Rant on the state of the community

Eh, I've been encoutering some difficulties this year. And I've become quite lazy, although I try to fight that lazyness. I have periods of activity, such as this one, and periods of... boredom (this is not really just boredom, but let's say it's that). This prevented me to work efficiently on some interresting project. The good is that I'm still working on it, and also that my periods of "boredom" are now shorter and less frequent.

Anyway, I do remember the Golden Age of 2001. I think it was when I entered the Community. And I'm nostalgic of it. I would love things to be as they were at that time. Back when I was known as David Declerck, Chaos, or just the french guy / translator.

I agree with you LOst, we must regroup. We must "survive".

 

The change is quite obvious from my perspective. After one long and eventful year of being on this board I have seen many things.
Back in the day, I saw a happy community consisting of people posting lame theories like the Burning Skeleton theory as the boss for Genocide City Zone, Billions of HPZ (one I kinda posted too frequently on and acted like a turd), and Dust Hill/Desert Level theories that have always been debunked by people with the knowledge to know what the hell was right and wrong. I have seen oodles of Sonic contests, such as boss contests hosted by Drakmyth Master, Sonic Adventure S Missions by BtCE, and LOst's 2 page thread called A competition (nightmare hard) just to name a few.
I've seen hacks like Foamy's Time Attack Hack, the first time LOst told us about his Eggman Hack (thirteen pages long if I remember), Mecha Mazgoth's multitudinous posts about his hack ideas. I've seen asdffdsa's (.hack//zero now) Omega hack get better as the years went by, and have seen Xinux (Quickman) post a bunch of Tech questions in the Tech Area. I even made a hack of my, but locked it and let the sands of time drag the topic to the bottom of the hack archive list.
I've seen the hoaxes that people have posted over the year. Like Mark Jurich's 911 rememberence hoax, and funny connections people made to the scrapped zones of Sonic 2, or even edits they made just for fun. I've seen the 3d level fad where people tried to recreate levels in 3D with level tiles (or whatever it was), and I even saw the topics BtCE tried to make on a hoax contest, which I don't believe made it off the ground.
In the Lounge, I've seen topics people posted about problems they had and what they should do, and the stupid topics of people saying they have all the Chaos Emeralds. Topics where Simon was the first to say Happy Birthday to people. And I've even noticed a topic that said: Has any one notice... how popular this board got!!!
I've seen people come and go, like Mase, PC2, Tails, Foamy, and others to name a few. I've seen the dissapearance of the Emeralds and the Tech Member status come to life for the first time.
No matter how you look at it, times have indeed changed since the days of the past. Now when you look at things, these times are more strict since people have to be smart or be left in limbo. Not that the turd filter has been a bad thing. It has been a good thing, but because of this new strictment policy, people have to watch what they say a little more than what they used to do. Anything worth saying is easily debunkable from the most smallest amounts of evidence so trying to discover anything is pretty much impossible unless you know what to do, which, in most cases, people don't know how to do. Back then, people could get away with a simple palette hack and everyone would be like, "Oh wow, that is awesome!" But now that time have livened up, a simple palette hack makes you look like a turd and you are pretty much flamed and are told to do something else, like port tiles from one game to another do something super special that is obviously beyond the person's capabilities. Nowadays, Tech Members are posting their projects and regular members are now ooo-ing and aah-ing what they do. What I'm basically saying here is that the only way to truly bring this board back to the way it was it to kinda lower the standards of the board. A little to make the board the way it is now, but enough to where people are still enjoying themselves and that they can post what they feel like and at least get a decent response instead of a flame. I don't know if any of you remember half of this, or even care as to whether I actually cared to state what the communities position on the way of the past, but is to show you we can still be the place we can be, but just try to be ourselves and let ourselves be open, and not try to push the limits so often. Otherwise, we'll have nothing to do at all, and just point fingers, flame, and then, with enough of this, actually tear down the community just because of want and greed. Take a lesson from this post if you want, but how about we try to get along and remember the things that truly brought this board together over the past year.

 

That almost brought a tear to my eye Trigahd.

I know that I'm not the most like member here, but I want to try and help bring back the community spirit that I had a taste of when I first joined. If some people have noticed, in the past two weeks I've been trying to reply to everything and raise points of discussion, like the views in the "I have a theory but I don't know if it's been proved" topic.

How about we all start doing the simple stuff again, like making hoaxes? And getting involved in the hoaxes other members make? [size=-1]Hint. Hint.[/size]

 

Hey Soil, I indeed noticed you replyed to my poll about KENS. I appreciate this a lot. That kind of behavior is what makes a "Community".

I have the feeling that something good for the future of the community will come out of this discussion.

 

No problem.

Indeed, I do too.

Also, if anyone needs an idea to start joining in with the community spirit, you could post your pictures at the thread in the members lounge.

 

Trigahd, I think you've totally hit the nail on the head, well said man

Only good things can come from it because everyone is being so mature. I'm honestly impressed by everyones attitute.

However I do think we should still be critical of peoples work, because, although it may seem mean, it does make people improve their standard of work.

 

My 2 cents:

About keeping stuff secret, it totally depends on the nature of the work. If it only involves flipping several bits of code? Then yes it may be somewhat anal to guard it as if it would bite. But things become different when we're talking about custom algorithms and codes (I don't know what LOst is keeping, so I'm just guessing here). They're more like mini-programs now. Whoever wrote it has every right to keep the source to himself or herself. When they spent their own time to come up with something unique, who are we to tell them "no, share everything now"? They deserve to have their hacks being special from everyone else.

As for this "change" everyone has been talking about, it's been going on for the past 4, 5 years. The gap between Techies and casual fans will continue to widen. It's just a normal consequence of research as people keep building onto and improving existing techniques -- you can't tell them to stop and let's go back to the fun brainstorming drawing-board phase where everyone can participate. You WILL be left in the dust if you just sit around and do nothing (like me :P). But the good thing is, programs are available to let you do basic hacking without understanding much.

I do admit things can look daunting and the learning curve can be steep, and perhaps people could benefit from some kind of user-friendly, pratical tutorials (e.g. "To turn RINGS into RING, following these steps.."). It might also stir up interests in new members.

Oh, and some Techies that "aren't doing much"? Remember the community has been around since 1998, most have given the scene a swift kick in the ass while you were not even here yet.

Many are not interesting in hacking. Actually, that's perfectly fine. Just don't complain about how others are going too fast ahead, or when your theories get debunked because of years of accumulated knowledge.

I hardly interfere with controversal topics (e.g. politics). Instead, it seems like there are LOTS of self-censorship going on. Trust other members and just express yourself, I believe most people can handle debates and accept differences easily. Well, if not, fuck them :P.

 

Trigahd, that is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever read (second only to a nice peice on Zelda games that I wish I kept. That really DID make me cry).

You also said exactly what I was trying to say, but in better words. The standard is so high, that it's like you either have to be the spawn of LOst and Nemesis (that's a funky thought), or get flamed harshly.

Sure, criticism is good. But when the most basic skills that are necessary to begin with anything are flamed, how do you get a good start? You learn the basics, how to make a hoax, how to do a pallete hack, etc. But when you show off your accomplishments to see if you did a good job, all you get back is negativity and posts of "Do better or get out!" (No specific post in mind just general idea.) How do you build your skills if the easiest of all skills are shot down whilst being tested?

That is why the others left the community. It was changing for the worst. Think back to the good days, back when the original SSRG was still open and Andy ran it. Those were the good days (and the final days of Andy's reign over SSRG was when I first showed up.)

It's the technology. It corrupts people. It's proven many times over. Fifteen years ago, the NES was super high end. The graphics were unimaginable. Just play Megaman 1 and see. That was a god-like game at the time and those were the days of good games. A crap storyline that barely worked, terrible graphics, and no one cared because it was insanely better than anything else at the time.

Just recently I had a friend over while I was playing MM3 on the anniversary collection. He just stared at it like it was the worst thing in the world and said "How can you play that?" I replied, "This was back when games were good and not judged by storyline or graphics." He just turned away and said, "Well, I hate it."

That hurt me. How can you hate the classics? Now granted, not everyone in the world likes Megaman. But to say you hate all "old-school" games? More or less, everything before the N64? It's just not right. I grew up, quite literally, around Super Mario Bros. 3 and Tetris 2. In fact SMB3 is still, even after 15 years of watching it, one of my favorite games of all time. Why? It's challenging, it's fun, and the only thing that matters is the gameplay. How many games today can you say depend solely on the gameplay? What game has almost no storyline, graphics that are not up to par in any way, and still is a best seller?

I just don't know what to do. Everything is falling to pieces for the worst. Technology is evil, but the newer it is, the more people want it. Deep down, I think everyone knows this. But not a single person in the world (with the exception of third-world countries and amish people) could ever give up technology, myself included. I know for a fact that technology is bad for you, but I'm not sure I could give it up for my life if I had to.

Look at that show that they previewed on Oprah tonight, the one where they take modern people and stick them in a 1600's setting. They claimed they had been living a 1600's lifestyle for 4 months. Yeah right. They had an 11 year old boy there. I highly doubt that kid could survive in a 1600's setting for five minutes without any electricity or running water. I sure know I couldn't.

But I'm getting off topic now. The point is, the standards are so high because the technology we use to make our hacks can do alot. But even if people don't know how to use these programs, they still make the most basic stuff which for most people who don't know anything about hacking Sonic is a great accomplishment. And yet they get flamed because so much more is easily possible. I just don't know what to do anymore.

 

I can't resist to reply here now...

I have this feeling too!

I'm with you Soil. I'm in a good mood now (not like yesterday <_< ) and I will do my best to contribute for this Community and keep it in a good way.

Trigahd, very nice post. That's exactly something I wanted to read. In my first post on this topic, I tried to write something like that, but I'm really too bad in English to express my feelings correctly, without making a thing unreadable (a lack of vocabulary?). At least, I tried... :D

 

I know it probably wasn't me that started all these positive comments but it feels like it. I feel like I've started off something good, which will greatly benefit the whole community.

I probably shouldn't waste my posts saying shit like this, but I feel like I helped in someway :D.

There is an old saying that has a particular relevance to the whole community at this time.

United we stand.
Divided we fall.

 

I can't help but grin as I'm sat in my chair typing this. This topic started out realy lame and not so negative, more of an annoyance. Now, we are all so posative it is starting to get cheasy. It's still fucking brilliant though :D

 

Agreed. Somehow, within the last page or so, the tension has loosened, and everyone seems to be back in more of a normal state of mind.

Yes, it's true that the tech members will excel far beyond us regular members, but that's not to say that we all can't get along because, in fact, we can and we will.

Everyone around here, Oldbie, Techie, Member, and even Trial Member has the same priveledge to be a member on this site, and that shared priveledge keeps us all together, regardless of our status.

Long live S2B!

 

Here, here!

Quick, somebody give me something worthwhile and contributary to write...

Just joking :P.

I just thought of an idea that could bring people in the community together and strengthen the members' ability to work as a team. Maybe it could be a great idea to work together on a team hack, sharing ideas, theories and methods of hacking to create something. People will probably think this is a dumb idea, but I think it could work, and could end up producing a hack that has a bit of a spark. Something extra special that will show everybody on the Sonic scene that this is the place to be, and show people what you can do if you all pull together.

Just a suggestion...

 

Totaly going in my Member name.

This is great. It's like a forum version of a pat on the back for everyone. :D

 

I don't think it was really that bad. Quick Man did risk offending people I guess, but it wasn't really negative - more of him just telling people what he thought backed up with good reason. And as we can see it was definatly worth it from the supportive replies from everyone. Hopefully you guys have kept QuickMan in the community.

This whole event is a turning point in the community and I believe it should be added to the history of the community document, if anyone is still maintaining that.

Although you have a valid point that behavoir does create elitism. They don't have to write a tutorial or anything, they just need share with people who ask for help or ask how they did something, which I think most people do here anyway.

 

(Talking about the rom hacking part of the community):

Well,It looks like I had to join to the community a few years back.For what I see,Is just the people are working on separate ways.That's why there isn't community.

A solution could be what LOst said,although it would be probably hard to do.I mean,that it will need colaboration from the people,and I don't how many people would like to do that.But of course,I won't say "no".

On another hand,there is people who want to learn stuff,but there isn't specific info.Usually if you want to learn 68k,"no problem" with that becuase there is some documents there talking about that stuff (Okay,relatively,you have to read documents and spent time learning it,but still,there is a base to start).But when it comes to the Naka's engine,you have to figure yourself what to do and how it works.That wasn't a problem for me but it could be to the people who knows hex,but don't know where to start or what to do.And with that,it finishes in less and less people how know that stuff.

Now,you will say "yes,but you aren't doing anything in order to avoid it".Well,if somebody is really interested I could post basic info about that.But that will have to be when I finish something that I'm doing

 

In this post, I found a link to the last posts from the SSC boards, before SSRG was closed. Well, I read them again, and it hurt a lot. And this happened just for my birthday (Sept. 5th).