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Just your average game and anime loving computer addict who idles a lot on IRC. ;D
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AIM: KingArthur6687
AIM (secondary): Pendragon6687
MSN: Away spambots! (屮゜Д゜)屮
(Feel free to PM me if you'd like it.)
IRC: King_Arthur or Dalewyn_Lancaster on the following networks: irc.rizon.net, irc.dynastynet.net, irc.dejatoons.net, irc.irchighway.net, irc.esper.net, irc.synirc.net
Skype: dalewyn6687
Yes, I'm still in 2002. Screw social networking!
League of Legends: Dalewyn
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:King_Arthur6687 (also has my contact info)
Steam: kingarthur6687
Kongregate: Dalewyn
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Dalewyn (YOU SHALL SEE NOTHING!)
EDIT: Just noticed how outdated my Wikipedia userpage was. TIME TO ADD MORE USERBOXES.
AIM (secondary): Pendragon6687
MSN: Away spambots! (屮゜Д゜)屮
(Feel free to PM me if you'd like it.)
IRC: King_Arthur or Dalewyn_Lancaster on the following networks: irc.rizon.net, irc.dynastynet.net, irc.dejatoons.net, irc.irchighway.net, irc.esper.net, irc.synirc.net
Skype: dalewyn6687
Yes, I'm still in 2002. Screw social networking!
League of Legends: Dalewyn
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:King_Arthur6687 (also has my contact info)
Steam: kingarthur6687
Kongregate: Dalewyn
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Dalewyn (YOU SHALL SEE NOTHING!)
EDIT: Just noticed how outdated my Wikipedia userpage was. TIME TO ADD MORE USERBOXES.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
First off, I believe we should stop being hostile towards kentona or presume there's any supposed "my way or the highway" attitude at work. If kentona really did want to push this change he'd have just gone ahead and done it. If anything, we should thank kentona for holding this discussion and allowing all of us an opportunity to chime in.
Now then:
Indeed, and some of the things you mentioned are obviously beyond my ability to see as well, so my conclusion used primarily this topic as the source of data. I think I did a fair enough job reviewing the discussion in this topic thus far though, at least!
Thing is we also have some commercial devs voicing their opinions here, most notably Harmonic. With them taking part in this discussion though, I'd have at least expected a more enthusiastic reaction from them, rather than the "hmm yeah this might be good, but..." posts that permeate this discussion. Too small data sample, or an actual hesitance towards the change? Food for thought.
I assumed any separation would've been done with an internal tag of some sort with list filtering done on the backend anyway. Duplicating the entire infrastructure is indeed a waste of time as you've just said.
Now then:
This is true, if you only look at this topic. However, there have been handful of other topics on this subject, as well as the IRC roundtable we held last week and the numerous private conversations I've had (and you can't forget the number of commercial games I have denied in the past 10 months, too).
Indeed, and some of the things you mentioned are obviously beyond my ability to see as well, so my conclusion used primarily this topic as the source of data. I think I did a fair enough job reviewing the discussion in this topic thus far though, at least!
I think you also have to consider that there is going to be a bit of bias in any polls or discussions of it here on the forums - we ARE the hobbyist developers and the potential commercial devs aren't around to say "hey yes, I would love this. RMN's gameprofiles are super! Can I haz?". Just something to keep in mind. Besides, it's not the number arguments for either side that matters, nor even the number of people on either side making said arguments. And with few exceptions, no one is firmly partisan on the issue.
Thing is we also have some commercial devs voicing their opinions here, most notably Harmonic. With them taking part in this discussion though, I'd have at least expected a more enthusiastic reaction from them, rather than the "hmm yeah this might be good, but..." posts that permeate this discussion. Too small data sample, or an actual hesitance towards the change? Food for thought.
Splitting commercial games into a separate area is not going to happen - one, there is no real benefit for doing this, and B, it's a lot of work to do. What I do intend to do is add another checkbox to gameprofiles that says "Is Commercial?" and that will give be an easy hook to filter or search or select commercial games from non-commercial. (So, I COULD build out a Commercial gams only page/list based on this, if we ever wanted to, but I am not going to duplicate the underlying code and classes and infrastructure just for the handful of commercial gams we might get)
I assumed any separation would've been done with an internal tag of some sort with list filtering done on the backend anyway. Duplicating the entire infrastructure is indeed a waste of time as you've just said.
A change that would be nice at RMN!
While I can agree with cleaning out stalled profiles with no downloads to keep things organized and tidy, I'd keep any that have demo/beta downloads on them since an incomplete game is still very much worth playing depending on the game in question.
[Poll] Editing and you
Yeah, this would be nice (though it isn't live-or-die essential).
Forum Topic subscriptions
I personally prefer subscriptions to be Off by default, usually I don't even notice I'm subscribed and suddenly I get random notifications/emails out of the blue.
Also this:
Also this:
author=Dyhalto
There's a lot of unnecessary details you're going into here. All you really need is a Subscribe/unsubscribe button on each thread. We'll handle the rest.
Have a concern about my art assets and could use an opinion.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
I believe the gist of this current discussion is that while we (the RMN community) don't mind and will even readily accept commercial games, we don't want them at the cost of negatively affecting the freeware games that we currently have and always had.
Dyhalto, Liberty, sbester, others, and myself have consistently voiced concern about the possible ramifications commercial games might have on the free games that the RM community has always nurtured and developed. I personally believe that these concerns are extremely valid and should be taken into heavy consideration because free games are what the RM community has been constructed on, free games are the very foundations of our community.
Another problem I see is that, while we seem to be open to the idea of commercial ventures on RMN, there doesn't seem to be a clear demand for them. Much of the "Yes" votes consist of "Mmm, yeah, I don't see why not." or "Yeah, commercial games would benefit RMN!" but as of the 3-pages-worth of posts as of this writing there hasn't been a single post clearly along the lines of "Yes, please allow commercial games. I want to submit my/our commercial games here on RMN!", not even from the commercial developers who have voiced their opinions here. Even some of the "Yes" votes are also voicing concern for any ramifications that commercial games might have. Maybe I'm missing something, but, like WIP back when he was still in charge here, I'm just not seeing the demand personally.
There are also an astoundingly larger number of "No" votes compared to "Yes" votes as of this writing if we were to simply tally up the vote count from those that have clearly stated as such. While this obviously doesn't mean much it is also food for thought: Are we just not getting enough "Yes" votes voiced yet or are we truly against the idea in general?
Overall, given the genuine concern for the well-being of free games on RMN should commercial ventures come in, a lack of clear demand for commercial games on RMN, and a seemingly generally negative outlook on the proposal, I'm coming to the conclusion that while RMN isn't against the idea of commercial games we also aren't willing to take the gamble. I think that as the RMN community, we just don't consider commercial games worth the time, effort, and risk involved in bringing them here.
Dyhalto, Liberty, sbester, others, and myself have consistently voiced concern about the possible ramifications commercial games might have on the free games that the RM community has always nurtured and developed. I personally believe that these concerns are extremely valid and should be taken into heavy consideration because free games are what the RM community has been constructed on, free games are the very foundations of our community.
Another problem I see is that, while we seem to be open to the idea of commercial ventures on RMN, there doesn't seem to be a clear demand for them. Much of the "Yes" votes consist of "Mmm, yeah, I don't see why not." or "Yeah, commercial games would benefit RMN!" but as of the 3-pages-worth of posts as of this writing there hasn't been a single post clearly along the lines of "Yes, please allow commercial games. I want to submit my/our commercial games here on RMN!", not even from the commercial developers who have voiced their opinions here. Even some of the "Yes" votes are also voicing concern for any ramifications that commercial games might have. Maybe I'm missing something, but, like WIP back when he was still in charge here, I'm just not seeing the demand personally.
There are also an astoundingly larger number of "No" votes compared to "Yes" votes as of this writing if we were to simply tally up the vote count from those that have clearly stated as such. While this obviously doesn't mean much it is also food for thought: Are we just not getting enough "Yes" votes voiced yet or are we truly against the idea in general?
Overall, given the genuine concern for the well-being of free games on RMN should commercial ventures come in, a lack of clear demand for commercial games on RMN, and a seemingly generally negative outlook on the proposal, I'm coming to the conclusion that while RMN isn't against the idea of commercial games we also aren't willing to take the gamble. I think that as the RMN community, we just don't consider commercial games worth the time, effort, and risk involved in bringing them here.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
One way to solve the problem of confusing visitors with a listing of both free and commercial games is to completely separate the commercial games into their own area. As in, we keep our current structure and we add on a "Commercial Games" section completely independent of what we have now, it'd only list commercial games and there would be no room for confusion. Though as the old saying goes, make something idiotproof and you'll get a "better" idiot...
Dyhalto also brings up very important, and I daresay essential, points. RMN is first and foremost a community of game developers who love making games and discussing the finer points of this art. I believe this is what Dyhalto is concerned with; we hobbyists and freebie developers make games because we want to make great games, commercial developers make games because they want to make a buck. While I'm sure we'd all love to get some spare change in our wallets (who doesn't?), we're fundamentally different from commercial developers who consider net profit their highest priority.
While I've said I don't mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I'm with Dyhalto in that RMN should not change from what it is today and what it has always been, a community of developers and players who are in it for the games themselves, not for any money.
This is actually also why I asked the question I asked Kentona on the last page (I thank him for his encouraging answer, by the way!). While I will not mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I will not stand to see the presence of commercial games negatively affect in any way the kinds of games that we the RM community have nurtured and cherished since its inception.
Dyhalto also brings up very important, and I daresay essential, points. RMN is first and foremost a community of game developers who love making games and discussing the finer points of this art. I believe this is what Dyhalto is concerned with; we hobbyists and freebie developers make games because we want to make great games, commercial developers make games because they want to make a buck. While I'm sure we'd all love to get some spare change in our wallets (who doesn't?), we're fundamentally different from commercial developers who consider net profit their highest priority.
While I've said I don't mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I'm with Dyhalto in that RMN should not change from what it is today and what it has always been, a community of developers and players who are in it for the games themselves, not for any money.
This is actually also why I asked the question I asked Kentona on the last page (I thank him for his encouraging answer, by the way!). While I will not mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I will not stand to see the presence of commercial games negatively affect in any way the kinds of games that we the RM community have nurtured and cherished since its inception.
Commercial gams - a philosophical & practicality debate
How would fangames, which usually utilize copyrighted content from their base work without permission from the IP holders, and games that use rips and other such illegal/"gray-area" materials be affected by the inclusion of commercial ventures on RMN?
Fangames and materials like rips are illegal by their very nature and may or may not buy the ire of the IP holders, but you have to admit that the games themselves have been largely great as art. A lot of the memorable RM2K(3) classics were fangames (ie: FF Endless Nova) or used rips in some fashion (ie: Legion Saga, Kindred Saga).
Fangames and rip-using games would obviously still be free like they are now (they need to be from their very nature), but I'm asking in regards to RMN's future general policy towards them if commercial games are allowed here. While I don't mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I definitely would not want to see them here at the cost of stifling any other kind of games.
Fangames and materials like rips are illegal by their very nature and may or may not buy the ire of the IP holders, but you have to admit that the games themselves have been largely great as art. A lot of the memorable RM2K(3) classics were fangames (ie: FF Endless Nova) or used rips in some fashion (ie: Legion Saga, Kindred Saga).
Fangames and rip-using games would obviously still be free like they are now (they need to be from their very nature), but I'm asking in regards to RMN's future general policy towards them if commercial games are allowed here. While I don't mind seeing commercial games on RMN, I definitely would not want to see them here at the cost of stifling any other kind of games.
How much do y'all like midi?
author=CyberDaggerNone of that is a justifiable reason for not using MIDI files.
Okay, here's the deal. MIDI is not a sound file, and that is precisely why it should not be used.
MIDI is instead a file that tells the player when certain sound samples should be played and how. It's more akin to sheet music than a recording. That is also why it has small sizes.
Here's the problem. Different hardware has different sound sample libraries. Just because it sounds good on your computer, you have no way to know how it will sound on others. And to be honest, most of these default libraries are awful.
Windows (which RM games usually run on) has consistently shipped with Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer as its default MIDI sound synthesizer since at least Windows 2000 and more often than not you can presume MIDIs will be played using it. Besides, Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer isn't that bad in terms of sound, though YMMV and there are certainly better ones out there.
Besides:
TL;DR: MIDI is bad because you have no control over how it will sound on different computers.The same can be said about all graphical resources used since we all have different monitors calibrated differently. The same will also apply to audio resources used since the data (be it MP3/OGG or MIDI) could be routed through an equalizer set differently by each user, among other things, and ultimately to speakers/headphones different to each user.
Basically, the developer has no control on anything the user receives simply because the user is ultimately at the controls of how he receives and perceives that data. The argument that "you have no control" is meaningless and holds no water because you never had control to begin with.
Games - Tester
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