https://github.com/Selbi182/ERaZor Sup. Long time no see. So yeah, I'm making the source code to Sonic ERaZor and everything I've worked on over the last few years public. Why? Read on. Our community treats source code like a holy grail that must be protected at all costs. I used to follow that mindset for literal decades, even long after I stopped engaging with the community, let alone creating anything new. However, since the years without me producing anything have steadily gone by, it felt more and more disheartening that my old work is simply left on an old git repo without ever seeing the light of day again. Therefore, making the source code for my old projects public is a way to circumvent this "digital decay". By making it accessible to anyone who's interested in it, there's at least the chance for people out there to find some value in my old stuff. I also believe that sharing the source code for my old projects is an opportunity to give back to the community, no matter how insignificant that contribution may actually be nowadays. I'm well aware that a lot of time has passed, and most (if not all) of the tools and techniques that I used in my projects will certainly no longer be relevant. But that doesn't mean it should stay locked up for all eternity, especially when there's no reason other than ego and pride involved. If you got any questions, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, do whatever you want with it. Cheers.
yes . . .Yes !! more people should be sharing their source codes to their old rom hacks , im tellin ya !!
I'd release soniNeko's code, but aside from what I wrote by my own (which is probably hideous by any standard), there are some important contributions by other people in there, mainly Puto and StephenUK, so it's not really my call to make. Besides, I don't think that anybody would be interested into my hack.
These are silly reasons to not release your code, IMO. I released some awful PHP code I wrote years ago that I'm sure nobody cares about, but there might be something useful in there for someone to use. This community is pretty good about releasing bits of code especially in the form of tutorials, but there's something to be said about working examples being out there. This, however, is a totally legit reason to not release code. Not cool to release someone else's code without permission. The other one is that you have to be ready for someone to take your work and not release their own changes to it, which can be kinda shitty. We can't exactly slap the GPL on our stuff, we don't own the code in the first place.
I would argue to mentally separate Sega's property from community work. Yes, technically speaking, they are the copyright holders, but I'd argue that community respect for fan-made code is equally important. I still vividly remember the drama back in the day about so much as Homing Attack source code getting leaked. Crazy memories. Also, nineko, I wanted to split your hack back in 2008 and use its content for my own good. So it's never too late
I know, I was there, and I'll admit I reacted less than politely. I do apologise for that, better late than never, I guess. Man, has it really been 15 years already? I'm feeling older by the day, and the fact that it's actually my birthday (at least in my timezone) doesn't help.
I did release all the songs a few years later, though. Back to the topic at hand, I'll see if I can get permissions from Puto and StephenUK, to release the whole source code of my hack. No promises, though, I don't think they're even active anymore. Stephen only did palettes iirc, but Puto was integral to my hack, starting from the spin dash and the custom sound driver.
I've found in Guitar Hero and Rock Band modding, that public git repos are *insanely* useful for collaborative work. I would highly suggest it for *any* game modder.
I'm all for open source and preservation. Makes me wonder if I should open source my old ROM hacks, Sonic 1 SSRG and Sonic 1: The Special Stages.
Welcome to the club! I also took forever to release my hoarded amount of things. Ends up, I wish I had done so a long time ago.
I think this is a good idea. I think more people in the community should do this. Hacking isn't what it used to be, back then you couldn't just release your source code since people could steal it and add it to their own hack.
Now everything is different and every hacker is makes his own brand new code and absolutely doesn't uses a guides and open source projects But at least today most of hackers gives a credits to authors of that or another thing. Anyway I think that source leaking is a good way to learn something useful, because you see cool thing, know how it's works, and even if you can't write your own code- you can navigate in code with knowing what is it and what it makes.
The difference is that the people who made those guides and open source projects were okay with their code being copied by others. If someone dislikes the idea of people using their code, then they don't have much of a reason to release it.
