nesdev.org

M_Tee wrote:What I can't understand though, is why one would feel that it's "politics" to even consider this, or how you could respond to "Have you thought about depicting non-white people in your game?" with "Thinking about that is nonsense that would kill my joy and apparently result in a not-lighthearted game."

This is "politics" because if you don't answer carefully, you're going to be labeled as a bigot. If this forum is anything to go on, we programmers are bad at communication, and a stint of bad politics will unfairly taint someone's project despite not actually physically doing anything to the project. Is it any wonder why people would prefer to not discuss things like this, when there's an army of people out there looking for any reason to label you?

GradualGames wrote:Says someone who quit an entire community after someone complimented you on how cool your game is that it could be funded by kickstarter. You're ridiculous, and I was calling you out on that. I accept being called an ass when someone's as nuts as you are. I still greatly admire your work and hope you release it eventually.

Excuse me? You were rather quick to point fingers before, with only half of the story, so I told you off.

You publicly apologized, before harassing me via PM in private, encouraging me to quit the homebrew scene.

I'll say it now, you're a two-faced asshole. Plain and simple.

...and no, before anybody asks, I'm not drudging things up from another forum, this all took place here, on NesDev.

For your information GradualGames, I quit the NA community after some shit-for-brains decided to give out my personal information, and incite personal attacks, and the moderators did nothing. Clearly, you missed that part.

My favorite part, was when they had the nerve to call me a "pedophile" for my artwork.

Espozo wrote:I love when people put emojis at the end of insults, I guess to avoid being insulted back?

I did no such thing, It's called mockery.

You're telling me there's a difference between insulting someone and mocking someone?

For your information GradualGames, I quit the NA community after some shit-for-brains decided to give out my personal information, and incite personal attacks, and the moderators did nothing. Clearly, you missed that part.

Well, why did they do it in the first place? How did this happen on NESDev? I thought it happened on NintendoAge.

Yes, as certainly as I shit for Mortal Kombat. When you mock the Mario, are you insulting Nintendo and DiC?

Alp wrote:

GradualGames wrote:Says someone who quit an entire community after someone complimented you on how cool your game is that it could be funded by kickstarter. You're ridiculous, and I was calling you out on that. I accept being called an ass when someone's as nuts as you are. I still greatly admire your work and hope you release it eventually.

Excuse me? You were rather quick to point fingers before, with only half of the story, so I told you off.

You publicly apologized, before harassing me via PM in private, encouraging me to quit the homebrew scene.

I'll say it now, you're a two-faced asshole. Plain and simple.

...and no, before anybody asks, I'm not drudging things up from another forum, this all took place here, on NesDev.

For your information GradualGames, I quit the NA community after some shit-for-brains decided to give out my personal information, and incite personal attacks, and the moderators did nothing. Clearly, you missed that part.

My favorite part, was when they had the nerve to call me a "pedophile" for my artwork.

Espozo wrote:I love when people put emojis at the end of insults, I guess to avoid being insulted back?

I did no such thing, It's called mockery.

I saw the whole NA thread... Everyone was being polite to you and complimentary. You flew into a rage and quit the community. I don't remember anybody calling you a pedo. If there really was something like that that I missed I certainly would owe you an apology.

Regardless. It doesn't matter. You're still a crazy person and you make great stuff. I'd love to see it finished.

And ...I never encouraged you to quit. On the contrary, I keep saying to stop being a drama queen and just finish your game. Nobody gives a shit about the drama.

I've only got three protagonists in my portfolio, each in her own unfinished game maker game on a stationary shoved in the closet and forgotten.

Itsy the spider, who's struggling with very perilous rain and bigger insects on her ascension to the top where she can find a mate to... mate with (tastefully shown as a heart), devour, and lay eggs. She's got a bobby haircut. It's just a silly jump and duck platformer about a spider from a children's song doing something a real spider might do.

Unnamed character who's a diplomat sent to a fringe world mine colony in deep space to solve what spacecorp thinks is a general strike, but of course it's alien bugs - they've dug to deep, everyone's a dead host to alien larvae, and help will take forever to arrive. You have to make do with inept skills and tools for the task and learn how to survive until you've gathered enough badass weaponry and learned your way sneaking through the complex. Then it's a lofi 2d-topdown doom massacre. Unfortunately, it leaks memory from every seam and i got tired of it. There's also a 'female' AI by means of speech synthesis. she/it is actually more fleshed out, the diplomat-turned-warrior you play is more of a vessel for your ride, like samus before other m and fusion, and she's got helmet and gloves which doesn't reveal her features.

The oldest dead project, which i hope to revive someday, is Rush'n'reverse, where you are Katyusha, and run and knife your way from right to left, seeking to destroy the enemy's secret weapon. I was planning for a jetpack fight with the mecha-statue of liberty. Graphic aspirations were too grand and if i'll give it a shot again, it'll be with lower resolution, someone who can program bosses, and a limited palette.

The learning outcome from those attempts is that it, at least for me, takes a team and clear restrictions. We were two on the middle one, but that wasn't enough given the scope.

As you can see, it's all sort of female characters - alternative two can be a bit ambigous/concealed if you want it to, but Ellen Ripley from alien undoubtedly was a strong influence. It's as much as a conscious choice as it comes naturally. It might not be a trend forever, but this is where i'm at. The only clear human ethnicity is in example three. Her only feature is really being a very skilled warrior who's been trained to prevail with as little as a combat knife if needed, even though you get the occasional gun, bazooka, and what not, just like in rush'n'attack/green beret.


Back in qbasic days, in the games i made, there were no characters. You were a car, or you were yourself in a text/picture based adventure, or whatever.

Late reply: I've been dreading catching up on this thread for fear that it might go downhill...

...which is already did. Some time ago.

Incoming broad opinions, please stop me from putting any words in anyone's mouth: If I misinterpret something you say, please don't think I'm trying to misrepresent you.

Anyways. I love this forum and the people here, but I'm seeing a lot of things that sadden me in this thread. I see a lot of insult and a lot of needlessly heated discussion. Honestly, I don't think there's anything to be gained by discussing the contents of this thread much further than they have been. I'm seeing a theme in the opinions of the people that call for change here; we are responsible for the way we represent people. I think that's a fair point. I'm seeing a few different themes in the opinions of the people that respond to those posts. I'll try to summarize:

1. Creators have the right to create as they see fit. I think Alp will agree with me the most fully here. When someone actually puts out the intense effort required to make these games, they earn the right to make these games the way they want to, no matter what anyone else thinks about it. The most an onlooker can hope for is for their opinion to be heard.

2. Creators don't want attention drawn to certain parts of their work. This is what I was trying to get at with my fantasy-european talk. If anything ever creates discord in a piece, it's going to draw attention. Discord between the culture show in a game and the ethnicity of the people within that culture is something that I feel we want to avoid for the most part, but I'm not certain that all of us will agree here. I do see Espozo bringing up a form of this when he mentions games that have 'every ethnicity crammed in'. If something sticks out in a piece that the creator didn't want to stick out, it is a failure.

3. This is an extremely dangerous situation. I have a lot of experience with this, having come from a forum that was almost completely destroyed by this exact same topic. I lost a lot of friends over this conversation, even though we were agreeing with each other. I think that while this conversation needs to be had, it also needs to be stopped once things turn south or we're all just going to end up causing damage to the community. As much as I hate singing and physical contact, I feel like a bit of group-hugging and Kumbayah is in order. There are things in this thread that offend me and I want very badly to call a few people out on it, but that will do no good. Whether I bear anyone ill will is not more important than the camaraderie of the forums.

Stop me if I am wrong, but I feel that we have all been heard. I think the thread got across the things that it needed to. There are many things to learn here.

I don't want to be selfish and hog the last word. Anyone that needs to say something will say it and I won't stop them. But, I'd like to ask something of the people here. This is a singular and honest request out of my love of the forum and my want to maintain or create a friendship or at least working relationship with any of you: Please stop talking about this. I fear it can only do more harm.

That's enough flowers out of my ass for one post. I'm going to try and leave this alone now.

This is nothing compared to the "Bible thread".

Also, about "friends" on these websites, my advice is don't get too close to anyone. There isn't enough you know about other people here. Hell, I don't even know anyone else's name. Mine's Drew Sebastino, which I'm telling anyone for the hell of it.

Actually, is there a "get to know each other" thread here? Well, the problem about these is the fact that no one is going to say anything bad about themselves.

Espozo wrote:Also, about "friends" on these websites, my advice is don't get too close to anyone. There isn't enough you know about other people here.

I've met some people in the NESdev community that I'd consider friends. We haven't met in person yet but I intend to keep in touch so no reason that won't change.

This kinda makes me think of the 90s internet warnings. Don't go sharing information in chat rooms or internet forums!

Hell, I don't even know anyone else's name.

Maybe you don't want to post your name is THIS thread. Just with search results and all. Just sayin'.

Well, the problem about these is the fact that no one is going to say anything bad about themselves.

Hi! I'm darryl and I'm a fuckin' asshole! You want help? Screw you!

I love everyone in this thread. I have strong opinions, that does not change that I think you are all awesome.

darryl.revok wrote:Hi! I'm darryl and I'm a fuckin' asshole! You want help? Screw you!

Yeah, I wasn't thinking too hard.

darryl.revok wrote:I've met some people in the NESdev community that I'd consider friends. We haven't met in person yet but I intend to keep in touch so no reason that won't change.

I don't know, it's just that how much do you really know these people? You barely know someone in school, and they're not given time to think over what they say. You also know more personal information than a made up username and picture. On these kind of websites, you can pretend to be whoever you want. (If it will convince anyone is another story.) Well, that's how I feel about it anyway.

The person I know the best here is koitsu, because I've actually seen his face and how he reacts to frustrating situations. (It's from the HiROM conversion video.) I remember one of the first things I asked here was why the SNES didn't reserve more ram for colors, (I had no clue how it worked at the time) and he went on a whole thing about how the past is the past and you can't change how they designed the systems. I thought he was a real jerk at that moment, but I've come to accept that as true, and that I had been too judgy with him.

Anyway...

GradualGames wrote:I think you are all awesome.

I'd have to say that the people on this website on average are nice, albeit a bit awkward, but I'm not one to talk. There are only a couple of people here I would prefer wouldn't be.

EDIT: I think I'm misguided on the topic but eh.

On the topic of character diversity on the NES: not surprising that a Japanese console doesn't have a lot of character diversity. As for America, it was 80's and 90's, so.

On the topic of character diversity now: not everyone has to be a PoC or LGBT+. The call for diversity is so crooked, people can't decide between "we need some diversity" and "why isn't this person a minority!?" Just let the designers have creative freedom. How they see characters is probably how they are to some extent.

I've yet to make a game with a real character so diversity in my games isn't really applicable to me.

Depending on the game you can decide by yourself to make it with or without whatever level of diversity you wish. More diversity might help to tell the character apart (although different kind of clothing could also do; depends what the author and artist likes!), but does not necessarily fit the game/story/whatever, so the author should do how they want to design it. If is open-source, modified version is also possible by anyone too. (And also depend on game, some may even be beyond human diversity to many kind of other species and/or whatever other parameters you want to adjust)

Guilty wrote:...
1. Creators have the right to create as they see fit. I think Alp will agree with me the most fully here. When someone actually puts out the intense effort required to make these games, they earn the right to make these games the way they want to, no matter what anyone else thinks about it. The most an onlooker can hope for is for their opinion to be heard.

2. Creators don't want attention drawn to certain parts of their work. This is what I was trying to get at with my fantasy-european talk. If anything ever creates discord in a piece, it's going to draw attention. Discord between the culture show in a game and the ethnicity of the people within that culture is something that I feel we want to avoid for the most part, but I'm not certain that all of us will agree here. I do see Espozo bringing up a form of this when he mentions games that have 'every ethnicity crammed in'. If something sticks out in a piece that the creator didn't want to stick out, it is a failure.
...

I think that you are correct.

I try to put in diversity in my games simply because its a completely arbitrary choice anyway, so why not address a common criticism of games? The characters in the game really don't have genders or races, and it's a totally arbitrary decision, so why not?

There is a legend, of a man who wished to see an NES homebrew starring a female protagonist which also fit a litany of other criteria. After much exploration, to his dismay, he discovered that the game did not exist. However, all was not lost. While he could not, at that time, enjoy the game which he hoped to see, he knew the solution.

He would embark on a quest, to create this game himself! The journey would be long and perilous, but the potential reward great. For at the end, awaited the game of his dreams, fitting all of the criteria he could choose, and made so much sweeter from the satisfaction that it was crafted by his own hands.

The moral of the story? Give a man a fish, and you diversify his NES game for a day. Lead a horse to water, and it beats two birds in a bush.