Sonic CD Restored 30th Anniversary Edition

I'd hate for the discussion-baby of "does this really make sense for this mod" to get thrown out with the "was Blastfrog in the right" bathwater though.

 

Okay, I thought detailing what I interpreted before would help, but the way it went, yeah this needs saying.

The "does this really make sense" topic getting thrown out alongside the "people are being mean to me" topic is kind of the point. If it didn't start that way, it's certainly become a convenient excuse now.

I was gonna leave it with the other post, but I saw this guy. This person tries their damndest to ask one question: "can I use the normal OST please". They get told to read the description, they've already done because they mentioned the unlock requirement. They ask again, and are met with a...rap? With a video description that implies anyone who isn't up for this is playing the game wrong (get used to that). They try a third time, and get told that CD restored is a "speedrunner mod". This doesn't justify the OST lock nor is it why most players use the mod, but the guy takes the high road and asks "okay, how can I get the fixes without the rest" only for a collaborator on the mod to come in and say "go ask someone who cares". The person still holds out though, and asks "who would that be", being met with "Sonic CD bits and pieces", which, best I can tell, is completely made-up? Google turns up nothing. He says it's an unreleased mod...so that was pointless, then. But chad requester continues, asking if he can distribute a modded old build, just for the regular OST. This gets a downvote and an absolute "NO" for...reasons. "What reasons?", our protagonist asks. This gets labeled as "trolling". The reason is that it would violate the mod's license, which...looks fine to me? The only thing stopping them is that they said so. The conversation ends here, with a token apology for the frustration, but still no actual justification. Lower in the thread, you can see the weird rap repeated, alongside some strange manifesto about how people will only "learn to play CD the right way" if he forces them to via this mod (I suppose via auditory torture). Intrepid hero once again asks what their alternative is for getting a load of code fixes, level additions and gameplay additions is if they want to listen to the original OST, and is met with crickets.

This is the pattern. Praise gets lifted up and some comments pinned, bringing up the silly OST decision gets dogged-on or accused of harassment and trolling, have everything in their comment responded to except the question about the OST, or are ignored entirely. Look at this guy. Spends 80% of their comment praising the mod, but because he dares to say "I wish the normal OST wasn't locked off", the response is a perfect 3 hit combo of "BEFORE now you had NOTHING" to "NOBODY complemented me on adding them back in" (wonder if it's cause you locked them off, bro), and finally "well people LIKE my music so WHY BOTHER".

I have no doubt there was toxicity in that comment section at some point, but it's clearly a two-way road, with comparisons to toxic persons being a convenient denial to the rest of the playerbase. When someone is this obstinate and unresponsive, it does kind of make sense that another person might get snippy with them. The justifications of "it's for speedruns" and "they can learn to mod it out themselves" don't hold up when the mod changes too much to fit a normal CD speedrun category and third-party alterations to it are actively discouraged.

As far as this thread goes, while I don't think mod creators are entitled to make their projects open-source (or indeed do anything at all), there is very little wrong I can see in blastfrog's comment. He's maybe a bit rude, but I can hardly blame him. At least rude can be honest! If pimpuigi responded to all these comments with "because I felt like it", that would be more accurate to the idea of modding as an art form he controls, than selling it as a fixes + utility tool, and would likely inspire other people to iterate upon it to be less stupid.

This is old drama at this point, but you can see the process repeating itself pleasewith the removal of Knuckles mod compatibility. I do not think we are doing ourselves or CD any favors when we get caught up in discussions of civility against rhetoric treating "can I use the normal OST" as innately hostile.

 

... I get what you're saying, but I don't think we should bring all that over here. I think someone posting here should have a clean state without worrying how things went along elsewhere. I don't allow myself to get too invested in this kind of drama.

There's a... let's call it a mod for the sake of argument... that I was a big fan of. It was a ROM. I used to comment on it a bunch at a different forum. I made a number of suggestions and reported bugs and such. The lead guy on the project finally decided to get snippy with me and told me I can add it myself if I want since it's open source. It was completely unnecessary, but I just decided to distance myself from it rather than engage. Some people just want to do their own project their own way. I haven't looked at that project in probably a year now, and I don't honestly miss it.

My opinion has already been stated: this is how he wants to make it, so let it be. He's done a lot of work on this that I think is interesting. I don't care so much about the soundtrack one way or the other. But it's legitimate criticism.

 

Why doesn't someone write a mod for this mod that restores the original soundtrack? That way everyone can be happy.

 

I'm surely the last person to come around and comment on such a matter, but I'll try to give my 5 cents on the matter and move on.

If it were to simply be @PimpUigi's personal vision of the ideal Sonic CD, it'd be fine, he had the right to enjoy the mod the way he wanted.
But he decided to release it to the masses. Then he decided to keep it "on his vision" alone, with alternate options locked or behind strict requirements.
I'm not sure how much it may incite speedrunners to do their best with his mod, but it's now noticeable some people are irked by his actions.
I know, the mod wasn't made to please everyone, but the way they're acting towards others makes it seem they're actually trying to please nobody.

To me, that's enough reason to snap at them, even if it only fuels needless drama and toxicity. There's gotta some civility from all sides, not just some.

Maybe the mod is packed in a way that complicates others' attempts at external modding?
I'm no hacker or modder, but for stuff I do I usually require a manual or some instructions to get through the process.
Without the mod's code, others may find it tough to locate the options they want to edit back.

 

I really don't want to take part in it. But I keep seeing people bring up the OST silliness, and immediately lose that thread to discussions of civility, when by-and-large the vast majority of people just want some improvements and fixes for CD. This can be very frustrating, especially when it's not one-sided in the slightest. It just makes all the posturing about harassment look extremely convenient.

Again. Modders can do what they want, but they should be honest about why they don't feel like making a particular change that people are asking for. And actively discouraging people from fixing it themselves suggests to me that "creative vision" isn't really the whole story.

 

I had a quick look at it and all you have to do to unlock the stock soundtrack is put "SaveRAM[300] = 1" at the start of ObjectStartup in Sonic CD Restored\Mods\Sonic CD Restored\Data\Scripts\Menu\MenuControl.txt, and then select it in the soundtrack menu. I have no clue why you people spent more time arguing back and forth than it took to fix the problem...

 

There was at one point an expanded music option mod for this mod/release, but I don't think it got updated. I liked it as it lended itself well to further soundtrack modification, adding individual tracks for each level at pretty granular stages. As I've done a custom soundtrack of my own and I also played that mod, modding the mod of the mod to add it in wasn't quite as crazy as it sounds.

At some point I'll update everything to this newest version, including the music mod in question.

 

I did say that I was gonna bow out of this thread, but I have one last thing I'd like to add. Even if the key purpose of this mod is speedrunning, there are many things in it that are good to have for general purpose play and cannot be found anywhere else. For instance, when I play Half-Life 2, I play the "old engine" mod, which is primarily intended for speedrunning, but I just play it to experience the 2004 version of HL2 before all of the patches changed the game in ways I don't like. And it actually has the chapters all unlocked right at the beginning, that's more options, not less, and certainly not options being needlessly taken away from players that already existed in the original game.

This video is more about commercial games, but a lot of the points here are quite applicable:

 

I'd rather just play the 1993 release rather than feed into some person's ego by using "their version". I swear the amount of times I've seen drama come up over this guy is astonishing.

Edit: You know what, I apologize for this post.

 

Least headcannon has a chance to fix up CD in Origins plus then we can forget this thickheaded asshole.

Anyone who spouts how their version is better than the original vision is an asshole. Games aren’t made in a vacuum and there are often reasons why things are how they are. Some improvements are one thing but insisting on shoving in a soundtrack no one wants is the ultimate in being full of yourself.

 

I don't think it's necessary or classy to resort to name calling, despite the ego/elitism at play. Fire can't fight fire, you know? And manners aside, is it really going to be compelling to PimpUigi to change things for the good of the community if this is how we act towards him? Not that I want to kiss ass, I'm not a fan of the current state of Restored either. I think it's generally a great project with terrific work and care put into it, but it's needless and petty to limit its potential reach and appeal (both through soundtrack shenanigans and intentionally hobbling it's compatibility with the Knuckles mod) just to get a sense of satisfaction that people are playing it "the right way". I may not like that, and I may not like how people who request these changes are treated, but I'm not going to attack PimpUigi's character. It is their project and they don't have to share it with anyone in any form. I can only hope that they can see that these requests (and outbursts lol) are coming from a place of passion, and realize they'd make a lot of people happy by increasing the flexibility of their project, and might even pull in some people into playing "the right way" that otherwise might not have. If you're reading this, I hope you'll think about it.

 

Posts like this make me want to leave this scene. Calling someone an asshole over a mod? JFC.

 

For people on all sides of this debate, we have to remember this scene is full of people who are socially-stunted for one reason or another as well as literal children... And even for those who fall into neither category, we're all works-in-progress learning how to best treat people. Remember that there's real people on the other side of the screen and lets try to be good and patient with each other.

 

Idk his attitude just seems very condescending. Apologies if I took it a step further than I should’ve. They’ve done some neat things with this, I just get a holier than thou sense from some of the modding scene sometimes and it bugs me. And I see I’m being a tad holier than thou in response, and that’s not helping either. So I was a dick too, my bad.

I’ve been in a weird headspace this week so it’s been a bit easier for me to go a little overboard.

 

The man expressed his opinion, and 100500 people said that he was a cad, and in general should be grateful that he can play this mod...
Freedom of speech!

 

I don't think anybody has called anybody a cad for saying they think poorly of the mod. In fact, I think most people talking about this in this topic are pretty against name calling all together. That's the point -- this scene is over 25 years old now, it's mature enough that we can talk about these kinds of things without insulting one another. That stuff got old back in the Sonic Cult days.

Just to make it clear, there is absolutely no illusion of freedom of speech here. We are all bound by a terms of service to use this board, and it pretty clearly asks for civility. It's basically rule number 2 of the forums TOS:

I'm so completely weary of the unpleasant edge the internet has these days. It's not nearly too much to have people hold back on calling other people names. And FWIW, Blastfrog was cordial enough to apologize and move on, which is really appreciated.

 

Thanks for the transparency, candor, and willingness to take feedback. It's very cool of you.