Page 5 of 9

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 10:56 am
by rainwarrior
tokumaru wrote:People who are not gamers probably don't do this, like that great-aunt that only uses Facebook and Pinterest but has actually been using her phone/tablet much more often than the PC, which's mostly forgotten in the corner.
I thought tepples was talking about people who buy gaming consoles because they don't want to use a PC for it, not people who don't play games at all? (Though even in that category I know several people who don't play games, but still have a PC connected to their TV for media stuff. There are lots of cases where people have access to cheap or old PCs that are good for this purpose.)

BTW: Steam finally disambiguated local co-op from co-op recently, as well as local multiplayer. I don't think all the relevant games have been tagged yet, but nonetheless there's a ton of games in there.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:07 am
by tokumaru
I see. Well, regardless of that, there is still a well established community of PC gamers. The same way you'd be excluding PC-exclusive gamers if you targeted a console, you'll be excluding a number of console-only gamers by targeting the PC. Unless you're willing to port your game to every platform imaginable, you'll always be excluding a good number of players.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:16 am
by NovaSquirrel
Even if you don't have a dedicated PC for TV stuff, I think at this point if you have any sort of laptop from this decade you're probably set, and that's the solution I use when I play things like Duck Game with guests. HDMI is so ubiquitous now that you probably already have an HDMI cable for something else that you can just plug into your laptop, and if not they're like a few dollars.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 12:31 pm
by tokumaru
That's true. Laptops have become more popular than desktops with the average person, and any laptop still in use likely has HDMI and/or VGA outputs, which are common inputs on today's TVs.

Unfortunately, having all the necessary hardware available at home (laptop, video cable, TV, controllers) doesn't necessarily mean people will use them to replicate the console experience. Some people simply haven't thought about doing this, and others just don't see the point because they're satisfied with their gaming arrangements and can't be bothered to do something different because of a few indie games.

Fact is you can't possibly reach everyone, so you invariably need to decide which specific crowds to exclude.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 1:10 pm
by rainwarrior
Sorry, maybe that's my fault, I may have accidentally created a strawman by interpreting tepples' initial response to DRW as more extreme than it was.

Yes, lots of people would rather buy and play some sort of gaming console than use their PC. Probably that is not being debated. I just saw DRW float what I thought was an extremely viable thing to do (i.e. make your game on PC), and tepples responds with 3 points why not, but I think it's my fault for making this seem like an exclusive argument.

Those 3 points though, are worth arguing against, because the value of all of them has been diminishing continually for years. Media/games PCs for the TV are increasingly common (and lots of people prefer or don't mind playing at a desk or on their laptop). More and more games are targeting lower, more robust min specs. More easily available engines are making hardware-configuration-hell development problems less of an issue than they have been in the past. ...and local co-op is very much alive and well IMO (an additional point made in a different post, though tepples' has been picking that particular bone for a while).

The context, though, is that 8bitMicroGuy was suggesting to "make OUR OWN console", to which those 3 points don't even factor in, IMO, so maybe this whole discussion is a moving target anyway. ;P

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 1:33 pm
by tepples
As for the original topic: Did EmuParadise have the (PD) stuff? If so, I wonder how the admins would react to a message to the following effect: "I represent the developer of a game that used to be available through EmuParadise until August 2018. I own the copyright, and I authorize EmuParadise to distribute it. How can I get this game restored?" I've made a suggestion toward this on the comment section of the announcement of EmuParadise closing its ROM section, but Disqus isn't showing any reply notifications yet.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 1:49 pm
by koitsu
tepples wrote:As for the original topic: Did EmuParadise have the (PD) stuff? If so, I wonder how the admins would react to a message to the following effect: "I represent the developer of a game that used to be available through EmuParadise until August 2018. I own the copyright, and I authorize EmuParadise to distribute it. How can I get this game restored?" I've made a suggestion toward this on the comment section of the announcement of EmuParadise closing its ROM section, but Disqus isn't showing any reply notifications yet.
To users considering this: I would strongly suggest not doing it. Here's why:

What is unknown is whether or not EmuParadise was hit with a suit similar to what was filed against Jacob Mathias / Mathias Designs LLC. They do not have to be public about it if so (alternately, they may have been hit with a "serious" DMCA-esque message strongly recommending they take down contents else legal action would be taken). In the case a suit has been filed, by contacting the admins with a message of support (of either the homebrew, or commercial game, that was distributed by EmuParadise), such could (likely: would) be used by defense attorneys during the suit, in which case if you lived in the United States you could be subpoenaed and/or required (by law) to give a deposition, which makes you part of the case.

TL;DR -- Stay away from this entire ordeal (with Loveroms / Loveretro, and/or with EmuParadise, and/or any other site that has been through this or involved in such things) as much as possible. If you have never been involved in a legal case where a corporate behemoth is involved, and/or you value your stress levels and time and money, do not get involved directly or indirectly. If you were to consult a lawyer and ask the same question ("should I do this?"), they would certainly advise the same.

That's all I have to say on the matter.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:50 am
by zeroone

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:36 am
by NewRisingSun
Ridiculous article. Running an advertising-supported ROM site is not "preservation". If Nintendo shuts down lostlevels, tcrf or nescartdb, then one can talk about N shutting down preservation efforts.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:44 am
by tokumaru
Yeah, I don't agree with the article 100% either, but they do make a few interesting points. I definitely agree with the educational value of debugging ROMs in emulators. I learned a lot of what I know about game development from using Nesticle's debugging tools.

Another good point is that without emulation, there would hardly be a market for these old games in the first place. AFAIK, none of the emulators used in official releases are developed in-house, because emulators are complex pieces of software that take a lot of dedication to make, and for most companies it's not cost-effective to develop emulators from the ground up. No company develops anything from scratch anymore.

As for offering a legal way to play old games, I don't think that a virtual console kind of deal is enough. I don't like modern games and I have zero interest in Nintendo's current console, so I really don't want to buy one just to play retro games, in whatever emulator they decided was good enough for everyone. I want to be able to pick an emulator myself, or even make my own, with the features I consider important. Also, as a game developer, I want to be able to debug the games and study their innards, not just play them like any normal kid!

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:55 am
by FrankenGraphics
Points aside, it's just not very good journalism to seek out others who share the same opinion as the author, pick whatever they said that aligns with the argument, and call it an article. Even an argumentative one (especially?) ought to throw in some counterweight, second opinions, etc. I felt it did the same mistake as don't copy that floppy, but for the other end of the opinion range.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:05 pm
by koitsu
FrankenGraphics wrote:Points aside, it's just not very good journalism to seek out others who share the same opinion as the author, pick whatever they said that aligns with the argument, and call it an article. Even an argumentative one (especially?) ought to throw in some counterweight, second opinions, etc. I felt it did the same mistake as don't copy that floppy, but for the other end of the opinion range.
This is getting off-topic, but:

What you describe is exactly what most "online journalism" in the United States consists of today. The colloquial term we use for this (in general) is "echo chamber". You will find that in polarised scenarios (social, political, whatever), neither side wants to leave their "echo chamber"; they surround themselves with like-minded individuals, allowing for unconditional support/agreement. I can't speak for others, but it's an environment/situation I've never catered to (and probably why politically I'm moderate); I like hearing opinions of all sorts, no matter how extreme.

A better "article" is simply to read Frank Cifaldi's own series of tweets -- they start here: https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status ... 6022254592 -- of which about 85% I agree with. One particular part I don't agree with is the weird segue into music/music formats, i.e. "when was the last time you downloaded an MP3?" I download one a few days ago. From Amazon. Which I purchased. With money. Because I like owning music, and not exhausting my bandwidth cap streaming everything. The latter also opens up avenues for tripe like advertisements (very common in music streams these days, re: Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, etc.). But I generally share Frank's opinion on ROMs (and esp. emulators).

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:21 pm
by tepples
The last time I downloaded an MP3 was off Discord to give feedback on a musical composition by another member of a server I'm in. But the last time I downloaded an MP3 of major label music was indeed through the Amazon store.

One difference is that there's no Amazon Music for ROM images. For about the last decade, record labels have offered paid downloads of notable* music in MP3 format, free of digital restrictions management, for use in (among other things) enthusiast-maintained player software. By contrast, video game publishers on the whole don't offer paid downloads of notable games in ROM image format for use in enthusiast-maintained emulators.


* By "notable", I mean that a work "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (source: Wikipedia project pages). Few if any homebrew games released as ROMs meet this criterion.

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:32 pm
by FrankenGraphics
I'd buy my wallet empty if there was such a service for ROM images. Nintendo and other publishers, take note. :P

Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2018 4:12 pm
by rainwarrior
Sega's been doing this on Steam for a while.
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/102625/

It unfortunately also downloads a crummy emulator and some relatively hefty stupid movie files, but the ROMs are in there, obfuscated very slightly.

It even has mod support, which is pretty interesting.