made to the engine. It's unavoidable that people is hacking the engine. However, if we promote and support an unlocked version, this could refrain other groups tryinf to hack the engine, and who knows, attaching a trojan in it.

This scary talk of trojans feels rather familar for some reason... oh well, let bygones be bygones, right?...

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I would like to hear your opinion about this, but I expect you will fully agree with our decission.

Oh, I'm inclined to agree with supporting something like this alright, despite previous comments - I guess it's just that the memory of completely different attitudes on the subject and some measures that had to be taken on the matter are still all to fresh in my memory... that, and the renewal of the elecbyte.com domain name...

I guess this means Nunor's decision to change the penalty from mentioning WinMugen from bans to mutings turned out to be rather convenient should the forum change its attitude and rules regarding these matters...


So what do you think folks... should we remove the rule regarding WinMugen hacks?... I see no way of changing it to make Rou Hei's version acceptable when compared to Elecbyte1's... there isn't that much of a difference between them the way I see it... digging up a technicality to include or remove in the phrasing of the rule doesn't seem like much of an option...

And if we were to post a link to that new section of Dev's, we'd be breaking our own rule...

And, of course, there's no way to allow people to force people to only post feedback on Dev should we remove the rule and post a link to their WinMugen section... invariably the topic would come up here too, even if it was just when commenting on things that work differently between the DOS and Rou Hei version...

Unless, of course, someone actually took the time to collect such comments made over here and quote them at Dev (preferably mentioning their source :P ) so Rou Hei would get all the info brought to him there...

... but with a Sticky topic and some posts commenting on that version here, surely several other forums would end up noticing and discussing the topic - then there'd reallly be no way to make sure that all commants got collected in the same place, but Rou Hei could hope to get some of the best feedback at Dev and some japanese forums where this may be a topic as well...


Comments/opinions/suggestions anyone?...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on July 01, 2004, 10:03:13 am
i understand your position loona. But you know, the fact is that more and more people will be using this hack, whether it's good or bad. Should we close our eyes on this or open them?
Title: Re: Way to go
Post by: Sepp on July 01, 2004, 10:55:55 am
Unless, of course, someone actually took the time to collect such comments made over here and quote them at Dev (preferably mentioning their source :P ) so Rou Hei would get all the info brought to him there...

I'm pretty sure that important things previously unnoticed would somehow find their way over to Dev. After all, a lot of Guild members are registered at Dev and vice versa. They ain't exactly isolated isles. =)

The difference to the Elecbyte1 situation -- ah, fuck this. We're not in court.

The directy from which that decission arouse should be rather clear by now, and it's not a whole lot more than what History says. And the situation was also not a whole lot different from Elecbyte1.

It was merely decided to try a different approach this time, for the better or worse.

It should at least be somewhat understandable, if only emotionally - even if upholding that in a trial would stand no chance.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: walt on July 01, 2004, 11:05:28 am
Off topic:
Winmugen has a new version of KFM (1 special added) ;D
Finally a KFM official update :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Winane on July 01, 2004, 11:47:14 am
Winmugen has a new version of KFM (1 special added) ;D
Finally a KFM official update :P
So does Linux Mugen. :P  (And both with new palettes as well.)
An added bonus for those who downloaded my AI Kung Fu Men. :)
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 01, 2004, 04:29:06 pm
Quote
So what do you think folks... should we remove the rule regarding WinMugen hacks?...
Might as well. Noone will be using elecbyte1's version now anyway.

Quote
... but with a Sticky topic and some posts commenting on that version here, surely several other forums would end up noticing and discussing the topic - then there'd reallly be no way to make sure that all commants got collected in the same place, but Rou Hei could hope to get some of the best feedback at Dev and some japanese forums where this may be a topic as well...
Considering the actual developer behind this is posting at Dev I am sure that is incentive enough to post there instead. Since the problem can be immediately addressed.

Another problem I have with this besides what I stated above is the hypocritical side to this.

Here we are trying to teach others that if you cannot contact an author to use there work then you cannot host or alter it in any way and it must fade away.

Although in this instance it is a bit more severe as DOS support is fading away and many future creators need (yeah actually need not I NEED Ryu) this update if they wish to create at all.
But on the other side we are doing this not to just a mere creator but to Elecbyte. Taking something that they specifically said not to host in any version but especially the beta.

It is no different than releasing a private character.

Since I have Linux mugen I think I will stick with it. I kinda feel if the community wishes to accept this then it should also loosen up on other things. Since this is a hobby we do not NEED WinMugen just like mugen fans do not NEED what creators make.
Title: Re: Way to go
Post by: Loona on July 01, 2004, 11:15:05 pm
Unless, of course, someone actually took the time to collect such comments made over here and quote them at Dev (preferably mentioning their source :P ) so Rou Hei would get all the info brought to him there...

I'm pretty sure that important things previously unnoticed would somehow find their way over to Dev. After all, a lot of Guild members are registered at Dev and vice versa. They ain't exactly isolated isles. =)

It's the fact that they're not isolated that makes this seem a bit too idealistic, bordering on the unrealistic:
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All feedback must be done through DEV, so it's ok to spread the news about the hack, but please add the link to the special area in DEV.

The possible outcomes of making the WinMugen hacks rule here dissapear both include the link to that section of dev being posted here - from then on, either people are already registered there (some may keep their comments to Dev, and keep closer to the ideal/expectations XG presented here), or don't mind doing so (which could result in in a series of barbaric/newbie "invasions" at Dev of differing kinds of consequences), or don't bother, and keep their comments anywhere else as soon as they eventually get the link to Rou Hei's site (if it'd be OK to post about that section of Dev's in the forum, then it'd also be OK to post the link to Rou Hei's site, bypassing Dev).

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It was merely decided to try a different approach this time, for the better or worse.

I'd just had preferred if the 1st approach hadn't involved a series of bans in this forum without previous discussion or warning, when several other alternatives (dumping of threads, mutings, etc...) would have been just as viable (on the basis of promoting illegal content that this forum's pretty much always had, but which aren't and shouldn't be punished with bans as a first offense), and now taking an almost completely opposite attitude at Dev... it wasn't that long ago, so the contrast is still quite present, and these expectations of containment of discussion to Dev don't really help...
Title: Re: Go >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on July 02, 2004, 11:33:31 am
By all means, people can bypass Dev all they want.

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All feedback must be done through DEV, so it's ok to spread the news about the hack, but please add the link to the special area in DEV.

is just part of the obvious Dev-revival action. The link to Rou Hei's page could be posted here at Guild, along with a line saying "For more info [and/or bug reports, if you will], go DevSectionURLHere."

That's not even an order (hoho), more of a suggestion. Because Rou Hei is at Dev. If Guild people start OMG talking about it here and elsewhere too, so what?

Like I said, important news will most likely find its way, and that shouldn't cause harm to Dev nor Guild.

Containment was, as said, a Dev-comeback scheme that has somehat worked out - and did hardly "steal" Guild or other boards members or something.

Nobody forces no one to go to Dev, and of course the link will and has been spread already without even a mention of Dev, naturally.

That's the why that "History" file is in there, to keep "everyone" a bit informed. It does not talk about Dev, more about what should probably be know about WinMUGEN stuff.

As with all history, part of it is guesswork, part prejudice, and the added part of "It was a hard desicion, but there was simply no other choice." is simply a lie, but it might overall still be good enough to serve its purpose.


First attempt could have been otherwise indeed, but it hasn't.


"The rise or fall of a civilization can depend on the decision made in a fragment of a second. There are many seconds in a day. How many seconds can you regret? How many choices?"

"Only the bad ones," Jacen said.

"And if you don't know immediately whether the decision was good or bad? What if you don't find out the answer for fifty years?"

Jacen looked at her. "Fifty years," he said. "I'm not even twenty. I can't imagine fifty years."

Her tilted eyes shimmered like waves over cold, deep water. There was unconquerable sadness in her voice. "Fifty years ago, young Jedi, I made a decision," she said. "The consequences of that decision echo down the years until today.

And I still do not know whether the decision I made was the right one."


Also see a tiny story from the Huai Nan Tzu, as related by Steven Mitchell in his [excellent] translation of the Tao Te Ching. =) (http://beingem.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_beingem_archive.html)
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 02, 2004, 07:44:02 pm
Let's see, I'm in a rush, but I'll try to address to anyone. Apologies if I leave someone without a reply.

@loona:

We did not promote the elecbyte1 version because:
- there was no mention of Elecbyte credited as the original creator.
- the hack surfaced just when Elecbyte disappeared, giving the idea that it was what caused Eledcbyte to closed thier site
- the DOS hack (yes, there was one prior to the winmugen one) was full with flames to certain members of the community as well, as discrediting Elecbyte.

We promote Rouhei's version because:

- Credits Elecbyte as the original creators
- mention that if Elecbyte ever returns or requests to stop the distribution, he will stop it. DEV will remove the feedback section and forbid further mentioning/distibution of such version
- Current status of mugen falls on abandonware. It's impossible to get mugen from an official source, there's no official support and many computers cannot run in due to XP issues.

We have chosen the lesser evil, as I said. I prefer having a version working and the community happy with it and praising Elecbyte as the original creators, than everybody using a warezed/hacked version crediting to Elecbyte1 (or any other name since you can change it) and forgetting in the long run that mugen originated from Elecbyte. I don't want wither to find winmugen spreading in underground/warez scenes and people from the mugen community migrating to those communities. That will mean the end of our community. Decisions were difficult to take, but we beleived it's the best way to behave.

regarding the  banned people from the elecbyte1 incident, you can unban them. I wonder why you didn't unban them before, since that ban was intended as a temporary one and not a definite one.

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Should Elecbyte find out about this new hack (so far it seems unlikely, unless they've secretly kept an account at Dev for some time and happen to drop by one of these days, or perhaps many months from now) and tell Rou Hei to stop, would this reflect on that new section of Dev's?...
With the renewal of the elecbyte.com domain name for another year, how can we be sure that's not a possibility?...
Considering Dev's completely opposite attitudes regarding the subject at different times still within the validity of that domain name, I think it's reasonable to ask about this...

Now it's time for some hypothesis. We argued that with other developers the days before taking our decission.

We don't beleive that Elecbyte will return. It's now clear that they won't do that, and the renewal of their domain is only justified to avoid domain-thieves taking that domain name and turning it into a pr0n/warez site. If I were elecbyte I wouldn't like the idea of having a pr0n site using my name. And why in the hell would you pay for a domain if you aren't actually using it? the only reasonable reason is in order to protect the name.

Furthermore, we believe that Elecbyte was decided to abandon mugen. What company in his sanity will give betas of their program to people they don't know on the internet, and expect them to keep it privately? It's expected that the beta will be leaked to friends, and these friends will leak to other friends, and etc... Locking features will allow to hold the openly distribution of such beta. But why did elecbyte just blocked the modes? Wouldn't it be better to simply remove them?? They could have released a minimugen version if they wanted, but they didn't. they just released a beta with all stuff included, just locked, that any hacker with some ASM knowledge will be able to unlock it.

And why then they wanted donations? To buy a compiler? WTF, they already compiled the program and it ran fine, before getting donations. The compiler excuse was just to get some bucks for their work. They knew that it wasn't viable to have mugen being sold, since everybody will stick to the free version, and I guess that they expected more donations and the few ones made them to find out that selling mugen wasn't viable.

Therefore, the conclusion is that they deliberately decided to close the doors, give a functional beta to some people knowing that someday this beta will be fiunctional due to some ASM tweaking. Leaking betas wasn't new to them. once in the past they allowed peopel to betatest their storyboard player, and it was leaked and published in many sites (although it's use wasn't interesting for gaming thus people soon forgot about this program). They already knew that people leked their bet before they released winmugen.

So, that's why we beleive that Elecbyte won't return. And therefore, official support for mugen is over.

MFG can announce rouhei's version freely. We only mentioned that official feedback and support is done in DEV, because RouHei is registered there and actually getting that feedback. MFG members can post their feedback here if they want, but RouHei won't get anything from it. And certainly, it's utopic to say that someone will forward all that feedback to DEV in real time, since it won't happen. The fact that MFG will have to post the feedback in DEV won't steal members from this forum. So, why "waste" feedback that can be vital, if they can just post that in DEV. Btw, wasn't the idea of this forum to teach their members about ethics of the community and allow them to share them in other communities? Then, why are you forbidding the possibility for such members to register in another community so they can post their feedback? In DEV, we mention to our members that requests can be made in MFG. Why can MFG tell their members to go to DEV and post feedback. Seems unfairly to me if you don't allow that.

And there's a reason to have all feeedback focused in an only place: Could you imagine a program like MAME if all developers used their own places to improve the program and weren't in touch with the other devleopers. You will end up with multiple MAME emulators each one emulating different games and having different features. There must be an unique and official place where the developers meet and share their knowledge. It happens that DEV was the first one to contact rouhei and he agreed with the idea, weeks before the "hack" was announced. It's the drawback of the resources that DEV has, and sadly MFG doesn't. maybe in the future MFG will be the main hub of mugen community, as it was TESTP in the past. But currently, DEV is still THE hub, even if there's few activity in the forum.

@Sepp: Yes, you can argue that this is only a maneuver to revive DEV, but it doesn't really matter if it is or not.

The fact is that mugen community was fading and many creators either quit or kept their work under secrecy shared only with friends that happen to use a hacked mugen version.

After the announcing of our decission, many creators have returned to business. I prefer the revival of the community (especially the creative one) than just the revival of a simple forum. It happens that DEV was in the right place at the right time, but it could have happened with any other forum.  
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 02, 2004, 08:09:33 pm
I fully agree that if possible all feedback go back to Dev.

But should we not expand the rights to use abandoned stuff that creators left behind?

To me allowing this is more severe than simply grabbing some stuff a creator abandoned.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Winane on July 02, 2004, 08:28:27 pm
Disclaimer:  I haven't read everything that's been said about the issue, so sorry if I reiterate anything or say something stupid as a result.


Sepp:  :)


XGargoyle: :no:
(Sorry, really don't have time to argue with any of those points.  Just felt like mentioning that I disagree with a majority of the text in your post below the quote. :P )
Though, guess I'll point out that if there's going to be an official WinMugen forum, MFG would be a better choice than Dev for the simple reason that it uses tolerable forum software.  I hate to think how frustrated Rou Hei will feel when he discovers that there's no search function, and he has to wade through oodles of Eigo trying to find what he was looking for.


In case it hasn't already been mentioned: We're already violating the license by using it beyond the expiration date, even if we're using DOS or Linux Mugen, right?

Personally, I think I'll wait until I get around to trying to contact someone from Elecbyte myself, probably the weekend after this one (don't wanna bother him while he's busy), before deciding about anything in regard to WinMugen.  In the meantime, I think I'll just continue finding amusement in watching people like Herman and especially Legato misdiagnose stuff and make bad recommendations at Dev. :D


So Dev still sure thinks pretty highly of itself, it seems.
Title: Re: Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on July 03, 2004, 01:06:54 am
@Sepp: Yes, you can argue that this is only a maneuver to revive DEV, but it doesn't really matter if it is or not.

Oh. I didn't want to say that. I wanted to say it should be clear that it is also a Dev-revival method.

*Think You Know Who* did really not begin this initiative in order to save DEV.


After all, DEV is only a forum. It has been dying for the longest time now, maybe it will actually make it through a revival, or maybe it was already too far gone.

Guild on the other hand has almost taken DEV's place, but not really yet, and maybe never.

But DEV was the obvious choice, regardless of software. *We* could be sure to control the "situation" there. We required that much certainty at least. Of the consequences, there could no certainty. They will be dealt and lived with as they come, without endless prior speculation.


Anyway, that has been done. No more justification stuff. Decisions made. As Winane said - MUGEN licenses ran out long time ago. As ShoShingo said, we are illegally using copyrighted intellecutal property and whatnot.

Let's not make up long lists of Why This Was Necessary and Right or Wrong now, or Why It Could Have Been If We Assume That So And Such. It's . . . tiresome, and we have few facts.


I think there has been enough "explanation" (!= justification) in order to enable a understanding of the decisions which were made and why.


Question at hand is: What will *Guild* do?

Answer: Wait, think and see; for now.



Dreamslayer:

Unless vanished creator was known for message like NOT DO MODIFY or REDISTRIBUTE, yes.

Wait, *we* didn't even "care" about that in Elecbyte's case. OMG. :o


Somehow all this chained my thoughts to a mental search for Limits of What Can Be Allowed and ended somewhat confusingly at There Are No Rules. But there are rules of thumb. Or something. Now I have to reread Traitor. Bastards.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 03, 2004, 01:18:56 am
I fully agree that if possible all feedback go back to Dev.

But should we not expand the rights to use abandoned stuff that creators left behind?

To me allowing this is more severe than simply grabbing some stuff a creator abandoned.

It's not the same, because a character that has been "abandoned" still works in your mugen. And in case it doesn't you can release "patches" or fixes like Winane does with other characters (telling people how to fix X character)

The creator still has the property of the code and his work is credited. In the same way, Elecbyte is still the owner of elecbyte, and Rouhei's work credits elecbyte.

When a thief uses code from other creators, he doesn't credit them, thus it's against the ethic of the community.

As conclusion, characters abandoned still retains the ownership of the creator, because there's no need for official support in order to make it work, therfore you cannot take it as "abandonware". Mugen, in the other way, has been abandoned and there's no official support. Hence if you need to "fix" it in order to use it in newer computers.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Valodim on July 03, 2004, 12:30:59 pm
umm... short question: does the fixed version still have bugs like the not working p2stateno-param? if yes, I'll stick with dos and linux mugen...

Quote
But along that same line of thinking, I can take a character made for the much older DOS mugen by a long gone creator, patch it up to work in the latest DOS mugen and add new bells and whistles, and re-release it just as long as I give full credit to the original creator.

if he doesn't explicitly say "do not redistribute/modify", imo, yes.

if I, after "leaving the mugen scene long time ago", saw one of my chars (assuming I released one :P) "renewed" and released with proper credit, I'd like it. :)
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 04, 2004, 07:32:41 am
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We did not promote the elecbyte1 version because:
- there was no mention of Elecbyte credited as the original creator.
"Elecbyte1"
"Whiners In Numbers May Ultimately Get Elecbyte Nixed"
"Elecbyte1 isn't Elecbyte"

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- the hack surfaced just when Elecbyte disappeared, giving the idea that it was what caused Eledcbyte to closed thier site
"Giving the idea" isn't as solid as the fact that the domain name was renewed.

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- the DOS hack (yes, there was one prior to the winmugen one) was full with flames to certain members of the community as well, as discrediting Elecbyte.
The one Messatsu posted about?
Which members of the community, BTW? Some quotes of that might help to understand this, especially the bit about "discrediting Elecbyte".

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We promote Rouhei's version because:

- Credits Elecbyte as the original creators
Pretty much everyone who can tell Mugen itself from "games" made with it knows it's Elecbyte's work, and even Elecbyte1 didn't bother to disguise that.
Several creators' sites still link to Elecbyte.com despite the fact that it doesn't work - it's hard to ignore that they created Mugen.

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- mention that if Elecbyte ever returns or requests to stop the distribution, he will stop it. DEV will remove the feedback section and forbid further mentioning/distibution of such version
But now that Dev has decided to openly promote it, anyone who cares the slightest bit about Mugen and doesn't know about this version soon will, and the harm will have been done and impossible to fix...
Consequences of that are already visible, like FlowaGirl's decision to remove the DOS versions of this creations from his site and adding there a link to Rou Hei's site...

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- Current status of mugen falls on abandonware. It's impossible to get mugen from an official source, there's no official support and many computers cannot run in due to XP issues.
This also applies to the Elecbyte1 version - the only major difference being that more features are unlocked, making it more appealing for things other than testing creations.

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We have chosen the lesser evil, as I said.
Doesn't the "lesser evil" principle only apply when you're forced into a choice by forces outside you?
You said "DEV was the first one to contact rouhei", so it wasn't a choice, but an initiative - that's forcing a choice to be made here.
At least this time it's not forcing one of the options...

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I prefer having a version working and the community happy with it and praising Elecbyte as the original creators, than everybody using a warezed/hacked version crediting to Elecbyte1 (or any other name since you can change it) and forgetting in the long run that mugen originated from Elecbyte.
I seriously doubt that Elecbyte will ever be completely forgotten by anyone who knows Mugen, and as for the eventual praising of the likes of Elecbyte1, Dev sure helped RouHei get a lot of attention and vice-versa.

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I don't want wither to find winmugen spreading in underground/warez scenes and people from the mugen community migrating to those communities. That will mean the end of our community.
It's already not unusual to find Mugen sections in roms/warez sites,not to mention Mugen games on places like eBay - this won't change a thing about that, other than make Mugen an even more popular choice at such places now that it's easier to find a fully functional version of the program for Windows.

As for people migrating to other communities, several people hang out in very different types of net communities at once, even if they tend to favour one or just a few.
Even if such communities involve things like warez (as if several people in the Mugen community didn't already have a foot in very questionably legal emulation communities), that's none of a Mugen forum's business unless the individual in question has a directly negative impact on the Mugen community.

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regarding the  banned people from the elecbyte1 incident, you can unban them. I wonder why you didn't unban them before, since that ban was intended as a temporary one and not a definite one.
All were unbanned before Nunor changed the penalty from banning to muting - except PacificAngra because he'd created a new account by then. I've contacted Nunor about that decision, since it's obsolete now, not to mention it'd stop new accounts - he barely posts, so the IP ban set by Val just for PA could be removed.

BTW, if you intended the bans in question to be temporary, why didn't you say so back then or resorted to muting, which would have been temporary by default?
Mutings would have been reasonable enough, but you acted like you would have in Dev.

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Now it's time for some hypothesis.
The Elecbyte1 bans were also based on a hypothesis: that as long as a hack was around Elecbyte wouldn't return.
Changes between now and then? A domain name renewal and a more complete hack.


If Elecbyte stopped caring and considered not returning, then letting someone else take the domain name would only help get the point across - if someday we find something completely unrelated with Mugen or the Elecbyte we knew at the elecbyte.com domain, it'll be clear that it's over.
Actually paying for rights over a domain name just so it wn't get taken over by a different kind of site might not be something most would bother to do, but what do I know? - but I do doubt that Elecyte would still be spending $ on it if they didn't have a plan after all the work they put into Mugen.

The WinMugen package is small, under 2 MB zipped - leaving stuff out in betas of more modern games with hundreds of MBs is typical due to download times/server strain, but really not the case with something this small.

Remember how quickly they started receivig donations when they released a new version that was for Linux instead of the OS every Mugen user was running it on - if it was easy to convert from DOS to Linux, it could have been a way to encourage people to donate if they wanted a new Mugen they could run without changing OS.
If there really was such a plan, back then it worked - considering how people got used to get all sorts of stuff from the net for free, Elecbyte had to be smart to get their hard work to pay off in some way, and I can't really say I blame them for it...

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MFG can announce rouhei's version freely.
We know it can - we just haven't decided if it will, and what else will change if it does... and messing with the root of the community will imply other changes if we wish to be coherent about it...

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We only mentioned that official feedback and support is done in DEV, because RouHei is registered there and actually getting that feedback. MFG members can post their feedback here if they want, but RouHei won't get anything from it.
Unless someone sends him links to off-Dev topics where his work is discussed.

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The fact that MFG will have to post the feedback in DEV won't steal members from this forum.
There's no concern about stealing of members - especially because Dev took the initiative of banning many of theirs for reasons which weren't always worth it.

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Btw, wasn't the idea of this forum to teach their members about ethics of the community and allow them to share them in other communities?
Ask Nunor - the Guild forum was an offspring of the Guild site, like the original Dev spawned from Mugen4ever.

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Then, why are you forbidding the possibility for such members to register in another community so they can post their feedback?
When did I try to forbid such a thing, as if it were possible?...
We're still discussing this, looking at it from as many points of view as possible, and trying to come up with a course of action, if any, to deal with this new factor - given the impact that this forum has on the community, this has to be very well thought out before we reach a conclusion.

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In DEV, we mention to our members that requests can be made in MFG.
You don't want requests there at all...

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Why can MFG tell their members to go to DEV and post feedback. Seems unfairly to me if you don't allow that.
For the time being nothing regarding Dev's WinMugen section is being allowed of forbidden past the current rule that forbids the discussion of Mugen hacks - if this bothers you today, you shouldn't have banned people here about it then.

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Could you imagine a program like MAME if all developers used their own places to improve the program and weren't in touch with the other devleopers.
Linux?

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It happens that DEV was the first one to contact rouhei and he agreed with the idea, weeks before the "hack" was announced. It's the drawback of the resources that DEV has, and sadly MFG doesn't.
Dev's resources are its staff, who contacted Rouhei - seeing as a member of Dev's staff is also part of this staff, it can be said both forums are sharing a resource: you.
Something like this affects all of the community, so you could have brought up the subject here before, but didn't.
Sadly.

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The fact is that mugen community was fading and many creators either quit or kept their work under secrecy shared only with friends that happen to use a hacked mugen version.
Many creators never needed a hacked WinMugen excuse to keep stuff private.

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After the announcing of our decission, many creators have returned to business.
Who?


Dev being at the right place at the right time... if RouHei had taken the initiative to go there - but you said he was contacted by Dev...
I take it you mean the discovery of his site, and that has to do with individuals, not forums.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 05, 2004, 04:03:25 am
I meant to make all of these replies in one go yesterday, but the forum wouldn't accept a message that big... :P

In case it hasn't already been mentioned: We're already violating the license by using it beyond the expiration date, even if we're using DOS or Linux Mugen, right?

Yep, because Elecbyte hasn't provided new versions past that date.

I don't think they realistically expected people to drop theis DOS versions just because they made a better one for Linux - although it helped them greatly to get donations.

So far, things have hanged on their action - or lack thereof.

It could be said that using their "expired" Mugens is a "passive" violation of the license (in the sense that no change has occured in users' Mugen habits past the last legal date to use the program), while hacking a beta to get a fully functional new Mugen or seeking one in such condition is a "active" violation...

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Personally, I think I'll wait until I get around to trying to contact someone from Elecbyte myself, probably the weekend after this one (don't wanna bother him while he's busy), before deciding about anything in regard to WinMugen.

I don't recall any past mention of such aquaintances... that'd explain the unusually deep knowledge of things like the SFF file format... :P


Dreamslayer:

Unless vanished creator was known for message like NOT DO MODIFY or REDISTRIBUTE, yes.

I'm inclined to agree - and apparently so is Elecbyte, judging from their Mugen FAQ:

"A character I saw did this cool effect. How was it done?
========================================================

Take note of which states that character was in, and take a look at it
in his `.cns' file. The reason for the open file formats is so that you
can share techniques with other developers."

It seems reasonable to accept use of others' work if they show no sign of being against others using it and credit is given where it's due.

However, it seems that despite Elecbyte's words this course of action is still considered taboo, even in cases where the original creator is mentioned...
Maybe some just love an excuse to accuse people of stealing, I don't know...

Such a paradigm shift in this forum could probably be justified only if the "updated" WinMugen(s) became acceptable around here... forbidding the updating or partial use of creations made with no profit in mind in cases where the original creator can't be contacted while allowing the use of a hacked program protected by copyright laws made with a business plan in mind would be inconsistent, so one thing should only be allowed if the other is too...

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Somehow all this chained my thoughts to a mental search for Limits of What Can Be Allowed and ended somewhat confusingly at There Are No Rules. But there are rules of thumb. Or something. Now I have to reread Traitor. Bastards.

Now I'm curious - who wrote that "Traitor"?... :P


I fully agree that if possible all feedback go back to Dev.

But should we not expand the rights to use abandoned stuff that creators left behind?

To me allowing this is more severe than simply grabbing some stuff a creator abandoned.

It's not the same, because a character that has been "abandoned" still works in your mugen.

Might depend on the Mugen version being used, so I'm told...

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And in case it doesn't you can release "patches" or fixes like Winane does with other characters (telling people how to fix X character)

I recall that Hsieh released his coins patch for ShinRyoga and NeoAhnk's Super Mario in the middle of one of the character's release threads, and I don't recall any mention of previous contacts or permissions between them.
That patch involved updating every file on the character except for the DEF (which anyone can put together just by looking at the list of files in the patch), and to this day Hsieh is still a rather respected member of the community as a creator and when it comes to helping people, without a single accusation of theft being thrown his way.
Credit is given to the original authors only in his website - maybe that was the decisive factor to keep his reputation clean?...
All that's said on Super Mario's readme regarding permissions is this:
"***THIS IS NOT TO BE SOLD UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!***

***Please do not upload SuperMario to your site unless you have
written permission from ShinRyoga or NeoAnkh***"

If he got away with doing something like that, I don't see why others might not get away with making similar changes if the creators of the original character do not forbid it in any manner...

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The creator still has the property of the code and his work is credited. In the same way, Elecbyte is still the owner of elecbyte, and Rouhei's work credits elecbyte.

When a thief uses code from other creators, he doesn't credit them, thus it's against the ethic of the community.

Then someone who makes a release claiming that (s)he used part of creation X from creator Y, who gave no reply despite despite attemps to contact him, shouldn't be considered a thief?...
In such circumstances, many still are...

Or is it that some people are so vocal about accusations of theft that it may be possible that they're wrong if the person in question did everything in his/her power to do things right while trying to share with others an update or new creation that borrowed things from one or more creations?...

After all, Mugen is just a hobby... some people eventually lose interest and stop caring, and may even become impossible to contact again when they move on to other things in life...
Considering such (rather frequent) situations, would it be totally wrong to allow their work, originally distributed out of willingness to share fandom/creativity with no thoughts of profit in mind, to help others with their own Mugen works if nothing was said about forbidding such use - especially considering Elecbyte itself designed Mugen so it'd allow people to learn from each others' creations?...

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As conclusion, characters abandoned still retains the ownership of the creator, because there's no need for official support in order to make it work, therfore you cannot take it as "abandonware". Mugen, in the other way, has been abandoned and there's no official support. Hence if you need to "fix" it in order to use it in newer computers.

Many Windows-based computers still run Mugen, and any new computer can run it in Linux - Elecbyte can't really be blamed if people don't feel like changing OS.

And, as mentioned by elecbyte themsleves, "The reason for the open file formats is so that you can share techniques with other developers." - this implies that by default you shouldn't need to contact other developers who shared their creations with the public if  their code spoke for itself.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Winane on July 05, 2004, 04:41:22 am
I don't recall any past mention of such aquaintances... that'd explain the unusually deep knowledge of things like the SFF file format... :P

Haha, no, I think you read way too much into that. :D  I've never been acquainted with anyone from Elecbyte (well, to the best of my knowledge, at least).  And I have my reasons for not publically mentioning how much I do know about them (which is really only a tiny tad bit more than most people). :P  No idea whether I'll actually be able to contact the guy, but I think there's a somewhat significant chance I'll succeed.

My knowledge of the SFF format is just derived from formats.txt, Pcx.txt, a hex editor, mugen.exe, sprmaker.exe, a little help from Christophe, and a bunch of flawed SFFs and SFF tools to do testing with.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 05, 2004, 11:26:13 pm
First of all, Loona, I don't know if you have a grudge against me, DEV, or a certain member in DEV's staff, and keep arguing because of that. My apologies if that's not true, but it's the only idea one can get from your messages.

Let's discuss your reply, since there are several points which are either non-sense or contradicted by yourself:


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We did not promote the elecbyte1 version because:
- there was no mention of Elecbyte credited as the original creator.
"Elecbyte1"
"Whiners In Numbers May Ultimately Get Elecbyte Nixed"
"Elecbyte1 isn't Elecbyte"

So, in your wisdom, this is credit. Then I suppose that Orochi's readme where insults brazilian creators is also good credit to brazil. And that calling someone idiot is also crediting that someone. I'm sorry but I cannot share your wisdom here.

Plus, if the elecbyte1 version was ever distributed without any documentation (the sentences you quoted are extracted from that documentation) it's impossible to deduce that elecbyte1 != elecbyte. (the executable is credited to Elecbyte1). So, your defense point is really weak, since you are only agreeing with what I posted previously. RouHei's version credits Elecbyte in the executable, and this credit will continue even if there's no documentation at all. That's why DEV allows its distribution, while elecbyte1's one is forbidden.

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- the hack surfaced just when Elecbyte disappeared, giving the idea that it was what caused Eledcbyte to closed thier site
"Giving the idea" isn't as solid as the fact that the domain name was renewed.

Keeping in mind that the domain is from Tucows, is most likely a prepaid automatic service. Therefore, as long as the account has some bucks, the domain will be renewed with no intervention from elecbyte. Moreover, even with the domain renewed, there are no facts of elecbyte being alive. Not all facts are what one believe they are. The domain being renewed doesn't imply that elecbyte is alive.

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The one Messatsu posted about?
Which members of the community, BTW? Some quotes of that might help to understand this, especially the bit about "discrediting Elecbyte".

To me, the fact of replacing "elecbyte" by "elecbyte1" and "****byte" (fuckbyte) is enough evidences of discrediting. If that's not discredit for you, then calling you "loonafucka" (motherfucker) shouldn't bother you, right? :P

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We promote Rouhei's version because:

- Credits Elecbyte as the original creators
Pretty much everyone who can tell Mugen itself from "games" made with it knows it's Elecbyte's work, and even Elecbyte1 didn't bother to disguise that.
Several creators' sites still link to Elecbyte.com despite the fact that it doesn't work - it's hard to ignore that they created Mugen.

I don't care about leechers and players that download the characters. They all know that elecbyte made mugen. I care about the games sold at ebay and Hong Kong stores with mugen compilations. Those that buy these games don't have a clue on who made mugen. If they buy a mugen game credited to "Mega enterprise" they will believe that. We cannot stop the selling of such games, thus I prefer at least that the games have a credit to the original creators. However, Loona, seems that your community concept is focused only on forums, while my concept os focused worldwide. As I said, we took the decision of the lesser evil. If you cannot see what's the lesser and what's the greater evil, it's not my fault.

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- mention that if Elecbyte ever returns or requests to stop the distribution, he will stop it. DEV will remove the feedback section and forbid further mentioning/distibution of such version
But now that Dev has decided to openly promote it, anyone who cares the slightest bit about Mugen and doesn't know about this version soon will, and the harm will have been done and impossible to fix...
Consequences of that are already visible, like FlowaGirl's decision to remove the DOS versions of this creations from his site and adding there a link to Rou Hei's site...

That's a complete non-sense and shows your poor understanding of the creator's point of view. Do you believe we wouldn't have stopped public releases of capcom characters' if Capcom did say "no" to our question about using their sprites? And btw, do you really think that Flowa won't bring back his DOS characters if Elecbyte tells not to use winmugen? Flowa will bring back his characters without any hesitation, if that ever happens. Btw, Flowa was one of the creators asked to say his opinion on this before we took the decision, and he agreed with our decission. Do a bit of research next time to want to argue something.

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- Current status of mugen falls on abandonware. It's impossible to get mugen from an official source, there's no official support and many computers cannot run in due to XP issues.
This also applies to the Elecbyte1 version - the only major difference being that more features are unlocked, making it more appealing for things other than testing creations.

Is that difficult to understand for you that while the Elecbyte1 version modified credits adding useless content and flames, Rouhei's version simply unlocks what was there before? Rouhei's didn't add anything extra. All the unloocked modes were already included by elecbyte. Hence rouhei's version is exactly what Elecbyte gave to donators, while elecbyte1's added extra stuff. WE allow RH's version because it keeps Elecbyte's soul in it.

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We have chosen the lesser evil, as I said.
Doesn't the "lesser evil" principle only apply when you're forced into a choice by forces outside you?
You said "DEV was the first one to contact rouhei", so it wasn't a choice, but an initiative - that's forcing a choice to be made here.
At least this time it's not forcing one of the options...

We saw that Rouhei was working on unlocking the character limit. We positively realized that if some guy did it, any one else could do that in only a matter of time. Then, we contacted RH and asked him about the difficulties unlocking the version, and he replied us that actually it was easy, as long you find the right spot. He happened to be the first one to find that out, but he was sure that other crackers will soon it sooner or later. Then, we took the decission of having a supported version, in hopes that once being unlocked, no one else will attempt to do that (and in the meanwhile, add extra stuff or modify elecbyte's credit). We were forced to take a decission in order to save the community and Elecbyte's name in the long run. It hasn't been easy for us, and we took into account every positive/negative factor it could arise with our decission. Also, several creators that counted with the community knowledge and experience were asked to say their opinion. After all that input, a decission was made. I'm sorry if you didn't qualify for that, but there are creators that have been longer in this community than you. Seems that you're angry for not being chosen. Don't blame that on me.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 05, 2004, 11:26:49 pm
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I seriously doubt that Elecbyte will ever be completely forgotten by anyone who knows Mugen, and as for the eventual praising of the likes of Elecbyte1, Dev sure helped RouHei get a lot of attention and vice-versa.
...
It's already not unusual to find Mugen sections in roms/warez sites,not to mention Mugen games on places like eBay - this won't change a thing about that, other than make Mugen an even more popular choice at such places now that it's easier to find a fully functional version of the program for Windows.
...
that's none of a Mugen forum's business unless the individual in question has a directly negative impact on the Mugen community.

That's completely non-sense and I see no relation to what was being discussed here. Check my reason about the ebay/HK stores for more explanation. Also, we cannot stop the distribution of mugen in these places, but at least, we can control that they will be using a version crediting Elecbyte instead of a non-credited elecbyte version.

And btw, it's forum business to ensure that mugen community learns about elecbyte's creation (not elecbyte's creation), promote the use of elecbyte's mugen (not elecbyte1's mugen) and help every new member about elecbyte's mugen (not elecbyte1's version)

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BTW, if you intended the bans in question to be temporary, why didn't you say so back then or resorted to muting, which would have been temporary by default?
Mutings would have been reasonable enough, but you acted like you would have in Dev.

If they were unbanned, then why in the hell are you whining about the banned accounts??? Btw, I was not the only person here in power to ban people at that time. My decission could have been easily overridden by any other staff member and administrators. However, it wasn't. Maybe you must wonder why everybody agreed with that decission of mine, and no one did anything about that until now when you're attacking me with such poor and weak argument.

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Now it's time for some hypothesis.
The Elecbyte1 bans were also based on a hypothesis: that as long as a hack was around Elecbyte wouldn't return.
Changes between now and then? A domain name renewal and a more complete hack.

more complete? it has all the stuff that elecbyte put there, with no estra stuff. Domain name's renewal was explained above. However, elecbyte1 version doesn't credit elecbyte. What do you want? People using a complete unlocked elecbyte1 (or any other name) or people using a complete unlocked elecbyte version? I prefer the latter...

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The WinMugen package is small, under 2 MB zipped - leaving stuff out in betas of more modern games with hundreds of MBs is typical due to download times/server strain, but really not the case with something this small.

LOL, that's probably the most hilarating I've ever read in my life. Take winmugen, remove the game modes and you will end with a storyboard player, like the one Elecbyte gave us to betatest what will be the windows port in the future. Loona, it was possible to give a smaller, limited version of mugen to the donators, but Elecbyte didn't do that. They gave them the full version....

Please, learn about mugen history before trying to argue certain points.

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We only mentioned that official feedback and support is done in DEV, because RouHei is registered there and actually getting that feedback. MFG members can post their feedback here if they want, but RouHei won't get anything from it.
Unless someone sends him links to off-Dev topics where his work is discussed.

So you prefer him to waste time visiting spanish, brazilian, french, italian, esperanto... mugen forums, struggling at bad translations with babelfish and trying to figure it out what people comments about his work, rather than having a single place in english, where he's already registered, where can get hosting for his work in case his site goes down, where he can understand what people posts and etcetera...?

Hooray for making things easier for the poor man.

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The fact that MFG will have to post the feedback in DEV won't steal members from this forum.
There's no concern about stealing of members - especially because Dev took the initiative of banning many of theirs for reasons which weren't always worth it.

Then, what's your concern about? I don't understand you

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Btw, wasn't the idea of this forum to teach their members about ethics of the community and allow them to share them in other communities?
Ask Nunor - the Guild forum was an offspring of the Guild site, like the original Dev spawned from Mugen4ever.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Mugen DEV had no relation with M4E. DEV was K3nsh1n's personal forum. K3nsh1n, due to server problems, asked M4E's staff if they could host his forum M4E gave him space in the server as long as they could moderate the forum as well. It's not a springoff, it was just hosting.

Again, do some research...

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In DEV, we mention to our members that requests can be made in MFG.
You don't want requests there at all...

And? Is that a problem to you? Are you concerned about DEV's policy of no requests?? The fact that we don't allow requests doesn't mean that we cannot tell where to get such requests, either by google or by MFG.


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We're still discussing this, looking at it from as many points of view as possible, and trying to come up with a course of action, if any, to deal with this new factor - given the impact that this forum has on the community, this has to be very well thought out before we reach a conclusion.
...
Dev's resources are its staff, who contacted Rouhei - seeing as a member of Dev's staff is also part of this staff, it can be said both forums are sharing a resource: you.
Something like this affects all of the community, so you could have brought up the subject here before, but didn't.
Sadly.

The decision by the "veterans", who made up 99% of the team involved with the final decision to promote the hack, did it using experience and a fairly unbaised look towards the possible downsides/upsides of promoting the hack.

Certain members from the staff of this forum don't have such experience/and unbiased look to take this decission (that's not a critic, it's just the truth). And certainly, before taking any decission, it wasn't secure to allow the possibility of leaks or misunderstandings of that critical issue. If you weren't asked personally as a creator/experienced member of the community, then I'm sorry for you. Make more/better creations in the future and you will be asked.

Btw, I'm not the only staff member of this forum that was asked for that decision, and not all of DEV's staff members were included in the decision, sicne they lacked the requested features we wanted.


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After the announcing of our decission, many creators have returned to business.
Who?

To mention a few ones: K3nsh1n, KoYoTae, Sander, HeartBurn Kid... want more?
 
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 06, 2004, 12:10:09 am
I suppose that there's no question when a person uses stuff from creators that are already available, seems that the problem comes with the creators that are no longer in the scene.

There is no problem, if a creator picks an old character incompatible with the recent versions and updates to make it work, as long as he hasn't add any extra stuff. In other words, if the resulting character is the same as the previous one. The problem is that thieves pick old characters and add crap on them. That's why it's not allowed. Fixing it to make it compatible in newer versions is ok, as long as nothing else is added, and credit is kept ot the original creator.

For the rest of the creations, there is no reason why people shouldn't ask for authorization before using them.

Hsieh's example is a good reference. He made a patch that improved Super Mario. But, he only released the patch, and you still need the original mario to get it to work. I don't see any problem about that.

In the same way, anyone could make a patch for X character that gives the character new features or fixes bugs, as long as he doesn't release the character attached. Palettes are a good example of that. Anyone can make his own palettes and release them, provided they don't put the character from another creator in it.

Rouhei's mugen simply patches and fixes something that is already in the executable. No extra stuff.

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"A character I saw did this cool effect. How was it done?
========================================================

Take note of which states that character was in, and take a look at it
in his `.cns' file. The reason for the open file formats is so that you
can share techniques with other developers."

The FAQ mentions to take note, not copy and paste. It mentioned about sharing techniques, not copying techniques. You can share knowledge so that others can learn from it. But sharing doesn't equals to simply copy. I can share with other members a technique to make an efficient AI routine, but that doesn't allows them to copy exactly my technique, but they can use my technique and do their own using mine as a base. An example in history: Chairman Kaga created the fatality code. Kamek used that as a base and made his own improving it. Kazmer just copied the fatality code, screwing it up in most of the time. Kaga shared his code with Kamek and Kazmer (curiously, all them start with K :P), while Kamek behaved well and make a good use fo the "sharing" concept, Kazmer simply behaved bad and made a bad use of the "sharing" concept. That's why Kamek is a respected creator, while Kazmer not.
 
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 06, 2004, 12:45:04 am
First of all, Loona, I don't know if you have a grudge against me, DEV, or a certain member in DEV's staff, and keep arguing because of that. My apologies if that's not true, but it's the only idea one can get from your messages.

My problem is basically with the bans you applied here without warning when posts were made regarding the Elecbyte1 version - back then Nunor had already left pretty clear he'd want to be consulted on such matters beforehand, and there were plenty of alternative courses of action, as mentioned before.

Upon arriving to the forum and seeing what you did, I found myself with a choice to make - either make the bans a standard procedure on such cases, adjusting the forum's rules for that, making your actions more understandable, or removing you from the staff for taking matters into your own hands contrary to orientations given to the staff, and completely nullifying a decision made by a staff memeber, making things rather insconsistent in the way this forum handles matters.

I ended up choosing to make an emergency change to the rules, and the removal of banning rights to GMs that soon followed made sue at least something just like that wouldn't happen again... it made things easier, but it was still a hard situation to find myself in on such a short notice, forced upon in such a manner.

That was the past, but these recents developments made it worse, since both times (one of the members of the) Dev staff placed this forum in a difficult position.

I've always respected you, if I didn't always agree with your attitudes on some matters, but this doesn't make things any easier...

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Let's discuss your reply, since there are several points which are either non-sense or contradicted by yourself:

I had to leave a lot of stuff out in order to be able to post - I actually ended up spending more time choosing parts of the text to remove in order for the forum to accept the reply than actually writing the original reply - that, along with the late hours and the fact that I'm supposed to be studying for a couple of exams and some ignorance on some details didsn't really help... I'll try to keep an untouched original copy of the reply and simply try to post different section of it if the forum won't accept the whole thing... it'd really help if there was some mention of how big a reply can be to be accepted...

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We did not promote the elecbyte1 version because:
- there was no mention of Elecbyte credited as the original creator.
"Elecbyte1"
"Whiners In Numbers May Ultimately Get Elecbyte Nixed"
"Elecbyte1 isn't Elecbyte"

So, in your wisdom, this is credit.

It's not credit, but it's not like the name was completely left out on purpose.

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The one Messatsu posted about?
Which members of the community, BTW? Some quotes of that might help to understand this, especially the bit about "discrediting Elecbyte".

To me, the fact of replacing "elecbyte" by "elecbyte1" and "****byte" (fuckbyte) is enough evidences of discrediting. If that's not discredit for you, then calling you "loonafucka" (motherfucker) shouldn't bother you, right? :P

I didn't try the thing on my computer, so I didn't know exactly what was written there, which is why I asked - back when Messatsu made the topic I simply locked it once I saw the site it was linking to, and what little credibility it had.

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We promote Rouhei's version because:

- Credits Elecbyte as the original creators
Pretty much everyone who can tell Mugen itself from "games" made with it knows it's Elecbyte's work, and even Elecbyte1 didn't bother to disguise that.
Several creators' sites still link to Elecbyte.com despite the fact that it doesn't work - it's hard to ignore that they created Mugen.

I don't care about leechers and players that download the characters. They all know that elecbyte made mugen. I care about the games sold at ebay and Hong Kong stores with mugen compilations. Those that buy these games don't have a clue on who made mugen. If they buy a mugen game credited to "Mega enterprise" they will believe that. We cannot stop the selling of such games, thus I prefer at least that the games have a credit to the original creators. However, Loona, seems that your community concept is focused only on forums, while my concept os focused worldwide. As I said, we took the decision of the lesser evil. If you cannot see what's the lesser and what's the greater evil, it's not my fault.

My take on it is that there's little to nothing we can do about eBay and Hong-Kong stores - we can, however, affect forums and related corners of the community, so that's invariably where the focus goes when taking decisions.

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- mention that if Elecbyte ever returns or requests to stop the distribution, he will stop it. DEV will remove the feedback section and forbid further mentioning/distibution of such version
But now that Dev has decided to openly promote it, anyone who cares the slightest bit about Mugen and doesn't know about this version soon will, and the harm will have been done and impossible to fix...
Consequences of that are already visible, like FlowaGirl's decision to remove the DOS versions of this creations from his site and adding there a link to Rou Hei's site...

That's a complete non-sense and shows your poor understanding of the creator's point of view. Do you believe we wouldn't have stopped public releases of capcom characters' if Capcom did say "no" to our question about using their sprites?

That might have been the end of the Capcom section in EZboard Dev, but it wouldn't keep people from making Capcom characters or finding them at places like Charasoon...

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- Current status of mugen falls on abandonware. It's impossible to get mugen from an official source, there's no official support and many computers cannot run in due to XP issues.
This also applies to the Elecbyte1 version - the only major difference being that more features are unlocked, making it more appealing for things other than testing creations.

Is that difficult to understand for you that while the Elecbyte1 version modified credits adding useless content and flames, Rouhei's version simply unlocks what was there before? Rouhei's didn't add anything extra. All the unloocked modes were already included by elecbyte. Hence rouhei's version is exactly what Elecbyte gave to donators, while elecbyte1's added extra stuff. WE allow RH's version because it keeps Elecbyte's soul in it.

What I meant is that from a user's point of view, you can do more with Rou Hei's version than you could with Elecbyte1's version... surely it can't be that hard to understand...

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We have chosen the lesser evil, as I said.
Doesn't the "lesser evil" principle only apply when you're forced into a choice by forces outside you?
You said "DEV was the first one to contact rouhei", so it wasn't a choice, but an initiative - that's forcing a choice to be made here.
At least this time it's not forcing one of the options...

We saw that Rouhei was working on unlocking the character limit. We positively realized that if some guy did it, any one else could do that in only a matter of time. Then, we contacted RH and asked him about the difficulties unlocking the version, and he replied us that actually it was easy, as long you find the right spot. He happened to be the first one to find that out, but he was sure that other crackers will soon it sooner or later. Then, we took the decission of having a supported version, in hopes that once being unlocked, no one else will attempt to do that (and in the meanwhile, add extra stuff or modify elecbyte's credit). We were forced to take a decission in order to save the community and Elecbyte's name in the long run. It hasn't been easy for us, and we took into account every positive/negative factor it could arise with our decission. Also, several creators that counted with the community knowledge and experience were asked to say their opinion. After all that input, a decission was made. I'm sorry if you didn't qualify for that, but there are creators that have been longer in this community than you. Seems that you're angry for not being chosen. Don't blame that on me.

I have no problem admitting that I arrived on the community some time after the Silent Storm events, and that apparently seniority was a criteria used for choosing people to discuss this.
I also have no major problem with Rou Hei's work, especially when compared to Elecbyte1's.

It's bothers me at least a little, however, that plans to "save the community and Elecbyte's name" apparently should only be a concern of this forum when it involves decising to ban people, since I think it's pretty safe to say that the amount of people that frequent this forum make it a factor to take into consideration.

So now we have to take a decision on this AFTER Dev took matters into its own hands on a couple of ralated issues without even asking us first - it might have been better if such decisions could have been taken together, making it easier on everybody to reach a consensual solution.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 06, 2004, 01:14:30 am
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We only mentioned that official feedback and support is done in DEV, because RouHei is registered there and actually getting that feedback. MFG members can post their feedback here if they want, but RouHei won't get anything from it.
Unless someone sends him links to off-Dev topics where his work is discussed.

So you prefer him to waste time visiting spanish, brazilian, french, italian, esperanto... mugen forums, struggling at bad translations with babelfish and trying to figure it out what people comments about his work, rather than having a single place in english, where he's already registered, where can get hosting for his work in case his site goes down, where he can understand what people posts and etcetera...?

The way you said could almost make one believe that there are no more english forums, and that all forums require registration for you to read them... BTW, it'd be interesting to check out that Esperanto Mugen forum... link please?... :P

What I was considering here was the simple possibility that, should WinMugen hacks become an acceptable topic of discussion over here, it'll still be impossible to force people to comment on Rou Hei's at Dev, so in case someone actually mention something relevant here, sending him a link to the topic where that happened could be a possibilty, in case nobody mentions that comment (or its origin) at Dev.

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The fact that MFG will have to post the feedback in DEV won't steal members from this forum.
There's no concern about stealing of members - especially because Dev took the initiative of banning many of theirs for reasons which weren't always worth it.

Then, what's your concern about? I don't understand you

I'm the one who doesn't understand why you came up with this silly talk of stealing members, but let's move on to other things...

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Btw, wasn't the idea of this forum to teach their members about ethics of the community and allow them to share them in other communities?
Ask Nunor - the Guild forum was an offspring of the Guild site, like the original Dev spawned from Mugen4ever.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Mugen DEV had no relation with M4E. DEV was K3nsh1n's personal forum. K3nsh1n, due to server problems, asked M4E's staff if they could host his forum M4E gave him space in the server as long as they could moderate the forum as well. It's not a springoff, it was just hosting.

I take it that was before Dev moved to EZboard then?... Because that's where I found it, thanks to the link at M4E, which was linked to from TESTP, which was linked to from Elecbyte.com at the time...

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In DEV, we mention to our members that requests can be made in MFG.
You don't want requests there at all...

And? Is that a problem to you? Are you concerned about DEV's policy of no requests?? The fact that we don't allow requests doesn't mean that we cannot tell where to get such requests, either by google or by MFG.

I'm simply saying it's rather different having a link to this forum if you don't want requests there than it would be for us to have a link to Dev's WinMugen section while this discussion is still taking place.

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We're still discussing this, looking at it from as many points of view as possible, and trying to come up with a course of action, if any, to deal with this new factor - given the impact that this forum has on the community, this has to be very well thought out before we reach a conclusion.
...
Dev's resources are its staff, who contacted Rouhei - seeing as a member of Dev's staff is also part of this staff, it can be said both forums are sharing a resource: you.
Something like this affects all of the community, so you could have brought up the subject here before, but didn't.
Sadly.

The decision by the "veterans", who made up 99% of the team involved with the final decision to promote the hack, did it using experience and a fairly unbaised look towards the possible downsides/upsides of promoting the hack.

Certain members from the staff of this forum don't have such experience/and unbiased look to take this decission (that's not a critic, it's just the truth). And certainly, before taking any decission, it wasn't secure to allow the possibility of leaks or misunderstandings of that critical issue. If you weren't asked personally as a creator/experienced member of the community, then I'm sorry for you. Make more/better creations in the future and you will be asked.

Not all of the staff members have a saying on wha this forum allows or not - if you didn't trust all, you could at least have contacted those/some who, unless you think you can affect the future of the community without involving the hundreds of people who frequent this forum that don't go to Dev - as it seems to be the case.

As for my puny Mugen creation count, sorry about that - I've been busy helping to babysit the barbarians at MGBR and over here when offline life doesn't give me other things to do.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 06, 2004, 01:49:28 am
There is no problem, if a creator picks an old character incompatible with the recent versions and updates to make it work, as long as he hasn't add any extra stuff.

I do believe there have been problems in the past when people have tried to make available to the public fixed versions of characters made for older versions of DOS Mugen...

And there are cases when all that's left are incomplete betas that looked very promising, but will most likely never be completed because the creator has left - if credit is given should someone try to complete and release the character, it wouldn't be that different from what Rou Hei did with WinMugen...

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In other words, if the resulting character is the same as the previous one. The problem is that thieves pick old characters and add crap on them. That's why it's not allowed. Fixing it to make it compatible in newer versions is ok, as long as nothing else is added, and credit is kept ot the original creator.

Does that "nothing else" also include things like required sprites/animations or other stuff that's clearly missing from the creation?...

And stuff that's added might not always be crap...
Evil Ken and the original Dark Chun-Li could be examples of this up to a certain point, since the possibility Reu and Eli had to contact Tenshin and Angel Myst, a possibility other people may not have to contact other creators, in no way affected their ability to build something quite decent from a complete character base...

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Hsieh's example is a good reference. He made a patch that improved Super Mario. But, he only released the patch, and you still need the original mario to get it to work. I don't see any problem about that.

Other than the DEF (which can be easily put together given the list of files the patch includes), the only file not included in the patch is the one that corresponds to the "stcommon" field... I didn't test it so far, but I can't help but wonder if the character would still be functional if that field was ommited...
It seems like a rather borderline situation, so I felt it'd be relevant to mention it...

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In the same way, anyone could make a patch for X character that gives the character new features or fixes bugs, as long as he doesn't release the character attached. Palettes are a good example of that. Anyone can make his own palettes and release them, provided they don't put the character from another creator in it.

I know all too well about the palletes issues, but there are cases (not that different from Hsieh's, bar the "stcommon" file detail) where the only way to give a character new features is to change every file, indeed allowing everyone to use it by putting together a Def file, bypassing the use of the original character.
I take that'd be alright then, if credit was given where it's due?...

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Rouhei's mugen simply patches and fixes something that is already in the executable. No extra stuff.

... other than a lot of other things from the beta that he didn't change but still distributed, because none of it is available anymore through the original source.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 06, 2004, 03:19:05 am
I managed to read all of XG's posts but I (no offense) couldn't last through 3 more long posts.

I still think the ban should be enforced if anyone promotes the elecbyte1 hack. I didn't think so because it was a hack but for the sole reason that it was something Elecbyte obviously did not feel like releasing to everyone.

I would have rather Dev only give access to this board to people it trusted at least. Seniority and respect values. It feels very wrong to just flaunt this beta out like it is just some program that will make it easier for people to create on XP. In fact out of all the people in the community it was XG's influence that built my ethics into what it is today.

I remember we clashed on all sorts of things back when I was new. But I never detested that, I looked and read what he was saying... trying to find that emotion in myself to see from that point.

The one thing that above all else is sacred for this community is Elecbyte. And something that I learned is no matter how much easier a certain shortcut makes things it is best to work with what you have at your disposal. It just seems that we are taking something from Elecbyte just to make it easier for some people. Not really caring if it does hurt them more or not.

If it is not broke why fix it? The linux version has more features and there are many ways to get Linux beside any other OS.

But that is past issues. What is done is done. The cascade has already begun and as much as some may not have liked we cannot be mad at XG (or Dev) for this.

We all make mistakes and succumb to certain temptations. I believe that XG thought and possibly still thinks his choice was the right one. Just as I thought it was the right thing to try to reason with BJ via emails which have seemed to made things just that much more complecated :-\

If we are too be angry at anyone it is whomever is responsible for the initial elecbyte1 release. This situation would not have arised without that. And as for the bannings XG administered at the time, it was a reflex action.

"Great Scott! Some idiots are posting the beta hack of WinMugen!!! What do we do? This isn't suppossed to be publisized! This is a huge travesty to Elecbyte and the community!!!"

I picture that is somewhat along the lines of most that understood what was happening when they 1st saw it. I know I did. The emotion of the shock of seeing the link here (moderatiately speaking in your own back yard) Then the anger geared towards the one celebrating this. Seeing as it is something noone here was prepared for banning was the best option for something so severe.

Now months later the idea of the leak has settled more. XG on many occasions seems to have accepted that he did infact overreact a bit. So what to do next? Let a silent and underground community form around the hack itself?Or go with the original beta again and try to deteer(sp) people away from tinkering with the hack?

I can see the logic in the choices that were made. And again with the reasoning to the length of this whole topic... most of us here in this staff were yet again not prepared for this. A huge shock to see followed with an emotional attachment to what has happened here in the past and Elecbyte itself.

I think the only thing XG himself really did wrong was not trusting us to at least help us prepare for this. Dev is an intricate part of the community. So much so I rarely post there because I honestly do not feel worthy yet. As much as I help and and thankful to all those that respect me for that I still have not payed my dues enough to be a regular at Dev.

So instead of all this petty debating on things that we cannot change, we should go back to where my original intent of this topic was suppossed to lead.

What do we do? I did not ask if it was right or not.
I feel this is just something we have to accept with teeth gritted. <--- right word? clamped be a better word? :P

I think we should either add a sticky to this area of Dev, or make an area for it here too. If a board was here it would be primarily for posting the history and stressing the importance of Elecbyte. We could use the board to post updates to the beta as we do releases. And the feedback section would still be a link to Dev. Only admins and moderators and special members could post to add the updates. And we could move the Elecbyte support thread there as well.
In fact I think a board like that would be the best course of action.

As much as I don't like seeing the beta being publisized like this everyone still has there own free choice to make on the ethics on whether to use this or not. And I hate how it is tearing apart this forum which I have called home for so long.

Let us press on together again. I still belive Elecbyte will come back. This really changed nothing with that aspect, nothing new is proven that they will not return because of this and nothing was proven that they will. I do wish you would be a bit more optimistic for there return though XG :P

EDIT: Yes I say some things that may contridict myself, remember I am speaking from two sides. I argue to myself like this in real life too =P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 06, 2004, 04:57:06 am
I managed to read all of XG's posts but I (no offense) couldn't last through 3 more long posts.

OK then, get some rest and do it later... :P

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I still think the ban should be enforced if anyone promotes the elecbyte1 hack. I didn't think so because it was a hack but for the sole reason that it was something Elecbyte obviously did not feel like releasing to everyone.

The penalty hasn't been a ban in quite some time - but considering the elecbyte1 hack is much inferior to the Rou Hei one, no one will care about it anyway the this more recent one is mentioned, which is why a likely possibility is the simple removal or the WinMugen hack rule, because from then on "natural selection" takes over, as seen on MGBR when everyone knew of Elecbyte1's version and rejected it due to its restrictions.

That's my current view on it, as I feel it wouldn't be reasonable to have a special rule just for Rou Hei's version, even if we end up creating a Sticky topic about it in Mugen Discussion or/and Announcements.

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The one thing that above all else is sacred for this community is Elecbyte. And something that I learned is no matter how much easier a certain shortcut makes things it is best to work with what you have at your disposal. It just seems that we are taking something from Elecbyte just to make it easier for some people. Not really caring if it does hurt them more or not.

Which is why I'm concerned about the domain name renewal factor - even if the renewal was automated, that's only a possibility, and I know of no way to confirm or refute it...

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If we are too be angry at anyone it is whomever is responsible for the initial elecbyte1 release. This situation would not have arised without that. And as for the bannings XG administered at the time, it was a reflex action.

"Great Scott! Some idiots are posting the beta hack of WinMugen!!! What do we do? This isn't suppossed to be publisized! This is a huge travesty to Elecbyte and the community!!!"

I picture that is somewhat along the lines of most that understood what was happening when they 1st saw it. I know I did. The emotion of the shock of seeing the link here (moderatiately speaking in your own back yard) Then the anger geared towards the one celebrating this. Seeing as it is something noone here was prepared for banning was the best option for something so severe.

Considering XG and a few others already knew of the thing before it came up in the forum, I expect the shock wasn't that great, and he was prepared up to a certain point... which is why I'm dissapointed at the Dev-like "reflex action" instead of an alternative attitude that'd be within this forum's previously defined courses of action... but that's the past and it was dealt with...

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Now months later the idea of the leak has settled more. XG on many occasions seems to have accepted that he did infact overreact a bit. So what to do next? Let a silent and underground community form around the hack itself?Or go with the original beta again and try to deteer(sp) people away from tinkering with the hack?

If you're referring to the Elecbyte1 hack, its use has been mostly creation testing... can't do much more with that, let alone form an underground community around it...

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I think the only thing XG himself really did wrong was not trusting us to at least help us prepare for this. Dev is an intricate part of the community. So much so I rarely post there because I honestly do not feel worthy yet. As much as I help and and thankful to all those that respect me for that I still have not payed my dues enough to be a regular at Dev.

That never stopped quite a few... tread carefully and you'll be fine :P

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I think we should either add a sticky to this area of Dev, or make an area for it here too. If a board was here it would be primarily for posting the history and stressing the importance of Elecbyte. We could use the board to post updates to the beta as we do releases. And the feedback section would still be a link to Dev. Only admins and moderators and special members could post to add the updates. And we could move the Elecbyte support thread there as well.
In fact I think a board like that would be the best course of action.

A Sticky topic would be sufficient - a new section would not only require Nunor's approval to be created, it'd also split Rou Hei's attention (although he wouldn't have to register and/or login to read it here if there was one...).

Already at the Blargh-net forums, where a Sticky was created with a reference to Rou Hei's hack and Dev's section Pextin, a creator who's been around for a while, created a topic to comment on a problem with the hack - we can most likely expect a few here too if we do something like that...
Creating a section just for it would only encourage it more, which may not necessarily be a good thing...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 06, 2004, 05:54:06 am
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I still think the ban should be enforced if anyone promotes the elecbyte1 hack. I didn't think so because it was a hack but for the sole reason that it was something Elecbyte obviously did not feel like releasing to everyone.
The point of that statement was to be that I still feel the betas are the worst thing that can be encouraged in the forum. Including the version at hand. Then below that statement I was trying to say why I accept the fact that it is not the penalty. Sorry I did not word that well.

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If you're referring to the Elecbyte1 hack, its use has been mostly creation testing... can't do much more with that, let alone form an underground community around it...
No more like that would be the version that people would begin to hack/patch/update whatever word you wish to choose. Another lack of explaining on my part apparently :P That is why I figured it would get it's own following.

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That never stopped quite a few... tread carefully and you'll be fine  :P
I am not worried about being banned. I think I would fit quite well there. But as you know I do not yet classify myself as a Developer.

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Already at the Blargh-net forums, where a Sticky was created with a reference to Rou Hei's hack and Dev's section Pextin, a creator who's been around for a while, created a topic to comment on a problem with the hack - we can most likely expect a few here too if we do something like that...
Creating a section just for it would only encourage it more, which may not necessarily be a good thing...
That is why only mods and other special people can reply. And the feedback link would lead to Dev.

But a sticky would work too :P

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I do believe there have been problems in the past when people have tried to make available to the public fixed versions of characters made for older versions of DOS Mugen...
Yup Gohan and Electrocaid did that. The community was outraged  >:(  :P

The reason I posted most of what I did was because I think this is drawing out too much and I don't think there is anything this forum can do to change Dev's mind now.

I totally disagree with there approach on this too but I think it is just causing uncomfortable vibes within the staff to let this continue.

We could just limit the talk of it to creations created for it as well. We could keep our rules the same and outlaw speaking of this here too. Although not to the extent we have in the past obviously or many Dev admins would be muted untill it was removed :P

My last idea is we wait on whatever Winane was going to do before we concrete anything.

Anyway whatever happens happens now. This debate could go on forever, but I hope not.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 06, 2004, 06:21:26 am
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I do believe there have been problems in the past when people have tried to make available to the public fixed versions of characters made for older versions of DOS Mugen...
Yup Gohan and Electrocaid did that. The community was outraged  >:(  :P

I remember that case, but since I don't remember if they only hosted fixed character or if they also had uploaded character that didn't require any fixing, I'm not completely sure that situation qualified - people have been very annoyed at both of them for a very long time for very different reasons, so getting the chance to call them thieves is an opportunity many wouldn't miss - so the validity of that may hang on details that are tricky to confirm nowadays...

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We could just limit the talk of it to creations created for it as well. We could keep our rules the same and outlaw speaking of this here too. Although not to the extent we have in the past obviously or many Dev admins would be muted untill it was removed :P

There'd still be a problem if such a release was made and inevitably people complained that they couldn't get the creation to run - I'd be impossible to give a solution to that problem without mentioning the hack...

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My last idea is we wait on whatever Winane was going to do before we concrete anything.

I'm inclined to agree - the tricky part is that that'll apparently last as long as my exam season... >_<
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on July 06, 2004, 04:01:24 pm
So far I haven't found the power to read through all this quoteanswerquotepost action.

Traitor is full of most interesting and thought-provoking stuff, regardless of it having "Star Wars" in the title. It is a Matthew Woodring Stover book, and one of his best. Perfectly self-cotained, despite being numer 13 in a series, it is at the same time the "darkest" and most brilliant Star Wars book ever written. Though that last part's not saying much. XD


Note: Guild and Dev share two "ressources", since before the "harm" had been done.


Having said that, I give you . . . the beginning, uncut:

Code:
Session Start: Sun Jun 20 19:07:03 2004
[19:07] <[Rolento]> It has been broken.
[19:07] <[Rolento]> The select screen has 3 people on it.
[19:13] <[Sepp]> Do we cry or celebrate now?
[19:14] <[Rolento]> We wait for now.
[19:14] <[Rolento]> Although I am suspicious of something here.
[19:16] <[Rolento]> Along with the altered form of the hacked mugen came a file simply known as ~
[19:17] <[Sepp]> Heh.
[19:17] <[Rolento]> I deleted it immediately just in case, but it was rather large. Scanned just after and found no viruses, but recommended to those that do get it to remove as quickly as possible.
[19:18] <[Sepp]> Haha, so it had nothing to do with the MUGEN version?
[19:19] <[Rolento]> I'd assume not.
[19:20] <[Rolento]> A text file exists in the archive that explains the hacker's intentions.
[19:21] <[Rolento]> And even gives an e-mail, which I question.
[19:21] <[Rolento]> 2 separate exes exist, one with debug text removed, the other with it still intact
[19:22] <[Sepp]> I hope it's not the "hacker" I know.
[19:22] <[Rolento]> Is he japanese? :P
[19:22] <[Sepp]> Not at all.
[19:22] <[Rolento]> Then no.
[19:23] <[Rolento]> "rouhei" is the name given.
[19:23] <[Sepp]> At least something.
[19:24] <[Rolento]> rouhei june 10 2004
[19:24] <[Rolento]> roh_hei@yahoo.co.jp
[19:24] <[Rolento]> http://www.attic7.com/unofficial/
[19:24] <[Rolento]> He gives a lot of information here. Be wary if you check.
[19:25] <[Rolento]> if you want stop of release to public , please send
[19:25] <[Rolento]> your view to roh_hei@yahoo.co.jp .
[19:25] <[Rolento]> I will read it seriously & think & send reply to you.
[19:28] <[Sepp]> It was only a matter of time. Good thing it was him and not someone else.
[19:28] <[Sepp]> BRB
[19:28] <[Rolento]> Ok.
[19:49] <[Sepp]> Baaack.
[19:50] <[Sepp]> Well, japanese guy _could_ have included only the files he modified instead of everything. But okay, he wants to spread the love, so he uploaded the whole package.
[19:51] <[Rolento]> You went to the site.
[19:51] <[Sepp]> Yes.
[19:52] * [Sepp] reads.
[19:55] <[Sepp]> That fix file is for people who already have WinMUGEN I assume?
[19:58] <[Rolento]> The one I was linked to had the whole thing in it.
[19:58] <[Rolento]> I'm not sure which is which, or what the second one is.
[19:58] <[Sepp]> The full one is the first. FIX seems to be a kind of UPDATER.
[19:59] <[Sepp]> Bleh. So he removed the debug font from the font file. Rather unsophisticated.
[20:01] <[Rolento]> If it works, it works.
[20:03] <[Sepp]> It sucks because you cannot use Debug at all that way. Well, for Debug he's included the other .exe. Okay.
[20:05] <[Sepp]> One thing... which WinMUGEN version is that based on? Hmmm...
[20:05] <[Rolento]> Hacked version.
[20:05] <[Sepp]> Just checked... right.
[20:05] <[Sepp]> Oh well.
[20:07] <[Sepp]> I had no ~ file anywhere in there, btw.
[20:07] <[Rolento]> Strange.
[20:07] <[Rolento]> I found it outside myself.
[20:08] <[Sepp]> Mh.
[20:08] <[Sepp]> Who found the page?
[20:08] <[Rolento]> Herman, but he doesn't need to know that you are aware.
[20:08] <[Rolento]> Actually, make that a friend of Herman.
[20:09] <[Sepp]> It's b een 10 days.
[20:12] <[Sepp]> I'd been thinkign exactly about what ShoShingo then posted on MS a few weeks ago. And what, basically, this japanese guy has done now.
[20:13] <[Rolento]> Indeed.
[20:13] <[Sepp]> Except that I would go one step further. Like, the Story of Elecbyte and WinMUGEN as we know it.
[20:20] <[Rolento]> Hmm.
[20:33] <[Rolento]> Probably the only way to properly display the history of it would to refer to a few people that want no part of it.
[20:41] <[Sepp]> back again. >_<
[20:42] <[Sepp]> No need for names.
[20:44] <[Rolento]> I wonder why whenever something is either private or strange, at least one person asks me if I know something about it.
[20:44] <[Sepp]> Haha.
[20:52] <[Rolento]> I can't even remember how the sound plugins are supposed to work for the music.
[20:53] <[Sepp]> I don't care much about them. Currently, I care about what "we" will do.
[20:55] <[Rolento]> A few options exist.
[20:56] <[Rolento]> 1. Try to reason with him to remove the site. Can't hedge bet on Elecbyte coming back, as that is unlikely at this point. Alternative argument needed.
[20:56] <[Sepp]> I had been thinking about posting, pre-faced with something like "This is the best we know, according many trusted sources, most of which will remain unnamed for obvious reasons."     .... no idea, something. A big post through one account, checked by some "insiders" before posting.
[20:57] <[Rolento]> 2. Shut down the site by force. Illegal software is illegal software.
[20:59] <[Rolento]> 3. Stand by and do nothing.
[20:59] <[Sepp]> Futile, 2. We cannot hope to win. We can only slow "it" down.
[20:59] <[Sepp]> Some goes for 1.
[20:59] <[Sepp]> It's been 10 days.
[21:00] <[Rolento]> Guild and Dev are set up so that any postings of this will be shut down.
[21:00] <[Rolento]> Mgbr would also likely shoot this down at this point.
[21:01] <[Sepp]> The number 1 reason for this, as Sho pointed out, was Elecbyte. Is it still?
[21:02] <[Rolento]> That's why I said alternative.
[21:03] <[Sepp]> Is there another one? If the Elecbyte argument breaks down, that's it.
[21:06] <[Rolento]> Hmm.
[21:06] <[Rolento]> Sadly, I cannot think of one.
[21:08] <[Sepp]> Looking at it another way would produce the opposite of "Sadly."
[21:09] <[Sepp]> WinMUGEN for everyone, and unlimited? "Hurray."
[21:10] <[Rolento]> Still same disabled modes, music issues, and the "fatal flaw" which is still unknown.
[21:10] <[Sepp]> Flaw?
[21:10] <[Sepp]> What's that? (didn't acutally test this version much)
[21:10] <[Rolento]> "fatal flaw" which is still unknown. <--- :P
[21:10] <[Sepp]> o_O
[21:10] <[Sepp]> A joke? :x
[21:11] <[Rolento]> Whatever stalled programming for Elecbyte, assuming a problem really did exist.
[21:12] <[Sepp]> That. Chances are it was an external problem, but yeah.
[21:13] <[Sepp]> It's not on me to decide anything anyway.
[21:13] <[Sepp]> This would need to be discussed by more than 2 people.
[21:13] <[Rolento]> Actually, a 4th option exists.
[21:13] <[Rolento]> Allow it, but control it.
[21:14] <[Sepp]> Controlling the Internet?
[21:14] <[Rolento]> No. Control this hack.
[21:14] <[Sepp]> I still don't understand. :)
[21:15] <[Rolento]> Personally deal with Rou Hei, and we work something out about this hack.
[21:16] <[Sepp]> I see.
[21:18] <[Sepp]> This could be and probably should done. Making that Story post, and including it everywhere possible.
[21:18] <[Sepp]> Rou thinks it was released in August 03.
[21:18] <[Rolento]> I'd want it controlled 1st.
[21:18] <[Sepp]> I meant that.
[21:19] <[Rolento]> Then I guess someone should contact him.
[21:19] <[Sepp]> Get as much of that "inner circle" together as possible and neccessary.
[21:19] <[Sepp]> 2. write up the Story
[21:19] <[Sepp]> 3. check it with said circle
[21:19] <[Sepp]> 4. contact rou with it
[21:20] <[Sepp]> ~
[21:20] <[Sepp]> 5. contact everyone else?
[21:20] <[Rolento]> Questionable on that last one.
[21:21] <[Sepp]> Question remains, of why. Because we're all gotten accustomed to being elitist bitches?
[21:21] <[Rolento]> In a word, yes.
[21:21] <[Sepp]> Fair enough.
[21:22] <[Rolento]> This conversation itself attests to that. :P
[21:22] <[Sepp]> From a certain point of view. :D
[21:22] <[Sepp]> Alrgiht. Get going. Who's Inner Circle?
[21:22] <[Rolento]> I'll worry about that. :P
[21:23] <[Sepp]> And what, write a list?
[21:23] <[Rolento]> More like gather the people.
[21:24] <[Sepp]> How direct~!

More info and consideration of what had been posted before this post to come in next post, once I can summon the strength.
Title: Re: HighWay to Dev >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on July 06, 2004, 06:04:14 pm
In the months before, I had been contacted unregularily (or had contacted myself) by a friend of mine who was working on hacking his way around the limitations of the Elecbyte1 hack. He is always looking for ways to attract users to his page, and that seemed quite promising, if successful. I could merely prevent him from releasing the 1 hack.

He knows his way around the Net and had pointed out that japanese pages were having a working WinMUGEN hack up (the 1) for download, even before the banning spree here and elsewhere occured, warning us of what would come.

Anyway, back to the 20th of June, where I contacted him shortly after the above chat sessions. He always kinda exaggerates, y'know "2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, never", and this time he said he was getting closer. He had been able to push the limit up to 9 characters; the same thing had been done on some Japanese page, according to him.

I trust him so far that I don't believe he was making that up, and so we had more hackers closing in on the limit, and one already out. That's the reference to "stopping" them.

Expectation had it that once this no limit leaked through to MGBR, well, nothing pretty would occur.

Turned out that was not the case. Okay, everyone now uses it, but it is not "supported". Same as with the 1 hack.

There was nothing FORCED. Nobody HAD to do anything.

The most efficient way was Dev (and Blargh). Assumption was that MGBR anyway and also Guild would follow suite.

Need for efficiency was there because we wanted to do this BEFORE it leaked through unaltered.

Clearly MGBR would not qualify as efficient - but nor would Guild.

Winane was contacted, but his "I'll try to talk to someone I think was part of Elecbyte . . . next weekend, or the weekend afer that, or . . ." was ignored as we wanted to make haste.

It still took ages until finally someone sat down and actually DID something, like writing some e-mail or organizing anythig.

Going to Guild with it was out of question. Contacting members not, but was not really done either, right.

Of all the people that were contacted, all agreed, one did not care, and Winane, who did not post yes or no as I recall, but I'm not sure.

Still, that left 10+ guys (sorry, lost track) in agreement with this. By now, that number is obviously higher. A lot.


Dreamslayer:

Great point. Personally, I had my shock moment when the 1 hack spread - as had many others.

I had started thinking about how to deal with the 1 hack in the future some time ago, because I had actually considered it as an example of problematic moral/ethic decissions in one of my final school exams. Anyway.


Forum politics aside, what is the earlier mentioned "harm"?

WinMUGE for everyone, and unlimited. Why not? I know I would of used it anyway. Wouldn't you have, had you been aware of it?

What is the harm in "officially" using it?

The people who agreed with this before announcing it were mostly old creators. Are you accusing them of disrespecting Elecbyte? Do you really think this it what happened? We dropped our respect?

Then your "patience" is greater than ours.

Some months ago, I could not have imagined "losing hope" or something. We don't know for a fact that Elecbyte is dead; but they are certainly not present, and have not been for a long time.

And that, I think, is essentially the only valuable point and question we could clearly see (apart from the background of the illegal):

Whether Elecbyte might still be around despite everything, or might soon be again.

Amazingly, the overwhelming feeling towards this was an almost certain No. And all that felt worth taking the risk.


And that's it.


And in all these posts, especially the newer ones, I cannot see any other intelligent point concerning the core question. It's petty board politics, and It Was That Way - No Not At All, You Lose - But You Blah. [The second being especially painful to read.]

That's what I meant you should try to avoid here.

"Justification" and pointless Right About This Point,  Wrong About That One discussions.


We were and are convinced we did the Right Thing, as "illegal" as it might be. If you are convinced we did the Wrong Thing, that's okay. But both positions would have a hard time standing up in court, seeing how we don't have real fact- or law-based arguments.


Quote
"Sith? Jedi?" she said. "Are these the only choices? Dark or light, good or evil? Is there no more to the Force than this? What is the screen on which light and dark cast their shapes and shadows? Where is the ground on which stands good and evil?"
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 06, 2004, 06:29:47 pm
Quote
We were and are convinced we did the Right Thing, as "illegal" as it might be. If you are convinced we did the Wrong Thing, that's okay. But both positions would have a hard time standing up in court, seeing how we don't have real fact- and law-based arguments and you apparently neither.
This sums up the ethic and moral implecations very well.

At least it is in an area that makes sure to remind us all of it's roots... Elecbyte.

@ XG: Would it be possible to add one more sticky to Dev's WinMugen board?

An homage to Elecbyte. Starting off with a history as we know it. And then closing with how much they mean to the community.

Maybe even leave it open so others can thank them.

I posted more but I didn't copy it and had an error >:(
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 07, 2004, 12:26:18 pm
I believe there's no more point in keeping an argument alive. All topics have been exposed and there's anything else to add.

Also, I don't want this staff splitting up in factions/groups by just a little and stupid argument between 2 of its members. One of the most important things that we must keep in mind is that the staff must be united at any time. That's something I somehow put in a second priority, and I believe I must offer my apologies, for being at some times more stubborn than I should have been. I just hope, that the rest of the members will soon forget this ridiculous event and focus on what should we do from now on.

A moderator or even a GM, shouldn't be the ones writing the rules of a forum. That's admins' job, however mods can discuss and propose ideas to be implemented. I don't want this event to be considered as a takeover on the administration, since it wasn't my idea and therefore, I don't want any one else believing it was that.

All topics have been exposed and now it's time for the administration to take a decission. DEV's decission may be wrong or right, but that was DEV's decission. MFG has to take his own decission. Hence, I ask:

What should we do now, Loona? You, as admin, must take a decission now, sicne we already wasted a lot of time. I'm ok with whatever decission the administration takes, since we already discussed about this and the rest of the staff seems to be fine with any decission; in other words, they accept both  "yes" and 'no"

@Dreamslayer: What do you refer by "homage to elecbyte"? There's already a topic explianing elecbyte's history. Care to develop?
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 07, 2004, 04:12:55 pm
Quote
What should we do now, Loona?
At the moment he wants to wait for whatever Winane is going to do. Untill then the current forum rules apply.
Quote
@Dreamslayer: What do you refer by "homage to elecbyte"? There's already a topic explianing elecbyte's history. Care to develop?
To make sure I did not overlook I checked again. There is a history for WinMugen but nothing about the history of Elecbyte. (Keep in mind I only checked the WinMugen board)
I was thinking something along the line of explaining how elecbyte was wanting to make a flight shooter then stumbling on the fighting engine. The different versions they had released at the different years. Talk abit about TestP. And then just sum it up with a thank you for the hard work they did and the legacy they left behind.

To be allowing the beta on Dev I feel that is the least the community can do. So everyone can thank elecbyte in there own way.

If someday they were to come back and view that forum I do not wish the first thing for them to think is that we have forgot about them and taken there project and ran with it ourselves. I want them to realize how much we understand that even this beta that is so controversial is derived because of them and them alone.

I have seen a few posts thanking Dev and/or thanking Rou Hei and it makes my stomach knot up. I want everyone to remember where we came from.

I know a bunch of this stuff is in the Docs but how many people read them? :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: walt on July 07, 2004, 11:33:25 pm
I know I'm always off topic ::)

... but Oh - my - God :shocked: !
I can't believe it only took me an hour and a half to read this thread :D

my comments on it later . . .
Title: Re: Shortest post so far =P
Post by: Sepp on July 09, 2004, 01:34:26 pm
"Wake up, Donnie." (http://www.mugenguild.com/forum/index.php?board=8;action=display;threadid=11682)
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 13, 2004, 01:04:27 am
Personally, I think I'll wait until I get around to trying to contact someone from Elecbyte myself, probably the weekend after this one (don't wanna bother him while he's busy), before deciding about anything in regard to WinMugen.

The weekend in question ended yesterday... how's the status on that research?...

Not having coordinated efforts with dev (even if involuntarily) did give us some extra liberty to take some more time checking on stuff like this, but it'd come in handy to have some idea of when such info might be available...


As for implications of possibly allowing the discussion of the hack here, would anyone be fundamentaly against the allowing of creation updates made in the same mold as Rou Hei's hack (couple of years of original creator's absence that makes him practically impossible to contact, proper credit given where its due, compromise to withdraw the update if the original creator asks for it) if the original creator never left anything specifically stated about the use of his stuff?...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 13, 2004, 02:07:13 am
Along these same lines, what about taking characters with stolen code/sprites, and cleaning them up (like Ogre, for example)?

You mean taking the illegitimate parts of the character, keeping the legitimate stuff, and hosting it, for example?...
Wouldn't that be technically speaking stealing the legitimate work of the person who stole in the first place?...
Assuming, that is, that after all of the necessary removals enough would remain to work from...
Then again, if handled by the above guidelines (which I should have also applied to partial uses instead of complete creation updates... my bad, but it's still in time to be discussed, I guess...) it might eventually considered legitimate... but extremely controversial...
In fact, wasn't one of the reasons why Eli's version of Silent Storm was kept private (despite being remade from scratch) and toned down (removal of moves) into Tetsu Yatogi for the general public th fact that the concept of the character still belonged in principle to the individual who went by the name Silent Storm and created a character with that same name, and the individual was no longer reacheable?...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Valodim on July 13, 2004, 02:17:05 am
You mean taking the illegitimate parts of the character, keeping the legitimate stuff, and hosting it, for example?...

...and replacing the illegitimate parts with legitimate ones... :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 13, 2004, 02:22:10 am
I edited my previous post with a tidbit about Eli's take on Silent Storm, but you guys replied in the meantime, so no deleting my own post to repost it for a thread-bump that'll get the changes noticed :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 13, 2004, 03:11:18 am
Assuming each and every stolen thing is accounted for and replaced, maybe it could be viable... but with the huge amount of stuff released out there that might have gotten stuff taken from, how could one possibly be 100% sure?...

Perhpas for now it'd be better to try and reach an agreement on the simpler cases, and from there move on the to more thorny possibilities based on the previously reached conclusions...
But then again, some might not post at all...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 14, 2004, 01:26:09 am
I don't see any problem with it.
In the case of Ogre you have ALOT to correct though :P

Not talking codewise but accuracy wise.

But how does one know what all coding is stolen and what coding is Jun's?

Unless it is like Psycho Ball d,f,x or something =P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 14, 2004, 01:40:58 am
As for implications of possibly allowing the discussion of the hack here, would anyone be fundamentaly against the allowing of creation updates made in the same mold as Rou Hei's hack (couple of years of original creator's absence that makes him practically impossible to contact, proper credit given where its due, compromise to withdraw the update if the original creator asks for it) if the original creator never left anything specifically stated about the use of his stuff?...

That's something that was long time discussed in DEV and I'm glad that you have mentioned it. It will be great to have a different approach and opinions.

We originally thought about setting a standard of procedure for updating/using abandoned creations. Any creation not following this standard won't be authorized and thus, considered as forbidden. The standard allows protection for both old creations and recent creations. Also, it allows for the rest of the community to easily doublecheck if the updated/modified creation is legit.

What classifies a creation to be updated for being abandoned:

1) Creator cannot be reached by email, IRC, ICQ, MSN or any other way.
2) Creator's site doesn't exist anymore
3) No known friends or contacts that are in touch with the creator, or that can authorize/deny the use fo the abandoned creator.
4) More than 2 years have passed since the release of the character.

Once all these conditions have been checked, the creation can be used as long as a text file is attached with the updated creation.

This text file will contain:

1) Email addresses or methods used to contact the creator without success
2) url of the site that is not existing anymore
3) Name of the people that have been contacted in order to find out if the character was allowed to be used.
4) Date of the last public release.
5) A statement that if the original creator ever returns or decides that no one should work on that creation, the distribution of the updated creation must cease.

Of course, the original creator must be credited always. And if part of sprites/code is used in another character, then the "borrowed" parts must be credited as well.

Private releases and creations that already contained stolen stuff aren't applicable to this new standard.


What do you guys think about it? I would liek to hear your opinion.

 
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 14, 2004, 01:52:29 am
My 2 cents: I agree with you on those counts pretty much XD, with the exception of excluding creations with stolen stuff: as I already said, cleaning them up might be the best way to do away with them altogether, IMHO.

Certainly, that's easier to be said than to be done. How can you remove stolen stuff from a character like ravenous? :P
Title: Re: >:( =P
Post by: Sepp on July 14, 2004, 02:03:45 am
Hooray for bureaucracy.

Can we please not make The Rules of MUGEN 354 pages long? Thank you.

Don't even try to cover every possible case. Updating MUGEN creations that contain stolen material AND ARE AGES OLD?

I admire your imagination. Seriously, deal with that as and if it comes.

Edit: My
"Unless vanished creator was known for messages like DO NOT MODIFY or REDISTRIBUTE, yes." from 3 billion words earlier in this topic stands, and should enough for a guidline.

Exceptions can be dealt with individually, I dare say.

Edit 2:

So, XG's list sounds okay. Who cares if it's been 2 years or 1.75, though? I hope we won't.

Same for things like urls to pages that don't exist. XD
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 14, 2004, 02:28:52 am
I am one for any leniancy towards a more open community. I always thought a bunch of these rules were a bit rigid.

But don't we have to verify this with other communities 1st? If I recall the japanese community is very picky about "updating".

If not we will be in the same situation as MGBR. Many creators in that community believe all is open source.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 14, 2004, 09:47:06 am
In the case of Ogre you have ALOT to correct though :P

Not talking codewise but accuracy wise.

Ogre doesn't really strike me the kind of character that was meant to be accurate... :P

Quote
But how does one know what all coding is stolen and what coding is Jun's?

In a case like Ogre's, I suspect only the edits and maybe some Clsns would be "salvageable"(?)...


Might be best to go touch and go: ask the community what *exactly* has been stolen in what character/stage etc, and go from there, fixing it up as it comes out.

There might be a problem with that (at least community-wise) if more stolen stuff was identified after a "clean"/"fixed" release...

It might end up being less troublesome to do what Eli did with Silent Storm (I'm not aware of anything stolen in the original - the situations are a bit different, but some controversy applies to both) and remake the creation from scractch, trying to stay somewhat faithful to the concept, but avoiding all of the problems the original had - giving credit to the one who came up with the character concept and all that.


What classifies a creation to be updated for being abandoned:

1) Creator cannot be reached by email, IRC, ICQ, MSN or any other way.
2) Creator's site doesn't exist anymore

There might be cases where the site still exists, but was abandoned, and any contact information there might be outdated...

Quote
3) No known friends or contacts that are in touch with the creator, or that can authorize/deny the use fo the abandoned creator.
4) More than 2 years have passed since the release of the character.

Once all these conditions have been checked, the creation can be used as long as a text file is attached with the updated creation.

This text file will contain:

1) Email addresses or methods used to contact the creator without success
2) url of the site that is not existing anymore

There are cases where people release their creations as attachements in posts of forums that allow for that option, and some people release their stuff direct-linking to the compressed character file in a friend's server - both those cases (and others that I may be forgetting) are examples of creators who didn't have/need actual sites for their stuff...

Quote
3) Name of the people that have been contacted in order to find out if the character was allowed to be used.

I take it this is only worth mentioning if one managed to get an actual reply?...

For example, not that long ago I tried to contact Mouser by e-mail about his Hon-Fu, and got no reply; so some time later I tried to contact H', who released the Sagat Mouser started, also by e-mail, and got no reply either...

Quote
4) Date of the last public release.

This one is important, but can make things quite tricky depending on how accurate you expect it to be - with the absence of a site and the elimination of forums where releases have been made (the EZboard Dev would have been a great resource to check on 2-year-old releases and their exact dates, but it's gone; maybe Charasoon can help with part of it, if it still keeps info from back then...).
Some creators may also leave out date information in their stuff, which makes this a tricky subject...

And then there are things like Mugen Museum's character list - where practically all creator names are mentioned, I think - I think it's a relevant, even if unpopular, example in this case, for it may be one of the very few ways to get or know about really stuff that can't be found anywhere else due to sites and creators leaving alost without a trace...

Due to these factors, accuracy in dates is almost an utopia in some cases, so a rough "tolerance border" of a few months or so might help... like Sepp, I think things might get silly if this talk of dates leads to arguments where no one can be absolutely sure exactly how long it has been, despite the fact that everyone knows it has been well over a year (and a half?) ago..

Quote
5) A statement that if the original creator ever returns or decides that no one should work on that creation, the distribution of the updated creation must cease.

Of course, the original creator must be credited always. And if part of sprites/code is used in another character, then the "borrowed" parts must be credited as well.

Private releases and creations that already contained stolen stuff aren't applicable to this new standard.

If the private release was a quite visibly unfinished beta/alpha and practically everything else above that still applies is true, I do wonder if it'd be that unlegitimate to complete a work that wasn't gong to be completed anyway - but this is a very specific (and unlikely?) case that might be better to handle later after the more "mainstream" situations are agreed on.

As for the stolen stuff, if the stolen stuff was removed in the process... well, same as above - let's deal with the simpler issues first.


Edit: My
"Unless vanished creator was known for messages like DO NOT MODIFY or REDISTRIBUTE, yes." from 3 billion words earlier in this topic stands, and should enough for a guidline.

I'm of that opinion as well, and surely I'm not the only one - however, considering the amount and variety of people in this forum, we really can't afford to ignore other views.

So now that there's a new factor affecting the community, we can at least try to work from the principles under which it was accepted and see how close we can get to "it's OK if the creator said anothing against it" while maintaining a general agreement - hopefully the variety of people who access this section covers a wide enough spectrum of views and experiences for us to end up with something no one in this section or in the community in general will be totally displeased with...


But don't we have to verify this with other communities 1st? If I recall the japanese community is very picky about "updating".

Quite a relevant point...

Well, with RouHei being japanese and characters like Nobuyuki(sp?)'s Magneto already being made compliant with his hack, it seems quite likely that some discussion on these matters has already come up in the Japanese community in one form or another...

Has anyone here looked over Charasoon or another Japanese community hangout and found any mention/discussion on this?...

Or does anyone feel comfortable with Japanese translation engines and their interpretation to try and look for such discussions, and possibly try to toss in some questions there?...

Quote
If not we will be in the same situation as MGBR. Many creators in that community believe all is open source.

And some don't expect to get caught...

DeleteBR doing stuff like hosting RouHei's hack doesn't really help as an example... -_-
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on July 14, 2004, 12:01:50 pm
Quote
Can we please not make The Rules of MUGEN 354 pages long? Thank you.
you are so right!
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 14, 2004, 05:10:07 pm
Why don't we just base the way we allow these updates on the standard of procedure XG said.

Stating that leniency straying away from these abit will be tolerated under certain circumstances.

I don't want the rules getting longer either :P The standard is a nice base and Loona has good points too so some leaveway from the standard should be acceptable.

If there is more doubt about the way the boards can handle this there are two ways that may make it less explosive.

Make a new release/wip board for creations like this. This way the creator can announce the WIP and ask if he/she is unshure if they are straying too far away from the standard.

Or make it so that only creators can do so in the creator release and private release boards.

The pros of this are that if the person has the creator status it is generally accepted that that person took a descent amount of time and knows the trials and time consuming nature of creating. This way it may be easier for other communities to accept since the creator has already established a knowhow.

The cons of that one is not all people that are creators have this status. OrochiKOF97 for one. And it would not be a good way for any other forums that do not have creator classes to deal with this.

Untill it is cemented a special board would probably be best. This way we can have different mindsets helping the flexibility of this standard.

Who knows maybe we will even find out that we are so tuned to upholding these rules that most other people do not care anymore what all happens to there work.

I am glad we are having this discussion. I never thought I would see the day when we try to ease up on this stuff.

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Ogre doesn't really strike me the kind of character that was meant to be accurate...  :P
His basic structure needs to be more accurate :P Not his moveset. I figure the creator at least wanted the core of the character to be more accurate. At least he better had >:)
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 15, 2004, 02:56:53 am
http://www.mugenguild.com/forum/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=11840;start=new;boardseen=1

I think our 1st act should be to change the rules a bit more. WinMugen is still not allowed. However the muting should not be enforced.

We should deal with WinMugen posts as Dev does with requests. The give a link to our request forum.

When someone asks about WinMugen stuff we should just lock the topic and give a link to the WinMugen board at dev.

Of course this is only for WinMugen questions itself and not character/stage/etc development that is the same for Linux or Dos Mugen.

EDIT: I know we cannot combine Dev and The Guild since there are certain things that each do not agree on but is there any other ways we could share the same resources easier?

Like perhaps posting a link to Dev at the top of the Guild forum and on the main site and Dev could add the Guild to the bottom of there page?

EDIT2: I went ahead and did what I said above. There is no reason to keep hiding WinMugen, and no links to it are being posted.

I am trying to get the users to ask WinMugen questions at Dev. Creation questions here. I really need to stop voicing my opinion on this in public though >_< I may start an argument.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 15, 2004, 04:12:55 pm
Why don't we just base the way we allow these updates on the standard of procedure XG said.

Stating that leniency straying away from these abit will be tolerated under certain circumstances.

I don't want the rules getting longer either :P The standard is a nice base and Loona has good points too so some leaveway from the standard should be acceptable.

The way I see it, unreacheable creator + lack of any statement against use of stuff + credit where it's due (Sepp and I seem to have forgotten that one in our previous posts in this thread, but it's most certainly a critical aspect that should avoid many problems and misunderstandings) + compromise to withdraw stff if the original creator requests it should be enough. Most other details would appreciated, but hard to enforce...


If something like this were to become acceptable at the forum, should a list of these criteria be posted somewhere as a Sticky?...

If it were posted, it might be taken as encouragement, and we might get, at least at the begining, a flood of "updates" and whatnot, and there might be a lot to check for each of them durng a relatively brief amount of time...

If it weren't posted anywhere, we'd be left to hope that anyone who eventually made such releases would have the good sense to at least mention basic stuff, like credit... as cases that did things right people would gradually begin to see what's required, what's accepted and what's not... hopefully that would lead to a slower, but more stable situation on the long run...

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Make a new release/wip board for creations like this. This way the creator can announce the WIP and ask if he/she is unshure if they are straying too far away from the standard.

Such questions can already be asked in Mugen Discussion before even such a WIP begins... I don't think a special section for it would be necessary...

At most, a Sticky with what may be considered acceptable, as mentioned above...

Quote
Or make it so that only creators can do so in the creator release and private release boards.

The pros of this are that if the person has the creator status it is generally accepted that that person took a descent amount of time and knows the trials and time consuming nature of creating. This way it may be easier for other communities to accept since the creator has already established a knowhow.

Someone who's already earned such a title in most  cases probably shouldn't need to rely on the work of others - modifying stuff is usually more educational for the beginners than it is useful for the veterans...

Didn't Reu and Eli start out by modifying other's work to create their own versions, and didn't that eventually help them to learn to do their own work pretty much from scratch later on?...

Only allowing this for veterans doesn't seem that reasonable IMO...

Quote
The cons of that one is not all people that are creators have this status. OrochiKOF97 for one.

His title was changed some time ago - I guess Nunor must have changed his mind...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Valodim on July 15, 2004, 04:55:00 pm
umm... hello...? winmugen...?

please get to a conclusion fast...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Valodim on July 19, 2004, 12:41:45 am
[00:27]<Sepp> Next time I post in the topic will so contain "Anyone still wondering why Guild wasn't asked beforehand?" Ugh. Not that I plan to post again there. XD

he's right! this discussion took 5 page full of monster-posts, 1 of them being off-topic about old creators and char updates.

the conclusion will either be "we allow it" or "there is no other way, so we allow it", so what are you discussing about?!

This isn't getting nowhere, so I conclude: We allow it. If there was some other way we could react without killing ourselves, I'd like to hear it.

And we can not wait for Nunor's opinion everytime something's to be decided, because he's just too rarely around.  
Me, see above. said:
This isn't getting
us
Quote
nowhere
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: walt on July 19, 2004, 01:25:11 am
I'll allow it

                     - Mills Lane
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 20, 2004, 12:45:28 am
this discussion took 5 page full of monster-posts, 1 of them being off-topic about old creators and char updates.

I'd be off-topic if we weren't risking a double-standard attitude regarding Mugen itself and creations made for it - sooner or later we (well, at least the Releases mod, the GMs and admins) will find ourselves confronted with a situation where these standards, which have been the topic of many a conflict in the past (and most likely will still be in the future), will be brought up, and I was hoping to see us reaching some sort of conclusion on this.

But guess what, at least two of the people of this staff who have been in the community for the longest time and who don't seem to share such a liberal approach to these issues don't seem to be bothering much with balancing the views over here... and it's not like this topic has been around for a short time, so brief absences aren't much of an excuse for the occasional reply here...

This would have probably been taken care of ages ago if things had been discussed at the same time, or at least soon after, Dev made a non-public decision regarding the RouHei hack support... lovely...

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the conclusion will either be "we allow it" or "there is no other way, so we allow it", so what are you discussing about?!

I thought it was pretty clear... "if an unnoficial Mugen update is allowed, how similar/different must a situation be when it comes to mugen creation for it to be allowed as well?" - I don't know about you, but I'd rather try and be consistent about the policies of this forum...

Quote
And we can not wait for Nunor's opinion everytime something's to be decided, because he's just too rarely around.

This sort of thing doesn't require Nunor's decision, but I expected some more particupation of the staff, especially from the more veteran members - would you rather have a say on matters now, or disagree/complain later?...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on July 20, 2004, 12:55:22 am
Well i already stated previously  that we should allow winmugen discussions in the guild and accept its existence.  Loona gets a point when he says that it is comparable to char stealing. However, we have to admit that this winmugen hack was necessary for the sake and preservation of the community. It could be like an exception that confirms the rule. Otherwhise, let's just pretend winmugen doesn't exist.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 20, 2004, 03:11:57 am
The way I am handling it is telling people to go to Dev to discuss WinMugen.

Only creations are allowed to be discussed. If the discussion is simply about WinMugen then it should be done at Dev.

Just like there requests should be done here.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 20, 2004, 04:46:31 am
However, we have to admit that this winmugen hack was necessary for the sake and preservation of the community.

Considering that what some people dislike the most about Mugen is the community, having it cut down to people who don't mind using DOS or using Linux would in a way weed out several "undesireables"... :P
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on July 20, 2004, 09:37:24 am
Quote
Considering that what some people dislike the most about Mugen is the community
Those people are the one who deserve to disappear.  Loona, you have an answer for everything! So what is your final answer concerning Winmugen?
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 20, 2004, 01:41:37 pm
Updates and use of abandoned characters has already been covered through this thread. I think it's completely explained, and I regret the lack of participation in this issue of all staff members but a few ones.

Spending time in how to hanlde this new approach ijn the community is just wasting time. Several creators are already "releasing" (different from making) win/lin-only characters. It's nothing new, those creators were already making win-only compatible characters since the DOS version was abandoned. It's just that they are releasing these creations now, that Rouhei's hack is allowed. In other words, now it's "politically correct" to use it.

This situation reminded me of the 0101->0627 transition. A great part of the community whined about elecbyte changing completely the engine, making tons of character simply not working anymore, and to re-learn most of the code in order to make your own characters. A lot of members of the community stated that they will stick with the 0101 version, that they will boycott Elecbyte by not creating anything for the new engine and crap like this. Others, in the other way, welcomed the change, and saw the improvements that the new version was offering. They didn't doubt at once to stop support for the 0101 and start working on the improved engine.

Now, we have an improved engine that allows more features than the obsolete and btw, illegal to use, DOS version. it's a backstep to stick with the old one.

Regarding the unauthorized update/theft of creations, we cannot avoid it, as we cannot avoid individuals making warehouses. Best we can do is teach the community about how to behave, and hope that these new-taught members will teach the same ethics to other communities where Mugen is not the top priority, but still has some importance. If we teach them the ethic and correct way on how to behave when you want to update old stuff, use other people's stuff, etc, it will benefit us in the long run.

This forum is expected to take a decission, as it was mentioned above: either allow it or not allow it. You cannot deny it's existance and usage. However, either if you allow it or forbid it, we must set the proceudre for updates on old stuff, no matter what this forum regards with winmugen are.

I was asked to look for counseil and feedback for any aspect that could affect the mugen community, however, I don't see any great participation/involvement here. Let's focus on the workflow for updates, since the decission to allow/forbid winmugen discussion is up to admins right now.
Title: He could sit here until he rotted, wallowing in misery-or he could Do something
Post by: Sepp on July 20, 2004, 02:53:54 pm
First XG post in this topic I can pretty much totally agree with. :D

Loona, you have an answer for everything!

That's because he is constantly offered material which can be thrown right back at the poster.


Quote
This would have probably been taken care of ages ago if things had been discussed at the same time, or at least soon after, Dev made a non-public decision regarding the RouHei hack support... lovely...

"What I have done? Oh, no no no, little Solo child. This is about what you have done."

"I haven't done anything!"

Vergere settled back against the chamber's wall a meter away. Slowly, she folded her back-bent knees beneath her, then laced her fingers together in front of her delicately whiskered mouth and stared at him over her knuckles.

After a long, long silence, during which I haven't done anything! echoed in his mind until Jacen's face burned, Vergere said, "Exactly."

She leaned close, as though to share an embarrassing secret. "Is that not the infant's tactic? To wail, and wail, and wail, to wriggle its fingers and kick its heels . . . hoping an adult will notice, and care for it?"

Jacen lowered his head, struggling against sudden hot tears. "What can I do?"

She sat back again and made more of that snuffling noise. "Certainly, among your options is continuing to hang in this room and suffer. And so long as you do that, do you know what will happen?"

Jacen gave her a bruised look. "What?"

"Nothing," she said cheerfully. She spread her hands. "Oh, eventually, you'll go mad, I suppose. If you're lucky. Someday you may even die." Her crest flattened back and became blasterbore gray. "Of old age."

[...]

"Is that why you keep coming here?" he muttered into his folded arms. "To gloat? To humiliate a defeated enemy?"

"Am I gloating? Are we enemies?" Vergere asked, sounding honestly puzzled. "Are you defeated?"



Quote
I thought it was pretty clear... "if an unnoficial Mugen update is allowed, how similar/different must a situation be when it comes to mugen creation for it to be allowed as well?" - I don't know about you, but I'd rather try and be consistent about the policies of this forum...

If nothing else, it could be called an exception. You don't want that, you put guidelines for updating creations up as well - a conclusion on what these could look like was already reached (not only in XG's impression), as well as it was established that nobody here is strictly against it. Chances are that people who by now have not or not often posted here might just have nothing further and worthwhile to say. You want everybody participating, make a poll.

What are you afraid of? That members might discover Internet forums are less glorious democracies rather than one-man shows ruled at will by a handful of administrators who can do just about anything they want to?

Even with the most stupid rules, the responsible dictators will hardly ever be trialed. About the worst thing that can happen to a forum is that its members decide it's time to leave.

That's on first glance a tad besides the problem you point out because I can't see a problem. Who says that WinMUGEN hack toleration with or without news concerning updating other creations makes the forum rules inconsistent? I don't see why it couldn't be treated as a flat exception to the rule, for example.

But *Your Object Of Faith Here* forbid that anything is done that might not make perfect sense to each and everyone and will not equal instant flawless victory in any Supreme Court trial - the accusers might complain once they find the smallest loophole in the rules or *gasp* even leave! :'(

Heh, let's make a public board-wide poll, too!
~


During his years of walking the world, the crooked knight came to find himself bemazed within a dark and traceless wood. In this wood, all paths led equally to death.

The crooked knight did not lose hope; he turned to his various guides for help and direction. His first guide was Youthful Dream. Later, he turned to Friendship, then Duty, and finally Reason, but each left him more lost than the one before.

So the crooked knight gave himself up for dead, and simply sat. He would be sitting there still, but for a breeze that came upon him then: a breeze that smelled of wide-open spaces, of limitless skies and bright suns, of ice and high mountains.

It was the wind from the dark angel's wings.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 20, 2004, 03:04:47 pm
Updates and use of abandoned characters has already been covered through this thread. I think it's completely explained, and I regret the lack of participation in this issue of all staff members but a few ones.

"Explained" maybe, but not completely consensual - I suggested some guidelines based on what RouHei did, you came up with an even longer list of requirements, and several others manifested a will to keep things simple.
Given all you've posted before, one would expect you to at least comment on the comments that were made then... How are we to reach an agreement if people who represent the most different points of view don't at least try to talk things into a reasonable compromise?...

Quote
Spending time in how to hanlde this new approach ijn the community is just wasting time.

I'd rather see it as saving time - discussing it now should make things simpler to handle in the future.

Unfortunately it seems that at least a few here aren't too interested in the future... and some of them have been around long enough to know that some dillemas will eventually present themselves, so it'd be expected of them to voice all objections and approvals they may find important...

Quote
This situation reminded me of the 0101->0627 transition. A great part of the community whined about elecbyte changing completely the engine, making tons of character simply not working anymore, and to re-learn most of the code in order to make your own characters. A lot of members of the community stated that they will stick with the 0101 version, that they will boycott Elecbyte by not creating anything for the new engine and crap like this. Others, in the other way, welcomed the change, and saw the improvements that the new version was offering. They didn't doubt at once to stop support for the 0101 and start working on the improved engine.

It's quite different from that situation, and you know it - the fact that Elecbyte was around made and that that latest version came directly from them made a whole deal of a difference.
Besides, there were never any restrictions about releasing Linux-compatible stuff.

Quote
Now, we have an improved engine that allows more features than the obsolete and btw, illegal to use, DOS version. it's a backstep to stick with the old one.

Now that's an interesting use of the word "illegal" if I ever saw one, given the circumstances...

And technically a backstep would be to use a version that's older than the latest, more widely spread, DOS version...

Quote
Regarding the unauthorized update/theft of creations, we cannot avoid it, as we cannot avoid individuals making warehouses. Best we can do is teach the community about how to behave, and hope that these new-taught members will teach the same ethics to other communities where Mugen is not the top priority, but still has some importance. If we teach them the ethic and correct way on how to behave when you want to update old stuff, use other people's stuff, etc, it will benefit us in the long run.

There has always been an effort to teach people to do things right around here - what invariably will come up some day is a situation not unlike the hack's, where the creator couldn't be reached for asking permission and an update was made anyway, possibly credited.
Then we'll be tested for coherence of policies, and I'd rather have the staff agreeing on what we can accept or not, regarless of who did that update, where (s)he's from and how long that individual's been around.

Quote
This forum is expected to take a decission, as it was mentioned above: either allow it or not allow it. You cannot deny it's existance and usage.

Like with conversions from recent games, as was the case not that long ago with KoF2003 and others?...

Quote
However, either if you allow it or forbid it, we must set the proceudre for updates on old stuff, no matter what this forum regards with winmugen are.

Heck, I could define some guidelines myself and not give a damn about what anyone else thinks, but I'm trying to encourage some particupation on these matters - where were you when myself and others commented on the list of things you osted not that long ago as possible requirements for an update to be accepted?...
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 20, 2004, 03:54:41 pm
Here is a start.

Q-Bee made by M@ppy, updated by ROQUE.

We could start the new exceptions immediately.

I could contact him and we could use his work as an opening example.

Here is the reply I got after asking him about Q-Bee.
Quote
Hello,

Sorry for this late reply : it is the first time in months I can access to this forum -_-.

Yeah Winane informed me that there had been some discussion about me releasing Q-Bee without his permissions. I doubt he will ever come back again but I decided to calm down people here by remaking her private. I've had a look just now at the forum and it seems that it worked.

That was the only element of the game for which I hadn't a permission though. For the rest, I'm totally "clean" (I've the mails of the different authors I used the work to confirm if it was ever necessary).

Since I'm not sure to be able to check again this message box before long (I'm currently using a different Internet line than usual), you can use my mail instead if you need to contact me : sunny@netcourrier.com.

See ya!

As for WinMugen... this is taking too long. Lets's try to speed some of the new issues up can't we? Between this long thread and the BlackJack long thread I bet the new mods are thinking we don't know what the hell we are doing around here :P

[sign=2]I promise you guys this is a recent debacle(sp)[/sign]
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: ky0 on July 20, 2004, 06:51:17 pm
I think we are discussing too much here. Here is what i suggest. we make a poll in the staff, stating whether we should allow winmugen or not. We vote , then after 3 or 4 days for example, we see the results. what do you think of that? i guess it's much more efficient than discussing for 6 pages quoting and countering each other's arguments.  
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: JustNoPoint on July 20, 2004, 06:54:33 pm
Although I know the outcome I agree.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: XGargoyle on July 20, 2004, 09:44:00 pm
I second that   :-*
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: walt on July 21, 2004, 12:55:11 am
So, who makes the new thread :D ?
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: Loona on July 21, 2004, 01:40:09 am
Only now did I notice Sepp's post... oh well...

If there's a new thread, it'll be to discuss the abandoned Mugen creation update/use issue that was brought up here - I guess we can still do that in a thread of its own after WinMugen itself gets allowed around here (yep, I'll be making the necessary rule tweaking :P), since many don't seem inclined to discuss that in this thread.
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: X on July 24, 2004, 12:00:59 am
Between this long thread and the BlackJack long thread I bet the new mods are thinking we don't know what the hell we are doing around here :P

It's about time someone said it.

6 pages worth of aggravation - half of it comprised of posts longer than most college essays and almost nothing solved.

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill...
 
Title: Re:Way to go Dev >:( =P
Post by: walt on July 24, 2004, 12:19:35 am
Dude, we already know this Gohan-long posts/arguments suck

it's just that it used to be taboo to say anything about it :P