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Does FFT (PS1) use the disc directory structures or custom LBA tables...

Started by nitwit, March 23, 2018, 05:13:39 pm


Elric

Nope, it uses magic + the hopes and dreams of small starving children.
  • Modding version: PSX

Xifanie

If I answer this one, will you finally stop asking questions out of pure curiosity? Because we both know you won't be using this information. Just like your last 10 questions.
  • Modding version: PSX
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Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

nitwit

Quote from: Xifanie on March 23, 2018, 07:28:55 pm
If I answer this one, will you finally stop asking questions out of pure curiosity? Because we both know you won't be using this information. Just like your last 10 questions.

Are you willing to bet that I won't do anything with this information, and if so how much?

Xifanie

You just proved my point. Betting would give you an incentive to actually do something with the information.
You even suggesting that shows you were not planning to do a goddamn thing in the first place. Also your failure to mention anything that you've done with your countless pointless questions.

Oh, and just to prove further my point, this is something I figured out in less than a minute by myself when I wanted to figure out how to move files in FFT.
Oh, and just to prove further my point, I made a fucking tool that allows creating and moving PSX ISO files. You would know the answer already if you gave half a shit.

FFH has a lot of people who don't really do much, and only work on their own personal projects, and I'm still fine helping them. You? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh...
  • Modding version: PSX
Love what you're seeing? https://supportus.ffhacktics.com/ 💜 it's really appreciated

Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

Angel

I'll just answer this in the most concise way possible: PlayStation accesses everything by sector, not by structure. This is true even for redbook audio - games do not play audio by track data, but by sector.
  • Modding version: PSX
* Angel should quit being a lazy bitch
<@Elric> I agree to that as well

nyanyame nyanyajuu nyanyado no nyarabide nyakunyaku inyanyaku nyanyahan nyanyadai nyannyaku nyarabete nyaganyagame
At the end of the day, are we not all trapped inside lemons?

Bonesy

  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: Bonesy#9386

Elric

  • Modding version: PSX

nitwit

I already wrote 99% of the code to navigate the disc image directory structure, read to and write from files, and generate EDC and ECC*1.  I'm debugging the last 2 cases of writing to a disc image (case 2, middle of a data table; and case 3, end of a data table).  It's abstracted such that it works on any table*2 in any file in a disc image regardless of it's location.  This is counter to how FFTPatcher works, where everything is hardcoded.

*1: Currently it only works for PS1 disc images, which off the top of my head I think are Mode 2.  I can never remember the correct Mode and Form, I always have to look at my notes.  Anyways, the code could be easily changed to accomodate other game systems that use CD-ROMs (like the Sega Saturn or CD-i), and maybe even the PS2 (which can use CD-ROMs and DVDs) though that would require a lot more work.

*2: Currently it only covers unencrypted, uncompressed tables with an absolute address, which never change size, and where all entries are all the same size.  For the editor I'm currently making for another game, I will eventually need to support tables that are encrypted, compressed, pointer-addressed, null-terminated, and of variable lengths.  I think these categories cover all use cases, though I'm not sure if that applies to images, videos, and sound.

I made this topic because I wanted to see if I can easily adapt this code to FFTPatcher or if I need to add code to handle custom LBA tables.  Java is superficially similar - at least in terms of syntax - to C#, so that's not much of a barrier compared to the operating system barrier (I use linux).  Having to write my own code to move files makes it considerably more difficult to test something - you can use CD Mage to move a file around and test it.

Now that I'm done discussing technical details, let's have a meta-discussion.

Quote from: Xifanie on March 23, 2018, 11:38:17 pm
You just proved my point. Betting would give you an incentive to actually do something with the information.
You even suggesting that shows you were not planning to do a goddamn thing in the first place. Also your failure to mention anything that you've done with your countless pointless questions.

So you don't want to share information because you already did the hard work of finding it and you don't want the plebes to know how to do it?  Is this really a forum about hacking, or is it a project to massage your ego?

How does treating someone like a moron for asking a random question that does not harm this forum in the slightest create an incentive for people to contribute?  I'm not angry, just curious, because it seems like FFH has lost the vast majority of it's participating members under your tenure.


Oh, and just to prove further my point, this is something I figured out in less than a minute by myself when I wanted to figure out how to move files in FFT.

Translation: "I'm a better hacker than you?"  Am I getting that right?  I'm very curious why you're having this outburst when a programmer asks a question.  Have you ever been employed as a programmer?  If instead you want to have a pissing contest then please tell me so I know to unzip my pants.  :)

Oh, and just to prove further my point, I made a fucking tool that allows creating and moving PSX ISO files. You would know the answer already if you gave half a shit.

Well thanks for telling me now.  Couldn't you have said that earlier?  Have you considered that I asked the question because I can't use most tools created for Windows and I'm more interested in programming than hacking hence why I rarely download spreadsheets?  Genuine question.

FFH has a lot of people who don't really do much, and only work on their own personal projects, and I'm still fine helping them.
You? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh...

LOL this is a straight-up lie, I've seen you ban people for not displaying proper netiqeutte... though you've stopped that in the past year or so.  I guess you realized that if you chase everyone away with emotional outbursts then there's no point to your project.



Why are you bothered by another forum post which takes up less than 0.01% of your database and bandwidth?  Do you think that mocking the few capable programmers that haven't already left for more relaxed modding forums is a good way to keep this community viable, or is this more of a social board where you can indulge your desire to control and dominate the converation?  Because if it is the latter - and if seeing someone do something that you can't or won't do bothers you - then I will stop posting and instead rely on Private Messages to chat with the remaining assembly language hackers and programmers.

I can't use FFTPatcher or most of the tools here, hence my inclination is to make my own tools.  This will happen with your assistance or without it, but if it happens without it you won't have any influence over me.  I've never moderated a community before and I'm very curious if I can do a better job than you.

In any case I thoroughly enjoyed watching your temper tantrum and I will pass this around to my friends as an example of how not to behave as an authority figure on the internet.  No hard feelings!

Quote from: Bonesy on March 23, 2018, 11:52:08 pm
how hak fft into another game entirely

Kissing the administrator's ass is peurile at best and demonstrates a lack of moral fiber on your part.  Elric and Xifanie have every right to participate in this discussion simply on merit of their contributions; you do not.  I want to make the tools to edit FFT better and most import I have the means to do so, hence why I consider myself on closer footing with them than yourself.

Quote from: Angel on March 23, 2018, 11:44:45 pm
I'll just answer this in the most concise way possible: PlayStation accesses everything by sector, not by structure. This is true even for redbook audio - games do not play audio by track data, but by sector.

I'm aware of that, Angel.  Some games use the directory sectors - which I call a directory structure - to navigate to and read from files on a disc image.  Some games instead load files from custom tables and ignore the directory sectors altogether - Vagrant Story is one such game, according to Valendian.  Using these custom tables (which Valendian and the people at RHDN call LBA tables, which I think stands for logical block addressing) makes it harder to modify the game as you must modify the LBA tables along with the directory sectors if you move files around.  You must find the LBA tables too, of course, which is tedious and time-consuming.

This is why there isn't a univeral disc image patching format other than PPF.  You can't rely on the directory sectors for every game, and you must find the LBA tables and document them before you could patch a game; assuming you wrote code to hande them.  Granted you could set up a repository to document this and let people contribute to it as they find out, allowing your universal disc image patcher to edit more games, but given how petty and spiteful so many people in the rom hacking world are these days it's unlikely this will ever happen.  That isn't a dig at FFH - being overly emotional is more funny than off-putting to me (you can guess how women react to this) - sites like RHDN are far, far worse than FFH ever could be.

Bonesy

Don't be an ass. Not even RHDN, a site you claim is "worse" has said some of the shit you've said towards me.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: Bonesy#9386

Nyzer

I made one of my rare weekday appearances in IRC yesterday to ask a question while I was waiting at a long red light, and while I was in there I saw Xifanie ask if she'd maybe gone too far with her responses to you here. Make what you will of that.

But, dude, some of the questions or ideas you bring up are just... weird.

You asked "how are DVDs and CD-ROMs different" in a topic barely even tangentially related to your question. A quick google search brings up a few general answers. I'm sure you could find the answer to a specific technical question in the same way (or a more appropriate forum for that specific purpose), but even if not, why not ... y'know, be specific with your question in that case?

You checked out a decompiler on github and decided to openly wonder what would happen if you tried using it on FFT files, instead of just... finding out by using it? And then when you got asked why you didn't just find out the easy way, you said it "didn't seem wise to use it on a public forum". But you wouldn't be using it on the forum, you'd be using it on your computer... so that reply doesn't really make sense. Are you suggesting the decompiler might not be trustworthy? Or that you couldn't put up the results of the decompiler for some reason (my best guess, the assumed potential risk of legal action)? Couldn't you still mention "it did this thing" without being too specific, if that's the worry?

I'm also confused by the idea that you can't run FFTPatcher or "most tools created for Windows". Windows operating systems are so universal that even Apple computers have an option to use 'em. I've been able to run Patcher on a cheap laptop that once crashed trying to open the Documents folder. I just don't get how you don't have that option at all. Or why reinventing the entire wheel from scratch is a worthier time investment than simply going out and grabbing a cheap used PC for stuff like this.
Honestly, I think I can safely suggest that absolutely nobody considered the idea that you wouldn't be able to do this.

The last thing that confuses me here is how you seem to take Xifanie's barbed questions so personally. I mean, normally I'd get it, but it wasn't that long ago that you proposed an idea of digging up old drama and pissing off a lot of people, some of whom ties have been mutually cut with, on the grounds that trolling people like that would boost productivity. (It probably won't surprise you that it was only after this post that I started seeing any comments expressing annoyance with you.) Well, here you are, arguably being trolled (to a far lesser degree than what you proposed), and you're spending time passive-aggressively biting back and asserting that it makes one a poor moderator. So... is it productive or not? You should really make up your mind on that.

And yeah, you're definitely taking it a bit personally, or else you wouldn't consider Bonesy's completely unrelated and off-topic joke to be "kissing ass". It can't have been a jab at you because it's not at all related to what you're asking. (Messing with you a little, maybe, but not rudely.) And the off topic part shouldn't irk you either, considering when someone else made a topic to discuss the release of FFXII hacks you decided to hop in and ask what the difference between CDs and DVDs was.

I can't really speak for anyone else here. I wouldn't have made the replies Xifanie did. But there's a little insight into why it can be hard to take you seriously and what might be annoying about (some of) what you're posting. And when you're asking a question that an available tool can answer for you, it's easy to see how someone might roll their eyes at it. I'm not saying this out of some attempt to drive you away or whatever; it's not as if you aren't knowledgeable about a lot of stuff. But you're not just being martyred for no reason here.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

nitwit

Quote from: Nyzer on March 24, 2018, 03:47:53 pm
I made one of my rare weekday appearances in IRC yesterday to ask a question while I was waiting at a long red light, and while I was in there I saw Xifanie ask if she'd maybe gone too far with her responses to you here. Make what you will of that.

But, dude, some of the questions or ideas you bring up are just... weird.

You asked "how are DVDs and CD-ROMs different" in a topic barely even tangentially related to your question. A quick google search brings up a few general answers. I'm sure you could find the answer to a specific technical question in the same way (or a more appropriate forum for that specific purpose), but even if not, why not ... y'know, be specific with your question in that case?

Good point about the DVDs and CD-ROMs, I should have clarified that - and I will if I remember.  I imagine the sectors are larger and it probably has more features in both the directory sectors and all sectors in general.

Most of the time when I ask a question I'm fishing for information that I can't find in a google search.  Given that FF12 is probably a DVD based game, someone who asks about it may know more about it than me; or may know where to ask about it.


You checked out a decompiler on github and decided to openly wonder what would happen if you tried using it on FFT files, instead of just... finding out by using it? And then when you got asked why you didn't just find out the easy way, you said it "didn't seem wise to use it on a public forum". But you wouldn't be using it on the forum, you'd be using it on your computer... so that reply doesn't really make sense. Are you suggesting the decompiler might not be trustworthy? Or that you couldn't put up the results of the decompiler for some reason (my best guess, the assumed potential risk of legal action)? Couldn't you still mention "it did this thing" without being too specific, if that's the worry?

There's a lot that's platform specific code in most PS1 games so output from a very powerful decompiler wouldn't be 1 for 1 what you could compile on your computer and expect to work, but decompilations that don't use clean-room reverse-engineering practices are illegal in the USA.  This means that one team disassembles something and writes a spec, and then one or more people who weren't part of the first team takes the spec and implements this.  Given the somewhat shady nature of the rom hacking scene, which are basically warez sites (let's not kid ourselves), I don't want to bring any more heat on the forum.

I'm also confused by the idea that you can't run FFTPatcher or "most tools created for Windows". Windows operating systems are so universal that even Apple computers have an option to use 'em. I've been able to run Patcher on a cheap laptop that once crashed trying to open the Documents folder. I just don't get how you don't have that option at all. Or why reinventing the entire wheel from scratch is a worthier time investment than simply going out and grabbing a cheap used PC for stuff like this.
Honestly, I think I can safely suggest that absolutely nobody considered the idea that you wouldn't be able to do this.

The last thing that confuses me here is how you seem to take Xifanie's barbed questions so personally. I mean, normally I'd get it, but it wasn't that long ago that you proposed an idea of digging up old drama and pissing off a lot of people, some of whom ties have been mutually cut with, on the grounds that trolling people like that would boost productivity. (It probably won't surprise you that it was only after this post that I started seeing any comments expressing annoyance with you.) Well, here you are, arguably being trolled (to a far lesser degree than what you proposed), and you're spending time passive-aggressively biting back and asserting that it makes one a poor moderator. So... is it productive or not? You should really make up your mind on that.

Hitting back isn't a bad thing by itself if your arguments are solid and you aren't the sort of autistic person that thinks the emotionality of the argument doesn't matter.  What's it called, escalation of force?  Where you reply with one level of greater intensity of violence than the person attacking you, in order to diffuse the situation via dominance?  That's what I did.

And yeah, you're definitely taking it a bit personally, or else you wouldn't consider Bonesy's completely unrelated and off-topic joke to be "kissing ass". It can't have been a jab at you because it's not at all related to what you're asking. (Messing with you a little, maybe, but not rudely.) And the off topic part shouldn't irk you either, considering when someone else made a topic to discuss the release of FFXII hacks you decided to hop in and ask what the difference between CDs and DVDs was.

Well geez, if I'm going to be struggle-session'd for my off-topic replies let's give Bonesy a struggle session too.

Is there even a tool to extract files from DVDs, specific to rom hacking?  Though you're right that I should have mentioned that it's hard to hack something when there's no easy way to interface with the data.

Usually if someone makes a low detail reply it's best to reply with an equally low effort request for clarification.


I can't really speak for anyone else here. I wouldn't have made the replies Xifanie did. But there's a little insight into why it can be hard to take you seriously and what might be annoying about (some of) what you're posting. And when you're asking a question that an available tool can answer for you, it's easy to see how someone might roll their eyes at it. I'm not saying this out of some attempt to drive you away or whatever; it's not as if you aren't knowledgeable about a lot of stuff. But you're not just being martyred for no reason here.

How is being as straight-forward as possible and calling things as they appear to be passive aggressive?  Isn't that normal aggressive?  The healthy kind where you stand up for yourself?  I'm not the type to shy away from direct confrontation.

Windows isn't an option for me right now because I'm on a hell of a budget paying off my student loans.  The firm that hired me literally brought in dozens of Indians and I was stuck doing IT scut work (imaging DVDs, oddly enough) for 3 weeks until management remembered that they were replacing all the Americans in the job I was hired to fill.  I'm washing dishes in a sushi joint for the next 4+ years until these people get deported... though if we could send the managers to prison and sell their assets to pay back the workers they ripped off that'd be great too.

Coding is one of the ways I keep my skills sharp; it doesn't matter to me if I'm reinventing the wheel.  Given that the wheel in question can't be used by some subset of people (and it's faulty for some use cases ie moving files or changing their sizes) reinventing it seems like a good idea if I'm the one offering to do it.

The issue with Xif's barbed replies is that I have personally seen people banned by her for asking questions when they aren't equipped to understand the replies.  If someone is going to ban me for asking questions and not giving 100% complete context, then that's on them and not me - I did all I could.

RE Bonesy: If someone hits me, I hit back.  Hardly passive.  If you're not getting the joke it's that I'm more bothered when someone suggests I'm passive than I am when someone calls me aggressive.

I wouldn't call going off and building my own tools martyrdom, and anyone who would non-jokingly create a massive shitstorm of non-feigned butthurt over internet insults is a loser (ed. for clarification, this refers to Voldemort).  Even if you did ban me I'd be OK with anyone here using any tools I make, forking them, whatever you want.  I'm just pointing out in my own special (which may be more retarded than special to some people) way that this may not be the best way to moderate a community if you want it to grow.

My style may not be your own.  I'd rather a forum where we don't take anything but hacking and programming seriously, and where we prank each other relentlessly.

tl;dr

I may be an asshole but I strive to be a fair, good-natured asshole.

edit

Fixed some spelling errors.

Nyzer

QuoteHow is being as straight-forward as possible and calling things as they appear to be passive aggressive?  Isn't that normal aggressive?  The healthy kind where you stand up for yourself?  I'm not the type to shy away from direct confrontation.


Well, most of it was the latter. But there are a couple lines where you switch to passive aggressiveness, or at least they come across that way.

I personally haven't seen her ban anyone for petty reasons; in fact, I once saw someone personally insulting her and her wife without being immediately banned. Dude got a strip or ten torn off, though.

Asking questions that should be easily answerable, especially without providing context as to why they might not be for you, is always going to be annoying. We had a user a ways back that kept using an outdated version of a tool - which at first was fair, it's the one that its tutorial is most accurate for - but after they kept running into issues that the newer version would fix for them, and failing to update despite multiple people telling them to, everyone got annoyed. Two of us even mentioned that the use of the older tool made it hard for us to even realize what was being done wrong because we were so used to the newer one now. In the end, the user ended up disappearing instead of switching tools, which was just frustrating for everyone involved.

Your case isn't the same, but this is still a case of a question that could have been answered if you'd used the proper tool (as no one knew that you couldn't) looking like it might lead into the seemingly redundant recreation of said tool.

If I told you that at work, we once went for weeks without knowing how to open a lock, you'd probably consider it to be massively incompetent. The context that it was a new type of lock in which the provided key didn't actually work (don't ask me for the logic on that one) leading us to consider that the lock was just broken or incompatible - that changes things a bit. So does pointing out that it's one of those big companies that tends to make decisions like making the guys on overtime, who have to get the trailer out by a certain time, do setup that the part-time morning staff could take care of on the way out, so being provided with a busted lock doesn't even register as a blip on the radar. (More than once they've sent us trailers using a lock we don't have the tool to properly open, so we have to break it off entirely.) Context matters.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Xifanie

Wow, that is just sad.

Listen, you can either listen to my advice, or be miserable the rest of your life. It's your call if you want to wake up or not. I'm not your boss, and it's your life.

You're going to be fucking wasting your life away if you try to pay back student loans being a dishwasher.

You got replaced because you were very replaceable.
Your current job also has you easily replaceable.

So, how do you make yourself not easily replaceable? You need a skill that is rare, and high in demand. Something that is up to date, not information that you learn in college that immediately puts you 5 years behind in terms of knowledge compared to people who learn how to code using just Google.

The moment you graduated, your knowledge was already was outdated. That's how school curriculums work; they don't change very fast. Now if you only try get a new programming job in 4 years, what's going to happen? Why would anyone hire you? You're not special, you're not up to date, you're fucking nothing.

You need to find a skill you perform well at and stick to it. Use Google; no one in the history of the world ever had access to so much information, and most of it is FREE. I don't care if it's programming or not. Is programming really for you? Is it the only thing you can remotely excel at? Is it worth all the trouble? You have to ask yourself these questions.

Because with your current plan, your life situation will NOT improve. That would be a total fucking delusion. Most Americans don't even have 10k in savings to retire, hell, something like 28% don't even have a single dollar saved for retirement.
And our generation will have it FAR worse. If you don't have plans to excel, yeah, then just get replaced by indians and robots and complain how people should go into prison even though you were so fucking replaceable in the first place. That's gonna help. You can bitch all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that your life is your own responsibility. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on and start improving your life.

I might have sounded harsh, but you need to wake the fuck up.
  • Modding version: PSX
Love what you're seeing? https://supportus.ffhacktics.com/ 💜 it's really appreciated

Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

Elric

Back the banhammer up here.

Atleast 80% of anyone banned in the last 5 or 6 years, has been by me, and sitting here looking at the ban log, there isnt a single one who didnt have it coming. When the site has rules and you are called out for not following them, its not a great idea to start name calling an admin.

You do realize that Xifanie has always been here right? Whether it be Zodiac or Xifanie, shes always been an admin here. So go ahead and tell me who was lost due to this that was needed in any way.

Lets run down the big patches shall we?

- Mercs, LD realized he was way in over his head and had ideas that werent even possible at that time and lots of spriters and people who came up with ideas for it, got burned when he simply bailed with little to no explanation. Nothing to do with Xif there.

- Remix, Zozma may have had issues with some people on the site, but Xif wasnt one of them for the most part and that was also the way of the site way back then before a lot of bad seeds left (feel free to check post history on any of these if you cant take my word for it). He bailed and left his big project unfinished as well, though it certainly went further than mercs.

- IA, good lord, do i even need to go into what happened with this one? The stuff between r999 and voldemort again, nothing to do with Xif.

- Symbols or Rage or whatever, dude got sick and bailed. I dont think Xif mailed him a virus, maybe, but kinda doubt it.

Since those mods, there has been no attempt at anything but small, easy, vanilla patches by 95% of people who come to this site. We have JoT5, TLW and eventually KoI in production by people who actually do things.

If youd look, youd see that anyone who has tried to venture outside of standard fftp work and make a non vanilla mod has still always had their questions answered, and even when it comes to fftp stuff they still usually get an answer, even if we encourage them to work on other things first, but hey, weve only been doing this for a decade, what do we know.

As for your personal life. Thats on you, that is completely irrelevent here. We could go into my background if it would please you, but to me, it seems pretty telling to call out someone else falsly saying that this is all ego related, then feel the need to inform us of your background. Are you also vegan?

Fact is, most of the tools Xif has created the last 5 or 6 years has been to specifically help people out or make their jobs of modding outside of the tiny stuff that FFTP gives access to, easier, and it has allowed many awesome things to be done that otherwise would not have been possible. So if you truely see it the way you describe above, you are incredibly delusional

  • Modding version: PSX

nitwit

Quote from: Xifanie on March 24, 2018, 06:53:53 pm
Wow, that is just sad.

Listen, you can either listen to my advice, or be miserable the rest of your life. It's your call if you want to wake up or not. I'm not your boss, and it's your life.

You're going to be fucking wasting your life away if you try to pay back student loans being a dishwasher.

You got replaced because you were very replaceable.
Your current job also has you easily replaceable.

So, how do you make yourself not easily replaceable? You need a skill that is rare, and high in demand. Something that is up to date, not information that you learn in college that immediately puts you 5 years behind in terms of knowledge compared to people who learn how to code using just Google.

The moment you graduated, your knowledge was already was outdated. That's how school curriculums work; they don't change very fast. Now if you only try get a new programming job in 4 years, what's going to happen? Why would anyone hire you? You're not special, you're not up to date, you're fucking nothing.

You need to find a skill you perform well at and stick to it. Use Google; no one in the history of the world ever had access to so much information, and most of it is FREE. I don't care if it's programming or not. Is programming really for you? Is it the only thing you can remotely excel at? Is it worth all the trouble? You have to ask yourself these questions.

Because with your current plan, your life situation will NOT improve. That would be a total fucking delusion. Most Americans don't even have 10k in savings to retire, hell, something like 28% don't even have a single dollar saved for retirement.
And our generation will have it FAR worse. If you don't have plans to excel, yeah, then just get replaced by indians and robots and complain how people should go into prison even though you were so fucking replaceable in the first place. That's gonna help. You can bitch all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that your life is your own responsibility. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on and start improving your life.

I might have sounded harsh, but you need to wake the fuck up.

China requires foreign companies to employ about 50% native Chinese workers and to share tech/I.P. secrets.  A lot of our products are already tariffed by the Chinese - we're already in a trade war with them and we're losing.  There's no reason the USA can't do the same.

The same can be said of illegal immigration and Mexico - Mexico does not allow the children of illegal immigrants to Mexico born in Mexico to become citizens.  Mexico also deports non-citizen legal residents that take part in political protests or general political activism.  So if I snuck into Mexico with my girlfriend, had children, and waved an American flag around at a political rally for other illegal Americans in Mexico so our kids can become Mexican citizens, I would be imprisoned, my property would be seized, I would be deported, and I would be banned from entering Mexico for decades.

All this guff about rights is bullshit, it's people who've are either hypocrites (the illegal Mexicans in the USA who wave Mexican flags), or people that have internalized beliefs that are counter to their interests (tech workers that take the side of tech corporations that bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign scab workers).  What I've noticed is that radical leftists don't care that they're hypocrites, they're willing to say and do anything to get what they want.  They're dumb enough to believe that we care about the sexual escapades of our orange-hued Executive after they spent decades defending everything Bill Clinton does.  We know that Trump is a poon hound, we didn't elect him for principles we elected him because we don't want our traitorous corporate overlords to destroy us.

It galls me watching Trump make deals with these traitors while giving ground on the few things that Democrats do well, like environmentalism, but Trump will only cut deals with people who negotiate.  The Democrats refuse to negotiate, therefore they get nothing.  Trump offered them everything they wanted to resolve DACA (which was a patently illegal executive order by Obama), but they rejected it because they've riled their base up so much that they will tear them limb-from-limb if they are seen negotiating with Cheetoh-Dust Hitler.

We'll see how this plays out in the midterms, but my bet is we will see a spate of suicides by diehard Never-Trumpers and #Resistance when they realize their folly.  Trump has an amazing ability to turn liabilities into advantages, and we have 6 more months to go.

Before anyone gets into a political fight, remember that both Republican and Democrat politicians support unlimited legal and illegal immigration.  Republican politicians support it because their donors want cheap labor; Democrat politicians support it because the children of immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democrat even going back to the days of Irish and Eastern European mass migration in the 1800s.  It took over a century to integrate the Irish and Eastern Europeans into the rest of American society, and if anyone needs reminding the Irish and Eastern Europeans were brought here by giant corporations who wanted cheap expendable labor.  Upton Sinclair - a socialist muck-raker - wrote a book about it called the Jungle.

I'm a radical centrist - a populist, nationalist, and anti-corporate capitalist.  I don't care about culture war bullshit because for the most part it's a distraction.  I'm thankful that Trump hasn't started any wars other than bombing an empty Syrian airbase and bullying Rocketman on twitter (and using North Korea's nukes as an excuse to apply economic pressure on China).  I did not look forward to Fallout 2017, should Hillary have won and started proxy wars with Russia.

I can afford to make more than the minimum payments on my student loans because I cook all my own food and don't have a high maintenance girlfriend.  By my own math it will be 4 to 6 years before I'm out from under them, depending on whether I decide to relocated to do wildland firefighting next year.

If I could go back in time 5 years I would be apprenticed to a plumber, because the key is to find something that isn't easily outsourced or mechanized.

Elric

Oh okay, so I guess we are just talking about more irrelevant stuff now.

Did you know that when a male octopus finds a mate, he takes off his weiner and throws it at the female to impregnate herself, and then grows another weiner himself?
  • Modding version: PSX

Bonesy

Quote from: Elric on March 27, 2018, 06:12:38 pm
Oh okay, so I guess we are just talking about more irrelevant stuff now.

Did you know that when a male octopus finds a mate, he takes off his weiner and throws it at the female to impregnate herself, and then grows another weiner himself?

did you know if you dipped a cat in cheese and chips it'd be nyachos
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
  • Discord username: Bonesy#9386

nitwit

Well if you insist I'll reply.
Quote from: Elric on March 24, 2018, 08:14:28 pm
Back the banhammer up here.

Atleast 80% of anyone banned in the last 5 or 6 years, has been by me, and sitting here looking at the ban log, there isnt a single one who didnt have it coming. When the site has rules and you are called out for not following them, its not a great idea to start name calling an admin.

In raw numbers, how many people were banned over the years?  What percentage of your "logged in that year" userbase were they?  What did they do to "have it coming"?

I pointed out earlier that I'm more than capable of making my own editing tools and given the apparent results of the current administration's tenure I don't need an antagonistic relationship with them to attract a larger active userbase.  All I need to do is focus on hacking, research, and tool development, without the random purges once every 2 or 3 years.  So your threat that "it's not a good idea to start name calling an admin" is toothless because you have nothing to harm me with, I pose more of a threat to you than you do to me, and I'm willing to be reasonable if you meet me halfway

Going by the visible dynamics, you're the enforcer and Xifanie is the policy-maker.  I have no real issue with you because from what I've seen you go by the tone set by others.  Your arguments aren't well thought out, which lends credence to this theory.


You do realize that Xifanie has always been here right? Whether it be Zodiac or Xifanie, shes always been an admin here. So go ahead and tell me who was lost due to this that was needed in any way.

It not who was lost that mattered, it's who was lost that would become someone that mattered.  If you kick off every stupid newb that doesn't know how to act, they will never grow.  Newbs serve a purpose - they are playtesters, bug reporters, cheerleaders, documentation writers, and marketers.  Those with an aptitude for something more involved usually find it and graduate, but the networking effect of having a large group of newbs is greater than the sum of their efforts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Scale matters.  You don't have the same interaction dynamics in a village of 150 as you do in a city of 150,000,000.  By the same token, progress occurs faster when large groups of people are around to feed on each other's energy and keep one another motivated.  Look at how many releases and code rewrites occur at communities with a handful of active members vs those with hundreds of active members.

By banning every poorly socialized no-nothing you hurt yourself.  It's better in the long run to call them out in an open, neutral fashion, and then encourage them to learn more.


Lets run down the big patches shall we?

- Mercs, LD realized he was way in over his head and had ideas that werent even possible at that time and lots of spriters and people who came up with ideas for it, got burned when he simply bailed with little to no explanation. Nothing to do with Xif there.

- Remix, Zozma may have had issues with some people on the site, but Xif wasnt one of them for the most part and that was also the way of the site way back then before a lot of bad seeds left (feel free to check post history on any of these if you cant take my word for it). He bailed and left his big project unfinished as well, though it certainly went further than mercs.

- IA, good lord, do i even need to go into what happened with this one? The stuff between r999 and voldemort again, nothing to do with Xif.

- Symbols or Rage or whatever, dude got sick and bailed. I dont think Xif mailed him a virus, maybe, but kinda doubt it.

Since those mods, there has been no attempt at anything but small, easy, vanilla patches by 95% of people who come to this site. We have JoT5, TLW and eventually KoI in production by people who actually do things.

And look at where FFH is now, where the people who do things are allowed to do whatever they want to the people who can't yet do things.

If youd look, youd see that anyone who has tried to venture outside of standard fftp work and make a non vanilla mod has still always had their questions answered, and even when it comes to fftp stuff they still usually get an answer, even if we encourage them to work on other things first, but hey, weve only been doing this for a decade, what do we know.

And look at how much your userbase has shrunk in that decade.  Part of it is due to people growing up and moving on, but that's not sufficient.  FFT had releases on PSP, iOS, and Android.  On GameFAQs there's a surge of activity whenever a game is ported, remade, or rereleased, but here?  Almost nothing.

As for your personal life. Thats on you, that is completely irrelevent here. We could go into my background if it would please you, but to me, it seems pretty telling to call out someone else falsly saying that this is all ego related, then feel the need to inform us of your background. Are you also vegan?

Well someone asked a question and I answered it.  If informing people of my background is an ego problem, what is Xifanie's use of chat and the forum as a way to publicly play out her BDSM fetishes?  Granted it's her forum, but she should be aware of the consequences that her behavior will have on the userbase.

Would you be willing to admit that something makes you uncomfortable or seems wildly unrelated to the stated goals of this forum when random newbs get banned for being newbs?  Or would you quietly ghost?

And where were you during all this, Elric?  Too focused on making things to be honest to the person who needed this feedback the most?


Fact is, most of the tools Xif has created the last 5 or 6 years has been to specifically help people out or make their jobs of modding outside of the tiny stuff that FFTP gives access to, easier, and it has allowed many awesome things to be done that otherwise would not have been possible. So if you truely see it the way you describe above, you are incredibly delusional




Elric

Quote from: nitwit on March 27, 2018, 07:14:46 pm
Well if you insist I'll reply.


QuoteIn raw numbers, how many people were banned over the years?  What percentage of your "logged in that year" userbase were they?  What did they do to "have it coming"?


Since 2012, 7 people, not including bots and alt accounts. All for either harassing moderators or admins, outright naming calling an admin for stating the rules weren't being followed, harassing other members, or posting inappropriate (in most cases, sexual) content. No, I'm not giving you more info than that, since its not really your business. You seem to think you know things that you don't. So, explain to me who you think was banned that shouldn't have been. There have been no recent bans aside from bots. There have, however, been a couple warnings. See below.

QuoteI pointed out earlier that I'm more than capable of making my own editing tools and given the apparent results of the current administration's tenure I don't need an antagonistic relationship with them to attract a larger active userbase.  All I need to do is focus on hacking, research, and tool development, without the random purges once every 2 or 3 years.  So your threat that "it's not a good idea to start name calling an admin" is toothless because you have nothing to harm me with, I pose more of a threat to you than you do to me, and I'm willing to be reasonable if you meet me halfway


Okay, so now we've established that you didn't actually read what I wrote, as the namecalling an admin bit, was referring to the people who had been banned here in the past, it had nothing to do with you. However, no, I'm not threatened by you in the slightest. I'll let that go because you are clearly triggered due to completely misunderstanding or outright not reading what I actually said.

You think you can do all that? Then do it, go on, have at it. There is nothing saying you can't have your own community. Let us know how that works out for you. You totally seem like an approachable, easy to have a normal conversation with, person.

QuoteGoing by the visible dynamics, you're the enforcer and Xifanie is the policy-maker.  I have no real issue with you because from what I've seen you go by the tone set by others.  Your arguments aren't well thought out, which lends credence to this theory.


Or maybe you just have trouble comprehending what I'm saying, as you are seeing this from a user side and not from the side we are, you don't see the PMs, you don't see the private interactions, nor do you get the complaints from other members regarding these types of things. You are basing everything on what you see on the forum, not even IRC or any of it's channels. How you see me isn't something that bothers me at all, because you only see what you want to see, but don't act like you know what goes on behind closed doors.

QuoteIt not who was lost that mattered, it's who was lost that would become someone that mattered.  If you kick off every stupid newb that doesn't know how to act, they will never grow.  Newbs serve a purpose - they are playtesters, bug reporters, cheerleaders, documentation writers, and marketers.  Those with an aptitude for something more involved usually find it and graduate, but the networking effect of having a large group of newbs is greater than the sum of their efforts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Scale matters.  You don't have the same interaction dynamics in a village of 150 as you do in a city of 150,000,000.  By the same token, progress occurs faster when large groups of people are around to feed on each other's energy and keep one another motivated.  Look at how many releases and code rewrites occur at communities with a handful of active members vs those with hundreds of active members.

By banning every poorly socialized no-nothing you hurt yourself.  It's better in the long run to call them out in an open, neutral fashion, and then encourage them to learn more.


Yeah, I'm sure the 7 people who were actually banned over those years for being extremely inappropriate, would've been a huge help. You seem to be a big fan of GameFAQs, so go ahead and tell me how Lockeadon would've had so much benefit for this site. You seem to be confusing a ban, with a warning. Before ever being banned, you are put on a warning and if you continue the behavior, the warning amount increases and eventually you have your posting privilege suspended for several days (usually between 3 and 10), AFTER that, if the same thing continues THEN you are banned, except in very extreme cases. In these cases, the warning blocking the person from posting for a few days is almost never the first warning they received. This, again, is all based on the severity of the offense.

QuoteAnd look at where FFH is now, where the people who do things are allowed to do whatever they want to the people who can't yet do things.


This one I find pretty funny, since it makes no sense at all. Again, it seems like you didn't read what I said. Anyone can do whatever kind of patch they want. But, if you ask a question thats been answered a million times on the site, and/or literally has a stickied topic to help with said question, you can expect that to be pointed out to you. Not everyone here is treated the way we treat you, because not everyone here asks questions that bare no relevance to this site, and then doesn't come back to thank anyone for the info they are given. That's mostly just you.

QuoteAnd look at how much your userbase has shrunk in that decade.  Part of it is due to people growing up and moving on, but that's not sufficient.  FFT had releases on PSP, iOS, and Android.  On GameFAQs there's a surge of activity whenever a game is ported, remade, or rereleased, but here?  Almost nothing.


Nah, I'm calling BS on this one. If you really think the GameFAQs community for ANY game is that valuable than I have some serious questions about you. Half of GameFAQs forum posts are nothing but bitching, or elitist crap.

What the reality is, is that we do get a bunch of traffic here whenever there is a port of the game. People realize soon that we don't support those ports, nor do we plan to make tools for them, and then instead of doing so themselves, they move on. The people who do things here, don't like the way WotL was done, and since all those ports use that version of the game, they have no interest in making tools for them. So why haven't you made the tools for them yet, since, ya know, you want to contribute to the community, or at least make it seem like you intend to.

QuoteWell someone asked a question and I answered it.  If informing people of my background is an ego problem, what is Xifanie's use of chat and the forum as a way to publicly play out her BDSM fetishes?  Granted it's her forum, but she should be aware of the consequences that her behavior will have on the userbase.

Would you be willing to admit that something makes you uncomfortable or seems wildly unrelated to the stated goals of this forum when random newbs get banned for being newbs?  Or would you quietly ghost?

And where were you during all this, Elric?  Too focused on making things to be honest to the person who needed this feedback the most?


Oh, you mean the time before I was an admin? The time where I was going from being a lurker, not even on the site, to joining and starting my project, Jot5? I'm not sure where you are going with this. When I first actually joined the forum in 2011, I read every post here, and saw little to nothing regarding BDSM on the site itself. Yes, there was some on chat, and that was no worse than any other off topic stuff that was talked about in IRC over the years, at that time included.

If you'd cared to do your homework, you'd have seen my post here on the forum from when I left the FFH IRC channel, as I felt it had little to nothing to do with actual FFT modding. It wasn't until much later that I went back to that channel, instead of only sticking to Jot5 chat.

I'm seeing a bit of a pattern here with you, and all of it is coming from assumptions you are making, rather than actual fact. You can deduce whatever you like from what you think you know, but truth be told, you don't actually interact with any of us, partake in anything we do, or really anything else here. You pop in once in a while, make a (usually) completely irrelevant post, and then disappear without response, so yeah, excuse us if you aren't a favorite person to help.

If we were really such tyrants, as you paint us out to be, then why are you still here? You've never gotten a warning to my knowledge nor banned, yet by what you are saying, seems like we would have done that several times over by now, no? I've never had an issue with you other than the things I've mentioned above, as I think those things are kind of annoying, but before you start making any more assumptions about who we are, or what we do, you really need to get your facts straight.

EDIT: i used the wrong quote in one part and am now at work, so i cant fix it, but you should be able to figure out where that was and what part of your message i meant to quote

EDIT 2: Fixed
  • Modding version: PSX