just notes to myself.. temp

[cowsmanaut]

just sending myself notes doubt you would be interested. This will be deleted once I pic them up from work.

http://www.noboundrees.com/yinako/tut/nprs/nprstut.html

[moo]

I was writing to someone on a forum only to discover after writing it the site had gone down during the time I was writing it. Since I'd rather not rewrite it I'm storing it here untill the site is back up.. this is not directed to anyone here. Moo

--------------------

you have to understand my skepticism. I'll be the first to admit I've bcome a little jaded over the years. People ripping off mystuff and claiming it as their own or simply just using it on their own. Other people offering my space only to find it's down a few weeks later then getting the email saying "my dad grounded me and took away my server". People posting me and asking for me to work for them only to find out it's a group of kids 12-14 with no real work ethic or understanding of what they are doing.

The internet is rife with it and if you can not communicate clearly your needs or intentions you run the risk of looking a little suspicious.

At any rate I had no intention of making you look bad.. if I had I would have done a better job at it. I have a horrible saddistic streak that very few see unless you piss me off. I have nothing against you and I'm most certainly not out to get you.

I was simply making a point that you gave little reason to trust in your word as you've remained untill now rather annonymous. We had no idea who you were, what you did, how old you are, etc etc. This is the nature of working on the internet.

Don't worry, be happy

moo

[Gambit37]

I read your post above with interest. It sounds like you too have experienced similar problems that I've come across over the years. It's a tricky one to resolve, and it can be especially hard if the people that are causing the problems are teenagers.

While I am wary of making generalisations, it has been my experience that anyone on the internet who asks for help or offers to help, and then has a problem with doing the work or communicating, is generally below the age of majority and does very little else with their time except play computer games.

I have experienced this over the years while helping out with mods for Duke Nukem and Tomb Raider amongst others. It took a while, but I learnt not to get involved in those kinds of projects. Unless they are *very* well organised and run by a dedicated and responsible team, it is just not worth the trouble.

Similarly, it's virtually impossible to have a sensible discussion on forums with many "youngsters"; one discussion I had years ago about copyright infringement got so bad that the guy at the other end (who turned out to be a 15 year old geek) flooded my ICQ account for a week. I enjoy discussions but it's a waste of time when the people your discussing with have no clue about what they are trying to defend... the guy in question unequivocally believed that ALL software became public domain after 5 years...

Anyway, just wanted to share that...

[cowsmanaut]

hmm yeah, figured someone would have something to say about the above. It's just to frequent a case on the internet to not apply to other people.

This was actually posted on the Milkshape 3d forums in reply to someone offering webspace in exchange for 3D models. No one knew who he was or how long the webspace would be for. I mean bassically you are contracting work from people without really offering them solid payment. It's just "oh I'll give you some webspace for a model" actually it was for four models, and he expected them to be of high quality. I mean come on.. really people who can make high quality models get paid good money to do it.. not 50 megs of webspace or so for god knows how long from some guy you don't even know. Just didn't sound like a fair deal to me and sounded even more suspicious since know one had ever heard from him before. Even now knowing more about him I don't think it a great deal since potentially he can make a good deal of money from models that he's trading off for some web space.. just bugs me.

moo

[PicturesInTheDark]

Apart from the negative experiences everyone has (including me), I'd like to make a point looking at the other side as well: especially Christophe's forum seems to prove that people can co-exist sharing and pulling the same strings.

I strongly believe that would it look otherwise, the site would be down by now because someone from FTL or whoever holds the rights these days (Wasne Holder?) would have forced it. But since this community is mostly aware of what they are doing and -correct me if I'm wrong- they are doing it with respect to the original, there has been no interference so far.

I'm glad these people (you!) still exist and I'm counting myself lucky to be a small part of that.

Regards, PitD

[cowsmanaut]

Actually, I think Wayne doesn't want anything to do with Dungeon master any more. I mean you think about the fan base now.. there were many more obsessed fans after him back when it was still in circulation. I think he just go tired of it all. I mean you also notice that DM2 got such bad response that he didn't release DM nexus here in northamerica at all nor in any other place than asia. Narrowing his market to such a small percentage like that and then vanishing to teach Java..

Anyway, I think it has more to do with him not caring about DM than thinking we are doing this out of reverence or respect. The other issue is that no one here is making money.. so he wouldn't be able to claim any loss. The most he could do is get a cease and dissist order. However, that would just be mean and cost him a bunch of money. Plus he would need to do this with a world wide aspect and he would need to do it to multiple people.all in all it's just not practical.

But still, you are right.. it is out of repect that this community works.

moo

[Gambit37]

Don't forget too that Wayne, like all of us, has a life besides his work and sometimes other things have to take priority. Having said that, he does keep an eye on what's going on in the community and will exert his influence when necessary... just ask Paul Stevens...

Your're not correct in your hypothesis about Nexus: it was a Japanese only release because FTL owed JVC a favour, although I don't know much about this (yet). FTL only provided the scenario and some technical assistance; they didn't have anything else to do with the production of the game. FTL considered that it would only reach a small market, and saw no reason to market it anywhere else because it was exclusively designed for the Japanese gaming culture.

[cowsmanaut]

well, the only way I can see causing him to act is if someone was charging cash for the games. Anything else would be somewhat pointless unless it was active slander against Wayne himself or FTL in general.

At any rate.. who is Paul Stevens? I imagine I should know but I'm horrible with names.

moo

(btw nexus would have been huge in northamerica I bet)

[ChristopheF]

Paul Stevens is the man who ported Chaos Strikes Back to Windows by translating Atari ST machine code to C++. A massive work!

Paul, if you read this board, what issues did you have with Wayne? Gambit, can you be more precise?

[Gambit37]

In fact, it wasn't really Paul at all, but something he mentioned to me about another person who was re-developing CSBWin for the Mac. They foolishly labelled it "Public Domain" and at that point Wayne stepped in... That's all I know really. I also understand that you too Christophe were approached by Wayne who asked you to put the copyright and credits notices on your website?

[cowsmanaut]

Ah, this explains why it looked familliar but I couldn't place it.

The more I think about it, I suppose that it would be a bit disconcerting to discover the number of people who have managed to reverse engineer the code. Why paul would attract his attention more than someone else is odd to me though. I didn't follow his project very much but near as I can tell he didn't do anything different than anyone else and that is to port over what we waited years for FTL to do.. bring CSB to PC. I still have my amiga and my orriginal disks and manuals but to go through the effort to hook it all up just to play a little while is a hassle.

If Wayne cares enough to warn someone about use of the code or Dungeon master name, why does he not recognize the large community base around? The simple fact that new people discover DM communities much to their elation every day. Think of how many people who don't know about the communities but were fans of the orriginal. I'm sure there is a large enough group that releasing a best of, or new maps, or even a new revision of the old game would be profitable to him. I mean if they can release Galaga, centipede, pac man, etc on a CD with a best of the 80's arcade label and make money off of it.. why not a DM compilation?

I guess I just don't know how someone could abandon a project they spent so long on and is still popular. oh well.. I'm sure he has his reasons.. but I'd still like to pick his brain about them.

moo

(shifty eyes.. perhaps he's reading this..)
I don't think I've done anything wrong yet..

[beowuuf]

I take it the phrase 'public domain' is bad - like saying 'this is my code and i don't mind anyone doing anything with it whatsoever because i'm releasing it to everyone'?

To cowsmanaut: He said the person porting it to Mac was warned off, not Paul directly : )

I wonder what wayne thinks about DM Java (not in a legal way)

[ChristopheF]

Correct, Gambit, Wayne asked me to put a copyright notice on the main page to avoid confusion. I was not aware of this issue with the CSBwin port to Macintosh... "Public domain" is definitely not appropriate!