Hi all!
Thomas wrote:
>And I'm not that much afraid of pirating as you might
expect. I see the
>whole copy protection discussion more from the sportive
side. For me,
>it's just as much fun to invent and implement some
ideas for that as it
>was to develop the kernel for Thrust.
>I can only speak for myself here, Manuel's opinion
might differ.
Well, not that much. thinking about stuff like that is
fun, really.
But I might just add more aspects, what I'm thinking
about all this:
I assume there's people out there, that think the
following:
"Hey, I could spend XXX$ a year buying homebrews. Or I
can _once_ spend 100$ buying a CC and never another
penny again."
Even if they think, "Well, if there's a really good
homebrew I will still buy it", the number of "really
good homebrews" will get drastically reduced once you
own a CC.
No one tell me, that these people don't exist. I once
owned SNES/Genesis disk drives myself.
Think about Thrust. Thomas said that ~30 copies were
sold all in all. Compare that to the number of "real
collectors" who bought a CC...
People will still buy ultra-extra-autographed-3-new-
levels-special editions. I don't fear about that.
But people who really work hard, share
concepts/thoughts, even fully commented sources and who
are really trying to push the scene towards quality,
because we love programming _and_ 2600 gaming, who sell
just plain stock versions, which actually should really
be worth the lousy 5$ royalties we're asking for, get
kicked in the ass in the end, with a game selling less
than 10 copies in a whole year! (Jammed)
Now we are the bad guys... ok... thank you.
Eckhard wrote:
>> And the Cuttle Cart is a homebrew project itself in a
certain way.
>> The people who bought one for $100 + s&h + taxes have
already proven
>> that they are willing to support the homebrew scene
with their money.
So be the Cuttle Cart the homebrew to end all other
homebrews and Chad being the only one to get some $$
back for his (admittedly) hard work?
Yes, people probably are sending him complaints about
Gunfight not working on the CC. When they come to me, I
tell them to buy the cartridge from Hozer. The binary on
that cartridges is not protected in any way, so if they
still want to play it on a Cuttle Cart, _after_ they
bought it, they may do so.
Besides I just accidently stumbled accros one point,
where it's just incompatible to a real VCS (to point
that out at least once), I didn't put that in the
cartridge on purpose. I don't even own a CC, so how
where I to do that?
I was just happy that it happened.
>> Of course you are under no obligation to release
anything. You have
>> every right to protect your games as you think it is
nessessary. But
>> if you won't allow us to play your games without
paying for them, then
>> I don't see why we should use our freetime, knowledge
and tools to help
>> you for free.
Ah, come on now. Gunfight was totally unprotected until
the very last version. The Hack-Protection was the last
thing I added. I'm not hiding anything or trying to
spoil the fun for others. I might just have a different
attitude towards what's fair and what not.
Think Ebivision or other guys doing "homebrews". From
Ebivison games you don't even see a screenshot, before
you buy them...
Am I really that bad compared to them?
Hey, you can play my game for free. I'm not selling the
"Katze Im Sack" or something like that. I'm not
crippling it. I even tried my best to avoid illegal
opcodes, to have everybody playtest it on any emulator.
The BINs even work on self-produced cartridges, so if
one is willing to go through the trouble of assembling
one, that's fine by me.
That's my 2 cents about all these topics.
I might add, that I still see this as 'just' a
discussion. I still love you all and respect your
different points of view, as I wish you'd respect mine.
Sorry for the probably sour tone on some of the above
sentences. That then comes due to my minor abilities to
express myself in english. In general I'm very happy
with everything, I have nothing against the CC in
general or the people using it and I'm not spending the
next year thinking about protection schemes or stuff
like that, but rather making my second better than the
first.
I'm gonna release the drivers of the ripped Parker tunes
soon and I'll post the source of the next Starfire demo,
as usual.
BTW: When developing Gunfight I spent a whole year
telling my girlfriend: "I'm not wasting my time, you'll
see, it'll pay part of our next holiday...". So if you
wanna see more games from me, order yourself a copy :-)
BTW²: When I was finished with Gunfight, I offered
everbody who really supported me much and was therefore
named in the manual, (That'd include you, Eckhard) to
get the game without paying me royalties. You can find
that *publically* announced in the [Stella] list...
Greetings,
Manuel
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