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Modded games


proghodet

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I have some games from the early 2000's, which are modded versions of other games - in my case Half-life. I know some of them became their own game, such as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Left 4 Dead and Natural Selection.

Should I add such games to the database or not, even if they didn't become a game on their own? (Vampire Slayer, The Specialists and others would be examples of this)

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I would like to say yes, but I don't think so. Right now, the focus is legit released games. Even DOS has this sort of issue to an extent, and it's really hard to know what was "officially released", what constitutes official. I make a game, I put it out somewhere, I've officially put it out. xD This kind of goes with the Romhacks and Expansions discussion, I think the Database and LB should be updated to have check boxes for these things in the metadata. Rom hack can get added, but it needs to be marked as such, and with expansions I think there is another better method to include that data on one entry, unless a game forces them to be separate entries and not one entry anymore. It's certainly a conversation worth having, because it's fairly confusing.

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Sure, I don't disagree, but the focus has to be officially released games currently, as that's what we're set up for, and that certainly might change. I've been debating on letting open the flood gates of rom hacks and homebrew, more so homebrew, but I certainly want a Rom Hack / Homebrew tag. If it's a stand alone mod, then I would probably count that under Rom Hack, so Rom Hack / Mod? However, if it's a mod that goes in to a game and you would otherwise not be able to tell (like Skyrim) unless you launched the game and saw mods installed, then I would say that those don't deserve to go in the database. Basically, individual mods shouldn't be in our database. I would even like a tag for English Fan Translated  games as well. In this case, where it was a mod of an existing game, do you need to launch CS to launch one of the mods? Or was it a standalone released product? That could be considered Homebrew, potentially. I guess it could be Homerew / Shareware, it's almost the same thing... but it's hard to figure out what.

I know that I wouldn't want to end up adding 15 different tag options... well... maybe, if you selected it like you did a region, but then my concern becomes quality control. If it's an english translation, that's something that should be attached to existing entries. If it's a standalone rom hack, then that could deserve it's own entry, but then it needs to follow the same rules as everything else, and most of those games probably don't have specialized artwork (I know people make special artwork, but every rom hack doesn't have that luxury). Chances are a homebrew title has artwork, but it still needs to follow each guideline. So while having entries for these games seems like a good idea, quality control will inherently be even worse in most cases, unless there is a dedicated user out there who makes the artwork, the creator created it, or someone associated to the project or who loved the project helped and made it.

Or could a better, more fleshed out Additional Apps feature be figured out instead? Why not have all your rom hacks listed under the game it's associated with inside of LB instead? Artwork wouldn't have to be worried about, but being able to bulk add multiple entries to one game would need to be a requirement almost. We could even carry that over to the Database instead. Have a section for Rom Hacks and Mods, that goes on the original games page, with a few common names it could be, and during import if it's found it's attached to the game it's attached to on the Database? Homebrew I'm not sure we could get around, that might have to go the tag route, since it could be original creation or a spiritual successor, or a fan made game. This can easily carry over in to PC as well, Homebrew / Fan Game. I think this last paragraph might be the perfect compromise?

Thoughts?

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In my opinion must be separated from the real games lists. They could overload any entry or list. For example there's hundreds of super mario world hacks. If we bulk it in the super mario world entry, is insane, and if we keep togetherthe romhacks with the real games, we could pass hours seeing only hacks before we find the real ones, and the scrapper could make crazy associations and asigns romhacks names to legit names, because the romhackers are plenty of imagination naming their creations.

Keep separated is my vote.

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5 hours ago, SentaiBrad said:

 In this case, where it was a mod of an existing game, do you need to launch CS to launch one of the mods? Or was it a standalone released product?

Half-Life was the original game, and in order to play Counter-Strike, you needed to write -game cstrike in the parameter for the half-life executable. Same with all the other mods i'm referring to :)

But I agree, in that it should not include like minecraft mods, or mods that just alter small stuff ingame - they should be "full fledged", to a certain extent - it should be a whole other feel to the game.
But then again, where to draw the line.. It's a tough nut to crack, indeed!

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  • 2 months later...

I know it's been awhile since the last post here but I have some thoughts I would like to share on this.

Right now the official stance is that unofficial releases, homebrew, ROM hacks, mods, etc. are not to be added to the database until a supporting flag system is implemented. After moderating on many of these types of submissions, I believe that this is the wrong choice.

Case in point, AM2R. Unless I'm missing something, this should not be allowed in the db; but it's in the db now and if we tried to delete the best Metroid game in years, the community would likely reject the delete or resubmit immediately.

People are putting in unpaid effort to bring data and images about the games they love and we are turning them away and telling them to come back later over an arbitrary restriction. If we plan to allow this data once a flagging system is implemented later, why not take the data now and let the community go back and flag those entries once the system is implemented? It's worked before, I believe it can work this time too.

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It's certainly a bit more complicated than that. Hacks and homebrews already do exist on the Database from when we carried over, and trying to go backwards after the fact ISN'T working. Most people submit what they feel like, right or wrong, and then others don't care. If we pull away both those two extremes, that leaves the rest of us and there just aren't a lot of us. Even then, stuff still falls through the cracks all the time. Stuff that should be deleted, edited, changed, or added, and it's not. @Jason Carr has been working on the Database a bit more recently, so this stuff might come sooner rather than later, but I don't think inviting chaos to then have to go back and fix it later is neceserily the right call. I don't like turning down a lot of stuff either, I love rom hacks, homebrews, translations (though that last bit has a home...), I feature them weekly, but I do think that system has to be in place.

I know it's difficult, the guidelines are partially based on "this is what we've talked about, agreed on, now we wait", and that is certainly frustrating. I do think there's a lot of Database stuff that should have been changed a while ago, but Jason is one man and I have to respect that.

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I understand the position @Jason Carr is in.  Managing a complicated program, database, and the bug fix and feature requests of the community is a massive undertaking. I work in a similar enough field to understand that it really is too much work for any one person.

Maybe if I came to the party earlier, I would feel differently, but my preference has always been to take all the data and images that I can get and to sort it out later.

I have nothing but respect for the entire Launchbox team and will continue to adhere to the guidelines despite my opinion.

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