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djpretzel

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Posts posted by djpretzel

    16 Bit Collective (16bc.org) Non-Profit for Education & Collaboration in SNES Music

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    If it's only SNES music, you may want to consider changing the name; there were, after all, more than one 16 bit system ;) Just a thought

    It's definitely easy to make a taxonomical gripe about this... then again, the ship has already sailed - "8-bit" has become synonymous with "chiptune" when in fact 8-bit microprocessors are quite capable of sample playback.

    Bottom line? In the world of VGM & chiptunes as well, "8-bit" is used & abused as a matter of course, and is more like a catch-all to describe a certain aesthetic. Naming a site "16-bit Collective" and having it just be SNES digs the hole deeper still, but... well, there was already a hole to begin with, and no one seemed to care much about getting out of it...

    At any rate, good luck on the site!

    Previous FF6 Kickstarter *cancelled* BUT new one in the works!!

    in Announcements

    Posted

    Update (2012-08-20): We worked extensively with Square Enix and were able to reach a fair & reasonable agreement, but after doing so we were informed by Kickstarter that they are technically unable to restore our project.

    1. The previous kickstarter is now effectively dead.
    2. Kickstarter staff have informed us that there is no need to cancel pledges, as credit cards will NEVER be charged, but feel free to do so anyways if you prefer! We did ask if they could just auto-cancel/delete all pledges, but apparently (as with restoring our project) they are technically unable to do that.
    3. Obviously, this is disappointing; we apologize for any inconvenience & frustration it may have caused you, and we are thankful for all the amazing support you've given us.
    4. Now that we’ve got everything sorted out, we're going to TRY AGAIN!! Stay tuned for info on a new announcement, and thanks (again) for your patience and support!

    OCR Mascot Bios - 20 more up for grabs!

    in Projects

    Posted

    Dafydd - Thanks for being understanding.

    We can't discus specific details of our interactions, but know that I will ALWAYS do my best to represent the contributions of all artists, staff, and members of the community. Speaking in generalities, many companies consider their characters an extension of their branding, and want to avoid any misconstrued endorsement or sense of something being "official" that could be perceived. While my personal belief is that fan use of artwork in this context only serves to popularize these characters and their worlds - free advertising, in a sense - I acknowledge that my personal opinion matters less than the copyright owner's wishes. While it's an interesting line of discussion, we're limited in what we can disclose, and I'd prefer that we focus on moving forward.

    As a side note, for the existing mascot pages, one solution might be employing fan art. We wouldn't reinstate the fan art in the upper right hand corner, but it could liven up the pages themselves. We need to work on a basic boilerplate licensing agreement that we can use for fan art - I think we need to start exploring more synergy between the VG fan arrangement & VG fan art communities in general, and this is a good catalyst.

    OCR Mascot Bios - 20 more up for grabs!

    in Projects

    Posted

    I've got an important announcement regarding mascots:

    1. We will soon be taking steps to remove certain site mascots from Square Enix, totaling around ~32.
    2. I want to stress that this is something we willingly agreed to do; while I explained the hard work and creativity that went into the bios for these, the copyright owner is concerned about their usage - as is their right - and we are complying with their wishes.
    3. The affected mascot BIOS themselves can remain online, sans art. I know that without the link from the right corner, they won't get much of a spotlight, but at least your work will remain online.
    4. Temporarily, the mascot images will be replaced with a single mascot, Mega Man X, and we will update the redirects to all point to his bio.
    5. Going forward we will not be adding any new SE mascots.
    6. We will need to find some new mascots! Super Meat Boy is a lock, but we'll do a thread soon in the main Community forum to see about some others.
    7. As always, I want to thank everyone for their hard work on this project AND for your understanding as to why this step is something that, while we wouldn't make in vacuum, is a respectful response to a reasonable request from the copyright owners.

    We can't answer "why" questions or provide any additional information, but if you've got questions about logistics moving FORWARD, please let me know.

    An Observation about OCR

    in Site Issues & Feedback

    Posted

    We may need to do some themed mixfloods to catch up. While this gives a little less "homepage time" to the included mixes, I think we can make it work as long as we can come up with a good grouping/concept. Newcomer floods, secondary album mixfloods, game series floods, etc. Thoughts?

    An Observation about OCR

    in Site Issues & Feedback

    Posted

    What languages are used? Beyond the obvious one being PHP?

    Backend-only? XSLT. Right now the backend is completely custom PHP plus XSLT for templating, but one of the first things I'm trying to do is move to CakePHP 2.2. I'd still like to keep the XSLT though, to me it's much saner than the dozens of language-specific templating solutions out there.

    An Observation about OCR

    in Site Issues & Feedback

    Posted

    We love volunteers, and all staff are basically long-term volunteers, and in a sense I'm a volunteer too. When it comes to software development, however, zircon correctly pointed out that flexibility and long-term commitment are VERY hard to come by. People wanna code in whatever language they want, however they want, whenever they want, especially when it's for free. While as a programmer myself, I can sympathize with such desires, they ultimately don't contribute nearly as effectively as something that colors within the lines and works with what we've already got.

    Because of all that, I was hoping to draft requirements for a lot of new site functionality and then investigate actually using site funds to outsource some of it, while keeping an eye on all development myself and making sure we're getting our money's worth. In order to do that, however, the site needs more of a budget.

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