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Requests and outside contributions (SMWCentral Faux-pas?)

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No, this isn't another one of those, "HALP! Where can I post requests?" questions or anything. There's just something regarding the individual philosophies of the SMWCentral populace that I'm curious about.

Does requesting and recieving significant contributions to your hack from other people tend to loosely be frowned upon by the community?

There's nothing I've seen concretely giving me reason to believe so, but I've gotten such an impression subtley time and again browsing the forum. So, I'm asking flat out what you think.
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I don't have a problem with requesting things; I do it all the time. I'm pretty much balls at graphics, so any graphics I get are either from my brother or from one of the other centralites.

I also have done a number of requests, and it has been a source of some of the more interesting things I've made.
Originally posted by Face
Does requesting and recieving significant contributions to your hack from other people tend to loosely be frowned upon by the community?

It depends on how and where you ask for contributions or resources. Creating a whole thread just to ask for a resource is certainly frowned upon, since it encourages mass creation of unnecessary threads with no discussion value. The same goes for posting a request in normal discussion/feedback-oriented threads (usually stickies), like the ScreenShots & Videos thread in WIP. Also, when one does these kinds of things, people just assume said person is trying to gather lots of attention to his/her needs in a cheap way, IMO. If you're in need of contributions, there are some methods you can use so you won't give a bad impression to other users:

- Post your request in your hack thread, if you have one;
- Post it in your sig/footer;
- Search for people who are open for requests, by looking at their profiles and sigs, and send them a PM.
I do feel there's an attitude around here that you need to make everything yourself for it to be good.

Just look at all the complaints when people use publicly available graphics/music/etc. "Unoriginal," "overused," and maybe even "stolen" are common complaints.


Ultimately I think this stems from two things:

1) The idea of "creator's rights" that permeates the culture. In a lot of creative communities there's no concept of ownership of resources; you make something, you publicly release it, and anyone can use it with only a vague expectation (but not requirement) of credit. No exceptions.

2) We're making full games, not additions to a base game. Editing original SMW levels is frowned upon, and from this very basic idea comes the attitude that hackers must make an entirely new game for it to be worthwhile.
Originally posted by Gloomy Star
Originally posted by Face
Does requesting and recieving significant contributions to your hack from other people tend to loosely be frowned upon by the community?

It depends on how and where you ask for contributions or resources. Creating a whole thread just to ask for a resource is certainly frowned upon, since it encourages mass creation of unnecessary threads with no discussion value. The same goes for posting a request in normal discussion/feedback-oriented threads (usually stickies), like the ScreenShots & Videos thread in WIP. Also, when one does these kinds of things, people just assume said person is trying to gather lots of attention to his/her needs in a cheap way, IMO. If you're in need of contributions, there are some methods you can use so you won't give a bad impression to other users:

- Post your request in your hack thread, if you have one;
- Post it in your sig/footer;
- Search for people who are open for requests, by looking at their profiles and sigs, and send them a PM.


Oh, of course. I'm not asking how I should go about requests. I know there's ways to do requests properly and politely, but I'm just asking where people stand between, "Figure out how to do it youself, you lazy bum!" v.s. "There are things far too ouside of people's abiities to devote time to honing such skills."

EDIT: This might have been a better way to expain the opening post. Perhaps, I'll edit it once I get to work and have wi-fi on my phone again, provided I'm not fucked in the ass from the moment I cross the threshold.
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Oh, sorry for misunderstanding your point. The tips I gave weren't actually directed to you, it's merely my opinion on how people should request in order to it not being frowned upon.

In my opinion, requesting certainly isn't wrong nor it should be frowned upon, since it mutually helps the one who's requesting and the one who's fulfilling. One gets what one needs in a simple way while the other gets experience, credit, and the feeling of being helpful. The way I see it, requests which just happen once in a while for some reason, be it the inexperience or even lack of time, are healthy and just OK. The problem is that just a minority here has skill, spare time and patience for helping with SMW Hacking, so it's just natural that we prefer inexperienced people to learn by themselves, grow and be productive and independent too. And besides, there are many advantages for making the effort to learn yourself how to do things, that is, if you have the chance. Also, people are always willing to answer questions and help on others' growth. So yeah, want to request? Go ahead. Want to learn? Great!
I have never requested anything though I do not really have a problem with doing it. As long as the final product (the hack) has the requested thing implemented properly, I do not have any issues with it. I cannot speak for everyone however.
In my current hack, as far as resources go, I'm trying to rely on others as little as possible. (Not reinventing the wheel for things that already exist, obviously.) It's not about ownership for me though, since many of the resources I make will be properly released anyway.

I agree that "stolen" isn't a valid complaint, but I'd argue that "overused" is - if the creator's goal is to entertain their audience with something innovative, they have failed. (Then again, if no innovative resource exists and they lack the experience to make one themselves it can hardly be their fault, so hm.)


 
I think the main (only?) problem with requesting things is the simple fact that someone wants to use something that looks cool and nothing else.

For example, some people got their hands on the Marx boss, and a lot of people will think having that boss in their hack will somehow make it better. There's also a very high chance that requesting such things like the Marx boss means you have little to no experience with SMW hacking and using these resources will be completely out of place and randomly thrown together with little thought.

In fact I think we could possibly put part of the blame on Brutal Mario for this: Flashy ASM and bosses completely distracting from the sub-par level design, relying on something looking cool to be considered good.

I'm not trying to start a discussion about Brutal Mario or anything but I think its a good example of what a lot of people are aiming for in these cases. I believe if someone really wants to make a good hack or at least make things on their own and improve, they would ask for help, not for unreleased resources or for someone to make something for them.
This is a bit ironic, considering I'm currently looking for a coder to code something up for me.

I don't think requesting is such a bad thing, but the one major problem to this is how unknown you are and/or how hard it is to code something. If you're new, you're obviously not going to get your request refilled simply because your hack will likely be cancelled, and the request that is made would go to waste (ESPECIALLY if the request was an advanced flashy boss). However I've seen that the more popular and successful you are, the better chances of your request being fulfilled. For example, Tahixham already released two "The Lost Land" hacks, and he got popular enough to request a final boss. Normally there's no chance, but thanks to how popular he is, and the fact that quite a few people have been following his hacks, someone would care enough to code anything he needs. The same thing can also be said about COLORS, but for a different reason.

That's what I've noticed, anyway.
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Originally posted by Gloomy Star
Oh, sorry for misunderstanding your point. The tips I gave weren't actually directed to you, it's merely my opinion on how people should request in order to it not being frowned upon.

Ah, gotcha.

Originally posted by Gloomy Star
In my opinion, requesting certainly isn't wrong nor it should be frowned upon, since it mutually helps the one who's requesting and the one who's fulfilling. One gets what one needs in a simple way while the other gets experience, credit, and the feeling of being helpful. The way I see it, requests which just happen once in a while for some reason, be it the inexperience or even lack of time, are healthy and just OK. The problem is that just a minority here has skill, spare time and patience for helping with SMW Hacking, so it's just natural that we prefer inexperienced people to learn by themselves, grow and be productive and independent too. And besides, there are many advantages for making the effort to learn yourself how to do things, that is, if you have the chance. Also, people are always willing to answer questions and help on others' growth. So yeah, want to request? Go ahead. Want to learn? Great!

This.

Originally posted by Kaijyuu
I do feel there's an attitude around here that you need to make everything yourself for it to be good.

Glad it's not just me.

I honestly very much dislike that mentality. Last time I checked many commercial games had full teams creating them. And, let's say an ASM baller ass G wants to make a hack with quality originally drawn graphics and has never drawn a day in his/her life. Should s/he spend a ridiculous amount of time and effort painsteakingly learning to become an artist and just pulling the ability to create beautiful aethsetics out of his/her ass?
My layout has removed you.

Originally posted by Face

Originally posted by Kaijyuu
I do feel there's an attitude around here that you need to make everything yourself for it to be good.

Glad it's not just me.

I honestly very much dislike that mentality. Last time I checked many commercial games had full teams creating them. And, let's say an ASM baller ass G wants to make a hack with quality originally drawn graphics and has never drawn a day in his/her life. Should s/he spend a ridiculous amount of time and effort painsteakingly learning to become an artist and just pulling the ability to create beautiful aethsetics out of his/her ass?


It is unreasonable to expect someone to be able to do everything. Humans got as far as they did relying on each other, expecting someone to compose and port music, draw their own art, design all their levels and overworld, and code unique things in ASM is just silly.

Not saying that nobody can do it, but certainly not everyone can. I'm of the opinion that people ought to stick to their strengths, or skills that they wish to develop.

If you have no interest in making graphics, but want your game to look non-vanilla, I'd say using existing graphics is reasonable. Of course, if someone hasn't expressed a desire to share their graphics, it'd be a bit rude to use them without asking. However, if you're lookin' to improve your ability to ability to make graphics and such, by all means have a go at it. It doesn't have to look amazing, and you certainly won't reach amazing levels without making less amazing stuff first.


Making everything yourself takes about 10 tons of effort. Granted, I'm a bit into "DIY" when it comes to making things, but there's also plenty of people who made all these resources so they would be used. So unless you're absolutely willing to spend weeks just having the resources ready, why not use what's available? If anything, it makes the people who made or ported these resources happy.

And on the same topic, people around here clearly have differing strengths. If you have the right people working on the right aspects, you can make something really good, and if the team has a great chemistry, it will be a true winning team, 'cause making things'll be fun.
During the development of Mecha-Bowser's Revenge, I quickly realized that requesting things does seem to be frowned upon, and that there seems to be a bit of a "Make/port/code it yourself, n00b" attitude. I had requested some sprites when the Requests section was still around, but only one ever got made, albeit long after the hack that was to feature the sprite was completed. Other users may offer to make things for you, only to not follow through. This also happened with a certain coder during the development of MBR. In the end, the community's apparent refusal to take requests killed the hack.

That said, there is one user who has completed a few sprite requests for me, and that's imamelia. This is why I voted him as Most Selfless during the 2012 Mosts.

The lack of request fulfillment eventually prompted me to start learning ASM, but I've only learned enough to code some very simple custom blocks. I still consider myself primarily a level designer, GFX artist, and music porter.
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What the hell is wrong with just showing some gumption and learning to get the job done yourself? I think its just lazy and unrealistic to expect someone else to create something for a hack that they're not even as passionate about. How do you even know they are even reliable and if not, then what? Going out of one's comfort zone and taking some initiative is what seperates the men from the boys. If that's too much dedication for someone, find another hobby.
Originally posted by Face
Originally posted by Kaijyuu
I do feel there's an attitude around here that you need to make everything yourself for it to be good.

Glad it's not just me.

I honestly very much dislike that mentality. Last time I checked many commercial games had full teams creating them. And, let's say an ASM baller ass G wants to make a hack with quality originally drawn graphics and has never drawn a day in his/her life. Should s/he spend a ridiculous amount of time and effort painsteakingly learning to become an artist and just pulling the ability to create beautiful aethsetics out of his/her ass?

Wow. This needs to be put everywhere.
I really need a layout. :<
Heh heh, thanks MandL27. =D

Originally posted by Skullkid
Stuff


But, not everyone is a highschooler living with their parent with all the time in the world on their hands. Not saying you are in particular, but my point is that I'm 26 years old, work full-time and play in two bands. My time is valueable and I can't always be in one place at a computer dedicating hours upon hours learning ASM or other painsteakingly tedious learning processes.
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Even if we lived in an anarcho-collectivist utopia where all our needs were met and we had all the free time in the world, it would still be unreasonable to expect people to do absolutely everything themselves.

There's no shame in getting help and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves.
Quote
What the [heck] is wrong with just showing some gumption and learning to get the job done yourself? I think its just lazy and unrealistic to expect someone else to create something for a hack that they're not even as passionate about. How do you even know they are even reliable and if not, then what? Going out of one's comfort zone and taking some initiative is what seperates the men from the boys. If that's too much dedication for someone, find another hobby.


In a nutshell, people have different focuses. As an example, I consider one of my main fortes in hacking to be level design, and thus I don't put as much effort into making graphics, music or ASM into my projects. On the contrary, people prefer being 'creative' with their projects and spend more time making resources than focusing on the level design. Brutal Mario could be an example of the latter.

What I'm saying is that it's irrelevant what your talents are when making hacks. People aren't going to be skilled at everything and that's a fact. That's the reason why there's teams of people making real-life games and not just an indie studio of 2-5 people, because everyone has individual and different talents.
@Spicyseafood and kaijyjuu : I guess that's true to a minor extent, but I still think people can surprise themselves just venturing outside their comfort zone. Plus you can never be certain if someone will come through for you so it's better to just play it safe and trust yourself over some potentially unreliable deadbeat.

@Face: You're 26 and still playing with cartoony pixels on a computer? Go get laid or something for shit's sake. If your excuse is not having time, perhaps you shouldn't have started a project. I've looked at your thread and observed the dates of your posts. You should have known from the beginning that a lack of time on your hands would be an issue.
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