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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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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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

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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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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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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 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 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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