Re: ATTN: Stricter rules re: commerical game resources.

[Enjay]

Well geez, what do you want us to do? I'm not planning on removing the time limit any time soon, because I was kind of hoping that these rules would help the community not look like a bunch of folks who sit around and think about what's the next "real" game that we can port to zdoom.

I just want a rule that fits with the others and has something a bit more concrete as its basis. Personally, and I know that some people will hate me for saying this, but I'd rather have an all-out ban on ripped commercial resources. Yes, I am very grateful for the not insignificant library of ripped resources that I have sitting on my computer and there are one or two resources that I still hope will be ripped at some point (Alien Trilogy Sprites and those Vegas2 sounds I mentioned). However, I feel an outright ban would be a far easier position to defend that makes more sense than this arbitrary four years that has just been pulled out of a hat.

I think that's a long way of saying "I don't know, I don't like the four year rule and if any alternative rule was to be made it should be the one that I think is too harsh and I wouldn't like either"

[edit] Just read Gez's response and that does make sense - except that I suspect more and more often games will not find themselves as hard-copies in a box on a store shelf because the game companies seem to be increasingly turning to low-price electronic distribution solutions instead of bargain-bin software on the shelves. [/edit]

[wildweasel]

Well, how about this - what exactly would you want the alternative rule to be?

[Xtyfe]

NO RULES!! RUN AROUND NAKED!!

[Enjay]

Well, how about this - what exactly would you want the alternative rule to be?

I think that's a long way of saying "I don't know"

Helpful huh?

I'm not sure. As in, I have actually thought about it and every "solution" I come up with doesn't work for one reason or another. I think that, perhaps, rather than a hard and fast rule of a four year limit, a guideline that basically says "The ZDoom forums are not to be used as a bucket repository for huge illegal dumps of game resources" or something similar (and probably better) and then see how well it can be self-policed with the moderators having an ultimate "that is not suitable for these forums, link removed" veto. I mean, that's kind of how it works now anyway isn't it?

[esselfortium]

I can see where Enjay is coming from. And as has been shown so clearly in this thread, the rule unfortunately hasn't done anything about the actual attitude that's the source of the real problem.

I don't really want to see the community perversely counting down to the day when RAGE hits "barely legal" age so they can rip and tear its guts.

[Enjay]

As a kind of side issue, perhaps I've just been in the wrong places (or perhaps the right ones) but, has anyone seen any actual discussion where someone has said something like "I'm in the process of ripping X from RAGE"? Other than a couple of self contained threads, I've seen very little RAGE discussion of any sort in the Doom community since the game was released.

[printz]

I think 4-year rule is easier to apply than what Gez suggested. Most games are due in 4 years. Also 2015 is closer than you'd think.

I wonder if all these rules can be copied into the Realm667 community as well, hahaha... There's that guy who got banned from here, always talking about ripping every other game of its textures...

[Xaser]

Well, how about this - what exactly would you want the alternative rule to be?

There doesn't need to be an alternative rule in its place. The others cover all the bases.

[Blox]

Actually, rule 4 of the "stricter rules" would mean that 80+% of all rips shouldn't be here.
For example the MMVI-VII rips, they're just (rather complex) recolors.

Reason to them being impossible to modify enough to pass that rule, is that there are usually over a hundred detailed sprites.
SFX Is an entirely other story, because at least you can properly modify images if you have the skills. You can't with audio.

And no, I didn't read the entire thread, so pardons if I missed something. (Stopped at page 5.)

[Sodaholic]

SFX Is an entirely other story, because at least you can properly modify images if you have the skills. You can't with audio.

Yes you can, it's called audio editing software. How do you think the sound effects were made in the first place?

[Trooper 077]

Personally, I agree with the stricter rule change. Maybe it'll force creativity. I would however reduce the 4 year rule, to 3.

[printz]

Yes you can, it's called audio editing software. How do you think the sound effects were made in the first place?

Can you make brand new sounds for monster roars or for impact events, instead of simply working with combinations and effects for already made ones? I find sounds less intuitive than graphics, because they're made of waves which can get all sorts of shapes.

[Xtyfe]

I don't believe sounds are different from images at all, in fact in theory they should be easier! I plan to make the sounds of all the monsters in my new project with just my voice and an editing program. I have no experience at all in doing this but it will still be original work.

[Gez]

People who work in sound effects used to be guys who never left their recorder behind. You've got to be creative and imaginative, and to record everything you can, then mix and tweak.

I think the guy who made the sound effects in Star Wars explained that the iconic lightsaber sounds were a mixing between hitting a power line's anchorage cables with a crowbar, highway traffic echoing in a PVC tube, and something else which I forgot. The sandpeople's cries are a donkey's braying accelerated.

It's hard to create new sounds entirely digitally, like one can do with images (e.g. pixel art) because there's no real way to sculpt sound intuitively. An image can be static, so it's simple to have immediate feedback when modifying it; sound however requires a temporal dimension so if your sound isn't a continuous drone you can't as easily change it in real-time, you have to go back and play it from start to end.

[Blox]

Which is exactly what I'm talking about.
At least you can "draw" out an image, edit it, and so you (can) morph it very slowly into something new.

You can't just "draw" on audio, you can't really tweak it in the same ways, unless you have an entire repository of sounds.
Which means that in contrary to pictures/sprites, audio editing requires a bit more than raw "drawing everything out on the run".

And by the way, not everyone has the talent or equipment for creating your very own sounds. (See the lightsaber example.)

GIMP is a really powerful image editor (Photoshop is trash), and it's free.
I don't hear of any (free) audio editing software that's anything like GIMP in the image world.

Not to mention, as posted around the first (?) page, the music rips I have from Jazz Jackrabbit would fall under the very same rule too. (Yes, it's still selling.)
Here, on the contrary, it's music and not SFX. Though here, talent is the big thing. And far from everyone has that talent. (I don't, that's for sure.)

Of course the music editors are much more dynamic than the SFX editors, since we're talking about track-based music here.
But music is like SFX, a very fragile kind of resource. Do one thing wrong, and the masterpiece turns to a dumpsterpiece.
And as mentioned, only talent (and a sense of rhythm) will help you here, though experience will too, as everywhere. Except that unlike GFX and SFX, copying the style of music is much harder.

I don't have skills in SFX nor music due to the fact that it does not catch me, and due to my lack of talent in the area, beginning is very hard and is sure to take a long, long time.
Time that could've been used for anything else I'm actually more or less good at, like filter mixing in AviSynth, drawing/editing random stuff, and competitive playing.

Creativity takes time, time that most of us don't have enough to spare, due to the fact that we've already picked our array of skills.
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