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03-28-24 02:25 PM
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cosmological
Posted on 03-08-14 04:59 PM Link | #39307
(the following post you are about to read is by far my longest post, but it also an extremely important post that you should find the time to read all of)

SMG Reform

Introduction/Why it’s a problem.

Well as many of you have noticed there has been a significant lack of progress in the SMG department. Both StapleButter and I don’t like that this is happening so we want to work with members to recreate the scene here on Kuribo. So right now I’m going to outline some of the ideas that SB and I have come up with and ideas of other members from the IRC. I’ll outline a lot of the sections.

What's the Problem?

Well there has been very minimal progress lately in SMG. So little that some members thought the only way to save it was to bring it to their own site. Well it is still possible to save, and we don’t need any rebirth sites to do so. So to make galaxy hacking successful we need to identify the problems that we've had with it.

- Few new members. To deal with this problem we need to get word out about Kuribo and galaxy hacking in general. We can do this by getting a demo out there (which I’ll explain more about later) and making a trailer for it. Once we have that out there, we should be able to attract more members, Now our other problem with new members is that our community hasn’t been very accepting of new members. So most new members can make derpy posts or make mistakes, but this is a behavior that can be improved. Our community needs to be helpful to these new members so that they can learn from their mistakes and not make them again. I DO NOT want to hear any other member calling a new member a derp or moron because they slightly messed up. (I’ll probably talk to SB to change some of the rules about this kind of behavior). The staff will deal with any potential problems with a new member not following the rules. Failure to do this may result in a ban.

- Lack of organization. Right now the SMG section is not organized as well as it could be. The problem mostly stems from the fact that it was created before we knew all of the extents of what we’d be doing with galaxy hacking. We need to work on a system that reduces clutter without having a forum or subforum for every little thing. I’ll outline all of my ideas for the reorganization later.
-Competition. Currently Kuribo64 has both SMG and SM64DS on the same forum page. Some members think that this makes it so that one of the topic outshine the other, while other members thinks this motivates both sides to make progress to be out shining the other. This could be solved in a way similar to what we did for 2.5 by having both sections on separate pages being able to access them from the bar at the top of the site (whatever that’s called).

-Immaturity. I don’t want to bring this up, but at the same time it needs to be brought up. Some members here can act very childish, and have feuds. To be successful we need to put our differences aside and work as a team. A problem with being childish is that you could be someone with a lot of talent and potential for the scene, but don’t get along with the rest of the community and discourage them from what they want to do.

-Staff motivation. Well a lot of you have heard SB say that SMG hacking is dead. Also some of you have probably noticed that I’m absent a lot of the time from the forums and can be unresponsive on the IRC. I think this is a bit problematic to the scene but it can be changed.


Some Solutions (Yay you all can help suggest stuff!)
Well here I’m going to outline some of the solutions that I’ve come up with to the aforementioned problems. Some of these problems have multiple possible solutions so I’ll outline a few for those with multiple solutions. In the thread you can tell me which solutions you like the most and SB and I can try to implement them as soon as possible.
One of our problems is the organization of the SMG section. The general board is really cluttered with a lot of unrelated stuff. When the SMG section was created we had no clue all that we’d be doing so it wasn’t made to handle all the new stuff. Our solution needs to solve our current problem with organization but also be easily expandable for any further developments. We also don’t want a million forums that barely have anything in them, because that’s just another kind of clutter. Also unfortunately I do not know much about the SMG documentation and SMG hacking tools and development forums so I won’t suggest much for those (people who use those more should respond if they need any changes or not). So I’ll just put some of my suggestions for what to do with the General SMG Hacking forum.

Ex. #1 (Not much forum spam and a much simpler solution)
-General SMG Hacking
o ASM Hacking
o Custom Levels
o Questions/Problems

Ex #2 (With more Forums so more future expansion)
-Custom Levels (post your custom levels or level ideas here)
o Demo #1 (advantage of this method is that it allows for demo subforums without needing another forum just for demos)
o Projects/Ideas (not really needed, but it would be a god place for people who have ideas for mini hacks to post away from all the other custom levels, if implemented it would probably be at a later date)
-General SMG Hacking (Problem here is I don’t know what wouldn’t go in the subforums)
o ASM Hacking
o Questions/Problems

In my opinion Ex #2 is more future proof and would reduce clutter in the long run, but in the short run there would be a lot of forums with very little in them. Of course if anyone else has ideas they think would work even better, feel free to post them below.
We could also use some improvements with just the layout of the forums and threads. It would be nice to establish some standards so that new members can know where to start and that we can have some consistency. Having more official threads would also help. For example it would be very good to have an official Questions’s Thread so that members with questions know where to post and not spam useless threads. I think it would also be nice to have an official Custom Level Template that is easy to navigate and to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Another slight modification I would like it to tag the threads describing the phase of the level being created. Let me give some WIP (at 12 PM after swimming half a mile) templates for these.


Level Name: ex. Unnamed Lava Level with Red Star

Creators (for old 2.5 members, by creators I mean everyone involved with the level) use the [user=X]

Current Phase: here are all of my stages of level creation (Basic Idea, Formal Design, Models, Textures (if applicable), Whitehole creation, Testing, Complete) you would fill out the one that you currently are on or what you have just completed. Please don’t make a thread unless you have at least some clue about what you want to do. This section will be refined (as I said 12 AM).

Brief Description: Here you would give a couple sentences describing the gimmick, theme of the level. If your level has no theme or gimmick and its just a test of skill describe it like that. Also include how many stars will be in the level/difficulty(planned difficulty) Example for my Lava Level: A relatively basic lava level with a lot of aspects from Bowser’s Lava Lair. The Level will also use the Red Star for a star chip collecting challenge. 2 Star. Planned Difficulty 6.5 / 10

Formal Design: if you have a whole design written up or a picture based design, write it up here. Make sure to not have a whole block of text but separate it up by area or planet.

Progress Pictures: Here you would post your screenshots of your level. Make sure each section is in a separate spoiler. The sections would include rendered images of your models, Whitehole Screenshots, In game screenshots.

Download Links: Here you would post the links to download the models, or the whitehole file

I sure hope you read that spoiler or else this will not make sense at all. MN1 suggested that we have a little mod to blargboard that would have download buttons for the levels (probably around the top of the post). I haven’t pitched this to StapleButter yet so I have no clue how easy/difficult it would be to do. If people think this is a good idea I’ll ask him if he can make it possible. This also relies on people not abusing the system.

Also as I mentioned the threads should be labeled accordingly to the type of level it is. This will help people looking though the board to easily see what kind of level the level is and how far in development it is.


After the Thread name and any other tags the poster wants to post this category should go first.

Category #1 Type of Level. All levels should fall into one of these categories [base models (only using Nintendo’s models)], [custom textures (base models with custom textures)], [custom models (pretty self-explanatory)], [custom animations (you have made leaps and bounds since this thread has been made).

Category #2 Progress in Level: This is like what I posted in my level template, Have the current state of the level of [idea], [formal design], [artwork], [models], [textures], [Whitehole], [Testing Phase], [Complete].
So yeah, those are my ideas for the more organization for making custom levels and organizing the General SMG Hacking Section. Sorry for the monster post but it needs to be done. Currently you have read around 1,600 (1,700) words. Unless I’ve added some more stuff and forgot to change the number, then I’m even sorrier for you (looks like I added some stuff, sorry). Hopefully these next sections aren’t quite as long.

Competition.

So as most of you know, Kuribo64 is not just about SMG hacking, but it also has SM64DS. Some members are concerned that when one of these sections is doing well, the other fades out of the scene. Other members could find that this encourages competition between the two groups to make sure their side is in the spotlight. I can see both sides and I think there is a solution that keeps the friendly competition as well as keeping both sections in the spotlight. Back when 2.5 has its own section of the board there was a lot of activity on both the 2.5 section and the forums section. I think we could have the same idea for the SM64DS and SMG sections. As some SMG community members have “suggested” in wanting a separate site I think it would be the most beneficial to have the whole SMG category moved to a separate tab on Kuribo and keep SM64DS with the other forums.

For lack of transition at 1 AM I’ll talk about other somewhat related issues in this section. So a problem with SMG hacking that some people have found is that it doesn’t have a nice pretty site advertising everything great about it. I think this could be improved with some modifications to the front page as well as making a youtube channel. The SMGHacking youtube channel would be managed by the administrators of kuribo and would be open for posting videos that we deem appropriate. Also the additions to the front page of kuribo would have to be made once we have more to show of it (demo). This also goes for the youtube channel. (My structure is decaying fast)


Immaturity.

I hope to keep this brief, because I don’t like talking about this aspect much. Our community has a problem with immaturity and I think there can be some changes made to help that. First off I know this is hard because generally the SMG audience is young and a lot of our members are teenagers (psych word). This automatically makes it difficult for us all to get along and act like mature adults. There is some advice I can give, being a teenager myself and dealing with some of these problems in real life. Not everything comes instantly, you have to work for things in order to get them. I’ve had this problem with motivation both on the forum and in real life. When you start a task you have to accept that it can and will take over a week to complete and you have to have the patience to go through with it. (take this post for example, I’ve been working on it for 2 and a half hours after weeks of thought and I’m getting it done). We also have to accept that we all have differences and we need to respect those differences. We aren’t all the same person and not everyone is going to be our perfect reflection. So I want some of the real life rules of conversation and etiquette (took a while to get spell check to get that right) to apply here. Please no talking about controversial topics (such as religion, politics, sexual orientation, etc.) because there is bound to be a person who sees it differently than you and will cause unneeded drama. We also need to show respect to everyone. If you don’t like something a person did, politely confront them about it and they will probably change based on that. This goes for staff here aswell, if you don’t like or understand something that SB grid or I have done... TELL US …(or we’ll ban you :P) we will be willing to give you information behind our decision and make change accordingly. We aren’t banhappy dictators and don’t want to be regarded as so, Please, please don’t complain about them behind their backs because that is not respectful and doesn’t help anyone (pro-tip this also works really well in real life, I used it to get a lot of positive change going at my school and got my friend out of an unjust suspension). Overall just be decent to other people, don’t act more important than another member for any reason (arrogance), and please be aware of the facts behind another member’s decision (don’t be ignorant) and take time to.
Woo its 1:30 now. And I’m 2,400 words in right now you’ll probably be reading more as I return to the start of this post to add another section that I would like to discuss before I get to the demo (Ctrl+s).

Staff Motivation.

We’ll this isn’t much of your problem, more of my problem and a problem for the SMG hacking scene. For the members to be motivated the staff needs to be motivated as well, and right now, us staff aren’t doing that great a job. I’ll let StapleButter talk more about his problems because I don’t want to put words into his mouth, so instead I’ll talk about myself and hopefully answer some questions. Ever since I joined the forums back in February 2011 I’ve never been that high of a poster. Although I still don’t believe in an extremely high post count and believe that every post should have a lot of meaning, my amount of posts has been quite pathetic to say the least. I’m not involved in the community. I don’t play the relaxland games or talk about random occurrences to me in General Chat, nor do I post on the custom levels. I need to change. I want the community to know more about me.
So let me explain why I’m not around as much as I’d like to be. I go to one of the top 20 high schools in the United States and live their 24/7 so I’m rather busy. With classes starting at 9:30 and going to 8PM I’m usually busy doing my 4+ hours homework for my 7 classes (4 AP) or socializing with my friends between homework sessions. I always have the IRC open and the forum open (except 7-9 EST because of school internet blocks) mainly to make sure that something horrible didn’t happen. I would like to get into the routine of taking 15 minutes out of my day to catch up on the day’s posts and respond to what I can. Also I’ve had some various problems with motivation due to personal events that have kept me from doing my school work diligently and thus working on SMG hacking. Fortunately I’ve been getting over though hardships and am doing a lot better mentally, socially, and academically. Hopefully these changes will spread to the board and I’ll be a more active member.
Woo, 1:40. Nearing 3,000 words, on page 6 of this single spaced word document, and time to get to the thing that everyone is waiting to hear about… the demo!

Demo #1 – A State of Galaxy
So what does a hacking community need most? Members! How do we get members? Advertising! What’s a good form of advertising? Get a demo out there! So lets talk about this demo. I want this demo to be a big but reasonable goal. A one world hack should be perfect. The demo will be called a state of galaxy because I want to to show off everything that we can do with galaxy hacking. Each of the 7 levels would show off a different aspect of galaxy hacking and what it can do so all potential members can see what fits them the most.

Here’s what I want to see in this Hack.
1 Level Using just Nintendo models: I think we should use either Cloudy Court or Supermassive
1 Level using Texture Hacks: Using the Standard Nintendo models but with custom textures.
1 Level using the Red Star: My nameless lava level takes advantage of the red star.
1 Level using the Ice Flower: My Coastline Cavern Star 2 uses the Ice Flower and the comet mission could also use it.
1 Level using custom models: It could be anything, we have a couple options, possibly Sky High
1 Additional of Community Choice: Under-Over is looking very nice but we also got PPG working on a SM3DW style level, it might be able to be combined with Retro Remix too.
1 Boss Level/ Bowser Level: Uses everything in a really nice way to make an epic final level. Maybe even a Dry Bowser Fight at the end.

We want to make sure all of these galaxies are nicely polished and work fine so that the player doesn’t experience any game breaking glitches. We’ll also need to put this into a nice trailer, probably advertise it on the old SMG2.5 channel as well as the new SMG hacking channel (bonus footage anyone?). We would also want to advertise on all of the other forums that we originally advertised SMG2.5 on. And we shouldn’t be subtle about wanting people to join our cause and help us expand the boundaries of SMG Hacking. I’ll work with SB to get all of the board modifications in place so we can start working on this demo ASAP.

Brief Conclusion.
2 AM now. 3,200 words in and I know this is a horribly long post, but its extremely important for the future success of SMG hacking. I really hope that you read all of it because I think it is all super important info and will help keep the forum in line for months if not years to come. Hopefully I’ve conveyed to you all that this means a lot to me and I’m willing to work hard on it. I’d love to see the same dedication from all of you and this really can go far. We just need to get this critical turning point right and everything should go well from here on out. Please post your questions or concerns so that this goes off without a hitch.

Let’s bring SMG Hacking back!

____________________
Long live the new Kuribo64

Stygmax
Posted on 03-08-14 05:27 PM Link | #39308
Love it. Great post detailing everything I've wanted to ever say about these problems.

Hope this goes well! ;)
Status: It was really, really fun, guys - thanks for the ride!

Jesse
Posted on 03-08-14 06:24 PM Link | #39315
yeah I agree with the point that we must be more friendly to newcomers, even people who doesn't even know about riivolution.

its also could be a good thing to have an FaQ in the sentence of problems. this can help much people with their problems.

Agent000
Posted on 03-08-14 07:10 PM Link | #39317
Good post! Maybe put some of that stuff in the Maturity section in bold and giant font and italics and stuff.

Also I'm not really sure about calling it "A State of Galaxy" -- I don't really get what that's supposed to mean or how it makes sense. But I like the ideas for the demo levels.

____________________
[image]
[image]
|AgentSplaturn| if someone uses an external hard disk to store porn on
|AgentSplaturn| is it their sex drive? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
|skyluigi| agent that's one of the best quotes I've ever seen on this IRC

PaperplateismGuy
Posted on 03-08-14 07:25 PM Link | #39318
Wow,nice post I like the part about being nicer to new users. I've felt that sometimes we are a bit meaner than need be.

____________________
Remember, every user has to start out somewhere,- Every time I look back at my old posts, I cringe.



NoSkinnedKoopa
Posted on 03-09-14 02:07 AM Link | #39324
Great to see cosmo still caring. Hope this turns out really well.

Arisotura
Posted on 03-09-14 10:49 AM Link | #39326
About the forum restructure: I'm ready to add more forums and subforums. However, making a separate page for SMG forums isn't really justified when SMG hacking isn't even as active as SM64DS (and SM64DS only has one forum so far).

____________________
NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

SnakeBlock
(post deleted) #39329

Soulja Boy
Posted on 03-09-14 09:31 PM Link | #39338
Yes! SMG2.5 might even be revived!

Arisotura
Posted on 03-09-14 09:43 PM Link | #39339
I don't think so.

____________________
NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

PaperplateismGuy
Posted on 03-10-14 05:02 AM Link | #39345
Not entirely, as Cosmo said this post is for trying to get a community. So in a way, SMG2.5 might be revived in terms of SMG hacking spirit. If the community gets big enough then we might think about fully reviving the project.

____________________
Remember, every user has to start out somewhere,- Every time I look back at my old posts, I cringe.



PablosCorner
Posted on 03-10-14 11:34 PM Link | #39361
I've never tried hacking Super Mario Galaxy/Super Mario Galaxy 2, but i would love to try one day. :)

Gmanextreme9
Posted on 03-11-14 09:04 PM Link | #39367
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

____________________
You can tell I'm testing new avatars.

Status: Totally didn't change this, nothing to see here.


NWPlayer123
Posted on 03-11-14 09:05 PM Link | #39368
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

You can't use your Wii U? Interesting.

____________________
"I hate playing musical chats" ~ Quote of the month

Gmanextreme9
Posted on 03-11-14 09:13 PM (rev. 2 of 03-11-14 09:14 PM) Link | #39370
Posted by NWPlayer123
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

You can't use your Wii U? Interesting.


Still trying to transfer files from dead Wii to Wii U and I'm not completely sure if Homebrew is on Wii U yet. And I never was able to install Homebrew on my Wii because I messed up and when I tried to fix it, the SD card broke and is unusable.

____________________
You can tell I'm testing new avatars.

Status: Totally didn't change this, nothing to see here.


Stygmax
Posted on 03-11-14 09:14 PM Link | #39371
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Posted by NWPlayer123
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

You can't use your Wii U? Interesting.


Still trying to transfer files from dead Wii to Wii U and I'm not completely sure if Homebrew is on Wii U yet.


It is. In Wiimode.
Status: It was really, really fun, guys - thanks for the ride!

PaperplateismGuy
Posted on 03-12-14 12:13 AM Link | #39375
Posted by Stygmax
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Posted by NWPlayer123
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

You can't use your Wii U? Interesting.


Still trying to transfer files from dead Wii to Wii U and I'm not completely sure if Homebrew is on Wii U yet.


It is. In Wiimode.


Well, I hope that they fixed that disc read hardware thing (in the wii) where it stops reading disks after about 4 years.

____________________
Remember, every user has to start out somewhere,- Every time I look back at my old posts, I cringe.



Arisotura
Posted on 03-12-14 07:32 PM Link | #39387
Never heard of such a thing. We have our Wii since 7 years and it still reads discs fine.

____________________
NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

natnew
(post deleted) #39388

Gmanextreme9
Posted on 03-12-14 08:49 PM Link | #39389
Posted by PaperplateismGuy
Posted by Stygmax
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Posted by NWPlayer123
Posted by Gmanextreme9
Well my Wii is officially dead so I won't be doing anything soon.

You can't use your Wii U? Interesting.


Still trying to transfer files from dead Wii to Wii U and I'm not completely sure if Homebrew is on Wii U yet.


It is. In Wiimode.


Well, I hope that they fixed that disc read hardware thing (in the wii) where it stops reading disks after about 4 years.


Yep that's the problem I have. It won't read anything. The only thing is I've had my Wii for 7-8 years.

____________________
You can tell I'm testing new avatars.

Status: Totally didn't change this, nothing to see here.

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