Things have calmed down a little bit, so let me try to explain some points from my perspective, in the spirit of cooperation and understanding
.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
This whole conversation could have gone in a completely different way with better communication.
I agree. Let’s move it in a direction that will serve everyone better!
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
In my defence, Coronavirus has effectively closed my business, and I'm stuck at home the whole day. I'm not looking for sympathy, we are all in this together, but it does leave us all feeling more raw and vulnerable than usual.
I agree with this as well. Personally, I don’t have a business to worry about, but I have other reasons to worry about COVID-19. I would think that most people are more on the edge than usual these days, and that includes myself.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
It's clear to me that Danny felt that I was aiming my criticism directly at him. Looking back at the thread, I can understand why that was, and I can understand why he would react in that way, especially since his intentions were only to be helpful. It must have felt like a slap in the face
It did, kind of. Let me elaborate:
I am passionate about Manic Miner (MM) and Jet Set Willy (JSW) games (i.e. games using the respective game engines and their modified versions) for the ZX Spectrum. I love MM and JSW games and I am not ashamed to admit that. That’s one of the reasons my previous responses were emotional.
I did not have bad intentions. From my perspective, the situation was like this:
You released the game, which I was really happy to see. You asked that people do not make full 'walkthrough' videos for the time being, but you did not mention RZX recordings. Had you mentioned RZX recordings explicitly, I may have refrained from making mine.
So I proceeded to do what I always do, if times permits, when a new MM or JSW game is released: I completed the game (and had a great time doing it!), RZX-recorded it, using Rollback, and sent the recording to Daren of the RZX Archive.
Daren was respectful of your request and did not make a video of the RZX recording, as he normally does, only added the RZX recording to the Archive. When you asked him to take it down, he did. In other words, the RZX Archive respected your request fully and you shouldn't hold any grudge against them.
The result of it was, though, that my recording showing the completion of the game, available publicly for a short time, was taken down. I was certainly upset by this, as nothing like this had ever happened before.
Please note that – as explained before – I do understand why RZX recordings, which are really game files, cannot be hosted if the author doesn’t want the game to be downloadable from other sites than his own. However, in such cases Daren normally makes a video and he is hosting the video only, while where the link to the RZX file would be, it says, “Distribution Denied”.
In this case, though, the video was denied as well, and it was upsetting.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:17 am
it seems I am portrayed as some kind of villain for wanting to control the distribution of my work in a way that ensures quality control (which is my right), and for believing that people should try to complete the games in an honourable way (which is just my opinion).
I do not consider you a villain
. However, please note that I equally don’t want to be portrayed as some kind of villain for wanting to produce quality RZX recordings which may be useful to people and which increase the visibility of MM and JSW games.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
So to be clear, I asked (not ordered!) people not to publish videos of them completing the game using rollbacks in the first couple of weeks for the following reasons:
1) Despite my best efforts, little bugs can crop up. These are usually only found once the game is in the wild and played by a much wider audience. In addition I was thinking about
maybe adding some new levels.
I understand that. I can only say that I would suggest keeping a game explicitly as a beta release until you are sure there are no more bugs in it. I would not record an RZX recording of a beta release for public consumption (I *would* record a playtest for you, if you asked me to) and I would not add such a game to
JSW Central, which is, by its mission statement, for gamma-released games only.
I know that bugs can persist even after a significant amount of playtesting has been done. However, if a game is tested thoroughly by several dedicated players, I think the problems *can* be eliminated before it reaches a wider audience.
If you produce new versions of “The Perils of Willy” and / or make new MM or JSW games in the future (or other similar platform games), I am sure the friendly folks on
JetSet Willy & Manic Miner Community will be happy to playtest them for you. Count me in - I will be delighted to be of assistance in this way!
Furthermore, I think it wouldn’t be a problem if, after the first gamma-released version of the game, updated versions followed. It has happened in the world of MM and JSW games (which is my focus) before:
“Jet Set Willy in Paris” reached version 4.0,
“Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise” reached version 2,
“Willy's Afterlife” reached version 2.0, and many games were re-released after the gamma-release without specifying the version number. There’s nothing wrong with improving or expanding your game even after the gamma-release
.
When I wrote:
“If you release a newer version of the game, Allan, I *will* record a new RZX walkthrough of it. In fact, if you do it several times and release several new versions of the game - I *will* record a new RZX walkthrough of each version, every time you update the game.”
it was a *promise*, not a threat! I wanted to reassure you that I will update the walkthrough, even if I had to do it several times, so that an up-to-date version of it is always available and that, from the perspective of the videos, you can feel free to update and expand your game as many times as you like. This promise still stands, of course
.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
2) It was intended as a challenge, to lay down the gauntlet and invoke the spirit of the 80s gamers we once were that didn't have that luxury. Playing games without breaking the rules can actually be fun.
I understand your intentions, but I would beg to disagree here, to a certain extent, at least.
I remember the Spectrum games in the 1980s as generally being difficult. There were different kinds of them, of course, in some you could just play to set new personal high scores, but in various games where you had a mission to complete, so to speak, it was extremely difficult to achieve that without either POKEs or tips published in magazines, or both.
There was no internet and no RZX recordings with Rollback back in the 1980s, but there *were* POKEs published in magazines and passed along among the players (e.g. at school), and they were widely applied (in my memory, at least). So it wasn’t as if people weren’t “cheating”, and I would say that applying a POKE which changes the game is much more of cheating than using Rollback – because you are not playing the original game any more, but one that has been modified to make it easier.
If you face some very difficult moments in a JSW game – like pixel-perfect jumps – using Rollback helps mainly because you don’t have to replay the whole game from the start when you lose all remaining lives in that difficult place. But believe me, in *really* difficult games you may have to repeat a manouvre (or series of manoeuvres) fifty or a hundred times before you get it right.
In today’s busy world (and I mean the world from before COVID-19) there is hardly any time for anything. I love playing MM and JSW games, but I could *not* afford to spend hours, and hours, and hours on end replaying sections of the game I have already played before just to get to a very difficult place once again – only to lose all my lives there and have to repeat the whole effort. It is simply impossible. In that sense, some kind of assistance – which you would probably call cheating - *has* to be used.
There are two main possible kinds of what you would call cheating: 1) POKEing the game and 2) saving and reloading snapshots or using Rollback. As mentioned above, I definitely prefer the methods mentioned in the second point, because while using them, you are *still* playing the original game. And, among them, Rollback is much easier and much more efficient to use than saving and reloading snapshots.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:17 am
for believing that people should try to complete the games in an honourable way (which is just my opinion).
The question of “honour” has cropped up more than once in the posts in this thread, I believe.
While I personally would not relate the concept of “honour” to completing Spectrum games at all, taking your beliefs into account, please consider the following:
If you want to talk about “honour”, it should be there on both ends of the equation. If you want players to behave “honourably”, the games’ authors/producers should behave in the same way.
The original “Jet Set Willy”, released commercially, was incompletable because of bugs. Players might have spent an eternity trying to complete it, and they wouldn’t have been able to, simply because it was impossible without applying POKEs to fix the game. Was that honourable behaviour on the part of the software company which released the game? Was it fair to the players?
Now please consider the Multiple Death Scenarios (MDS) present both in the original JSW and many remakes. You lose a life because of an error and then you lose all the remaining lives because of the same error, without being able to do anything about it (and if you have the Inifinite Lives POKE applied, it becomes an Infinite Death Scenario and you still have to reset the game). Game Over. Is this “honourable”? Is this fair to the player? No, by no means. The player’s using Rollback is a perfect response, though. It does make the game fair. You protect yourself from an MDS by rolling the recording back. The author of the game was unfair to you and you have taken adequate steps to avoid the consequences of his wrongdoing. That's pure self-defence - is anything wrong with it?
Fast forward 35 years. We are involved in retrogaming, but this term can have various connotations for various people. I specialise in MM and JSW games for the Spectrum, so I will speak *only* about them now.
There are various games released in the last decades, which are *forbiddingly* difficult. This includes some of the projects I have worked on. Look at the Hard Version of
“Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix” (which includes rooms and sprites by myself but also by many other authors, most notably John Equinox Collins and various others – detailed credits are in the Readme). The game has 256 edited rooms and 256 items to collect. In order to complete the game, the player has to visit 248 rooms. Some of them are quite easy, but a significant number (at least 80, I would say, maybe more) are very difficult, requiring tight jumps and the knowledge of various quirks of the game engine. You start out with 10 spare lives. That’s nothing – once you get to “The Land of Great Hardship”, you’ll lose them before passing the second room in that part of the game’s map. I would be *amazed* if any human being was able to complete this game (the Hard Version) without any kind of assistance ("cheating") – I think it’s just impossible.
In a sense, “Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix” is an example of a game that is *designed for ZX Spectrum emulators*. It is not designed for the original hardware, because it would be very difficult to complete it even using the Infinite Lives POKE. It is designed to be played saving and reloading snapshots – or using Rollback. Otherwise, it’ll drive you crazy.
There are various other examples of such games, which I can discuss in detail if need be.
This is also retrogaming, but another kind of retrogaming. It’s facing extreme challenges with a full support of Rollback/snapshot saving. Telling someone *not* to use Rollback when playing those games would not even be a dishonourable action: it would be plain cruelty!
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:17 am
If you are able to complete the game within the rules of the game, I would 100% welcome it.
With the kind of games I described above, these *are* the rules of the game: you’ve *got to* use either some POKEs or Rollback, or you just won’t be able to complete them.
Of course not all games are like this, some could be completed without using Rollback.
However, please consider this.
There have been various negative comments in this thread about using Rollback, saying it’s cheap and lazy and cheating, and the like. Even this comment you made:
highrise wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:03 pm
What I am against is people using RZX rollback simply to be the first person to complete a game and post a video, often doing so within 24 hours of the release, not posting opinions or reviews, and doing so for every single game, regardless of how they feel about it. This is because (a) I don't think it requires any great skill or talent
You say you don' think completing a game using Rollback requires any great skill or talent. I don't know about that, but I can say that *at times* it requires a lot of hard work.
Please note that I will now be speaking *only* about walkthroughs of MM and JSW games, which is my area of expertise. I will *not* be speaking about other games, or all games in general, because I do not feel competent to do it.
The majority of the recordings of MM and JSW games currently hosted on RZX Archive are my recordings.
Making these recordings is a challenge for me and I consider them to be a work of ark to a certain extent.
I am trying to observe the following standards for these recordings:
Each game has to be completed as smoothly, elegantly and efficiently as possible, aiming to achieve the best completion time (for JSW games) or the highest score (for MM games).
The protagonist (usually, but not always, Willy) should act decisively, without hesitation, and without making any unnecessary moves (like stepping back where he can just wait standing in one place). He should take the shortest, most efficient route possible (that’s in JSW games, of course; in MM it can apply to routes within the rooms). The challenges he faces should be overcome without any unnecessary waste of time. Needless to say, no lives can be lost beyond those (as is the case in some games, regretfully) that need to be sacrificed to collect an item / some items.
It may sound trivial to do all these things, but it is not, at least not in many of the released games. Finding the shortest route in the biggest JSW games, with teleports, illogical exits from rooms (e.g. taking you to rooms far away on the map from the one you’ve just left) and detours you need to make to reach certain places can be a daunting task. Sendy’s
“where’s woody” is an example of such a game – you need to visit some 240 rooms to complete it, the game is not linear by any means, how do you establish the most efficient route to take when there are literally dozens of possible routes?
When working on recording RZX games for the RZX Archive, many times I had to re-record a given game three or four times to get the quality of the recording I wanted – the optimal route, efficient jumps and no hesitation. It was not a “cheap and lazy” exercise, it was hard work to first prepare these recordings – to know which way I should go and what I should do in each room – and then to record them, and then to re-record them to make them even better. It took me between one and two weeks – working a few hours per day – to produce satisfactory recordings of the most challenging JSW games.
The results of using Rollback are an illusion – and you may not like it. You’re perfectly entitled to this opinion. Nevertheless, other people may like it, so why take it away from them by denying those who record the right to use Rollback?
The walkthroughs created using Rollback are an illusion: they have a quality that would be impossible to achieve without it. I admit it, it’s obvious. The RZX Archive gives information whether or not a recording was made using Rollback. There is no cheating there. You know it was done using Rollback, you know it’s an illusion.
However, what a beautiful illusion it may be! It’s like a good movie – good movies are also illusions created for the sake of the viewers. It’s beautiful, because Willy is moving gracefully, wasting no time, heading firmly forward, avoiding the monsters with close jumps that at times seem to border on magic. It’s not a result of magic, though – it’s the result of hard, repetitive work.
Of course, not all games are as difficult and challenging, some aren’t. Also, MM games are easier to record, because the uncertainty can only be about intra-room routes, not the inter-room ones. And even then, it took me some two weeks to complete the game and make a decent RZX recording of
“Manic Scribbler” – the most difficult MM game in existence, I think – or of some of Andrew Broad’s MM games, full of tricks using the so-called quirky features of the game engine.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
3) I am frustrated at certain channels that use rollback on every single game that comes out within hours to be the first to post a video and get Youtube hits. I still don't believe they make any net contribution to the community.
It may be that you are talking about things beyond my experience. The only YouTube channel I know that regularly presents full walkthroughs of the Spectrum games is the one run by the RZX Archive (there is another one – zxspectrumgames4 – but, as I understand, it used to make videos of RZX recordings published on the RZX Archive, it did not have its own “supply” of RZX recordings, and stopped doing this after being admonished for using someone else's work).
I have a very high opinion of the RZX Archive, I am proud to be a contributor over there (in my narrow specialty of MM and JSW games) and I believe it does provide valuable service to the community.
highrise wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:03 pm
What I am against is people using RZX rollback simply to be the first person to complete a game and post a video, often doing so within 24 hours of the release, not posting opinions or reviews, and doing so for every single game, regardless of how they feel about it. This is because (a) I don't think it requires any great skill or talent, (2) I don't think it benefits anyone except themselves, because they aren't actually interested in the game, they re interested in getting some kind of credit or hits on Youtube.
This touches upon an interesting subject of expectations – what do authors expect from players?
Let me make an important distinction here.
There may be a relatively small circle of people – like the guys on
JetSet Willy & Manic Miner Community, for example – that will assist me in preparing a bug-free release of my games or projects. I *will* expect them to playtest and comment on *beta versions* of my games or *working files* I upload *just for them*, because that’s the essence of our collaboration. I will do the same for them, of course.
I do have certain expectations of these friendly folks, because we work on things together and support each other.
However, once I declare a game gamma-released and upload it for anyone interested to download, I do *not* have any expectations whatsoever.
I have no idea how many people have played the games I have released / the projects I have worked on (I am not the sole author of various games I worked on and I keep saying “projects I worked on” to avoid the wrong impression that I have released several games of my sole authorship).
The feedback I received by e-mail (which I always encourage in the Readmes) has been minimal over the years. The feedback on websites has also been limited.
Five days before you released “The Perils of Willy”, Highrise, I released
“Madam Blavskja’s Carnival Macabre 48K”, a port to 48K of Fabián Álvarez López (Adban de Corcy)'s 2002 JSW128 game. It’s not just a 128K game squeezed into 48K, it’s a game enhanced with several new rooms (and an option to play with them or just the original game), enriched music and various technical novelties. It took me some four months of extremely intense work to create it (and I wasn’t the only person working on it – Ian Rushforth made some brilliant contributions). Since it was released (with the original author’s approval), *not a single comment* was posted on the Spectrum Computing thread where it was announced. I think it’s the same situation on World of Spectrum (I didn’t check it today).
In this context, I am happy if I know that someone outside of the small circle of members of JetSet Willy & Manic Miner Community had a brief go at my projects. I don’t honestly expect most people to complete these games (although “Madam Blavskja’s Carnival Macabre 48K” is an easy one to play, and its rooms, designed by Fabián, are charmingly atmospheric). If they play them just a little bit, I consider it a success. I hardly expect anyone to write any reviews – if people won’t even play these games properly ("properly" meaning to me "for more than a quarter of an hour"), how can you expect them to spend time writing reviews?
To be honest, I don’t mind at all if someone just watches an RZX walkthrough of my game. They will at least have an idea of how it looks and what it’s about. Of course, I would prefer people to play the game, discover it and enjoy. But if that’s impossible – because few people really appreciate JSW games any more and everyone is busy in the middle of the rat race – I prefer people to watch a video rather than not have any contact with the game at all.
I believe authors should be humble in what they do and should not have inflated expectations. I believe authors are servants in a sense, and players are masters. The player can do anything – play my game to completion without any assistance (“cheating”), play it to completion with assistance (“cheating”), play it only in part without any assistance (“cheating”), play it in part with assistance (“cheating”), just have a brief, passing look at it, not play it at all but watch the whole RZX walkthrough, not play it at all but watch a part of the RZX walkthrough, not play it at all and not watch the walkthrough either.
Who am I to tell them what to do? If they become interested in the game so as to spend a little more time on it – I am thrilled. If they like the game and play it to completion – I am happy. If they write a nice review – I am delighted. If they write a bad review – I am not happy, but I appreciate the fact that they have taken the time to write that review at all. If they complete the game using “cheating”, like POKEs – I feel sorry *for them* that they missed the real beauty and thrill of it. But it’s their choice, I don’t feel authorised to interfere with it in any way.
Once a book is on the shelf in the bookstore, the author can only sit back and watch the developments. No more changes or corrections (until the second edition, at least), just watching if people react to their book at all and, if so, what their reactions are. I think it’s similar for homebrew games.
I would *never* condition the players’ activities in any way, even in my mind – like thinking that if they want to make an RZX recording, they should first write a review to show their respect for me as the author and for the work and time I have put into creating the game. The players do what they want, they are the masters. They did not ask me to create the game in the first place – I did it because *I* wanted to do it – and they have *no obligations* whatsoever towards me – they can take whatever they want from what I created, and I don’t expect them to give anything back. If they do, it’s fantastic, particularly if their feedback is positive. But I don’t expect it. I am nicely surprised if they do. I am only a little sad if they don’t. But this sadness is *my* problem, not theirs – because I don’t think I can expect or demand anything from them.
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:51 pm
And if someone spends hours cooking you a delicious meal, is it wrong for them to suggest you take your time over it? If you decide to just wolf it down like dog food, that is your right - but it's not exactly going to encourage them to cook for you again is it? Especially if you decide to film that and put it on Youtube.
Well, this is again a question of expectations and, even more, of your motivation to make games. From what you wrote, it looks like you make games *for people* AND expect them to enjoy them the way you imagine they should, i.e. slowly, taking their time.
I must admit that with this kind of motivation – which you are fully entitled to have, of course, it’s your motivation – it is logical that you are disappointed when people “wolf down” your games.
My attitude is very different, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we have a hard time understanding each other. I create games / work on game-related projects because it gives me pleasure to do it. I am taking the possible players’ response into account (like whether to make the game very difficult, whether or not to use the quirky features of the game engine, etc.), but I am essentially making the game because *I* want to make it, not because I think someone is waiting for it or needs it.
It’s like I am cooking a meal mainly for the sheer pleasure of cooking it. I share it with a small circle of friends before it’s fully ready and this is the only stage when I expect some comments, feedback or even help. Once the meal is fully ready – gamma-released, so to speak – I offer it to the wider public, but I don’t have any particular expectations of what its members will do with it / about it, I don’t expect them to behave in any special way.
If they ignore it, that’s fine. If they wolf it down, that’s fine too. If they enjoy it longer, that’s great. I assume that very few people will actually spend more time on it. If they do – it’s very gratifying. If they don’t – it doesn’t matter, I've had my pleasure already while creating the game.
And I really don’t mind if they put it on YouTube. I am not very happy if they put there low quality, poor recordings of the game I created, or perhaps only of parts thereof, with not-too-supportive comments. But I appreciate even those, because those poor videos and those dismissive comments mean that some people actually played the game, which is more I may have hoped for.
Alessandro wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 4:02 pm
highrise wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 3:04 pm
It's not nice to see that after months of working at a game and fine tuning it before release, people cheat by using rollback and snapshots and complete it almost soon after it has been released. It feels lazy and cheap to me. Couldn't these users at least try if they can complete it for a week or so before resorting to cheats?
Why does it bother you that they complete the game quickly? It’s their choice. They could have chosen to play the game “the hard way”, they chose the easy way. Appreciate the fact that they played the game at all, they didn’t have to!
Alessandro wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:39 pm
I too get annoyed by this irrational urge to be the first to swallow a new game and put the results on YouTube, and what's worse, for a foolish sense of self-gratification.
Whether this urge is “irrational” or not, and whether their sense of self-gratification is “foolish”, is a matter of subjective opinion. Apparently, this urge and this gratification serve some purpose for those who do it; otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. Why does it annoy you so much, though?
Judging by your opinions, you look down on this kind of activity (“swallowing” a new game and putting the results on YouTube). Consequently, I understand you don’t have a particularly high opinion of the people who do these things. Why do you care about what they do, then? Let’s call them – for the sake of discussion and simplicity only – “losers”. There are some “losers” who “swallow” new games and put the results on YouTube. Would you like *these people* to be the admirers of your games? Would you like “loosers” to be the ones to write the reviews of your games? Do you even care about them?
If you do, I would say it’s strange. I would care a thousand times more about people I would not consider to be “losers”. The opinion about my game of one person I value highly would matter to me a hundred times more than the opinions of ten people I consider “losers”. Why bother about them at all? If they want – for whatever reason – to record your game quickly and upload it, it’s their choice. It makes them “losers” in your eyes. Do you care about the opinion of “losers”? Would you like to read their reviews? Why? They are “losers” and it’s pretty much a waste of time to deal with them.
Now, the people you don’t consider “loosers”, the ones who are ready to play your game without (or with little) assistance, spend a considerable time playing it and then write a review – they don’t have to watch the YouTube videos the “loosers” have posted. What’s more, *if* they are like-minded people for you and share your views and preferences, they *will not* watch these videos, they will play your game without watching them. Their opinion is what really should matter to you. So why would it bother you that the videos are out there?
The “loosers” recorded their quick videos and got their instant gratification. The “wise men” (and women, as much as those can be found in the Spectrum community) did not watch the videos and played your game without any assistance ("cheating"), and then wrote meaningful reviews. You've just made two groups of people happy. What’s wrong with that?
Please note that someone may think I wrote this ironically. No, there’s irony here at all, I really think this is the way things are. *If* there are people I don’t respect, I don’t care about their opinion. I do care about the opinion of those I respect, though.
Alessandro wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:39 pm
If there is something that can be defined as the "spirit of retrogaming", in my personal opinion, it is the challenge, the beauty of being put to the test and finishing without any external aid. It is not so much the "arrival" that matters; rather, it is the "travel", how you manage to get to the end.
I won’t say that what you described is not the spirit of retrogaming, but I would say there are more spirits and more definitions of retrogaming than one. As mentioned above, I spent countless hours working on RZX-recording JSW games that took weeks to record properly, even with Rollback. The “arrival” did matter, I will not deny this – but what a “travel” it was, each time!
highrise wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:40 am
it's likely that because of that, I came across as someone who is dismissive or arrogant. Hopefully my more recent posts have shown that I'm neither of those things.
No, I actually didn’t perceive you as either, and I know you are not. I just think we have different opinions on some things we feel strongly about. I hope we will be able to find some mutually acceptable middle ground – and I am looking forward to it
.