Originally posted by sp

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First I want to state that I'm a bit of an extremist/open-source zealot. Why? In my opinion people who don't open-source their freeware are assholes. I can forgive them if they have legal reasons for not releasing their code but any other excuse definitely falls on deaf ears with me.

Good, that's out of the way. Now about the topic. I firmly believe that more information = better than and available source code is more information than any documentation could ever contain. Arguing for more documentation while simultaneously arguing for closed source is completely grotesque in my opinion.

The core of all progress is the simplification of earlier inventions. That's not just the case for software, but for the rest of the world too. In the years after Gottlieb Daimler invented the automobile it was so complicated that it was seen purely as a tool for engineers who know to fix their cars basically on the fly (because early cars were difficult to control and broke down a lot). Only a few decades later, people like Henry Ford managed to simplify automobiles so far that even normal people could use them.

This is not just true for cars, but for most if not all inventions.

Combine this with another aspect of life. There are no geniuses. Nope, none. Isaac Newton once said that "If I have seen further [than certain other men] it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants". Using this sentence he tried to explain why he invented so much more than his contemporaries. He studied the history of his field a lot more than others and studying that gave him an advantage over others. He knew what was already tried and failed and he knew what wasn't tried yet and could concentrate his efforts on those areas.

There are other examples. Who invented the telephone? Graham Bell? No. The telephone was invented by (at least) Antonio Meucci, Charles Bourseul, Johann Philipp Reis, Cromwell Varley, Poul la Cour, Elisha Gray, Thomas Edison and finally Alexander Graham Bell. The invention of the telephone was not the work of a genius (because they don't exist). It was the work of many people who studied what their ancestors in the fields of electrical engineering developed and they all improved on these ideas.
It's the same with the steam engine. Think James Watt invented it? Nope. By the time James Watt made his significant contribution to the steam engine some hundred of them were already running in Great Britain. James Watt merely studied them and found ways to improve them.

We don't have to limit this to great inventions. Here's a ROM hacking example. If FCEUXD had not been open source there would most likely be no symbolic debugging or conditional breakpoints in NES emulators today. I do not have the time to develop a NES emu myself just to make a better debugger. I am not sure if even have the skills to write my own one. I can, however, guarantee you 100% that I would have never implemented anything like I did in FCEUXD SP if I couldn't have built upon the work of the earlier contributors to the FCE/FCEU/FCEUXD project(s). And - in my fairly biased view - this would be quite unfortunate. I really like symbolic debugging and conditional breakpoints.

What I want to say is that a closed source policy is against many of the most important aspect of inventing and developing. You want to deny us the ability to build on the works of our "ancestors", you want us to reinvent the wheel over and over again, you want to deny us the necessary simplification (for example in the form of libraries that could be developed for common tasks) to make quick advances, you want us to be geniuses (which don't exist) and you want to force us to be the first "giant" in line over and over again.

I ask you, how's that any better than just making programs open source?

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Originally posted by BGNG

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Speaking of which... If you're gonna moderate, you might as well go back and delete that "BWAHAHA" post as well as the "OMG IT'S LONG POST DEBATE TIEM" one before locking the thread or moving it to The Pit of Dispair. I'm fairly certain spam and flaming aren't allowed.

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Originally posted by BGNG

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You just shot yourself in the foot. I give you a reasonable example to support my statement and you ignore it because it's not what you wanted to hear.

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It's obvious you aren't the least bit interested in understanding why I feel the way I feel and you will, as you have been doing, simply post things that say "I disagree, BGNG. Try harder" without any real reason other than the fact you disagree.

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Originally posted by Disch

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Same thing as above, you took a statement of mine and said "I disagree, therefore you are wrong."

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If you were hoping to retain any bit of credibility, Disch, you shattered your dreams into tiny ilttle shards.

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I will make no further replies to this thread. If anyone wishes to speak with me on the subject, use a PM.

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Originally posted by Disch

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7) I don't see any comments. Commented source can be far more informative. ;P

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Originally posted by Disch

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BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Originally posted by Xkeeper

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Don't go on a crusade trying to get everyone else to stop doing it too. No one likes Jahovia's Witnesses, and you're acting just like them.

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Well, I have a -10 saying it shouldn't, and documentation more than makes up for it.

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Originally posted by Disch

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In reality, documentation exists to prevent people from discovering things (by telling them what's already been discovered).

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theta = cutoff*2*pi / samplerate

LP:
H(z) = (1+p*z^(-1)) / (1+p)
out[ i ] = 1/(1+p) * in[ i ] + p/(1+p) * in[i-1];
p = (1-2*cos(theta)) - sqrt((1-2*cos(theta))^2 - 1)
Pi/2 < theta < Pi

HP:
H(z) = (1-p*z^(-1)) / (1+p)
out[ i ] = 1/(1+p) * in[ i ] - p/(1+p) * in[i-1];
p = (1+2*cos(theta)) - sqrt((1+2*cos(theta))^2 - 1)
0 < theta < Pi/2

Originally posted by BGNG

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Then the cause of confusion between us is a miscommunication of what we understand ROM hacking to be. I understand it to be getting, not putting, but getting data from ROMs and figuring out what it does.

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As far as I know, there is nothing extremely negative that could result from releasing source code, at least not for a ROM hacking project.

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Originally posted by Disch

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That said -- the truth the matter is many people don't care about how the game works. Many people just want the toys they can make their games in. Many people don't want to get into further understanding of the game.. since they don't have any interest in that area of ROM hacking.

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Originally posted by Hyper LOL

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Exactly my point. Camera movement transformations and simple file I/O have nothing to do with actually editing the game, only with making a program to do it. Of course it wouldn't make sense to include these in documentation. This is why the source code would be more useful, as it provides a thorough, precise explanation of how the program does everything it does, be it hacking-related or not.

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Originally posted by Hyper LOL

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And if you were serious, I'd love to see such an article. I just hope you interpreted me right...

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Originally posted by BGNG

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Originally posted by Hyper LOL

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• Source > Documentation. Some people just suck at documentation. It also takes longer to write it after you've already written the code. Well-commented code is documentation. Also, you can't possibly document everything. Your own FZX editor is a great example. Since it's a 3D editor I can assume it does things like translate up/down/left/right/forward/backward camera movements into axis movements. I've never managed to get this working and there doesn't seem to be one single piece of documentation on Google (it's all about doing similar things that work totally different). If your program does indeed do this, and I have its source, I can just look at how you did it to get an idea of how it works. On the other hand, if you just release documentation, I think it's a safe bet that if I'd never said this, the documentation wouldn't contain any such information, because it's not information about FZX.

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If people suck at documentation, then their documentation is not good. Good documentation is better than source code, as I don't know about you, but I would rather look at a file format specification than look at some source code that implements it. File formats, unless they are copied as comments, are never documented in source code.

Relative transformations for camera movement in 3D space is a rudimentary programming principle, so I'm certainly not going to document that for F-Zero X. According to you, I should explain my theory for file I/O as well as setting up an OpenGL rendering context. If you would like, however, I will write an article explaining how to do trigonometric relative transformations in 3D.

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Originally posted by BGNG

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I don't feel that the benefits of knowing the intricacies of a game will typically come from looking at the source code. "cnmeerr = nins(0x67430, 0x6E3F0, 0x800D43F0, cnme[ i ]);" doesn't necessarily mean "Write next course name to deallocated ROM space" to most people.

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Who cares how many editors and mods are churned out by people? I don't, for one. What matters is that people have the capability to move on to bigger and better things, being able to make great works with what they know and can do.

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And I don't mean by use of editors, either.

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so its source code will not help much.

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Does it matter if people have the source code? Not if understanding and skill are the focus of the mission. Source code provides little to that end.

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Originally posted by BGNG

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If the source code is there, and application of the understanding provided by the documentation is already implemented, then there is little reason to look into things any further.
--snip--
It sounds rather lazy to me for people to request source code for ROM hacking when documentation is provided.

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With just documentation, however, a working model will have to be created by research and experimentation.

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It is wasteful. And they may never hack the game at all if they have some arbitrary editor's source. They are more likely to do so given documentation and no source.

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Given documentation of how to hack, people will gain a better understanding of how to hack.

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Given an editor's source code will likely remove any ambition for using the documentation in the first place.

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It's apparent that people aren't willing to do work. They don't care about the "why" behind things; only the "what." They just want their toys so they can make stuff and feel special. Is this the idea you intend to express? Is that in any way helpful to making better hackers?

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Originally posted by Disch

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Anyone that would WANT to do this extra busy-work is still able to (like for practice, or experience. And in fact... I doubt it's uncommon for people to hack things the hard way for this very reason. I've done so in the past). But for everyone else who doesn't mind making use of other people's hard work.. they can still gain the benefits.

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Originally posted by Disch

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The thing about progress is you try and move forward. If you keep throwing away everyone's experience, information, work and "encourage" people to start from scratch... ROM hacking will be thrown back into 1998. Imagine if every ROM hacker had to re-invent the wheel for every hack they wanted to make. Production would grind to a screetching halt.

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Originally posted by BGNG

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For specific utilities that hack games that perhaps have specifically not been hacked in the past, source code will dilude the motivation to further understand the workings of the game.

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Originally posted by Disch

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It seems to me you're saying many people download source but never use it. And that's somehow counterproductive? I guess you could call it wasteful because that person is wasting their HD space and they wasted their bandwidth on the download -- but how is it counterproductive? Do they all of the sudden stop hacking because they have some arbitrary editor's source?

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Originally posted by Disch

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Wouldn't the goal of ROM hacking be to hack ROMs? How does possessing but not using an editor's source relate to that at all?

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Originally posted by Ailure

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So you say that to understand my computer fully, instead of working with the Linux kernel source code (or any OS). I need to make my own OS? I don't really get that logic...

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Originally posted by Ailure

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Also, why this large fear for Open source in the ROM hacking community?

I don't understand the "MINE MINE MINE!" mentality a few ROM hackers have, instead of working together forward. I admit that I have a few unreleased hacking docs on my HD, but i'm going to release thoose as soon they're cleaned up.

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Originally posted by Kyoufu Kawa

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Originally posted by Hyper LOL

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Add things to prevent this. Partway through a large piece of code, embed a check that will display your name in a message box if certain keys are pressed.

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I remember that! Some dude's business program was stolen and presented with a different name and color scheme at a convention or something, and the original author asked the demo guy what this and that key combo did. The demo guy said "nothing", and was persuaded to try.

Owned.

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