Reproduction carts board/forum/section

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Do you feel a separate "Reproduction carts" board/forum would be beneficial?

Yes
80
71%
No
9
8%
I don't care either way
18
16%
Other (please explain in a follow-up post)
6
5%
 
Total votes: 113

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Jeroen
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by Jeroen »

infiniteneslives wrote:
Jeroen wrote:This thread makes me want to vote no.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10480

Now I"m ok with people asking occasional hardware questions, but can we make it an unwritten rule that the person has to at least do other stuff on the forum and not just join to ask about pirating games? (Say if someone has 200 posts, all related to nesdev...then its fine. But when someone just comes in here for pirating games it's not. Rule enforced at mod's discretion (Sorry Tepples) )
That thread/user proved to me that it doesn't even matter. I intentionally ignored that ridiculousness only to receive two PM's asking for explicit detail on how to complete their repro. There is no avoiding the absurdity. Somehow a crazy ass story of how you broke something that is coincidentally also your hobby to create is supposed to motivate us to write you a detailed instruction on how to make yet another repro. Unfortunately the few give a bad rap for those who are more tactful.
Even if us not helping doensn't actually matter. I feel we still shouldn't be HELPING them. The good o'll "but if I don't do it someone else will" argument.
Karatorian
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by Karatorian »

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. But I voted other, just so I could drop in my two bits here.

The assumption that all questions about rewiring donor carts are about making reproductions and piracy is false. One project I'm working on right now is an MMC3 dev cart. I don't actually have any specific use for it, I just made it for the hell of it. I've got some sort of problem with it and was hoping to get some help debugging it. Reading this thread made me realize that a lot of people will write me off as just another repro maker. (On the other tentacle, I don't know of any MMC3 game with 32K PRG and no CHR. Do you?)
zzo38
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by zzo38 »

Karatorian wrote:The assumption that all questions about rewiring donor carts are about making reproductions and piracy is false.
I agree. There can be a lot of possible reasons for such things, even such as making up a new game, wiring things differently just to see how certain features are working in other cases better, debugging a cartridge, game, or Famiclone hardware, and so on.
One project I'm working on right now is an MMC3 dev cart. I don't actually have any specific use for it, I just made it for the hell of it. I've got some sort of problem with it and was hoping to get some help debugging it. Reading this thread made me realize that a lot of people will write me off as just another repro maker.
I don't (mainly because I do not believe it implies that), and don't know how to debug it (especially without a specific question), but if it was posted I would look at it anyways; maybe I do have some idea even though I don't really know about it.
(On the other tentacle, I don't know of any MMC3 game with 32K PRG and no CHR. Do you?)
I don't know of any (although I am not familiar with most existing games anyways), but I do think it can be useful to support that kind of things too, in case of making a MMC3 homebrew game at least, even if no existing games use it.
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
psycopathicteen
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by psycopathicteen »

I can't believe I didn't notice this thread sooner. These repro questions are really getting on my nerves. I want to read some discussion where I can actually learn programming techniques from.
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nintendo2600
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by nintendo2600 »

I voted yes for different reasons.

1) It would be good to have a section of the forum for "noobie", "learning" and\ or straight up "I wanna pirate this game an profit" users which will keep such threads from clogging up sections of the forums where much more versed programmers and engineers don't want to see such types of talk.

2) It's a good idea to group threads like that for those various users with whatever type of reproduction intentions
to have like minded people to talk with and not get in the way or piss off others that are offended by such. Any of
the more versed programmers and engineers who like holding peoples hands through experiments can drop in and do
so without annoying the ones that don't want to.

3) There could be more but I'll just go with 1 & 2 for now.


Myself I fall in the middle, I know a little about programming, a little more than that about electronics in general with
a real habbit of making odd carts of weird games and yep I've sold some of them I'm not gonna say I haven't. Mind you
most things I need help with are for my own uses. I've wrote guides before for noobs and some of the more seasoned vets
asked me not to post them as they just end up in the hands of those that are only looking to sell repro's for $100 a pop.
I'm not one of those guys, I've actually learned alot from this forum and I do like to share what I know when I can with
folks that at least seem genuinely intrested in the same vein I am (mind you I have given pointers in the past only to see
the user disapear 2 posts later and the same user name be on ebay with said info put to use for profit.)

It's an odd topic and a sensitive one for alot of people. Some far to one side, some far to the other and some in the middle.
End of the day a sub-section as questioned in the OP I think would be a positive thing all around for everyone no matter what part of the argument they are from.
tepples
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by tepples »

nintendo2600 wrote:It's a good idea to group threads like that for those various users with whatever type of reproduction intentionsto have like minded people to talk with and not get in the way or piss off others that are offended by such.
That's fine and good until "others that are offended by such" start to include video game publishers with lawyers. I'm thinking of it more in terms of what could get nesdev.com shut down. That's one of the reasons why I made Holy Diver Batman, so that people could practice making repros without openly inducing each other to commit copyright infringement. I want to keep it implicit: if you can reproduce a mapper test ROM, you can reproduce anything else on that board.
I've wrote guides before for noobs and some of the more seasoned vets
asked me not to post them as they just end up in the hands of those that are only looking to sell repro's for $100 a pop.
So start by making a bunch of "How to make Holy Diver Batman on XYZROM" guides, putting them on the wiki, and linking to them in a sticky topic here.
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nintendo2600
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by nintendo2600 »

I've wrote guides before for noobs and some of the more seasoned vets
asked me not to post them as they just end up in the hands of those that are only looking to sell repro's for $100 a pop.
So start by making a bunch of "How to make Holy Diver Batman on XYZROM" guides, putting them on the wiki, and linking to them in a sticky topic here.
Good idea. I'm so on the fence about all this as I totally get where people are coming from on both sides of this topic and it's only a few people who "ruin" it for everyone and the ones who "ruin" it are not the people from either side of the topic they are just greedy fools who want to exploit the hobby.
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Bregalad
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by Bregalad »

So when will this new reproduction board open ? The vote has clearly yielded a "yes", and even though I initially voted "no" I'm so pissed of question in regards to repros that I really can't wait for this section to open so I'll be able to ignore those messages completely. I has been like half year this poll has been made, and the demand for help on repros has even more increased.
tepples
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by tepples »

I'm ready to open it after someone drafts a charter and we discuss it. A charter includes the title of the forum, the strapline for the index (like "You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board." for General Stuff), a summary of the kind of topics expected in the forum, what's allowed and what isn't, what people are expected to have read before posting, etc. Usually I wouldn't expect a formal charter, but this topic has historically been so sensitive that I feel like coming to a consensus about what's a repro topic and what isn't, as well as how proactive the moderators are expected to be against suspected infringements that could get WhoaMan in trouble.
qwertymodo
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by qwertymodo »

tepples wrote:I'm ready to open it after someone drafts a charter and we discuss it. A charter includes the title of the forum, the strapline for the index (like "You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board." for General Stuff), a summary of the kind of topics expected in the forum, what's allowed and what isn't, what people are expected to have read before posting, etc. Usually I wouldn't expect a formal charter, but this topic has historically been so sensitive that I feel like coming to a consensus about what's a repro topic and what isn't, as well as how proactive the moderators are expected to be against suspected infringements that could get WhoaMan in trouble.
On the NES side, I'd say split the current "NES Hardware and Flash Equipment" into two separate sections, one for commercial hardware such as the PowerPak, and then a "DIY Hardware and Flash Equipment/Mods/Repros". Figure out a "charter" for each in order to distinguish between them, then make a boilerplate copy of each to the SNES side. That way, anyone wanting to ignore repro discussions would be able to hide the DIY forums, but still have access to the discussions on the commercial carts if they wanted to do so. I feel like repro threads are as dissimilar to commercial carts in their discussions as they are to software development. As to a formal charter, I feel like that's a good idea, but I don't have time to draft one myself, though I'll definitely weigh in on any discussion once somebody drafts one.
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blargg
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by blargg »

I think that plenty of regulars here are interested in hardware development discussions that are rewarding to follow, and have found that most discussions about making reproductions lack this quality. These tend to involve "drive-by" postings or people who don't get involved much outside the thread, so they don't contribute to the community. Short of banning these discussions, these regulars would like them in their own section so they can be easily ignored and don't clutter the active topics page.
zzo38
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by zzo38 »

blargg wrote:I think that plenty of regulars here are interested in hardware development discussions that are rewarding to follow, and have found that most discussions about making reproductions lack this quality. These tend to involve "drive-by" postings or people who don't get involved much outside the thread, so they don't contribute to the community. Short of banning these discussions, these regulars would like them in their own section so they can be easily ignored and don't clutter the active topics page.
If this is the case, I agree to put a separate section would be a sensible way.
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
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B00daW
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by B00daW »

Since it's been roughly nine months since the last reply of this thread and the majority agrees on creation of a Repro subforum, have we decided to take action and make it and slowly flag and move over threads now since the reproduction threads have increased and nearly taken over the HardwareDev subforum?
tepples
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by tepples »

I agree. Once someone writes a draft charter, I'll open the ACP, make the new forum, and move it there.
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B00daW
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Re: Reproduction carts board/forum/section

Post by B00daW »

I figure the only "gimme" that the forum should have is posts that blatantly pirate homebrew games or duplicate homebrew circuitry less than 10 years old should be removed and the user warned. If it happens a second time then the moderators should have a discussion about that individual. Everything else should be fair game. As for a general guideline there isn't a lot of "hand-holding" for "n00bs" and Reproduction discussion isn't something that we'd like to see pop up in the newbie forum either; since it sort of infests and takes over.

1.) "Don't be a dick."
2.) Don't undermine your peers.
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