Global guild rules and Timeframe discussion

[haloOfTheSun]

You are about to get lampmoosed beyond your wildest dreams, mister.

[modern algebra]

BIGARADE!

you are so going to be smitten for trying to impede my vision. it does not behoove me to do so today, but you're living on borrowed time penisbreath.

[Falcon]

Heil mein fuhrer, modern algebra.

[Zylos]

MA vs. Irock, round one. FIGHT.

*waits for the first fatality*


Oh, and I like the idea of starting January 1st, going to maybe the end of March.

[Grafikal]

haha, this topic got funnier the further down i read.

Uhm. So about the time period. I like the 3 months and 4 releases. I mean, I don't care if it ends up being like 4 months and 4 releases or something. But I still like 3-4. Also, I don't think anyone said that each release would be a demo. Or at least I missed that part and just automatically assumed it'd be up to the guilds as to what they would release. I just thought it was a good idea to have a required release of some sort. Lol, actually, come to think of it, I don't think anything different was suggested since I mentioned the 3 months 4 releases. That's basically MA's staggering thing anyways. They're not all demos. Idk, I thought I mentioned multiple times that at the first release it would be up to the guilds as to what they release. I think I keep using the example: 1 Guild would release something like a story and character development at the first release, while the 2nd Guild would feel like releasing a title screen and a story.~ I don't really care what each guild releases as long as it's somewhat substantial. Not something like releasing main characters one release then releasing just their history the next release and stuff. I think releasing a demo would be up to each guild if they even want to, or maybe that'll just be the 3rd release that they have and the 4th release is the game. Something like that.

[Zeriab]

3 month isn't very much time if the users on average put say 4 hours of work per week.
I would personally say we start the 1st of January and then finish the 30th of June with a looming deadline never being more than a month away.

I think Nammy had a good point in not wanting to releasing a demo. Seeing the finish demo without having seen the intermediate demos does sound more fun for the people outside. They get their teasers :3
I can tell that if I become a guild leader then I will force the build per month over my team. (I'll try to even if I don't become one)

*hugs*

[tSwitch]

I said I didn't want to release demos because they are decryptable, more than because it'd give away information.

[Esmeralda]

Decrypting them is a lot of effort, and I doubt whoever did it wouldn't learn a lot of importance. They'll basically be seeing whatever is in the demo or game from just playing it anyways, if it's something that absolutely must not fall into the wrong hands they can hold from implementing it until they have to (a script or something, maybe?). Yeah ._.;;

[tSwitch]

not really, there are programs that have been written, you feed them an archive and they decrypt it for you.

Event systems, scripts, database information, anything that is encrypted would be up for grabs, which defeats the purpose of encryption.

[joy]

Dirty bastards.

[Esmeralda]

not really, there are programs that have been written, you feed them an archive and they decrypt it for you.

Event systems, scripts, database information, anything that is encrypted would be up for grabs, which defeats the purpose of encryption.

The only way to be really safe then is to not release it, which sort of defeats the purpose Custom scripts and graphics are sure pretty heavy stuff to steal, but if you have none of that and simple event systems then I see no harm in it. We're a relatively small community too and any blatant theft would be noticed. We get people from .org and RRR anyway.

[tSwitch]

I don't care if it's decrypted after the thing is over, I just don't want them decrypting and stealing our work while it's still being made.

If we're making games and one team steals another team's work, and turns out an identical system, it causes so many issues, I want to avoid it.

[Esmeralda]

Well yeah I guess, but the guilds are being pretty closely monitored. Anyone would notice if someone stole from the others game, lol. I think we're above that

[Grafikal]

Lol, I don't think our team would be stealing from you ._.
We have a pretty good grasp on things we're probably going to be using anyways, and I know for certain that Joy and I would be looking out for things like that. I know that I can easily recognize a lot of resources and if it was a certain person's or not. I'll be asking all of the members that have any resources to contribute to supply with credits and a source link if necessary. If we find something very suspicious, we'll ask Halo or MA about it and they'll check to see if you guys are using it or have been hiding it or something. Plus, I thought that's what Halo and MA were basically going to do anyways as overseeing the projects at the same time, unless I was mistaken.

[tSwitch]

I'm just paranoid enough grafikal :p

Besides, you can't say that your game won't be influenced by what you see, nor can we.  What if you see a concept in our demo for something, which causes you to change or modify or even try to reverse engineer to apply it in some way to your game.  Do you see where I'm trying to go with this?

[Grafikal]

Yeah, I mean, everyone is influenced by everything we see everyday, so I can't disagree that we would be influenced by your information just as much as you'd be influenced by ours. That's understandable.

I know what you mean about then taking information and trying to directly incorporate it into our game, however I think that'd be cheating. I know that I'm not a cheater unless it's an art history exam. So I know that I wouldn't be the one to do this. I'm very confident in Joy that she wouldn't either. If what you post would be made public and that if any of our members tried to suggest things directly related to your game then I know both Joy and I would reject it. Just as an example, if we saw that you were making your game and you used A LOT of green or maybe blue tints for a strong ambient feeling throughout your game (or if it were to help a major concept in your game), I would think that taking that same similar colors would be stealing, or even perhaps just tinting our game redish for the same reasons would be stealing. However, it'd be possible that instead you would influence us to think "Oh hey, using tints to set the ambience of a map or cutscene is an important idea that would work well with our already existing information". Like that kind of stuff is the influence I would expect to see from either of us. It ends up making either game better. I used that example since I pretty much do the whole tinting thing a lot anyways. So don't steal it lol. Idk, I'm pretty trusting in people and I place my full trust in both you an Irock that you wouldn't plagiarize work either.

If you're concerned about a story or something about a story were stolen, then I would imagine that even less likely. I mean, I've asked all the writers to come to the guilds with ideas already flowing. My reason is that when we get around to coming up with the story, it's where we would just meet and bounce these ideas around until we find a decent very basic naked plot. Then from there we work the details. I would also imagine that the story would be in the first release. So I would imagine that you guys could pretty much compare/contrast from what we said and what the final game ends up being. (Also, if you guys have like your own Story Forum or Topic like I imagine we would have, then MA or Halo could just check up on us on occassion.) I don't think a demo should really include any plot twists and stuff unless it's 1 plot twist right at the end of the demo to make people want more or something lol. I think if we were to steal that 1 plot twist, it'd be pretty obvious

[joy]

All games are going to have overlapping concepts/systems, it's just the limitation of the system and the genres. There's varying levels of similarities between games, and while no one will cry foul over two games both having a system where you battle monsters and gain exp, who's to say at what level of similarity someone will become suspicious at?

I think because of that, even though I trust everyone involved completely, in order to remove any suspicion we should keep playable builds private until the final release. That way there's no way there can be any form of theft, and any similarities will be coincidence or just due to similarity of the programming and genres.

For gameplay updates, or if you just have to show off a system/scene for publicity, I think we should limit it to screenshots and videos.

There is absolutely no way we can prevent each other's games from impacting one another on some level, but you have it from me that, in the interest of the community having a varied experience between the two games, if I make any changes in response to your guild's work, it'll be to diversify our project from it.

There...I was long-winded.

[tSwitch]

I know you can't prevent influence, I just think demos would influence far more than just screenshots or information.

[Grafikal]

That's cool. I can agree to not release playable demos. It doesn't really bother me. I like what Joy had said about screenshots and videos. Instead of demos, we could post videos.

[Zeriab]

I'm not talking about actually releasing the build. Other than MA & Halo nobody outside my guild would see the builds.
As for efford in decrypting the encrypted games. It took me an hour or two to write a java file and compile it into an executable .jar files so you can put the .jar file in the game directory, press enter and wait a couple of minutes before it's been decrypted.
It's piece of cake really, if you know what you are doing, and it's not time consuming. It took 5 minutes to decrypt 80 MB.

*hugs*

[EvilM00s]

I'm inclined to agree with Skanker; I think we as a community value originality so much that theft is out of the question. Then there's all the scrutiny- if theft of any idea or script or the like occurs, it would be found immediately. I also like what joy says, though- to prevent theft from occuring altogether, don't post a build. Screens and such would work fine, I think. Video even better.