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Is Paul actually going to use or integrate VPDB?
I think that train has left the station. ;)
The SAM discussion is not about what Paul likes or not. As you said, it’s our site, our rules.
I thought a bit more about the “community” idea above and I think it could actually work. I mean at some point SAM will be accessible publicly, but meanwhile this could work well as an intermediate solution. Of course it wouldn’t be nearly as restrictive as Dribbble.
What do you think?
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I thought a little more about the SAM issue. This is only an idea so bear with me.
What if VPDB would offer SAM games only to “the community”? And by community I mean anyone who contributed something to the community. It wouldn’t be hard to obtain that status, basically if you have been around for some time and participated in one of the boards you would get that status. But that would mean that the “public” still wouldn’t have access to SAM games. Which is our primary worry, to be honest.
The pros are that VPDB still wouldn’t mass-distribute SAM games and kind of honor the “agreement” if there ever was one. The challenge would be to find a democratic way of attributing that status. I don’t see anyone alone to be given that right, so maybe an invite system would work? Once you’re “community”, you can invite other people to join?
I haven’t thought this entirely through yet, but it might be a base to start with. What do you guys think?
EDIT: Dribbble works in a similar way.
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Freezy, yeah you are right… the two things can go hand in hand. What do you think about “link to discussion thread” being standardized as a field in the table submission form?
Hmm maybe authors would appreciate a way of disabling VPDB comments for a release and display a button that leads to the support thread at their forum instead?
What do you guys think?
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Hi, if you go to Profile -> Download Options, you can define how the table files are named. You can either add {release_version} but you could also just replace everything with {original_filename}, in which case it’ll be named like the original file, which usually contains the version number.
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I thought about that, basically some pre-defined values as link descriptions. But finally there will be always other kind of links that aren’t anticipated, meaning we would need to have an option for adding link types and then it just gets really complicated. I like simple. :) So currently it’s a label and an URL the author can define. Or multiple of course.
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Yes, true, sorry, I noticed too late. IPB made a lot of progress in v4 though.
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Yeah you can already link any thread or site when uploading a release to VPDB. That’s what most table authors already did, e.g. Tom and Ninuzzu link to their WIPs at monsterbashpincab. I also think that it’s a good solution. People who want to know more about the release or the author go to the linked forum/thread the author indicated, and the link is clearly visible. As VPDB drives more traffic, more people will come visit those forums, and they are people interested in the community, not just in the download. So I think that this could work very well.
@Randr, my screenshot wasn’t supposed to criticize your layout at all. I think it’s fine how you’ve solved it here, because you already have the forum section where the authors get honored. Just as a general note when it comes to layout or design, I would rather take the approach “what would VPF not do” in order to make VPB better… ;)@Al, good point about the rebellion. :)
@Drybonz: I think these details actually matter. If every time you launch a table you see the author’s name and avatar, you WILL recognize it if you happen to see a post with the same name and picture on a site. And that’s one of the things that matter, right? If on a board maybe even totally unrelated to pinball, someone responds in a thread and adds “By the way, you’re the guy who recreated game X, right? Pretty awesome!”, then that’s pretty cool, right?You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Yes, that was the sentiment I was trying to express. I like the technology very much as a distribution platform. It’s this initial application of the technology. Disembodied from a developer’s/author’s forum and fully automated, I truly don’t see it as that helpful. But it’s good for the casual player. It’s Wal-Mart for VP. No reason to stay once you have gotten your shit.
While that’s true I don’t think it’s relevant. It applies to everybody. Do you think that the casual player “stays” at the forums just because it’s a hassle to get the files? No. Do you think established and active members of the community enjoy spending 10 minutes searching for a ROM and the right backglass for a given table? Hardly. I’ve heard there are some. I don’t. VPF is a horrible download experience.
What I’m trying to say is that one doesn’t exclude the other: You can have a thriving forum site and a thriving “distribution” site at the same time. For a forum community, all the leechers that just come, “get their shit and don’t stay” have zero value. Let VPDB handle those. Focus on what you do best: Maintain a wonderful community of virtual pinball enthusiasts.
“But at a distribution site, us authors become anonymous and noone will appreciate our work anymore!”
Honestly I don’t think that’s true. I remember how I was when I first visited VPF: I straight went to the downloads section. I didn’t bother searching for WIP threads or read thousands of other threads. “Submitter” names in the file descriptor were completely irrelevant. I think at VPDB, authors are more prominently displayed. Just look at the space authors and acknowledgements take at VPDB compared to here and VPF:
We can even go further: What if the next PinballX version displayed the authors including avatar of each game in the wheel? This kind of stuff is easy doable with structured data but nearly impossible with the forum solutions we currently have.What irks me about vpdb.io is the SAM rule and the perpetuation of the myth of this binding gentlemen’s agreement and the subsequent “worst kept secret in virtual pinball”. It may not be explicitly stated, but within the community the implication is that if you don’t believe this then you (meaning everyone who contributes to VPinball, VPU, MonsterBashPincab, etc.) are bad people, disrespectful, and wish harm to the larger pinball community.
I must admit that this thought hasn’t crossed my mind. I was always under the impression that the “narrative” was to follow VPF rules with the rest being “rebels”. I didn’t think anyone could be offended by not supporting SAM. If that’s the case, I sincerely apologize, that was the least of my intentions.
I need to think more about the consequences allowing SAM and obviously discuss it with Tom and everyone else involved. I’ll keep you guys posted.
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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.
Yeah you can do that under preferences. Basically there are placeholders you can mix to your liking, which define how the table file in the .zip is named. Oh, and if your tweaks are only script changes, I’ve found a way to automatically keep them across table updates. I’m looking into how to apply other changes as well, but that’s going to me more challenging.
@fren: Well you didn’t reply when I asked, so no AMH at VPDB. Pity, it’s a very nice table and I specially added support for the UltraDMD stuff.
@ICPjuggla: I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m just trying to step on as little toes as possible.Keeping everyone happy is impossible, but to be honest I appreciate you guys here a lot. It was a difficult decision and you don’t make it any easier now. ;)
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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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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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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.
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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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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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1016 tables.. that’s just crazy! :)
There’s VPDB, which is basically an API and a web application, but there’s also VPDB Agent which runs on your cab and updates everything in real time. I haven’t talked much about the latter yet but when it’s done it’s gonna be pretty awesome.
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