@wiiqwertyuiop:

Actually I think this is honestly only true in very few cases.

I branched out from the metroid hacking community to bring my hack here as well as romhacking.net to get a wider reception. Many games also lack a dedicated user base revolving around hacking it.

After all, you're not exactly bound to one community and one alone, I am part of quite many myself.

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Posted by Celice

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It's simply because it is - Romhacking in general is an unforgiving landscape for newbies.

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I've found this is a very big misconception. What it's actually supposed to be is dicks are going to be dicks. I don't think that ROMhacking inherently brings unforgiving members. I think unforgiving members clog up the place and make it unwelcoming. It just sucks that dicks are very loud when they want to be.

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The problem does not really lie there either though. ROM hacking is pretty darn hard to do, and you need to put down a lot of time and effort both to learn coding low level languages as well as reverse engineering the original games code. But let's face it, we are not really talking about ROM hacking here, so let's move on.

The REAL problem is that game designing and/or development is pretty darn freaking hard. In order to get ANYTHING done you need to have the following skills:

-Will to stick with a project till it's done.
-Learn how to handle hex editing and minor coding. (De-bug and repoint mostly)
-Study design others make and learn from it to produce something unique.
-Having a bunch of time.
-Be willing to give up on a project before it's done and move on the next.

Now before you call me out for being a moron, yes, the first goes straight against the last one. But the thing is, you need to be willing to give up on several projects since you have fundamentally advanced in your skill and it would be a better idea to go on.

Most beginners come in with the wrong interpenetration of what game designing really is about. Nearly every fan of a game will have thought that it would be better/more awesome if X or Y change was made, or, simply: it was longer or had even more. Therefore, people join ROM hacking or fan gaming communities under the impression that they want to make just that.

But like every other form of art, you need to learn how to do it well, and in order to make something truly great, you will have to put in a lot of time and effort.

The problem is that ROM hacking communities takes the brunt of this. Every new designer will want to learn the same thing, but most of them will kick the bucket on projects way too soon. And eventually give up and leave, most without leaving much of anything of worth behind.

Which means ROM hacking communities such as this one rapidly get new people that ask the same thing and a user base which always have to answer the same formatted questions. (Then there are those that just ask others to do work for them, but they can burn in a fire if you ask me.)

That is not to say that helping them is wrong, in fact, if such help was never to be given I, myself, would not sit here today having released a rather popular Super Metroid hack.


I can not, and I never will, justify being rude to beginners. But what you need to be is blunt, forward, and provide functional feedback. Sugar coating the whole deal (coughsmwccough) will only give users a false perspective of what is needed and required to get far anything done.

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Back on topic. (I will edit this out into it's own post later)

We will now start listing suggestions on basis as you provide them in short and sweet form so management have something to go by when trying to revive this place. After all, this place is for all of us, not just staff.

(Someone/me will just edit them into this post when added to this thread.)

So far we have:

1. Keeping and focusing on the ROM hacking section.
2. Being nicer to newcomers .
3. More administrative work and action when needed/demanded.
4. More ROM hacking resources.
5. Tighter community.
6. More open community.
7. Being trendy.
8. Next generation ROM hacking.
9. More board gimmicks.
A. Promote friendliness
B. Remove HTTPS on IRC RSS. DONE!
C. Remove unused fora and add new forum/fora when interest exist.
D. Group projects.
E. Advertising.
F. Recruited members. (How?)
10. Programming/ROM hacking workshops.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
...

Note: This is a list of things suggested not a list of things we are implementing.


I'd like to voice out and say that while we are always open to suggestions on how to make this place a better place for you and everyone; It would be nice if suggestions of things you want to see, or otherwise, where posted soon so management can take in all the suggestions and rework what is needed and get shit done.

So please, keep coming with ideas, that is all!

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Spot on, I do agree that most of them should be options, not all though.

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Except, the problem still stands that you can't attract members with an group project, you can only boost activity with it among current members. Like mentioned before, most SMW hackers opt for SMWC.

Not to mention, we tried a SMW group hack before and it kinda failed.

And in all honesty, let's not go around saying SMW is the easiest way to go, it really is not. It may have one of the easiest editors to start up with. But SMW is an object based game, making it a living hell to import and use graphics from anything that does not use the same object structure. Or, I suppose, you could make new objects, but that would be quite a load of work as well. SM (super metroid) on the other hand (as an example) is an tile based game and is a lot easier to work with graphics in.

Not to mention sprite graphics load on-demand rather then pre-designed graphics pages. One may bitch about how hard SMILE is to learn, but it really does exactly what is needed and in a very smooth way.

Lunar magic is very easy to get in with and start up with, and SMILE is very hard. But in the end, how hard the editor is to learn is not really relevant, as you will still have to put down the same effort to actually design your part of the group project. Which, for the record, is where most group projects fail.

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You're entitled to your opinion. But I think editor and game is the least of our worries as long as there is something available that does what is needed.

The amount of work and effort to actually provide anything worthwhile that can be used in the final product is still a higher quality and experience bar then there is to learning to use an editor.

SMWCP (or how it was named.) is an perfect example of this. From what I have read and seen of the levels actually made for it, the quality standard is surprisingly low. This is obvious and issue that came up with no quality regulation.

It's fine and all if you want to use a group project to infuse activity to a forum. But in all honesty, for me to give any shit about doing one at all, I would want the final product to actually be something enjoyable.

This can obviously be done in SMW as well, I'm not saying it can't. But if people can't even be arsed to make any sort of playable quality on what they add to the project, then how hard the editor is to learn is the least of our issues. In fact, editor and game choice should not even be decided based on editor or how many know it at all, it should be based on what people will want to make and then take the game which would be the easiest to build from.

Another interesting note (if you ask me) is that if we are just doing this to infuse activity, then SMW might even be the worst choice since it already have a very dedicated hacking community (or two).


Also, added your workshop suggestion to my list in an earlier post.

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Posted by anonymousbl00dlust

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Posted by NightKev

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You can't really compare ASMT, because the new registrations were probably caused by people who watch raocow's videos. He made a lot of "hey look we're doing a thing!" videos for ASMT/A2MT, and the talkhaus is, y'know, based on him and stuff.

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compare talkhaus to protonjon's board at it's peak (while he was still regularly posting videos). huge difference.

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I think you miss the point he was trying to get over. Getting people to join over a project like this would be very hard for us and it may in fact no yield any members at all.

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Posted by Pac

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Is it possible that board2 could merge with Jul again? If it did, I might actually use it.

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That's never going to happen unless the administration on both changes.

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However, RHDN does not really run on a very attractive message board software.

Besides, Acmlm board was always about the community and hacking, not just hacking. If we take step towards a resource stacked website as well as forum board then I don't think that would hurt our community part at all.

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Short answer: no.

Long answer: You could use Kawas open source ABXD which is a new build from the ground up. Or you could get the Jul build if you bother around for a while. I know a few people who have the source of that.

As far as I know though. 2.0, 2.x and 2.5(WIP) are not public.

Oh and there is always that shit old build, but good luck getting that to run, I sure didn't.

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The author of the article seem to imply that the current zelda is not zelda enough. He keeps complaining about wanting an open overworld yet on the same time he praises Zelda 2, which is as linear as a train track. :/

I can understand some of the things he is trying to say, and I sure as hell would want an open overworld where you can go and explore and do things in your order. In fact, that was one of my major selling point with my own ROM hack. (Which was not a Zelda hack.)

But I digress though, the difficulty in zelda 1 and zelda 2 are terrible, at best. Sure, alttp seem terrible easy compared to the first two, but you also have to understand that there was nothing about the set up in the first two games that where good. I have played and beaten both of them, as well as almost all of the second quest in zelda 1, and I can honestly tell several design faults in both.

In the article he proclaims that having to bomb walls without any hints on them was the way to go, in which I can honestly say he have no idea what designing a good game means. Zelda 1 was simple, the only wall sections in the dungeons you could bomb where always in the very center of the wall, making it very easy (costing at max 3 bombs) to check if a room had any secret bomb able walls. Zelda 3 uses a lot more advanced level data in chunk form. Since the screen is auto scrolling and rooms are not the exact same size you no longer had any way to simply check walls without wasting large number of bombs. The developers knew this and where smart, they made some walls show that they where bomb able, other walls where trickier and you had to make use of your sword to check if there was a passage behind the wall. Furthermore, there where cracks in some walls that where not bomb able as well, so it was never a given that a crack in the wall would hold a hidden passage.

Granted though, Zelda 3 is an example where they pulled it of really well; And I have certainly seen worse (AKA way to obvious) things in newer Zelda games. But having to "bomb every tile" as we say in the metroid community (and ironical enough, it make sense in this context as well.) to find the way forward is not a good secret, it's terrible design; You need to have some sort of hint. I can agree with him that their current set up is not good, it's way too obvious, but praising Zelda 1 as the best shit ever does not solve the problem, it just makes you look like a nostalgia freak.

However, the article does make some very good points, many which I have had similar views of myself. The series needs to renew itself and give in to new play mechanics as well as more creative item set up. The hookshot was revolutionary in alttp due to what you could do. But I digress, the items full potential was not reached until OoT where you could use the item in 3D. However, regardless of how much I like the item, seeing it in (mostly) every Zelda game since (in some form or another) have just made it stale.

Regardless of what items I get (or if they are new or not) whenever I enter a puzzle in new zelda games I just look at it and know exactly what to do. SS was just me chugging forward and solving things rather then actually trying to think. Those puzzles I could not find the obvious solution for I solved with some creative thinking instead. For example, in Skyward Sword there is a section where you need to grab a bomb with your flying thingy and drop down on a switch to move forward. The problem was that there where no bombs around. I had gone through the whole area without noticing that there where bombs growing on top of the cacti. I did not notice this until I reached the next puzzle which also needed that mechanic. The first puzzle, however, I got past by using the slingshot and gravity to make the shell fall down the hole instead of a bomb. It was rather tricky, yes, but it was certainly a very interesting experience for me.

I never get dumbfounded like that for puzzles in Zelda games these days, since I know the solution is always very obvious. The think is, regardless what Zelda game you play first, that one will always be great; But the rest will be a lot less interesting. They recycle the concept of puzzles and logic rather then the puzzles and area design themselves. This makes it so that if you have beaten a Zelda game before, you will have very little issues going through the next.

So, while I don't think Zelda games have been declining in quality terribly much (Though I do think Skyward Sword is a big offender in quality going down, but that's for another thread.) it is more an issue of the series not progressing. The statment "don't fix what's not broken" certainly seem to be what they live for, (not that I blame them; it sells games) innovation and creative gameplay is long since dead for this series if you ask me.

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Please calm the fuck down everyone or I will close down this thread. :/

This is a thread dedicated as of how to save this board, not your personal drama space.

Thank you~

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Your first post in this thread was indeed very content filled xk and it's nice to get some input from the other end of the spectrum, in fact, I'd be nice if you could share even more.

But that does not change the fact that I (nor any other user) want to deal with drama clogging up this thread, which you should be aware of.

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Liliana, buck off, I did not ask for minimodding, nor do I want it.

Blackhole may have been in love with the post count, I would not know. But we are in the middle of planning an overhaul here. It's fine if you don't have any faith in it, I'm certain there are many who don't. But that's not going to stop me from at least trying my best to make sure we get to a point where we have an active board and users are not dipshit at each other half of the time.

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Please refrain from bringing your and Lilianas drama up on the board. If you want to sort out anything with her please consider using the PM function or IRC, both are very valid methods that I know you use.

Have a nice day.~

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Posted by MikeFuryXP

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to make a sub-forum for flamers for you guys if you want it so much.

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No.

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Please stop harassing staff about wanting to become staff.

Thank you and have a nice day!~

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This thread is a means of showing off a change log of all changes we have taken in order to improve and modernise this forum in an attempt to revive it.

Stay tuned for updates!

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As of today we now have a strike list system. The rules in the FAQ will be slightly changed when I get the time and FTP access to do so, but for the most part, we will use the same rules as before.

This effectively mean that the new reduxed management will start moderating everything by the new system. And while we are a bit undermanned right now, we will still do our best to make sure the rules are enforced! =)

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Oh, I can see the issue. You need a code dump of the layout to get it in here. Ask (or look around) on that forum for a code dumping function. Possibly, ask Kawa about it on irc.

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We will be adressing suggestions that users brought up in the impass thread and work on adding/removing what we see is needed to make the board go the way we think is the best.

Should it not help the board? Well, then at least we gave it a try to update it.

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