Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Stealth - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Hez, on Yesterday, 05:02 PM, said:

I am being honest.

Stealth, on Yesterday, 04:18 PM, said:

It's something I'm well-known for anyway, and with me admitting that I know some people would want to donate to it, obviously it's impossible for bias not to get involved with my motives. If you admit that I've already admitted that it's an attention-grabber, then what am I being dishonest about?

Hez, on Yesterday, 05:02 PM, said:

Am I allowed to laugh at this? You want to tell me about support in the middle of this mess? In my relative crisis back in the late 90s, only 10 people bought SonED. If I say anything that even comes close to hinting at the possibility of money being anywhere within a hundred mile radius of myself, there are people who go apeshit every time. There's always somebody telling me I owe them sourcecodes, there's always people telling me I owe them updates and releases when there's nothing I can update/release that they won't turn around and bitch at me for, there are people who have demanded access to things they shouldn't have even known about yet and bitching and whining based on assumptions about what I would or wouldn't do with it. Now I get picked to death over mentioning Megamix anywhere near a Patreon that it's not necessarily a significant part of?

A comment like this made in the context that it was is particularly telling:

Hez, on 22 July 2015 - 09:22 AM, said:

In what way are you "supporting" me, exactly? You're not even actually providing me with "moral support" at the moment by going out of your way trying to rip this to shreds when it really can't have any effect on you whatsoever if you don't want it to, and unnecessarily adding basically how unnecessary/redundant I am. You don't have to praise me like a god or anything, or tell me I'm better than anyone or any thing that I'm not, but this? Yeah, I feel supported

As for real moral support, I truly do appreciate it. Everyone who's ever cheered me on, wished me well, or come to my defense over something (Ex: this), it's great. But don't dare tell me that a few pats on my back demand that I dedicate myself fully 24/7 to everyone in the "community". I owe some people kindness. Some people. I owe very few people anything more than that, and hardly any of those people post anything on or even read this forum

In response to defending my right to handle my own material in whatever way I want, I was once told explicitly that I'm obligated to "pay it forward". Ok. What am I afforded that warrants such an obligation on a persistent basis, and where is it?

Don't pay me money, fine; I didn't go to your house, get in your face, and demand specifically that you give me money, and if you don't, that's fine with me
Just don't tell me I fucking owe you anything

Stealth, on Yesterday, 03:55 PM, said:

The only other real option would be to remove any mention of Megamix whatsoever from the patreon entirely, and if it becomes my primary income, never, ever work on Megamix again because I may as well have explicitly said that the projects listed in detail on the page are the only ones I'm ever going to work on and I'd otherwise be lying to the people kind enough to fund me. Is that preferable?

Neo, on Yesterday, 03:52 PM, said:

Reminder that I made the damned thing free for everyone a notable amount of time before I ever even thought of creating SonED2, and I did ask all of the people who were nice enough to put down a one-time payment after I cut the price in half if it was ok with them if I made it free

Nevermind that I was working fluctuating part-time hours for minimum wage and living in an expensive apartment that I was under threat of losing at the time, and by the way, I did ultimately lose it for that exact reason - not able to get enough money to keep up the rent, and that was after my wife (then just a friend) put up a full month's rent for me that she barely even really had. I told this to everyone too; I told them that this, coupled with the existence of third-party shareware game editors I had already seen for other products, was exactly the reason that I thought it was worth asking for anything at all. Thanks so much, for the consideration, guys

People whine and bitch that I don't give them shit all throughout my history here, after my part in founding the place, providing some information, providing the projects that I have done for free and serving as inspiration (yes, I've been told specifically that I was the inspiration) for several other major projects that other people have created, and once I even try to give them something but someone leaks that I'm even working on it, and I get bitched at over the course of the next three or four years for "horading it" and not giving it up because the "community" "deserves it" or has some god-given right to force me to turn over anything I ever do immediately. In all that time, I lost my apartment, tried to move to a better neighborhood and lost that house, having to move in with family, lost that and had to move back to a terrible neighborhood, and got all of my funds from working part-time, minimum wage food-service to prolong the lives of demanding and non-appreciative assholes. I still work on other projects, such as trying to pitch a freely-available E02 here along with a complete Sonic engine that anyone can use to make fan games with it, I try to work on Mega Man Triple Threat, I do what I can on Megamix when I can actually do it, I've still dedicated time to and released several updates to SonED and SonED2 for free

But yeah, fuck me for ever getting any one-time payments of $15 for a software program that I developed by myself with a lot of information I discovered by myself in my spare time when I was barely making a living. I'm horrible

Hez, on Yesterday, 04:00 PM, said:

It's called "disclosure". If nothing else had changed about you except that you decided to put money in because of HCGE, then I'm sure you and others would be bitching the moment something happened regarding Sonic Megamix because what the fuck am I doing spending my time on that when I'm getting paid money for other stuff I said I was doing

Though I won't lie, I knew some people would want to put in for it, and that's their choice. I'm not "milking" anybody. Nobody has to pay me a goddamned cent for Sonic Megamix; nowhere have I said that they did, and entirely to the contrary, I've been explicitly saying that they don't

I see that absolutely everybody has actually visited and read the actual Patreon page. Should have known I wouldn't be able to get away with something like this



Seriously, that's what some people are behaving like it looks like. Maybe actually read it? I don't know

It's a pretty pointless argument anyway since I'm not going to take it down or anything, or even change my mind about what I'm doing first. I'm going to leave it up, I'm going to mention it when I feel like it, and I'm going to start by pleasing the people who wanted to help who happen to be Sonic fans by working on "Sonic 1 Megamix" as I promised as a direct response to their generocity

I want to turn my projects, all of my projects, into my full-time work. I have a lot of them. They are big. They need a lot of attention and complex stuff that I just can't do to them in-between everything else.

Megamix hasn't been finished for 11 years? I've been dealing with a ton of various stuff during that time just to make a living, and I kept pushing it anyway, and in all that time I never asked for anything, not even when Megamix won a supposed cash prize from the hacking contest at least twice and none of us ever received it, even to this day.

HCGE/E02 has incidentally been in development for 11 years as well, not counting 7 years of development for its predecessor, and anything else I did before that, and it looks "limiting" and "not worth [your] time? The thing comes from prior to 1997. I've been trying to get the time to build it for that long, and I haven't been able to in large part due to the fact that I have to make a living. HCGE certainly hasn't been helping because I don't want to force hobby people to pay anything, and I haven't asked except for if hell freezes over and somebody decides to build a commercial game with it. To-date I've only gotten a very limited number of people who even tried to use it as a hobby, and each and every one of them have quit for one reason or another. Do you want like wide-screen and a million colors? Well I'm sorry, but it's going to have to take a backseat to core engine and editor functionality and features, because I don't want to be responsible for people churning out "pretty"-looking crap. I'm building a game engine, not a color playground. Help me or stop whining and wait until I'm allowed to get around to actually doing something like that; it's just that simple of a choice, and you do have the choice. Just make it and move on

$1 won't do shit, honestly. $64 won't really do shit, either. A few hundred $1's, though, that's getting somewhere. I'm aiming big, going full-time with what I want to do, how I want to do it. This is the exact opposite of developing under someone else and/or for money on deadlines or having to forsake wild ideas or complex implementation for what can almost be guaranteed to be well-functioning and actually done within the amount of time that is available to me; this is on my terms so that I can take however long it actually takes to do whatever actually needs to be done to make whatever it is that I'm doing the best that it can possibly be with me as developer, and that's exactly what I told people. They know this going in, and still I already have 10 patrons so far. If you check the full list, you'll find that they're not all "random nobodies", as well, and I resent being made to put it that way because these people are just plain awesome

I don't know what else can possibly be said. I don't care who hasn't read or doesn't read it; I'm not going to repeat myself. I can't be bothered to spend any more time on people who aren't put out in the least by any of this and can only stand to potentially benefit from it being ridiculous

I'm going to run this Patreon.
Megamix is going to be one of the projects that I spend any time developing while the Patreon is open.

There is nothing more to discuss regarding the subject, particularly given that this is supposed to be the new legitimate Sonic Megamix project thread that has little-to-nothing at all to do with the fact that there even exists a Patreon.

I guess I do have to thank those of you who participated in all of this, though. I didn't quite feel right before; now, this really does feel like an actual Sonic Megamix thread.

MotorRoach, on 23 July 2015 - 06:02 PM, said:

Not actually true, they're just not doing it here :P