The state of the community

[Wayward Winds]

My two cents (or pennies, seeing as I'm British):

I think, from what I've seen, it's usually the same few names issuing the put downs. There are on the other hand, some extremely helpful people around. It's the same everywhere.

There's also the fact that when these idea pop up, the person responsible often gives off the vibe of 'impulse', it'll be gone in a 'couple of weeks. Or alternatively, the story seems to be all they currently have (which is fair enough, you must have your concept before all else), but they then immediately ask for portraits, sprites, the lot. As if they aren't going to try themselves. That can come across as 'lazy bum', whereas showing progress in other areas first and asking for help rather than fully fledged elements would probably come over better.

(Before everyone thinks I'm sounding a bit of an elitist snob myself there, here's the summary: there's no problem posting ideas, as lomg as it looks like you're devoted enough to attempt most of the work yourself. Asking for help in just one or two areas, say portraits (although there's always the possibility of splicing), is just covering weaknesses).

I'm fiddling around with FE hacking myself now, but I'm determined to figure out most of the basics for myself and get a few chapters done before I start clogging up the forum. So, all you'll get is a name: Echoes of the Mist. Anything else can wait 'till I run into a roadblock I can't solve without help, and I'll still do what I can elsewhere before I ask for that help. That way I'll actually show that I mean business.

That said, I too would support a 'new hack ideas' sub forum, because it would give newcomers an entry point where they aren't required to immediately be on par with the veterans. I can churn my way through problems using tutorials and a bit of logic, but that's not the way for everyone.

[Agro]

I've been trying to put this into practice for months honestly

[Onmi]

I'm not going to lie.

I intended -and in fact still intend to- leave once my project is done. While I've met good people here the overall feeling of the community was pretty damn disgusting, compounded by the fact that I've been working pretty darn outside the box there was a combination of no help, and pretty much all requests for it being distilled down to "Go work on FE7".

Then I left, and I found someone else, and he helped work with me and we got it done in less than 24 hours. Now I know why I was getting the bugs I was getting. Now I can proceed forward after 3 years. Hell the responses off site have generally been more positive and helpful than they ever were on. Off-Site people were welcoming to enter discussion about potential flaws, while suggesting improvements, with a liberal freedom to swap both criticism and help.

I still meant what I said in my own threads, the animations, the research notes, everything I've done for my hack is going to be free to use once said hack is done. It's going to be there to help other people. So when someone goes "Hey, I wanna do an escape chapter" Someone can tell them "Here, these notes detail how to make an escape chapter in events." Or when they're looking for animations, they have them. Or if they simply want to modify the rom from my hack, with all the changes I've implemented there. They can.

If I've learned one thing over the past three years it's that nobody succeeds on their own. People have flaws and weaknesses, and sometimes we need other people to cover those for us. And really I don't want to leave. I want to see this place change for the better.

If I can give an example, Ryru apparently found out how to put Manaketes into FE7. Everyone knows this, but nobody apparently has the documentation that explained how this was done. It seems to be a "We know, but we don't know." And I find that to be a disheartening flaw. I feel like each hacker should definitely be documenting, and that these notes be released for everyone. And then backed up. So that this doesn't happen.

After all, Information is only as good as your ability to use it. For example, in FE6 if you want to use Event Assemblers definitions, all your events have to have their co-ordinates be double digits. 1 is no good, 01 is what has to be put in. For the longest time I didn't know that, I don't think anyone did. But now it's documented for the future.

I still realize how hard it can be to help people who are getting into hacking however. It can be so frustrating to be helping someone without direct visual communication, since you can't simply tell what's been messed up. But the effort should be put in. Not simply because it would make the community a better place to be, but what's to be gained through being guarded and hostile? We should try our hardest to be open, giving and above all else work together.

I dunno, that's just me. I don't think I wanna see someone who winds up in the position I was in. Waiting 3 years to do something and not being able to proceed because of something they couldn't control.

[Agro]

If I can give an example, Ryru apparently found out how to put Manaketes into FE7. Everyone knows this, but nobody apparently has the documentation that explained how this was done. It seems to be a "We know, but we don't know." And I find that to be a disheartening flaw. I feel like each hacker should definitely be documenting, and that these notes be released for everyone. And then backed up. So that this doesn't happen.

To be fair, Ryrumeli's notes disappeared into the void because he had a psycho girlfriend who destroyed his laptop or something like that. He also discovered a way to increase the native resolution of the games and a way to feasibly have voice acting, but those are gone along with Ryrumeli. It's not that he didn't document--in fact I'm fairly certain that Ryrumeli was one of the more diligent documenters around.

The hacking community has devolved into this "it can't be done" sort of place because no one knows enough and the people who do are either unwilling to help or requested funding to do it. I'm sorry that you've had such a negative experience here but unfortunately it's just become like this out of necessity--I mean, if no one has time to help a person, then the best response they can give is "do something else". If you found help elsewhere, good for you. I've tried to be nice to help people here but there's only so much I can do. We can't just spend hours and hours looking into every single little feature that everyone wants, unfortunately.

I don't mind being helpful to newbies but the one thing I cannot stand is people unwilling to help themselves which is generally what most pitch threads and a lot of hacking questions come down to.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Agro

[Onmi]

To be fair, Ryrumeli's notes disappeared into the void because he had a psycho girlfriend who destroyed his laptop or something like that. He also discovered a way to increase the native resolution of the games and a way to feasibly have voice acting, but those are gone along with Ryrumeli. It's not that he didn't document--in fact I'm fairly certain that Ryrumeli was one of the more diligent documenters around.

The hacking community has devolved into this "it can't be done" sort of place because no one knows enough and the people who do are either unwilling to help or requested funding to do it. I'm sorry that you've had such a negative experience here but unfortunately it's just become like this out of necessity--I mean, if no one has time to help a person, then the best response they can give is "do something else". If you found help elsewhere, good for you. I've tried to be nice to help people here but there's only so much I can do. We can't just spend hours and hours looking into every single little feature that everyone wants, unfortunately.

I don't mind being helpful to newbies but the one thing I cannot stand is people unwilling to help themselves which is generally what most pitch threads and a lot of hacking questions come down to.

I did not know that about Ryru, all anyone ever said was that he knew how to do all these things and they didn't have any notes. Still, and I know this is an obvious thing to say. Had nobody tried Way-Back Machining where he posted them in the first place? I mean you very well could have and not found anything but it seems a shame to leave such valuable research to the dust. And not to pass blame, but I think this would have been less of an issue if others had thought to back it up themselves. I realize that's hindsight speaking, and isn't meant to be a shot at anyone who was around for that era. It's just one of those things we think to do now. I have made sure that I don't contain the only documentation to my research, even simple things like fixing a broken data stream.

I realize that we can't spend ever moment working on new features, at the same time if a problem emerges, especially in the tools we all use. The response shouldn't be "Oh well the tools work fine the rest of the time so screw it." I mean, Nightmare can still break FE6 roms if you go "Save" instead of "Save As" Why? I have no earthly idea. One day I'll sit down and have a gander and try to see what's up I guess.

But at the same time, the funniest thing, and probably the saddest thing, about the FEditor bugs regarding FE6? People in fact did know what the cause was, but they simply never equated it to the bugs. In the thread where I posted the fix, Arch asked me "So, did you fix the save patch?" Which just prompted me to blank because I wasn't aware of any bug. And when Arch explained to me that the hack for FE7 and 8 which changes how the save routine saves stats didn't work for FE6 it became one of those "And no one thought to bring this up?" moments. Because that was the exact problem, that the save routine had been ruined by the auto-patch. And the double funny thing is that Cam knew that it was an Auto-Patch causing the problem. And Arch and I don't know how many people knew that there was an Auto-Patch that flat out didn't work right... but that apparently never dawned on anyone!

I have to stress I'm not insulting Cam or Arch, but it just becomes one of those hilarious in retrospect things, like one person knew one piece of evidence, another person the other. And that was the solution to the mystery, but somehow it never came up! It's both so sad and funny!

And yeah, when it comes to helping people, I have always believed that a person has to be willing to show that they are completely devoted to their project. And secondly, and this was always personal. I would never ask someone to do something that - Had I there skills and they mine- I would not personally take on. An example of this is that Cam explained to me about a non-threatening bug in my game, I asked if it was fixable and he answered me honestly. Yes, but it would be such a massive undertaking it would take about a year to complete.

That's a no brainer, I would not be willing to undergo a year for someone elses project. Especially since it's not critically in need of fixing. Asking someone to deliver you the moon on a whim should always lead to you asking "If it was the opposite? would I be bringing them the moon?"

I have always lived by the idea that people would help you, and cover your weaknesses, if you were willing to help yourself. When I started my project I couldn't anything. I had to learn to event, I had to learn to mess around in HxD. And while I'm not good, or even great, at what I do. I can at least help myself. I believe myself to be bad at Map making, but I can make them. And I truly believe that so long as I show that my project is not in fact, something that's just going to die out. And that I'm putting in all the effort I can. That when help is asked for, someone will oblige. Maybe they wont do everything, and that's fine. But I know that I've looked at other peoples projects and thought "Man, if I had known this was going to turn out like this, I would have offered to help." No jokes. I would seriously have gone to them and said, "Hey, listen this is how I honestly feel this is turning out. I would like to help you if you would like me to."

I thank god for the kind souls of people like Temp, who is another person I found off site. Who is so willing to put in the effort when it comes to animations, out of the goodness of his heart. I am thankful for people like TactHack, who isn't just willing to help when it comes to eventing or testing. But when it comes to his own hack is so willing and open to accepting criticism and improving upon them.

So yeah I agree, people need that desire to help themselves. But at the same time, no man or woman can do everything on their own.

[Chocolate Kitty]

I'm not reading all of the page long comments before me, so I'll apologize in advance if I repeat something.

While I agree that a lot of the community as devolved into asshattery, no one seems to take into account how much easier hacking is now than it was when we 'vets' were starting out. We had much less information, truthfully listened a lot more, and were much more willing to try things on our own before asking questions about how somethings work. This is mainly the reason why I hate helping out new people; because they have no willingness to try or learn. Nothing gets done if you don't at least try it first(I've seen countless examples of people posting things they think is right, but are too "afraid" to actually test). Maybe this is just how I approach everything, but I deem it lazy if you don't at least give it a shot first.

Sometime the obvious questions are asked multiple times by the same person. I'm sorry, but if I tell you that 2x+2x = 4x, I'd assume you'd remember that the next time it pops up, not get horribly confused when 2y+2y shows up. I'm not saying you have to remember every single question you ever ask, I'm asking you to try and look for the answer on your own before instantly running to someone else. Especially if the answer is directly in the post before yours.

In an overall stance, I agree with most of the first post, people need to be a bit nicer(which has improved greatly from the last time a topic like this was posted), but like I said the last time, people who want to be helped need to actually try things on their own(or in some cases try things that people tell them before reporting a problem). No one in this community got anywhere on their own, and no one got anywhere by not trying; getting a sort of balance is what you need.

tl; dr version:

People need to try and listen more, and others need to be willing to help if someone asks.

[Wayward Winds]

To be fair, even the best tutorials fall short at times. (Sorry Blazer, but I'm using yours as an example here):

Ultimate Tutorial, Ch. 23/24 (music insertion). It states that to get a song to repeat properly, you need to get the end of each track aligned with the others by inserting rests. Well, my version of Anvil automatically deletes these 'needless rests' when you switch to editing the next track, so that wasn't working. Did I come running for help? No, I experimented, found if you extended each track beyond the intended song end using rests and inserted a random note, then truncated the whole song back to its intended length, then the rests would stay, and all tracks would be automatically aligned. Problem solved!

That's the key. Hit a problem, experiment and try to solve the issue yourself, and only then go for help. Otherwise there's not much effort on the part of the original hacker. Plus you learn better when you fix the problem yourself.

Also, people are more likely to donate portraits or whatever to an in-progress hack that looks like it actually might be quite good, than to the metaphorical blank slate. Again, it boils down to obvious effort on the part of the original hacker.

P. EDIT: Bother, beaten by Kitty. And following on from his 'asking a question already answered', another thing that only takes a moment is the internal search engine. And reading the obvious. Not related to actually hacking, but how many people have reported 'Ch. 15 doesn't work' in Dream of Five's thread? Despite the OP clearly stating how far the current patch goes?

...

...You can see why people get annoyed.

FINAL EDIT: Remember, this is a Newbie saying this. I personally prefer experimenting, then asking questions. I learn better that way. I'll admit, others may not. But how much does it take before 'help me' essentially becomes 'spoon feed me'? Hence my preference for experimentation first, because I refuse to let myself become reliant on others. I'd rather not do this full stop than that.

...It's a fine line at times. Others will prefer or maybe even need to get close to it; I'm keeping my distance. At least until I've got something to give in return.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Wayward Winds

[Mysticblade]

The idea of telling someone new to 'experiment, figure it out yourself' when they don't have a base to work off seems like a pretty bad idea to me. It's just not very newbie friendly, and creates a barrier for people who want to hack. If attitudes like that continue, FE hacking is going to fade away much soon than it should. Leaving people out to dry is only going to drive them off.

[Kon]

The idea is to encourage people to try experiment instead of wringing their hands and running to the more experienced hackers immediately. Newbies shouldn't be chastised or shamed for asking for help, but at the same time they can't always desperately cling to the other hackers, as that doesn't help them learn. Hackers are people too, and constantly being called on for help can wear on their nerves very easily.

They have a legitimate point in people looking up their problems before asking too, as asking questions that have already been answered, sometimes multiple times in the same topic, can give the impression that they didn't even try to read up on the subject.

[Chocolate Kitty]

The idea of telling someone new to 'experiment, figure it out yourself' when they don't have a base to work off seems like a pretty bad idea to me. It's just not very newbie friendly, and creates a barrier for people who want to hack. If attitudes like that continue, FE hacking is going to fade away much soon than it should. Leaving people out to dry is only going to drive them off.

What are you even talking about, there is a base. It's called the entire ROM hacking section and the tutorials that are on every street corner.

[CT075]

it's not "go figure out everything by yourself" it's "don't go running off to someone else every time you're not sure your idea works"

[Arch]

They have a legitimate point in people looking up their problems before asking too, as asking questions that have already been answered, sometimes multiple times in the same topic, can give the impression that they didn't even try to read up on the subject.

This is why someone probably me should compile an FAQ/directory of questions type topic and get that shit pinned.

If we're as organizationally solid as we ought to be, then it's just a simple matter of "you didn't do the reading." I don't blame people for not wanting to sift through pages upon pages of the Questions subforum, honestly.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Arch

[Chocolate Kitty]

It takes 8 seconds to type keywords from your question with the search function. No one says read every page that ever existed.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Kitty of Time

[Arch]

Quiet nephew you're expecting too much from the little buggers.

[Lord Glenn]

Honestly, I feel that there are a few things that certainly aren't helping matters in regards to the section, and KoT (and others, now that I've finished typing this) kind of touched on it already.

Call me "old guard" if you will, but I feel like things end up blowing up extremely quickly because of a lack of effort on the parts of people both new to the hobby and SF in general. And, while Arch's suggestion of a Concepts sub-forum might help, I feel like it would still present issues.

While it is easily poorly organized, SF does have a large number of resources, tutorials, and answers for the community's disposal that are already there - items that could easily be found just by clicking a few links and looking over the page or, heaven forbid, using the Search field at the top of the page. And yet, a large majority of the topics that end up causing these problems seem to be caused because the person who started the topic hasn't bothered looking for something that is fundamentally right in front of their nose. While I'm not against helping or pointing people in the right direction, especially given how chaotic the Resources board can be in terms of organization, I can't help but feel... annoyed (?) that people can't take thirty minutes or less to try and track down something and attempt to solve the problem on their own before reaching out for help if they couldn't figure it out.

The above almost ties in with the whole "someone else do this for me" attitude that seems to be creeping up more frequently, too. People posting new projects seem to far too often expect that someone else will do "Make X" or "Code Y" or "Answer Z" for them without making an effort first, and with the frequency that it's been happening, I can honestly empathize with the people who are skirting the line and continually having to repeat that the user needs to do it themselves, make do with default assets until later, or pay for help, because, frankly, I'm already tired of it and I don't even post much in this section! If I was posting frequently and constantly had to say the same things, I'd be annoyed and snippy about it too. Again, call me "old guard", but I come from the "generation" where you either do what you can and see what happens later, or you use the time for something else and don't bother. (Heck, if I could make every single kind of graphics, I'd have made a hack myself. But I can't do face sprites to save my life, and I'm not going to bother other users for help or waste their time. So, instead, I offer what I *am* good at to projects that I think have potential and that I personally want to see completed.)

Then, even if you take Arch's suggestion into consideration, would this activity change? New users on SF seem particularly keen on not reading the board's rules when they join, so even if we had a Hacking Concepts board, would people actually use it correctly? That is, would they, when they want to create a topic for their first project, even post it in the correct board? Do we force *all* forthcoming hacks to be posted in Concepts first and then "approved" by a staff member to be moved to the main ROM Hacking section once they're not concepts any longer? (Including ones posted by the so-called veterans.) Would new posters, posting in Concepts, actually start to go through our documentation on their own instead of immediately asking for help?

Having a "queue" for Concepts to ROM Hacking certainly feels like a very bad gray area, if you ask me - not to mention that staff members would have to spend extra time paying attention to the board to see what was ready to move up to the main board. They'd have to deal with an increase in PMs from people thinking that their topic was ready to be moved out of Concepts and then have to read through the topic and use their judgment to make a decision. That, of course, could hypothetically lead to issues between members who posted topics in Concepts around the same time and one of the topics was permitted to be moved while the other wasn't. Unlikely, but still possible, and not something that I would want to deal with if I were a current staff member.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Lord Glenn

[Arch]

Look at this shit guys.

L-O-fuckin'-L. Thank God the screens are all dead links.

We all gotta start somewhere.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Arch

[Shin]

I remember when an "ideas" sub-forum was suggested, the thread was locked and it was said it was not up to the public to decide.

Simply having an "ideas" subforum and a "presentation" subforum would easily split those who probably need some advice from those who want to show people what they've done. Of course it depends on user decency to post in the right place, but it'd provide the distinction needed. Plus, it'd mean that people can post ideas without fear of being ridiculed, since people should be able to understand that ideas are probably from newer hackers.

EDIT: I need to learn to type faster. Well, that's something!

Edited November 22, 2013 by Shin

[fuzz94]

What are you even talking about, there is a base. It's called the entire ROM hacking section and the tutorials that are on every street corner.

I remember when I first joined the community, about 2 years ago, that there were a bunch of other people sharing ideas, just like me, and running to the hacking questions forum every time an error came up. About a month or 2 later, the only ones still around were me and NYZgamer3. I'm not gonna sit here and say I didn't ask stupid questions and do stupid things, but I spent a lot of time reading and searching as well, and normally found my answer that way. Some problems have come up so many times that your answer is literally just sitting there. Yeah, it isn't organized, but it's still there somewhere. Take the time to use the search bar, and your problem will be solved.

[Klokinator]

Look at this shit guys.

L-O-fuckin'-L. Thank God the screens are all dead links.

We all gotta start somewhere.

Still more effort than the average post in this board though. Way more effort, it even had screenshots, I assume. Also this was 5 years ago, before FEditor even existed I think.

[Tangerine]

Having a "queue" for Concepts to ROM Hacking certainly feels like a very bad gray area, if you ask me - not to mention that staff members would have to spend extra time paying attention to the board to see what was ready to move up to the main board. They'd have to deal with an increase in PMs from people thinking that their topic was ready to be moved out of Concepts and then have to read through the topic and use their judgment to make a decision. That, of course, could hypothetically lead to issues between members who posted topics in Concepts around the same time and one of the topics was permitted to be moved while the other wasn't. Unlikely, but still possible, and not something that I would want to deal with if I were a current staff member.

This isn't an issue honestly. I already have a moderator that I hired specifically for this section, even as a global mod it has always been her primary job. Heck, she's probably ecstatic about the increase in responsibility, lol!

I can always add this to eclipse's list of sections as well if for some reason it gets out of hand or eCut feels she needs more help. But we aren't dealing with FFTF here, RH is pretty tame.

--

Anyway, I've put the time in and created the section, but it's your responsibilities to make it valuable. Don't just ignore it now because it's separated; make an effort to give feedback and treat new members and project authors with less abrasion. There is no excusing the way some people have been treated in the past, so I hope you're all being serious about this and intend to do your best to help improve the quality of this environment.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Tangerine

[dondon151]

The idea of telling someone new to 'experiment, figure it out yourself' when they don't have a base to work off seems like a pretty bad idea to me. It's just not very newbie friendly, and creates a barrier for people who want to hack.

on the contrary, this is the exact mindset necessary for someone who wants to develop into mostly a self-sufficient hacker. even if you followed well-written tutorials to a T, you're going to encounter problems that you should be able to figure out on your own. (that said, the existing tutorials are pretty jumbled and some of the tools are pretty wacky, too.)

i'm going to play a bit of devil's advocate against cam's OP. first, i agree that it's bad behavior to call ideas "dumb." however, i don't know if people really even do that in the first place. if that is a problem, then that's the only real problem: i disagree with everything else that was brought up. if some new guy comes along and starts a thread with nothing but a plan and a recruitment plea, then you know that that project is doomed from the start. there is literally no conceivable response that is not either unhelpful or concessional: either you say "go learn how to do this yourself" or "let me spend a bunch of time that i don't have holding your hand through this."

the issues with this community are that it doesn't have a great number of experienced hackers, the experienced hackers don't have the time to commit to helping out every single person with trivial or difficult questions, and the influx of potential hackers is rather small. these aren't problems that can be addressed with a simple behavior change. the members of the ROMhacking community whom i queried when i was just starting out were rather helpful with their answers (actually the biggest beef that i have with the ROMhacking community is that they're almost entirely super casual players, but that's an entirely different matter). the core members of the community haven't really changed since then, so i can only arrive at one of two conclusions:

1. i'm way fucking smarter than other aspiring ROMhackers

2. the quality of aspiring ROMhackers is generally abysmal

and if it turns out that conclusion 2 is correct, then i don't see much of a need to rally for a behavior change.

EDIT:

One could do much better helping, and second best, by staying shut-up and saying nothing at all.

actually i think this is really the best policy, but you can't count on people on the internet to agree to shut up.

Edited November 22, 2013 by dondon151

[Celice]

As a note, we are not entitled to the work and progress of others. If a new individual comes and doesn't understand what they are doing, aren't familiar enough with forums or the hobby to know what to search, or don't yet have the experience and intuition to "feel" around the issues they're being stuck against, there are a couple options available. Going out of one's way to ridicule, bluntly tell them to figure it out, or suggest their project isn't worth finishing/something is amiss with the author is unnecessary, unhelpful, and hostile. One could do much better helping, and second best, by staying shut-up and saying nothing at all. Not only does this behavior discourage any new life or progress in the research of our favorite games, it means there are less new things for us to experience. Everyone benefits from having a new hack available. Helping out means we get some new life in the series, a new game when Nintendo is busy making money and planning new gimmicks.

If the new person is not to make any progress, that will happen regardless of whether someone helps them or not. And, let's say that one does help another some ways and the project gets dropped: anything created along the way ought to now be open resources for anyone else to use or create, as well as practice along the way. Anything donated isn't somehow lost as the project dissipates, but remains just as it was when it was initially submitted. Dearness is not a word familiar to romhacking circles, though often some members of the community misinterpret it as being so.

Few people are going to have the drive and the foreknowledge to carry themselves very far in a romhacking hobby, and one shouldn't make an active attempt towards hedging in this small audience in the first place. Very often, people gain charitable interest and passion as they learn, as they become more proficient in the hobby. They tend to act as the new pillars for the community, as they are more understanding both in the process of gaining knowledge where one only knew ambiguity, and also the empathy in how gain such knowledge. Those who had the natural drive and capability to learn and create on their own tend to remain ambivalent to the community, and wrongly suppose everyone has the same bootstraps as they themselves had when they first investigated the hobby.

It is fine for one to, in an ugly manner, feel others are lazy because they aren't familiar with the hobby, because they aren't sure what or how to locate the info they aren't even aware they need. It's fine, in an ugly manner, to suppose the project wouldn't live, with or without help. That's up to one's own conscious to bear. It ought not seep and cover a public forum--have decency, and keep one's own suspicions and faults to themselves. There is a much larger group of people trying to figure out the hobby, who are making cool and interesting projects for the public or themselves to play and enjoy, and a much larger group who genuinely care about new content and discovery (just look at Super Mario Central, romhacking dot net, and the Super Metroid romhacking communities as an example). It would be highly prudent for the vocal minority to, rather than attempt in a nonsensical way to dissuade new members from getting their project off to a start, to concentrate on their own endeavors. If they wish to help, they should make a concentrated effort, instead of a passive, half-hearted ambiguous gesture that is ultimately token and bears ill fruit.

This said, I was just talking with Furby a while ago, an old hat from FESS who messed around with romhacking while Iggy Koopa was around. Furby ditched the community because of such hostilities, such elitism (the very concept of a "vet" is absurd in a romhacking community, and is a fabricated gown, not one begat from experience and knowledge). He is one of quite many, sadly. But at the same time, it is perhaps best, for why would one willingly send new members into place unwilling to aid them? There are far better things to do with one's life than deal with the unwilling.

[Thor Odinson]

I feel like there's two types of people who post ideas.

The first type is those who have an idea and is willing to learn to do the work themselves but may or may not have an idea where to start. Those are fine. If they're stuck somewhere and have at least tried, there's no reason not to point them in the right direction. In my school, at least, as a CS major, we're given assignments with specifications after learning the concepts in lecture/given a basic rundown and the api and we have to figure out how to code things ourselves, but there's no penalty for, should you be stuck, going to the professor and asking some help go through roadblocks, even if you're stuck at the very beginning and don't know where to start. This way we learn through experimentation and lots of headbashing, but aren't quite left to fend on our own. I feel it could work for our modding scene as well. As long as they're willing to actually learn, it'd be nice of us to give some help.

Then there's the other type. Plops down this idea and expects people to just do the work for them for free handed to them on a silver platter, with no indication that they're going to at least try to learn even the basics of modding. I'm sorry, modders and programmers and artists, we have 24 hour days and lives and ourselves to feed. It's apparently a really common phenomena in the actual game development scene as well, according to one of my professors. Too many game designers, not enough devs and artists, and a lot of game designers feel entitled to ask devs and artists to work for them for little-to-none compensation (someone had the gall to go up to my professor and ask him to work for free). I see no reasons to encourage those people.

[DH_Ninja]

I don't intend on posting a wall and I feel the need to rant a little.

I agree with the above. The elitism and the hostility it breeds is a problem. In a commission thread I posted ( http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=43100 ) the first thing I was met with was, "Why should anyone put their time into this? (At least you're putting money on the table, but...)." Yes. I had no screenshots and no hacking thread. I've been met with some pretty cool people who have done request for me in the past with little discussion and I was also offering to pay for anyone who would be interested in contributing. But the question that was raised was just...aggravating. I felt pretty pissed off to be honest. But the question implies, "Why do you matter? Are you important enough to warrant working with? Is this project just going to be dumped?".

Even the post after that was frustrating. Offering help for 100 dollars or if you're spending about 8 hours on the sprite: 240 dollars. 100 dollars is most of my paycheck and 240 is more than I make in a week. Worst yet it felt like the above was being justified.

Eventually people who I am still working with did show up and so far the results have been amazing and the people have been more amazing. I've seen how some people who have little to show get treated and really it's not too far off from this.

People need to change otherwise things aren't going to be getting any better.

[Klokinator]

I was actually puzzled why nobody offered to help DH_Ninja, of all people, one of the guys who worked on Sacred Contentions and a couple other big hacks. Like, this isn't some nobody no-name, this is a well known person ffs.