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I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 9:27 am
by Zordon
I’ve just been going over a lot of the old thread posts on the original SFXB forum. I can’t believe that it’s been over 10 years since I posted there. Not only that I’d like to up front apologise to Andy for being such a prat all those years ago.It’s true what they say with age comes wisdom, humility and even sometime regret and acceptance. My main goal over the last few years has been to become a member of this forum that could at least contribute to the fandom.The person that posted on those forums all those years ago is long gone and I don’t ever want to see him rear his ugly head again. (I am in fact talking about the 17 year old version of myself)So with that I’d like to say I will at least try to create a fair bit of information and content for this new Wiki style site that this newly created team is heading towards.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 2:49 pm
by Crash
I was about 16 when I found this forum and was an idiot then. I'm nearly 25 now and I haven't even changed a bit!I just hope things start to go better for Andy in 2011 and that he's 100% back on his feet as soon as possible.If I had one wish for 2011, that would be it, especially after everything he did to help me out when I was up to my neck in difficulties (not just with Enoki and Co.) and helped keep my project running.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:00 pm
by Zordon
Agreed, he helped me too along the way. I wish him a good recovery and all the best to his family

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:23 pm
by Crash
I said to Shane and Vanessa in another thread how before the internet I gave away my games on floppy disks.I remember saying to someone when Enoki came knocking that I would continue and distribute the game on 100 floppies or a million miles of paper tape if need be. Cos that was essentially how we did it before.You hear hellish stories about filesharers being saddled with fines of millions of dollars before even leaving University, which is obviously the same area of law as general copyright infringement. I think things got on top of me then with lots of things going wrong at that point that I seriously developed a mental picture of me living in an alleyway, handing out disks in brown paper bags.That was why I reacted so violently to what was just a misunderstanding. But when Andy took over, it was like the armoured Valkyrie coming over the hill and minigunning the corporate giant into retreat.Having said that, someone did repeatedly XSS-inject my site every month from the date they supposedly discovered the site.




I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:28 pm
by Zordon
I think once X-bombers been wrapped up me and you need to work on another colab game like we did with the arcade style game.I can do the character basic animations but the graphics clean up would be your area.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:43 pm
by Crash
Someone asked me what I was going to work on after X-Bomber, just before Christmas.Because I said I was nearly done, they must have thought I was gonna be finished the next week or something. They weren't taking into account the fact that it's taken nearly 7 years to write this 'Mark-II' version.I'm not too aggrieved at that seeing how far the game has come in that time. I mean, it was a massive brief that I gave myself: 17 missions, 20 upgrading special weapons, the Dai-X junction system and that's basically been fulfilled, not only that but I've managed to 'transcend the brief", as my art teacher would say, in many ways as well.So, anyway, I just told them I hadn't really thought about it.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:58 pm
by Zordon
LOL, I was going over the old game files last night from the beta we kind of made back in 2000 or so.the games come a long way.Shame you can't convert it to freeware for the X-box 360 as theres this great little Shoot-em-up i played last week and I was like "damn I must tell Piers about this"

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 9:18 pm
by AndyThomas
Thank you Dave. Whilst you certainly could be a PITA at times back then, I hope I was never too heavy handed. I was a little older than you when I started to seriously put the site together and I could see that you had a lot of raw talent but that we were never quite going to see eye to eye in terms of our approaches, and both personality and age had a lot to do with that.The great irony is that SFXB has always been a bit of a Wiki, as I have had lots of contributions from all over that have helped build the site up. It just happened to be the case that it was me taking lots of inputs and creating an output. Now, the tools are available to create that output from lots of sources automatically. I often smile loooking at Wikis for other projects because it would have been bloody useful to have had that sort of ability back in the day, and you can see the commonalities in terms of character sections, episode guides and so on.I put a lot of time into the site early doors, and I hope I helped others with theirs too and it was great to have others devloping sites because it encouraged me to keep developing SFXB. I suppose what I have contributed is a degree of stability over time, which helps with the visibility of the series in the long run and has helped us get the DVD release.Obviously with my health the way it is and my other responsibilities I am not now in a position to devote that much more time to "the cause", but I think the new creative projects that are being talked about are very positive. Just try and keep yourselves balanced along with it; it is great to have passion and be doing something creative, but there is always the risk that it can become a little all-consuming. I now play Eve on and off, and it's nice, because at some point running the site started becoming more like a job than a hobby and at that point it's probably best to take a step back and ask whether it's time to move on to something else.These are great times for creativity - I used to hang around newsgroups back in the mid 90s, now you can have video calls, get hundreds of Tweets back from a single question. Hell, these things are driving revolutions now. So I guess I'm a bit of an old war horse now, my son despite his tender years can probably already out-iPhone me (scary but true). Anyway, enough with the random philosophising. Time for the next generation to take over.I'll leave you (for now) with an email I received earlier this year; this is the sort of thing that makes me smile and was the driver for my putting SFXB together to keep the memories alive:"I was 6 years old and didn't know how to put on the VCR. My mother used to connect and play the VHS of some cartoons for me. My elder cousin lived in Sharjah (UAE) and he used to record these cartoons for me and send them over to me. I live in Pakistan and we used to have these conventional tom and jerry and loony toons sorta cartoon on national TV.I Loved to watch the cartoons on VHS and later on after few years I discovered that those cartoon were a few episodes of 1980s GODZILLA and STAR-FLEET. Shiro was my hero right from the beginning. Then that VHS got corrupted / dysfunctional. I missed those cartoon like hell. When I turned 24, we were shifting to a new placeand I found that VHS. Excited and recalling memories of those cartoons, I took the VHS to a professional editor and asked him if he could take out the tape and convert it into a CD format. Luckily I got it done.I had four episodes of STAR-FLEET (8,9,10,11). I was hell curious about f-01. I search on the wikipedia and got my answer. But now I wanted to see all the episodes. There was DVD I could have purchased online but unfortunately we don't get them shipped to Pakistan. Meanwhile I came across your website and I was so happy to see it and know about all the characters, space ships and episode stories. This made me talk to you and share my story of Star-Fleet with you  Currently I am in search of the DVDs which of course I can't find in Pakistan or can't buy online. So I am going to download it from the torrent, I know its wrong but I will do it for the sake of my childhood favorite series  Thanks to you for bringing this informative site for the die-hard fans of star-fleet. I loved reading all the content on it - took me 2 days Hoping for you to read my email. Thumbs up for the Star Fleet !Taimoor Ali"All the best one and all.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:40 pm
by Crash
It is good to hear from the landlord!You're right about focus. I like to use my game to keep perspective on life.I like to have a small project and an enormous one on the bench at any given time as well as work.It helps keep me sane.I'm probably a bit programming addicted. It's pure logic and problem-solving and the rewards in games-programming are awesome, I think.

I'd like to apologies

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:09 pm
by Zordon
Totaly agree with Andy on this one, The passion to create took over alot with me in the yearly days wanting to make something of SFP.Trying to rush everything out just to keep the fans engaged sort of backfired on me from time to time. I think that this new collaboration with Crash where I just send him stuff to add to the X-archive would work out ok.I have enough to do writing Omega to take on sucha big project as running a site. although the moonfruit site will still be up and running, i'll update it when I can.