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Should I cancel my hack? No one seems interested.

As you guys know, I'm making a Super Mario World hack called My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure. I'm doing my best to make the quality super high.

But what I'm really concerned about is that no one seems interested. When I posted the C3 demo in the C3 thread on the first day of C3, it was toward the very bottom of the forum collecting dust until it got a couple posts a few days later. I kept looking in the Ropebox Nomnomnominations to see if anyone nominated the demo to be put in the C3 Ropebox. I face palmed at posts in the thread like, "Hack A looks good, but seems unpopular." I thought, "Well, my hack seems less popular."

Not many people are posting in the threads. If I can't get a lot of feedback and community support, I'm not going to get much help with issues. If I can't get help with issues I can't fix, then I'll have to cancel it anyway. The unpopularity is making me lose motivation to develop it.

I'm currently helping Yoshifanatic a little with his Yoshi's Strange Quest hack. We've sent PMs back and forth, and we're still doing it. When I told him about the unpopularity of my hack, he's a bit baffled about my hack being unpopular, too, because My Little Pony is still fairly popular. He did say that it'll probably get more popular if I work on it more and show off more features. Is that true? If Person A's hack is unpopular now, will there be more people interested and will there be more discussion if Person A develops his hack more? If it is true, then I should DEFINITELY keep working.

So should I cancel my hack or keep working on it?

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I thought, "Well, maybe it's just the community. After all, it's called "Super MARIO World Central", not "My Little Pony Central"." So I tried submitting my C3 demo to Equestria Daily.

Now, as everyone knows, if you submit something to SMWCentral, it is put into the "Waiting to be Moderated" section of the category of the submission. If you submit a patch, for example, it gets put into the "Waiting to be Moderated" section of the Patches section. You can tell exactly where it is in the waitlist, and anyone can still download it. If the patch gets accepted, it gets put into the main section. If it's rejected, the moderator will tell you EXACTLY what you need to do to get it accepted. They don't just want you to re submit, they ENCOURAGE it!
Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you can CLEARLY, CLEARLY see whether your submission is still being moderated, is accepted, or is rejected. One of the many reasons to love SMWCentral.

However, with Equestria Daily, you simply send an E-Mail to an address with the details of what you're working on or of what news you find, etc. So I sent an E-Mail letting them know about my hack and C3 demo on July 15, 2017. Now, I KNOW my hack will get shown on the site, at least sooner or later, because the quality of the hack is so much higher and the hack is so much more faithful to the show and the franchise than 99% of the fan games on there. Seriously, I think Game Jolt has a better selection of My Little Pony fan games than Equestria Daily! Equestria Daily has so much junk and shovel ware in the "Game" section it's unbelievable! I mean, seriously, they've put crap like this on the site. All it is is Super Mario All Stars except the Mario characters are dressed up in costumes of My Little Pony characters. Considering the stuff I've already done with my C3 demo, even, like free flight, chargeable magic blasts, HP, and even changed physics, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON that they shouldn't post about my hack.

Anyway, so on July 19, I got an E-Mail back from Equestria Daily saying that my hack is cool and that they'll have someone look into it, but, ever since then, I've gotten nothing.

I don't know whether Equestria Daily is still looking at my hack or has rejected it. I don't even know if they even CAN reject submissions. I'm completely in the dark and know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the status of my hack other than the fact that it's not on the site yet. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting but it's still not there.

I'm thinking about updating my demo to fix bugs and issues, then sending another E-Mail. But would that be rude? Is sending a second E-Mail the right thing to do? Should I keep waiting? I don't know how long it even takes for submitted content to show up on Equestria Daily. I've read that it can take months for a long Super Mario World hack to be moderated on SMWCentral. Should I keep working on my hack, and submit a second E-Mail when I, like, complete my World 1 Demo?

Oh, I don't know what I should do? What should I do with the Equestria Daily situation?

Click the character on the right side of my layout to visit my Discord server and discuss and play and look at and get updates and sneak peeks of the games and other things I'm making.

The authors of these 2 My Little Pony fan games have removed their games from the Internet.
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has been updated! Download My Little Pony: Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX: Director's Cut and My Little Pony: Magic Shards now! Spread this link!

Not gonna lie, My Little Pony's time in the SMWC spotlight is long past, and I can't imagine a resurgence in the near future. This probably means your hack isn't going to be as popular as you would like, since you crossed MLP and SMW so heavily that it's not likely to be appealing to people who don't already like MLP.

That said, you have a potential secondary audience in Equestria Daily. I would suggest reaching out to them again and asking about the status of your hack following through with your first email. But don't be too pushy about it.

I will not flat-out say that you should or shouldn't cancel your hack. It's clear that you have put a lot of work into it and we shouldn't be making that decision for you. If you feel like you're not getting out of this hack what you put into it, then that's your call.
Originally posted by DPBOX
As you guys know, I'm making a Super Mario World hack called My Little Pony: Cutie Re-Mark Adventure.


I didn't know that, otherwise I would have been following it. I wouldn't consider myself a Brony anymore, but it would be a nice throwback to play a well done MLP:FiM hack.

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I'm doing my best to make the quality super high.


That's good to know, so long as you put your best efforts into something and have developed your hacking skills, it should be successful regardless of the theme.

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But what I'm really concerned about is that no one seems interested. When I posted the C3 demo in the C3 thread on the first day of C3, it was toward the very bottom of the forum collecting dust until it got a couple posts a few days later. I kept looking in the Ropebox Nomnomnominations to see if anyone nominated the demo to be put in the C3 Ropebox. I face palmed at posts in the thread like, "Hack A looks good, but seems unpopular." I thought, "Well, my hack seems less popular."


With a lot of hacks and only a few getting top titles, many people won't have their work featured. It's just part of being in something competitive. It shouldn't reflect that your hack is bad, your hack hasn't even been finished yet.

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Not many people are posting in the threads. If I can't get a lot of feedback and community support, I'm not going to get much help with issues. If I can't get help with issues I can't fix, then I'll have to cancel it anyway. The unpopularity is making me lose motivation to develop it.


I wouldn't be discouraged because of that. You picked a theme which would have been popular once upon a time, but that doesn't mean to say that it won't become popular once you start showing some new things after more work and development. If people aren't impressed so far, just keep developing. Everyone wants their work to be appreciated and popular. You would most likely get to be LP'd a couple times. Also, if your hack is genuinely of good quality, you might be able to get featured on something, because everything gets reviewed.

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I'm currently helping Yoshifanatic a little with his Yoshi's Strange Quest hack. We've sent PMs back and forth, and we're still doing it. When I told him about the unpopularity of my hack, he's a bit baffled about my hack being unpopular, too, because My Little Pony is still fairly popular. He did say that it'll probably get more popular if I work on it more and show off more features. Is that true? If Person A's hack is unpopular now, will there be more people interested and will there be more discussion if Person A develops his hack more? If it is true, then I should DEFINITELY keep working.


Of course. You were basically told exactly how it works. I have my own project conceptualised over 10 years of thinking and planning (on and off), but I haven't posted a single thread about it; why? Because I have nothing to show for it and I want people to associate the project name with the first thing I publicise about it, not screenshots from a 0.000001 alpha edition version of the hack.

Sometimes a juicy idea can be popular in it's own right and gain support and enthusiasm, but this just isn't the time for MLP:FiM, so you won't be able to thrive off of the sensationalism alone. You will need to gain support just from having a good hack with good things to show for it. So instead of thinking about trying to go the MLP route, maybe think about showing more about why it's a good game, even if it didn't have ponies, and that MLP just happens to be the theme of what is a good hack. So considering that being MLP isn't enough of a reason to gain popularity, can you make a good hack what ever the theme may be?

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So should I cancel my hack or keep working on it?


That decision is entirely up to you. What ever excuses come into play, it's giving up that prevents success; showing something based on a now largely outdated fad so early in development is not going to immediately get a following. If it makes you happy and you're happy to do it, keep working on it, but to make other people interested you need something to show, and MLP isn't noteworthy enough anymore.

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I thought, "Well, maybe it's just the community. After all, it's called "Super MARIO World Central", not "My Little Pony Central"." So I tried submitting my C3 demo to Equestria Daily.


That's quite a good idea. I have considered where I might share my project once it's 80% complete. It will bring more interest into SMW hacking as a whole and could raise the bar even more and maybe the tools will advance as well.

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Now, as everyone knows, if you submit something to SMWCentral, it is put into the "Waiting to be Moderated" section of the category of the submission. If you submit a patch, for example, it gets put into the "Waiting to be Moderated" section of the Patches section. You can tell exactly where it is in the waitlist, and anyone can still download it. If the patch gets accepted, it gets put into the main section. If it's rejected, the moderator will tell you EXACTLY what you need to do to get it accepted. They don't just want you to re submit, they ENCOURAGE it!
Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you can CLEARLY, CLEARLY see whether your submission is still being moderated, is accepted, or is rejected. One of the many reasons to love SMWCentral.


If you release a demo, you can guarantee constructive criticism if it's rejected, yes.

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However, with Equestria Daily, you simply send an E-Mail to an address with the details of what you're working on or of what news you find, etc. So I sent an E-Mail letting them know about my hack and C3 demo on July 15, 2017. Now, I KNOW my hack will get shown on the site, at least sooner or later, because the quality of the hack is so much higher and the hack is so much more faithful to the show and the franchise than 99% of the fan games on there. Seriously, I think Game Jolt has a better selection of My Little Pony fan games than Equestria Daily! Equestria Daily has so much junk and shovel ware in the "Game" section it's unbelievable! I mean, seriously, they've put crap like this on the site. All it is is Super Mario All Stars except the Mario characters are dressed up in costumes of My Little Pony characters. Considering the stuff I've already done with my C3 demo, even, like free flight, chargeable magic blasts, HP, and even changed physics, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON that they shouldn't post about my hack.


If they're interested in what appears to be a re-skin, I'm sure they would be interested in a full SMW hack with the powerful tools we use to make a new game based on the same engine. Go for it.

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Anyway, so on July 19, I got an E-Mail back from Equestria Daily saying that my hack is cool and that they'll have someone look into it, but, ever since then, I've gotten nothing.

I don't know whether Equestria Daily is still looking at my hack or has rejected it. I don't even know if they even CAN reject submissions. I'm completely in the dark and know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the status of my hack other than the fact that it's not on the site yet. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting but it's still not there.


Don't worry about Equestria Daily, they're just one of many foreign sites you could be sharing your hack with, SMWC is your target audience, you would only go elsewhere to entice a few people who might be interested in SMW hacking if only they knew about it. Besides, if you have a hack that is almost finished and looks awesome, I don't see why ED wouldn't reply back sooner. Keep working on it.

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I'm thinking about updating my demo to fix bugs and issues, then sending another E-Mail. But would that be rude? Is sending a second E-Mail the right thing to do? Should I keep waiting? I don't know how long it even takes for submitted content to show up on Equestria Daily. I've read that it can take months for a long Super Mario World hack to be moderated on SMWCentral. Should I keep working on my hack, and submit a second E-Mail when I, like, complete my World 1 Demo?

Oh, I don't know what I should do? What should I do with the Equestria Daily situation?


Don't worry about how long it takes to be moderated once you actually submit something, if you've finished a hack then you're accomplished with what you set out to do and if it gets rejected when you think it runs smoothly, it might just be a little tweak that needs doing before you resubmit it. I wouldn't send ED a second E-Mail, I think the whole approach towards popularity needs to have the white board wiped and rewritten.

Is it a collaboration? I know you want 'support' but it sounds like a personal hack, but that means going it alone for the most part, but if you want some help then I understand why you might make a thread asking for help, or posting in request threads for certain things.

To be honest, if this was a collaboration, I would be more than interested in helping out with anything. I was working on a port of "Winter Wrap-up" some time ago and this would be enough of an excuse for me to get back on that.

Anyway, I hope you make the best decision and good luck. The take home message of this should be that when you start a hack, you should be doing it because you enjoy the process of making a hack and you know that eventually it will be finished. Test other people's hacks, get to know what makes a good hack and what mistakes make a bad hack. Keep learning and keep developing, and once you have a hack that is intrinsically good, you won't need to emphasise that it has ponies in order to get a following.



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Your hack does look very good, aesthetically and design-wise. I care nothing for My Little Pony and am honestly confused as to its appeal, but it wouldn't stop me from giving it a go.

I understand your frustration, too. I've got a hack I've spent years on, and it has generated minimal interest as yet. That doesn't discourage me, though, because while I would love to see people take an interest, I'm making it for myself, because I have fun.

Don't give up, unless you are not having fun anymore.
GANYMEDE

Chapter Two: Land of No Shame
It looks like people do care about it, I mean you have gotten feedback, so that should count for something. And my hacks sometimes get ignored, but I still do 'em anyways.
BANANA SLAMMA.