Don't forget what SpritesMind is

Importante releases or news for the communauty

Moderator: KanedaFr

KanedaFr
Administrateur
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:56 am
Contact:

Don't forget what SpritesMind is

Post by KanedaFr » Mon Nov 24, 2014 11:39 am

The main goal of a forum is to discuss of several topics, to learn everything you want about Genny.
The real goal of this forum is to make possible the release of new games.

While the real goal is almost a failure, I kept SpritesMind alive because of main goal.
I learnt what I know now about the Genny because some great people share their finding, took the times to explain some "basic" stuff to a newbie like me.

Actually, this goal is failling also.
Some newcomers registered, posted a question and never get back.
Why ? because the question was "stupid, RTFM" or the solution was not "the good way to do", etc...

To sum up, I had a very bad feeling and I hope this is not the beggining of the end.
Today, I made another step on the bad way : I deleted and edited some posts.
I never did it and if I had to do it again, I'll mean SpritesMind failed.

So I'll say it again : BE POLITE and SHARE !

If not, it kills me to say this, but I had to : please leave, don't force me to ban anyone.

db-electronics
Very interested
Posts: 89
Joined: Mon Feb 24, 2014 6:04 pm
Location: Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Post by db-electronics » Mon Nov 24, 2014 5:41 pm

It'll be a major loss if SM fails, I hope everyone reads this message and understands its meaning.
What does db stand for? Well that's an excellent question...
http://www.db-electronics.ca

kubilus1
Very interested
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2012 2:25 am
Contact:

Post by kubilus1 » Mon Nov 24, 2014 6:03 pm

Yeah, this site has been a *huge* resource for me and by far the largest push to get me into developing on the Genny! Compared to a lot of other tech-scenes, this one has seemed more mature and engineering focused which I've really appreciated.

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Mon Nov 24, 2014 6:08 pm

db-electronics wrote:It'll be a major loss if SM fails, I hope everyone reads this message and understands its meaning.
My feelings entirely; my interest is to promote the Megadrive and I want others to work on the MD contributing where they can to Open-Source software in the form of Tools, Libraries for the MD and even Open-Source Hardware as in the case of UMDK.

I supported Prophet36 on UMDK and I shall continue to support him with what he needs for it to be a successful project that everyone can benefit from.

I wrote MD Util to be a one-stop tool for all MD related data needs.

I wrote AXLib to be a light-weight Library for making Games on the MD.

I wrote MD Command-Monitor to allow Developers to interrogate and control the MD remotely.

I have a team and we are working on a couple of Games for the MD.

As such, I am 100% behind the MD but what I find more often than not is a kind of selfishness whereby people do not want to see things happen and I saw even less collaboration in the past than I see today.

The upshot of this is that the MD is dying and unless some serious collaborative efforts are invested in the MD Homebrew development scene it will not improve.

I will not let that happen from where I am standing but a community is not made up of one individual.

Kaneda has tried to keep things together and adapted along the way so let's pay back this spirit with some useful collaboration.

Cheers,

Minty.
UMDK Fanboy

Chilly Willy
Very interested
Posts: 2984
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:33 pm

Post by Chilly Willy » Tue Nov 25, 2014 12:48 am

I might on occasion not be as polite as I can, but I ALWAYS share. I haven't done one thing on the MD/CD/32X that wasn't posted with full source and a willingness to answer any questions on it. I also help out on sgdk, among other things. I've looked into PAR codes for people, helped with debugging, and support for mice and taps for other people's games. I can't think of how I can help any more than I already do, so if there's a problem, I don't think it's mine. :lol:

I love this board, and hope you keep it going. It's the best board for technical knowledge and code on the Sega 16 bit systems. If you can't find it here, and if no one here knows, it simply doesn't exist in the world. 8)

Charles MacDonald
Very interested
Posts: 292
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:14 am

Post by Charles MacDonald » Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:28 am

I agree, it's tiresome to see the same few posters who are routinely rude to people. They refuse to be civil and give the newbies a hard time excessively. To be honest, people like that can poison a small community and should not be tolerated.

SMS Power has a very friendly community and I think this is because the moderators are always reminding abusive posters to be civil. They also remove offensive posts with any kind of hateful talk. But it takes a lot of vigilance from the moderators to do that job, and can be quite an effort.

Maybe we need a "Getting Started" subforum for newbies where we can perhaps concentrate more of the commonly asked questions, and we could sticky a thread that has the answers and links to posts that resolve such issues. Then we could have a valid excuse for telling abusive posters to not read the subforum as it is intended for newbies; "dumb" questions would be encouraged there. (also, some people were interested in a YM2612/music subforum, can that happen too?)

Kaneda, SpritesMind is a really great place and I appreciate the effort you've put into maintaining it all this time. I hope it continues forever. :D

db-electronics
Very interested
Posts: 89
Joined: Mon Feb 24, 2014 6:04 pm
Location: Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Post by db-electronics » Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:04 am

Charles MacDonald wrote:also, some people were interested in a YM2612/music subforum, can that happen too?
I second this motion - I compose a lot of music!
What does db stand for? Well that's an excellent question...
http://www.db-electronics.ca

neologix
Very interested
Posts: 122
Joined: Mon May 07, 2007 5:19 pm
Location: New York, NY, USA
Contact:

Post by neologix » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:36 pm

db-electronics wrote:
Charles MacDonald wrote:also, some people were interested in a YM2612/music subforum, can that happen too?
I second this motion - I compose a lot of music!
I third this motion - YM2612.js needs some love! :)

ob1
Very interested
Posts: 463
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:01 am
Location: Aix-en-Provence, France

Post by ob1 » Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:34 pm

Hello Kan'.
I ain't sure what you're talking about, so I gonna talk about what I know.
SpritesMind IS a wonderful source of knowledge, and a great achievement.
I mean, look at what we knew before SpritesMind, and look at that we know now. Before SpritesMind, there were indivuals with huge knowledge. Now there's a community of fellow developpers with a even huger knowledge. That is thanks to SpritesMind. SpritesMind made it real for developers from all around the world (France, USA, Russia, Estonia, Venezuela ... you name it !) to get in touch with each other, to elaborate, and to learn. That is what Internet should be for (I mean ... pr0n aside :D ) and that is what SpritesMind is about.
Merci et bravo.
But, SpritesMind has the flaws of its media. It's an Internet forum and as such, there will be the flaws of an Internet forum. There will be hacks, there will be rudeness, there will be thanklessness ... Jeff Atwood (StackExchange and Discourse) speaks a lot about this on his blog (codinghorror.com). That's the way. Let's face it : fewer and fewer people are gonna be interested in Genny development because fewer and fewer people were young when the Genny was out. Nostalgia is a huge factor for us. If people would have been to know the Genny, would have loved to develop for it, and would have wanted to put investment in it, it would have been a long time they arrived here. I'd say 95% of them did it. The other ones, those who could but didn't may never arrive, and those who would have already arrived. We're not gonna welcome a brand new genius, few exceptions aside.
And I'm OK with that ! Because, time flies, and that's good. We're this little community, those crazy ones, who keep on developping on Genny, on 32X, on Saturn (?), on ... c'mon YM2612 !!! Who the hell in your real life does know what the YM2612 is !?! And, I say it once again : without SpritesMind, nobody would have.

I haven't seen a huge amount of rudeness, of cruelty, of ungentlemanness on this forum, but I'm less on it nowadays. But, as far as I know, people will always need, from time to time, someone to ring the bell and say when there's a foul, and when there's a foul, there's a penalty. Life, sports, forum. That's life.

Finally, once again and, I promise, for the last time, without SpritesMind, my life wouldn't have been the same. Thank you.

Eke
Very interested
Posts: 884
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 2:57 pm
Contact:

Post by Eke » Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:21 pm

I couldn't have said it better than ob1 just did, this is exactly how I feel about this forum after all these years.

I think there will always be rudeness between users from time to time, just like people will lose motivation from time to time or move on with their lives or to other hobbies. Unless flaming suddenly becomes the norm in every topic or each time a new user comes out with a question, I wouldn't worry much if I were you, this place is still one of the most friendly sega fan community I know about and THE reference for technical informations about the Megadrive.

PS: The new "Genny in depth" section is a great idea

LocalH
Very interested
Posts: 152
Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2006 5:04 pm

Post by LocalH » Wed Nov 26, 2014 5:05 pm

Kaneda, what you have here is simply the English-language hub for MD development (only other forum I know of that even comes close to having the technical MD knowledge that we collectively have is Sonic Retro, but their focus is necessarily the Sonic games while ours is more general).

I remember when all we had was a smattering of basic knowledge of questionable quality (like sega2.doc). I remember when Devega went down.

This is the greatest MD-related forum in the world, and in that regard you have succeeded past your wildest dreams.

Here's to much continued success with SM, Kaneda! You (and indeed, everyone here, since their contributions have greatly helped the place grow and flourish) deserve it.

I'm even itching to get back into coding, been extremely busy lately but looking to carve some time out :)

KanedaFr
Administrateur
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:56 am
Contact:

Post by KanedaFr » Wed Nov 26, 2014 5:44 pm

I'm well aware that SpritesMind is the only place to talk about Genny development "seriously"

Like I said, I had 2 goals when I opened SpritesMind : share and release

Share is becoming more and more difficult because SM is sometimes elitist : a newbie could be fired in sec by an unhelpful answer to a, for some of you, dumb question
Of course, you told me a wiki will be the answer, I could understand that.
It'll ask a lot of time for me to explore and initialize it if I ever feel it would be good (and needed for the Share goal).
But honestly, I don't see right now why I should spend this time to this rather than trying to satisfy my second goal : Release.

Release ... SpritesMind is becoming old and, even we all the informations available here, you could use your (two) hand to count the release, and you could use only one for the release in real cart
OF course, I won't blame anyone, life is what it is : you start a project, something comes in a middle, it's hard to come back if even possible and finally the project die. I know all of this.
But I can't stop thinking YOU are so able to make great stuff so where are the projects ?! I'm dying when I look at Oerg Titan demo : "F$$CK, Genny could really do this" ?! I was really sad when Project MD stopped (for obscure reason which seems similar) : "wow ! how the hell did he make this mirror effect ?!" and i won't talk about the wolfenstein ports which are responsible for 1/3 to 1/2 of the anonymous visitors every day.
So yes, I'm focusing on releasing stuff (and not sharing wiki stuff) and yes, I'm already prepared to face some stupids remarks but I can no longer continue with this (almost) failure.


About recent events, since you seem all ok with this, I won't move.
Meanwhile, I'll now be a real moderator and less tolerant.

Thanks for all your replies.

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Thu Nov 27, 2014 12:01 pm

I have been on SM for a couple of years now. Way before I started to learn how to program the MD I started to read the posts on SM.

What I have found is this:

1. the Old-Guard: more damage to the MD's success than anything else and that tends to fall into the category of elitism. If a person wants to learn about MD development by making a Tetris clone then I think it is a good idea and would encourage someone to do that. Ok, it might not be a new concept or a new game but the developer learns a lot along the way.

2. the Old-Guard: it makes me laugh just how hard some people are willing to make things difficult/impossible for themselves. Arguments over not using a Debugger or anything are frankly ignorant and a joke in this day and age. I saw a great deal of resistance from most over using UMDK and what is more Prophet36 got little support. Luckily, I supported him and we now have UMDK which I have taken steps in order to ensure that the rest of you can get UMDK for yourselves.

I recall back in 2012 asking if anyone had made a MD Schematic using a modern Schematic capture application and was literally shot down for even asking the question. Half the time I put it down to there being a language barrier but some people are just plain rude and ignorant. I then saw some of the old guard going as far as to defend the actions of those who criticised me for asking the question this alone will put many Newbies off. Luckily, I am not a Newbie Developer but many who come to SM are and the effect is that people would walk away and that is another lost opportunity for the MD Community sadly.

3. Direction: things are starting to improve on SM but for a long time all I could see what that each member was working pretty much on their own with little to no collaborative work effort.

I wondered why there was not a section for people to pitch Game ideas to. Often when a community is mostly technical people this can happen but no Game will come about strictly as a technical piece of work; it requires the skills of many creative types too such as Artists and Designers. So in a way, SM would have to appeal not just to the technically minded but also to the creative people. This can work and it does work as an Example there is a PC Engine Site that has made it work.

4. Envy/Boasting; yep, that's right, back to the biblical days we go.... Envy, I see it far too often on here with certain members (often residing in Eastern Europe it appears...) seem to be mighty pissed when any one else does something and I see "oh., I did that 10 years but my Hard Drive died so now I have no code" - if you cannot add to a discussion just kindly leave it as it is. Far too often someone will hijack a Thread and turn it to their own way to support their own agenda. This leads to no where. Instead of talking about how great a programmer you are just simply give the code out and be done with it as it may well help form a vital stepping-stone for someone at some point in time and we end up with a healthier outlook long term in the MD Community.

I think that there needs to be more collaboration, more long term projects, more talk of game projects and far less talk about criticising Prophet36 for using a Xilinx LX9 instead of some Altera FPGA - it is a joke to sit there and nitpick, people - if the machine works then use that as your basis instead of counting the cents and pennies.

Just some ideas, and no I am not criticising most of you just a few who stand out.

Cheers,

Minty.
UMDK Fanboy

Count SymphoniC
Very interested
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:58 am

Post by Count SymphoniC » Tue Jul 21, 2015 5:50 am

If it weren't for Spritesmind I would've never gotten as far as I did on my 68k asm genesis music sequencer. I lost the source code and sure people had their rude moments but I was nagging a bit too, that doesn't mean spritesmind is a failure. I'm going to start my music sequencer over again from scratch and this time it will be open source + mixed C, z80 and 68k. DONT CLOSE DOWN SPRITESMIND, we need this forum and its treasure trove of information to stay alive. Good day :)

BigEvilCorporation
Very interested
Posts: 209
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:41 am
Contact:

Post by BigEvilCorporation » Mon Aug 03, 2015 7:13 am

Without SM I wouldn't have landed my dream job at Crytek.

I never did a Computer Science course and my fundamental knowledge of low level code and the inner workings of machines was non-existent, I was a C++ "user" with little understanding of what was going on underneath, I'd never have passed the entry tests. Learning to code for the MD (and learning assembly languages in general) gave me a hell of a boost.

Also, this wouldn't exist.
A blog of my Megadrive programming adventures: http://www.bigevilcorporation.co.uk

Post Reply