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I’m in this hobby for the community as much as the games. Connecting with developers and fellow enthusiasts never gets old.
Couldn’t agree more Ben.
& @Dr.Tom, this is a pretty special forum where you can actually openly discuss things like adults .. it’s very refreshing.
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I think it’s great for the guy that wants to just grab a table and go play. Â But not going to help them trouble shoot any one of the 100 issues we come across all the time. Â Like said above and before, Â I like the people here and like the fact we can contribute our ideas or feedback, Â with only getting mildly teased. Â We also get great lessons on Aussie sayings and driving why without shoes is right
Thinking about my favourite knuckle heads anyone hear from Hauntfreaks? Â Worried the real world swallowed him up. Â There could be a whole bunch of people here not know who he is, what he contributed, or any of his analogiesÂ
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I’ve sent haunt several emails and have got no answer! I hope he is ok.
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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android********************************************************
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Must be a heck of a hot water service .. and he did give a bit of warning that he was dropping out for a bit .. but as an avid forum reader I miss him too
I hope he’s just too busy enjoying his barn find table ..
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I’ve sent haunt several emails and have got no answer! I hope he is ok.
I don’t know what happened with Haunt, I can see he’s on the forums everyday, but not responding anymore. Too bad, I miss him..
Ah
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Have not heard from him. Â I was working on a project when he was last around and I’ve stalled out on it because I was having more fun when we were working on stuff together. Â He was having some computer trouble the last time I talked to him… hopefully he is well.
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Hey guys,
Excellent thread, I was hoping for such a civilized discussion about the elephant in the room. ;)
I’ll try to address your concerns as good as I can.
VPDB and VPB
It’s true that Jason and I have been in contact long before VPDB went public. I was pretty open to anything really, but as far as I remember the final reason to keep VPDB separate from VPB was technical (I’m a developer, I don’t do WordPress
). Joke aside, it was basically the same problem we had with VPF: You can’t integrate VPDB with an existing, unstructured set of data, and that’s the whole point of VPDB. You need to either start from scratch or spend a huge merging effort, which neither of us was willing to do.VPDB and VPCabs
I sent a mail to Brad shortly after the Shark Tank episode. I told him that VPDB might solve his pre-loading problem. He liked it. That was it. Haven’t been in contact since, that was in May. Carny, I have no idea why you think VPDB is in any way linked to VPCabs.
Commercial aspect
VPDB looks professional. Programming is what I do for a living and since a long time, and I think I’m a capable developer. But commercial projects aren’t usually open source and they usually don’t come with an open API like VPDB does. Technically it’s very hard to prevent anyone to install VPDB on another server and copy the data through the API to the new site. Hell, even detailed installation instructions are publicly available. That’s not what commercial projects do.
I can’t promise that VPDB will be free forever. Maybe Tom won’t be able to afford the bandwidth anymore or the cost will be so high that neither of us can financially support it anymore, who knows. We’re not millionaires. But what I can guarantee is that active members of the community will never have to pay a dime at VPDB. We’ll make damn sure of that, because without you guys, VPDB is nothing.
Stern SAM
I hear you, it sucks. In fact, I would really love to have SAM games at VPDB. But we’re new here and we can’t just stamp into a community without respecting the rules that have been there from the beginning. Rules change with time but for now, we have decided to play along.
WIP threads & community
I also love the WIP threads, and I think they are a really important part of the community. VPDB doesn’t want to take that away. VPDB is not a forum, and that’s why I don’t necessarily see it as a competitor to you guys or VPU: VPDB does only one thing but aims to do it really really well: Share virtual pinball resources among the community. Look at VPDB like Imgur for pinball. Imgur is used all over the place because it does one thing really well: Share images.
That doesn’t mean VPDB doesn’t give a shit about the community, on the contrary: Never you will see any member-provided content without the member’s name or avatar right beside it. People need to know who brings them this great content, and I think it’s important that VPDB makes sure of that.
“It’s just a pretty face, what’s the point”
I could go on about his for hours, but I’ll make it short. VPDB looks pretty, okay, but it’s much more than just a nice UI. The point is that the data is structured and openly accessible. By openly accessible I mean not just by the website, but by any other program as well. And this is a game changer, because it opens up a whole ecosystem. Literally any program can plug into VPDB and use its data. The possibilities are endless, and I’m going to show that with VPDB Agent, a tool for cab owners that I think will be pretty awesome.
“He’s going to rip you off and run away with your content!”
It’s true that it’s a very valid point. You spend hundreds of hours recreating a game and you don’t want to just give it to anyone who might be making profit off it. You’ll need to have to trust a platform before you give it your work and I fully understand that this will take time.
“Who’s this guy anyway”?
I’ve build a cab, and I guess that makes me part of this community. I read a lot more than I write. I’ve been here since around 2012 so I’m not a complete noob anymore but I’m not one of the old-established guys either like most of you are. I’ve also done some stuff for real DMD owners. I love technology and I even more love to innovate new technology.
It’s hard to express my motives because if you need to label your motives they are probably made up anyway. But I hope that through my explanations you guys understand a bit better where I’m coming from and what I hope to achieve with VPDB.
Cheers!
-freezy.
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I’m a huge PinballX supporter. After all, I’m a moderator there. But I’m probably not going to contribute much to the FTP going forward, seeing as those contributions tend to include S.A.M.-related media anyway. It’s their house and their rules though, so I can respect that POV.
GameEx is not the same as VPDB. Stopping to support a platform because it supports another platform that doesn’t support your thing is just silly.
I still have the auto-build thing on my TODO list. PinMAME has gotten more activity recently and it’s going to take more effort to release your builds. I can help with that. That doesn’t mean that VPDB must support SAM games as well.
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“VPDB and VPCabs
I sent a mail to Brad shortly after the Shark Tank episode. I told him that VPDB might solve his pre-loading problem. He liked it. That was it. Haven’t been in contact since, that was in May. Carny, I have no idea why you think VPDB is in any way linked to VPCabs.”
What’s his pre-loading problem?
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His pre-loading problem is that he’s accused by half the community of pre-loading VP tables on his cabs without asking the authors for permission.
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His pre-loading problem is that he’s accused by half the community of pre-loading VP tables on his cabs without asking the authors for permission.
I see but I’m not sure how this solves that. Â Does uploading to your app grant implicit permission to cabinet makers who pre-load tables as well?
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No, of course not.
The reason why someone would pre-load a cab is because it’s currently quite cumbersome and time consuming specially for newcomers to get the tables set up. There was a similar scandal with Tom Tower allegedly sending DVDs to friends. Getting set up is obviously a problem for many people.
VPDB doesn’t really “solve” this problem, but it lowers the “entry bar”, resulting in less need of pre-loading cabs. That was the point I was trying to make with Brad. Nothing came out of it.
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His pre-loading problem is that he’s accused by half the community of pre-loading VP tables on his cabs without asking the authors for permission.
Well ive seen preloaded virtigos myself. It’s a fact
like everyone has said it’s a nice looking database of downloads! freezy your a great guy as is Tom at pbx! Thanks for joining the conversation and keeping it professional.
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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android********************************************************
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Cheers man, it’s a pleasure being here. :)
I haven’t seen a VPCab in real life, but what you’re saying sounds plausible. Though let’s keep that discussion for another time shall we :)
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One thing I made sure here is uploader owns the download. Uploader can upload, modify, update and even remove…yes remove their upload! It’s something I wanted to make sure worked while I have still tweaking to do for screenshot slideshow and other things like related downloads I made sure uploader had full control.
freezy how does vpdb work? What happens to upload if a uploader what’s to completely remove it?
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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android********************************************************
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It’s a good point. The VPDB API allows the uploader to remove its uploads. Since VPDB allows multiple authors per release, the API even allows the other authors to disable the upload they co-authored.
I’ve recently made this available in the web application for B2S backglasses, but for the table uploads it’s still on my TODO list.
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Stern SAM
I hear you, it sucks. In fact, I would really love to have SAM games at VPDB. But we’re new here and we can’t just stamp into a community without respecting the rules that have been there from the beginning. Rules change with time but for now, we have decided to play along.
You are not stamping in, you have had this in the works for a quite a while. Also, Paul is NOT the community. It is fine for Paul to choose to not host SAM tables because he said he would not. Â But he does not speak for the entire community. It is your software, if you want to have SAM tables, you can (or not, I suppose).
I guess I see the VPDB as more like browsing the download section of the forums. Â You still would link to the download through the WIP or release threads. Â As an API to “subscribe” to a table download sounds cool, but I personally wouldn’t use it beyond wanting a notification that a new version of a file was uploaded. Maybe kind of a neat interface to see which tables I have that have downloaded also have new versions available with a link back to the WIP or release thread. I make changes to pretty much every table I download and wouldn’t want it auto-updating any of them without me doing it.
One thing I would like to see is a standardized naming convention for files downloaded.  I would like to see some of the names validated against IPDB for year, mfg, and title. then maybe author, version, mod description, ect…  I pretty sure most everyone downloads files and then immediately renames them to match their preferred convention, which is fine and will still happen. However, it would be nice to always start from the same place.
It is a really nice interface and I think a step in the right direction.
-Mike
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Ok, let’s just say that VPF isn’t the community. Their rules only apply to their site. Just because it’s the oldest (well….) doesn’t mean their rules are all encompassing.
BESIDES that, I think the interface is great, I think it’s a cool idea, I think it’s a long time coming. But I won’t continue to participate since most of my tables wouldn’t be allowed. I give permission for any of my tables to be uploaded there if that’s desired (I think AMH is already there) but since the best of my work is focused on games that have been nixed from access for arbitrary reasons, I won’t actively participate.
I was very excited about the project until the SAM rule was added. It was very disappointing.
Punch it!
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Honestly, for my self I don’t see the need for this.. I admit the idea does seem cool but I have a feeling things about it are being left out on purpose to deceive us authors.. It’s something that seems to happen in this hobby way too often too line someone else’s pockets..
If someone wants a table I worked on they can get them the good old fashioned way by downloading it at the sight I upload it too..
Also, if this has anything to do with VPCabs I want nothing to do with it.. Its just my opinion and many others that selling our work is total bull shit..
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Excellent thread, I was hoping for such a civilized discussion about the elephant in the room. ;) I’ll try to address your concerns as good as I can.
Cheers for the input Freezy, appreciate the effort, it’s a lovely interface, and thanks for the additional clarity.
Cheers,
al.
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