Castle Paradox

[MultiColoredWizard]

Um, no Leroy. GAME ARCHIVAL. And if you wish to overwrite it, you can, just re-upload the game.

[Inferior Minion]

First off Fyre, how would you know how easy it would be to separate reviews and game entries...you haven't seen my code, you haven't seen the database, you haven't successfully written your own working script, and you're constantly bashing my work when your site has resorted to the prewritten, all inclusive PHP-Nuke.

There is no game deletion button for standard users 'cause (as MCW has stated) CP's gamelist is intended for archival purpose.

If this site was just a forum where you could advertise your game and chat, there's no point to the gamelist...go use geocities or angelfire and give the forum a link. You end up with a community whose games are scattered across broken links and 404 errors.

Guess what Fyre, not everyone on CP has heard of Ends of the Earth....new members are constantly joining, the OHR community is still growing. You treat it as though everyone here was at Zant, everyone here visited RPG Online, everyone here has been an integral part of the past 5 years...I've never heard of RPG Online, I never registered at Zant, I checked the boards a few times to get a laugh at arguments CN told me about on the way to school...I couldn't tell you who made Ends of the Earth, I've never played it, nor could I tell you where to download it. Yes, the creator has left the community, maybe adding the game to the gamelist would be "artificial life support", but having it readily available on a page that isn't "long gone" (as you put it) allows new users to get exposed to more games. A great game can't be remembered if the people who know about it leave. Even if it's just a demo, or it's something the author might be ashamed of now...it was a stepping stone and people can learn from it.
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[fyrewulff]

One: I KNOW it's easy because I KNOW how mySQL databases work. It wouldn't be that HARD to SEPERATE the REVIEWS from THEIR GAME LISTINGS. AND HOW DO YOU REVIEW GAMES THAT ARE NOT ON THE LIST? OHRRPGCE.com has Reviews seperate from listings.

Two: I like you you say I "resorted" to the pre-written phpNuke when 95% of this site's code is guess what.. phpBB's. If you can use phpBB as a base, you should have no problem with me using phpNuke as a base.


Three:It doesn't matter if it's supposed to be an archive, let's see...

[Shadowiii]

[fyrewulff]

[Roach Lir]

Your all acting like children. Fyrewulff, does it matter? Does it really matter? I'm sure OHRRPGCE.com will be a good site once it's up and running, and will be very popular. It's nothing to fight over. OHRRPGCE.com and Castle Paradox shouldn't be in competition.
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Dark Legacy - 0.3%

[Shadowiii]

I'm not trying to argue with you, I misunderstood what you were saying, Fyre. However...

[Rinku]

fyre, not all ohr sites end. hamsterrepublic has been up for quite awhile.

also, i have no problem with this site mirroring operation ohr: in my understanding cody gave the ip rights to moogle1, and he gave them to aeth. aeth now 'owns' operation ohr. if they wanted to archive rpgonline, or ohr monthly, then that'd be a different story, but as it is, it's up to them to do what they want with what they own.

i do agree with fyre about the ability to delete games though. but seeing as one can edit a game's description, screenshot, and game, and replace all of those with blanks, you CAN delete your game. it's just a lot more complicated. so if anything, all you can do is complain that castle paradox makes it unnecessarily hard to delete your games. but it doesn't make it impossible.

also, this thread has to do with what we can do to make the ohrrpgce "community" better, and things like the game list and archiving old ohr sites have very little to do with how good the games are that are made in the ohrrpgce.

no one plays old games anyway: take a look at origin. it's uploaded, without vidual's permission (thus it breaks ip -- i can only assume it's aeth who did that because he asked me to send him origin). but despite that it criminally breaks ip to be up there, it's not even downloaded very much: last i checked it had something like 11 downloads. it doesn't make the ohr better to upload games without the author's permission, so i agree with fyre about the principle, but most of his accusations about the breaking of this principle don't actually break it.

(of course, you could also say i broke ip by sending origin to aeth, but i assumed that since he was asking for it he had had it at one time and that it was a replacement for a copy that he lawfully downloaded)

(also i'm not saying i never break ip myself -- for example i uploaded a fixed version of magnus. i did that knowing the consequences however, and for a different reason, and i felt that that reason outweighed the costs.)
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Tower Defense Game

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

[fyrewulff]

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Just an addendum since several people posted in the time it took to write all that. FFH and TS1 were uploaded automatically without my ever having been contacted about it way back in February of 2003. When I found out, I said 'I'm the author of those games, and here's the updated versions' and the problem was then solved. Since at the time I was looking for a place to host my games at the time (on account of my ignorance in being able to make my own site, I have to rely on Thellos for that, and the site's still outdated) CP seemed ideal, and up they went. The rest is history.

[Pepsi Ranger]

Unfortunately there are way too many points to address to really make this post worth much, but there are a couple things that I'd like to add or clarify as the case may be.

In response to the question of why the game list should matter if CP will eventually disappear like all the other OHR fan sites to date, I see the issue a bit like this:

The argument was that this may or may not be a problem because of the simple fact that a forgotten OHR site will be host to hundreds of forgotten OHR games, which makes hosting them permanently a moot point. Naturally, this problem lays true with all OHR sites past and present that no longer update or exist, so CP hasn't really buried itself yet.

Where the problem could feasibly be greater than that (and thus actually making this whole deletion/intellectual property rights thing worth considering for reasons beyond simple changes of the author's heart), is that if by some remote chance the author of the game decides to adapt the story to book or movie form (or dare we even dream professional gaming format) and manage to get it published/produced, the owner of the copyright may in fact want to own all other versions of the story as well. Keep in mind that when I use the word "owner," I'm referring to the publisher or the production studio executives (the people with the money and the lawyers), not the author (the guy who's broke and living in his parents' basement). This could in turn raise the demand that all unlicensed and/or unauthorized versions of the work be terminated from circulation. That would include its original format--the little 2MB OHR game that can be downloaded off of Castle Paradox or OHRRPGCE.com.

The natural solution of course would be for the administrators of the various websites (in this case CP) to delete the game upon request. All of the admins here agreed that they would delete a game for special occasions (unless I'm just imagining that), and that of course would be a special occasion.

But then there's the one possibility (and understand that this entire scenario is pretty farfetched anyway, but you never know) that CP could someday still exist even though it's technically dead. Imagine RPG Online if you will. I think most of the links to that site have been destroyed and its host site deleted, but what if it had been created on a stable server that still existed today? Steve let it go years ago and no one took over for him, and yet if it were on a stable server, it could be visited and used to download games from even today. So what if Vidual for example had written a book called "Origin," starring a character named Covn who just returned home by train from a great war? The publisher would want to capitalize on all the sales and adaptations, right? Since the publisher was the first to buy the rights to the story, the OHR game (which may have come first) would also belong to the publisher (in theory anyway). Now realistically the publisher would never find out about the OHR version unless Vidual spoke up about it, but if in the off-chance the publisher surfed the net and found ORIGIN.RPG on the website, he or she would want it taken off immediately by right of ownership and copyright law. Normally this wouldn't be a problem; Steve would simply take the game down by publisher's request. Except Steve doesn't run the site anymore. It just exists. No one in charge can actually take the game down because no one is in charge. And Vidual is the one stuck in the middle.

Now cut to the present and plug CP into the spaces where RPG Online was the subject of the story. Five years down the road Eggie may write his grand literary epic about Urban Fantasy and sell it to Barnes and Noble. But lo and behold he can't do much with the project because he's stuck with his newbie OHR game on a site that may still exist, but has long since been abandoned by its creators and administrators, thus trapping him in a licensing limbo forever because he can't take his old game down.

And I think that's one of the points about deletion and copyright that's trying to be made in many shorter paragraphs throughout the latter portion of this thread. Again, my example is practically unrealistic, especially considering the flexibility of the game list's uploading abilities (other sites required you to submit them rather than post them yourself, which made replacing a file with a text message impossible--for us internet retards anyway), but it's still a scenario that has faint possibility, and thus makes the argument reasonable.

In any case, that's my conspiracy theory on the matter. Hope it was good for laughs.

The second point that I wanted to make was about Operation: OHR's ownership. Again the issue is practically null and void, but it should clear up some behind-the-scenes history.

Cody Watts was the founder and original owner of O:OHR. He created the site out of the desire to replace the ashes of RPG Online so that all of us dedicated OHR users would have some sort of community legacy to continue. At the time, RPG Online's death meant no new articles or reviews for gamers and creators to benefit from. It also meant opening the ground for a much more deficient and impractical way to circulate new games into the community. Cody didn't want that lack of material or inability to find new games to remain untouched for long, so he created O:OHR to fill the void. And it had a rough start for the most part. Games were only submitted for review (the O:OHR game list didn't exist until just before Cody left), hardly anybody wrote articles, and only two games were reviewed. It stayed like this for two months. Because I felt bad for Cody for creating a site that nobody participated in, I decided to write a couple game reviews to help get the blood flowing. And bear in mind that I wasn't a name here yet, so it was a bit intimidating to just throw something of mine on the internet for any random passerby to see (review or not). But for some reason that helped because then a couple other guys stepped up to the plate and started to post some reviews. And then the articles came in more frequently. Then there were the features...

And pretty soon thereafter O:OHR became what it was created to be--the next big community news, article, review, and game site.

But then Cody started to get tired of it. That's when he shared responsibility with Tarot Master. The workload was becoming quite a bit for one person to handle exclusively (at least that was the impression he gave of it), so he had TM do periodic updates. And then shortly thereafter Tarot Master took over just about everything (by Cody's request and approval). Not long after that Cody gave us the first incarnation of the game list and then packed his bags and said his goodbyes to the community. From that point forward it was all on Tarot Master...

For a few months anyway.

Shortly before Cody left, he gave the administrative "keys" to Moogle1 in order to help out with short order updates and such. I don't remember exactly why he needed Moogle, but I think it was supposed to be temporary. My history lesson is a bit fuzzy there, but the point was that Moogle wasn't originally brought on board to take over, he was only brought on to help out. When Cody left, TM pretty much did everything, with Moogle popping in only occasionally to post minor updates. And that's the way it was for awhile.

But then Tarot Master came to a point where he couldn't give anymore of his time to the site, so he left.

And that's when Cody (the original owner and founder of O:OHR) wanted to close its doors forever. He still owned the site at the time.

I urged him to keep it open long enough to let the remainder of the games waiting for review get reviewed, and also to allow me enough time to post the Behind the Epic episodes that he and Tarot Master both agreed to host for me. Moogle and I also tried to urge him to keep it open for as long as Moogle was willing and able to keep it updated, but Cody wasn't terribly supportive of the idea. Even though he was cool with letting the remaining games get updated, he wasn't too keen with leaving full responsibility on Moogle's shoulders, primarily because Moogle updated so infrequently. After a promise on Moogle's part to update more regularly, Cody reluctantly agreed to keep it open as long as the site's format was preserved in its original state and as long as the updates stayed current. But the terminal condition was that once Moogle ended his season as lead updater, the site would be closed forever. Cody didn't want anybody he didn't know (or trust) running his site. That was essentially why he wanted it closed after Tarot Master couldn't fulfill his responsibilities anymore and after I admitted that I wouldn't keep up with it very much if I were given the task.

I remember that it was somewhere in that time frame that I gave him the name of two prospects who were interested in taking over O:OHR after the "Death of O:OHR" crisis began. One was a well-versed HTML artist (or PHP, or one of those fancy browser formats) who had this visionary concept for the "new O:OHR." The other one was not so high-tech, but really wanted O:OHR to stay alive, and would've gladly kept the site up-to-date, making its original owner proud. That person (the second one) was the one I thought had more promise, and was in effect the one I tried to convince Cody to consider. That second candidate's name was Aethereal.

Let me re-emphasize the word "tried" here. The fact was that Cody didn't know him, and thus did not trust him with his site, and was thus not in favor of giving the keys over to anybody anymore, but would have rather let O:OHR fade away into the archives with RPG Online and the other sites that preceded it.

And that was where I had last discussed the matter with Cody.

Sometime later O:OHR was mysteriously updated by this virtual unknown named Aethereal, and was greeted by a comment from Moogle saying, "I don't remember giving you the password," which either referred to the email address or the website itself (Aeth would have to clarify this one).

And so the fabled Operation:OHR website lived on for another season, with Aethereal doing his best to pay respect to Cody's original vision. I haven't actually spoken to Cody since the last turnover, so as far as I know he wasn't aware of O:OHR's fate or Aethereal's dedication to the site until CP came about, but I chose to let the issue and my involvement in the matter die after that since the site's integrity remained intact after everybody else previously in charge gave up on it and Aethereal took over.

Aethereal would have to tell the rest of the story as far as the transference of ownership goes since I don't know what conversations transpired between him and the other Admins at the time. But the above is my account of what Cody talked to me about.

And yes, I was offered the position after Tarot Master left, but as I stated before I'm the wrong guy to leave an entire community website to. I'm not that well versed in web related things and I have a problem with prioritizing. So you all should be glad that I turned it down.

So, those were my two points. In case anyone forgot where in the world these questions were asked (or addressed), they're somewhere in this thread. I don't really remember myself. Reread the thread and you will find it.
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Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2

[no_shot]

The fuck do you mean Charbile is dead?
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Play Horrible Fantasy NOW!

[fyrewulff]

[Inferior Minion]

Fyre...you are a bitter, bitter man
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