Wow.
Prince, I'm going to respond to as many of your points I can. Before I start, my earlier offer stands: you can give your friend my email address (faustwolf@yahoo.com), and I would be interested in speaking with the beta testers who either feel they've been slighted during that process or feel that the C&D is fake. I have a valid interest in protecting the integrity of the work I put into CE during the late beta phase. For proof of that work, you can see the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnw9KH_WnfIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE5ZZvwy_bghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtCSpxPoX3A That took awhile, and it became an art form -- an art form I was looking forward to sharing with others who played CE. Believe me, if this C&D were fake, I would be rather angry that my work was trashed along with everyone else's. There were also a number of other contributors (sprite artist extraordinaire Darkken being one, he did the portraits) whose work didn't see the light of day in playable form, and I'm sure they'd be a bit miffed too. Again, faustwolf@yahoo.com
Now, let us begin.
Zeality and co. have been working on this game for 5 years. They managed to get everything in place, so to speak... the only problem? The game was bugged-up beyond any form of hope. Zeality just couldn't get his stuff together.
You know all those betas coming out and how each time the team is like, "oh, this is the incomplete version, like, only 75%, it's more like an alpha!" Pure baloney. You really think there's some kind of God-like nigh-perfect uber beta out there? Well there isn't, this is as good as it gets. Rather than admitting that one of these bugged-up betas is the real deal they're just calling them "alphas" while pretending that some mystical near-perfect super-beta is out there to cover up their real reasons behind the cease and desist, and to pretend that the actual quality of what they produced is of much higher than what it really is.The lack of new techs and missing portraits, combined with the CE Memorial videos, are proof enough that what's circulating and what's shown at CEMemorial are very different things. Compare what you see in the leaked alpha with what you see here, esp. 2:38 starting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fH_uz1Qrd4If you can get Robo to do VulcanPulse or Frog to do Nirvana X in your copy of the ROM; and the new portraits are in, you're looking at the bona-fide 98% beta in all likelihood. Simple as that.
Furthermore, why is it that whoever's releasing the "alphas" isn't releasing the "more complete" beta as well?
Just stop and think about that for a while.
For that to be true Zeality and co would have to have given one set of fans the first beta, and then only a second "more trusted" set of fans the "nearly complete" "98% beta" or whatever they're claiming it is or are calling it.Correct. The last beta circulating within the beta tester pool was dated April 23 IIRC. That would have played out like a mostly bug-free version of the alpha now in circulation, but didn't even have the new techs inserted. Take a look here at the Compendium forum, where at least one member of the beta testing squad was completely unaware of the new techs even being in (this was one of the surprises reserved for the final release):
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7608.msg166224.html#msg166224That is circumstantial evidence suggesting the separation of the beta tester pool from the 98% complete version. Obviously a good idea in retrospect, as it decreased the risk of leaks (at least of the final version).
Truth is, Zeality and co were bad at fixing all the bugs- it was too much for him and his group. After 5 years he wanted to give up. But he didn't want to give up his fame and prestige for this or have to lose face. Instead, that's where all this C n D baloney originated.Serving as a beta tester myself, I can attest to Agent 12's excellent bug-squashing skills. We actually made a list of all the bugs we encountered as we played through, and Agent 12 crossed them out as he squashed them. Having played through the game two and a half times, plus the 98% complete version you can see at CEMemorial, I know for a fact that numerous, numerous bugs and glitches disappeared with each rendition. Plus, Chrono'99 added a lot of polish, which kept my interest despite the possibility of playthrough fatigue.
And that is why I've been so "gung-ho" about CE as you call it, Prince: it was an excellent product. I've had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of hands-on time with the full game's various iterations. It was truly astounding, and I will never back down from that claim as an end-user of the product. You'll notice that the core CE team itself has been extremely humble about its quality. Nearly every claim of "oh, CE is sooo awesome!" will come from my username. And I'm not a bit ashamed, because I feel it's true. CE wouldn't have done it for everyone, but it did it for me.
Moving on...
Yet, through this all- notice how cool and calm and collected Zeality and the group has been? Almost too quiet if you ask me....It's called "maturity," Prince. You realize that the CE team is composed of grad school students or people with working lives, right? Adults, not acne-ridden 13-year-old hacker wannabes with hormonal imbalances.
And really- five years of their life down the drain. FIVE WHOLE YEARS ON A PROJECT? And you REALLY think that in response to that they'd simply maintain their cool throughout all this implicitly like they were all a bunch of extraordinarly mature mini-Obamas?Care to read or listen to Agent 12's explanation of the situation?
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Agent_12_Radio_InterviewThe core CE team led perfectly normal lives during this process, which is part of why it took that long. Also, I am pleased that you approve of President Obama and consider him a mature leader. I do as well.
Most people would fight that- or at least, they wouldn't immediately give up. And even IF they gave up, they'd be mad as HELL about this, they would not be as "Joe Cool" as Zeality and co have been.Again, it's called "maturity." I'm actually pissed as hell at you right now, Prince, but have I resorted to name calling and posting in all caps? No. Instead, I'm determined to break down your feeble tirade that substitutes quantity for quality of information.
Also, as far as the CE team not taking this to court, think about this for a second. When you walk in for a job interview, do you really want people to know you've gone to court over a
fangame? Fans would understand, yes, but not your typical job hirer. In this economy, people are looking for every reason to a.) fire you, or b.) not hire you. I once made the mistake of mentioning anime, manga, and videogames on a job application, and I feel the employers thought less of me for it. That's the kind of thing the CE team is concerned about here. Additionally, I've made my own opinion clear: fan activity needs to earn its right to exist via precedent and not in court, for the aforementioned reason and also financial considerations.
SE ALREADY ISSUED A CEASE AND DESIST FIVE YEARS AGO FOR THE MOD CHRONO RESURRECTION AND MADE NO ATTEMPTS AT THE TIME OF DENYING THEY HAD DONE SO AT THE TIME?!
What on earth would change so much over the course of 5 years to make Square-Enix so much more shy and uncomfortable about doing the exact same thing over again? And bear in mind this IS a giant, wealthy, multi-national company we're talking about?
The answer? Nothing.Correct. Well, almost. First, Chrono Resurrection was not a mod to my knowledge, but a freshly-coded and designed fangame.
But you're right, nothing has changed in the past 5 years (except the quality of the C&Ds they issue nowadays apparently). Square Enix sent Chrono Resurrection and Chrono Trigger Remake Project C&Ds back around 2004 or 2005, and then remained silent. Same deal with Crimson Echoes. Or do you have an official public statement issued by Square Enix on the previous C&Ds?
But what does Compendium man FaustWolf have to say about this?
"It's really a comedy of errors any way you slice it. The closest thing to the truth as far as we know is that a new hire in Square Enix's legal department decided to start out his job by writing a C&D, apparently the first he'd ever written, or at least he didn't bother to make it high quality (a la the well-drafted C&D received by Chrono Resurrection) because that reflected the amount of respect he had for modders of an SNES-era game.
Add to that the fact that the project may or may not have been brought to said lawyer's attention by a would-be modder/fangamer who felt jealous about the fact that he couldn't get whatever projects he had in mind off the ground while CE had reached fruition.
Add to that the fact that Square Enix refuses to make an official statement about all this, possibly because it's simply embarrassed at the poor quality of its own C&D.
My take on the situation, anyway."
Notice something in the above? For starters, how FaustWolf is already making up excuses for some of the shoddy quality of the so-called Cease and Desist such as, I don't know, maybe the lighting?I'll give you points for not calling me "FalseWolf" again.
As I said, my take on the situation. If you compare the C&D received by CT:Resurrection to the C&D received by the Compendium...
http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1416http://www.crimsonechoes.com/letter.pdfI don't exactly have to point out the difference in quality there *aside* from lighting issues. Where did you pull that explanation from? Can you show us where there's Photoshopped lights or sparklies on the Compendium's C&D?
It's laughable that you feel you need lighting issues as evidence that the C&D has been falsified. The C&D's shoddy quality all around is what other skeptics have focused on, and I respect that. I also felt that it was suspicious at first, and grilled the core CE team, cross-referencing what they told me with what I knew shortly after this all happened. As I've stated before, I'm not interested in losing my work on the project toward the end of its development cycle, and I'm not interested in seeing people like Darkken and nightmare975 lose their hard work either.
That said, aside from the quality of the C&D, everything checks out. CE was extremely playable -- better than a lot of professionally developed games IMO, and I say this as an end-user who had extraordinary access to the project. There was simply no motive to fake the C&D. It wasn't maimed due to being fraught with bugs or anything. As for why I've been subsequently convinced that the C&D is real despite its quality, you can review my opinion on that in detail over at the RPGamer forum:
http://board.rpgamer.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?act=ST;f=10;t=19433;st=89But in short, I feel the shoddy quality of the C&D can be explained by the fact that it was produced in-house (the C&Ds given to the earlier projects were produced by third-party contractors to my knowledge); and that the guy who authored the C&D PDF according to its metadata had only worked for SE less than a year. He's either inexperienced in writing C&D orders, or the quality of the letter showed his personal disdain for game modification -- maybe both. That's my theory right now, based on actual evidence. It's more plausible in my mind than the CE team just throwing away their work and everyone else's to advertise the project. You might think that because all you've played is the shoddy bug-ridden alpha, but as someone who's played the 98% version, I can safely say that the conspiracy theories just don't make sense.
And really- doesn't it seem odd he was "clever" enough to "trick" SE but too danged stupid to cover up his own tracks enough to avoid a banning pwnage from his name obviously connecting together? Why couldn't he just make up a fake name that couldn't be traced when bragging about "causing" the cease and desist. That seems pretty stupid and yet, his original actions seem very sneaky and clever. But these aren't traits which tend to mix together well, nor would an extremely sneaky person be too dumb to protect himself from being caught. The point of trolling is to get attention, right? Sometimes people will settle for any attention, even the negative kind. It's always been my opinion that Alienat0r wanted to be outed for the thrill, given his careless blacking out of one of his other aliases on the supposed defamation letter.
Everytime there's a point made that makes them and what they're trying to do look bad or wrong and that has been made public they always have some convenient new excuse to make it look otherwise.
An excuse for the shoddy quality of the Cease and Desist letter.
An excuse for SE "refusing" to make a public response and trying to be secretive.
An excuse for the released beta being of such terrible quality, with them quickly giving it a catchy new nickname ("alpha") to dispel the belief that their beta was actually a piece of crap and not the work of art perfection that they claim.
And an excuse for giving up 5 years of their lives immediately with no hesitation and not a single bit of fight or anger in them. Really- does the person have such a great job or are they just lying and is it a crappy job or is he/they just a basement dweller? Whatever response to this will immediately deny/counter this as much as possible with an opposite claim.At least we back up what we say with evidence. It's better than what you're dishing out. I could be persuaded otherwise, perhaps, if you invite the beta testers your friend is speaking with to shoot me an email so we can discuss whatever "the big gun" your friend referenced earlier is.
An excuse for not fighting this even though they think they might probably win it.Care to produce a post from anyone in the CE team making this claim? As you've noticed, I'm producing actual evidence here, even if admittedly circumstantial at times. I expect the same of you.
Also there'll be an excuse for this topic too and every single point I have raised in it.I'm sure I've missed numerous points in your multi-post tirade for fear of losing my entire Friday morning to this effort. At least I'm providing explanations and not just pulling unbacked claims out of thin air.
That is the whole story- there is no magically perfect "beta" and there never will be.Certainly not "perfect" but I...sort of played through it in early May and recorded just about every second of the playthrough. Please re-examine your claims after watching through some of what's been uploaded so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSTpkMB9kNkOr are you just going to poo-poo on that too, and call it fake footage whipped up in Dreamweaver as part of a huge grand conspiracy to cover up the bugs that you think would have been in the final version?
And for Zeality and co, well... oh boy! This is lots of fun for them.I can't speak for ZeaLitY, but I'm not having too much fun right now. If anything, we've gotten just as many negative reactions from this as supportive ones. Oh, and did I mention that the C&D hit just before finals week? *Grad school* finals week, at least at the colleges ZeaLitY and I attend? If this had been faked, you'd think we would have picked a slightly more convenient time.
And so, they are posting their carefully, carefully, heavily and extremely micromanaged youtube videos in a manner to avoid all their multitude of bugs and make the game look decent and playable....Did you even watch the Youtube videos? This is the best concrete proof we have against claims that the C&D letter was fake, or that the game was fraught with bugs. As you can see, there are a still a few bugs that pop up. Take, for example, 00:33 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vKuU8zu5bs...or 02:04 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwJi3kLSbgNot exactly avoidance playing there, Prince. Really, try watching these. The developer commentary actually pokes fun at the few bugs left in the game.
And if there were really that few bugs left in the footage shown, do you seriously think Agent 12 was incapable of squashing any in areas not shown?
And so, they are posting their carefully, carefully, heavily and extremely micromanaged youtube videos in a manner to avoid all their multitude of bugs and make the game look decent and playable. Then when it's done, and people are worshipping this thing like it's Jesus Christ reborn or, for us gamers, Chrono Trigger 2, some hapless fans who actually KNOW what they're doing with mods and who already have come to worship the thing will fix all the bugs and pimp the game out and make it shiny and new and sweet, thus fulfilling their desires and finishing the product for them.
That's what Faustwolf's post on this board in which he said seems to allude to I think. (NOTE- he may delete that post later. Janus deleted one of his and Faust deleted one in his topic and redid it to change something, they're probably make up some bogus excuse for what they edited so anyway, here's the post in full detail)
"This is not a struggle the CE team will win or lose for us; it's a torch that we must take up and carry on into the future. For the Chrono franchise, the next phase of the struggle will have to be completely underground; yet we can take some pride as fans in knowing that by the time any new Chrono project were to see the light of day..."
That's pretty much it- other fans do all the heavy lifting for them and make an exceptional project and then Zeality and co. get their egos stroked as they get to be heroes and the whole Chrono fan community just leaps up and rejoices at the "great" deed that has just happened. I doubt Zeality and co. ever planned it that way from the start- but with the entire way their game has magically been transformed into a symbol for something it's totally not, of it's course it's absolutely feasible and more than likely that this is what is going to happen. And it's shame because it really is **** ****.I have no reason to delete that, especially since I'm not finding grammatical errors in it
In fact, I'm rather proud of that one. Trying to finish CE is something fans might want to do, but bear in mind it's already been C&D'd and that endeavor carries extremely high risk. What I was referring to was the future of fangaming in general; I do hope it continues, and that the fan communities carry on as they have up till now.
(and you'll also see many more bannings there aside from the ones which have already taken place on Chrono Compendium against certain people who've been outspoken against them- obviously that is NOT the place to discuss the real stuff happening behind the scenes because of Zeality and co's influence there, ergo why I don't post there)
What a rotten set of accusations. The Compendium is a place where freedom of speech is incredibly encouraged, outside of leaking C&D'd work, obvious trolling like the stunt Alienat0r/Dark Serge pulled, and posting pr0n or something. A number of users questioning the happenings have not been banned, though they've been argued against vigorously. For example, take phelph here:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7437.msg161506.html#msg161506Or Meol:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7636.0.htmlNeither has been banned. Any Compendium users who've been banned recently were either responsible for the alpha leak, bots advertising Viagra, or Alienat0r.
"If your friend is really in contact with beta testers who have proof that the C&D was made up, Prince, I welcome you to tell your friend to forward my email (faustwolf@yahoo.com) to the beta testers he's in contact with. As an interested party who plunked dozens of hours into the development of CE, I would love to examine any real evidence your friend and these beta testers have turned up.
Furthermore, even if those beta testers are merely suspicious that the C&D was fake, I'd welcome a discussion with them as another interested party who's also helped tangentially in the development of this mod."
Wow really? You sounds so helpful and eager to be of assistance despite everything negative that's been said.... maybe I was wrong about you. You know what, I'm going to e-mail you everyone I've spoken to you so you can help sort this whole thing out for all of us.
..... yeah right, think I was born yesterday? Nice try acting all nice, but you really think I'm going to be tricked that easily by you? Or that I don't already know how you guys really act behind the scenes as opposed to the public "mature, friendly, nice guys" routine you always pull and are easily able to do since other fanboys automatically do all the bashing that's needed?
My offer stands despite your obvious mistrust of me. What more can I do? As I've said before, if the C&D is fake, all this went to waste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnw9KH_WnfIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE5ZZvwy_bghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtCSpxPoX3A Do you know how long that took? Do you really think I'm not angry that others didn't get to enjoy that work as part of a feature-length mod? I have a legitimate interest in the truth here, and I assure you I'm not trying to launch a one-man sting operation against beta testers who have legitimate concerns. If you or anyone else has solid evidence (the "big gun" as you've called it), by all means reveal it. The beta testers your friend is in contact with don't have to do it over email if they're that worried I'll forward a private conversation; they can do it through an off-the-record chat or something. I'd be happy to set one up with them. You have my email, and I'm patiently waiting.
Anyway, let's assume two different scenarios since there are basically two scenarios to this. The first scenario- being that you're telling the truth. I already know personally that you're not so let's just skip that one and look at the second scenario- that you're lying.
If that's the case then you already KNOW that everything I've said so far is true. If that's the case then your claims that you would "love to examine any real evidence your friend and these beta testers have turned up" and that you would "welcome a discussion with them as another interested party who's also helped tangentially in the development of this mod" are utterly false.
Wow. Way to engage someone in a position to investigate further on your/the beta testers' behalf and maybe find evidence of discrepancies they've noticed. Again, my offer stands; if you've got some real solid evidence, I want to hear it. I wouldn't be afraid for a second to launch an investigation that could save my own work and see the release of CE. I've made this clear to both Agent 12 and ZeaLitY previously. It's a bit jealous perhaps, but the truth ultimately takes precedence over their interests and mine -- ff the C&D was fake, then there's no risk of Agent 12 and ZeaLitY having to go to court over it, obviating that concern.
@SuperSaiyanTien
Secondly, is it that far-fetched that Zeality and Co. couldn't handle it, so they just said F* this, I mean rom hacking isn't the easiest of things, not hard, but not easy either, bugs DO pop up, some more damaging than others, and sometimes you do need to restart over or what not. As for the "proof" that it was real, by the videos on youtube, I've seen those videos..it's called artful dodging, where you don't show anything BIG you show little things, to fill up time.80-odd videos showing all the major game events without breaks is...artful dodging? Artful, maybe.
Dodging, not quite.
