Main Site Updates

[Aran;Jaeger]

Before I make a certain suggestion/offer regarding this hack categorizing issue (which would cause some further work for me again), one question:
Would MetroidMst´s videos of playthroughs of a lot of those hacks not give sufficient information for these hacks already?
Or in other words: What kind of relevant information would be missing? Or would it take too long to get those infos that way? Or would videos like those "spoil" the hack? Or are those playthroughs too hard to find? Or... [insert questions that I missed] ?
[Regarding readme(s) for hacks though: There does not always exist such a readme, especially for older hacks and rushed halfhacks aswell as incomplete/abandoned hacks. Although, of course, for those hacks for which readmes exist, it would help to put that information onto the corresponding hack´s site.]

[Just in order to make posts short and compact, since I do not like posting with little/no content:
Here would be my suggestion:
[spoiler]
I have a certain project going on for about 3 years now, which in principle consists of making Snes9X-movies of Max%Playthroughs (without OoB, GT-Code or ST-beam) of all existing, humanly beatable Super Metroid hacks, and I also plan to upload all of them at some point in time to provide a variety of informations regarding those hacks and to answer some questions
(such as: What number of items is Max% in a given hack?, how can one get each single one of those items?, is it possible to save the animals?,does the hack have a normal ending?,how large is the hack?, what does it look like?, is it a half hack or are there only few rooms?,are there physic changes or is there new stuff coded into the hack? what kind of tricks are sufficient to beat the hack? [note that I did not say "how hard is the hack?", since my playthroughs only use just one possible route and I did not always optimize those routes to make it as easy as possible, and therefore, my routes can only be seen as upper bounds for the difficulty, but the hack can be easier or require a different set of tricks that allow to beat it, too.],...).
And my suggestion would be to additionally to those videos of those hacks, I could write down/sum up most of the aspects that are mentioned above (in JAM´s post) relatively detailed (by watching/fast-forwarding my movies and taking notes) for the Super Metroid hacks (but not for hacks of the other Metroid games).
[/spoiler]
]

[Quietus]

The only thing I'd suggest with such an undertaking would be to actually make videos on Youtube or something, because with snes9x movies you always run the risk of version problems, and the movies desynching.  I know you'd lose the ability to fast forward (though you can skip), but at least they'd work long-term.

On another note, 100% walk / playthroughs would be welcome.  There've been a few times in the past where I've searched for a 100% run of this hack or that hack, and had no luck.

[snibsnib]

Can I suggest maybe adding an estimated completion time to each hack, rather than classifying them by hack size. Just because some hacks are harder than others and would take longer than other hacks of the same size.
For example:
Z-Factor - 8-10 hrs
Redesign - 10+ hrs
Project Base - 1-2 hrs
Evacuation - 1-2 mins
etc

[JAM]

МНОГА БУКФ штоле?

I personally think that world size (small, medium, large), difficulty (easier, standard, harder), new graphics (none, some, overhaul), and custom code (none, a little, a lot) is enough to sort things. Possibly one or two additional columns or a bit more elaboration between the degrees to which each category is sorted.

OK. Then how to determine hard hacks from each other? Impossible, Redesign, I Wanna Be the Metroid, Blackout, Cider, SMNonCompetiton are all hard. But some hacks just giving you fun challenges, in some of them bosses a hardened a bit (which is also fun) and some of them are just kicking you into spike hell or force you to make TAS-like tricks (Super Short Charge, diagonal bomb jumping (not just 1 or 2 in a row), VERY low Mid-air morphing (3 blocks) etc.). Is just "hard" enough to describe all this?

I think the options need to remain pretty minimal.  If players want to look at specific changes in any great depth, they can read the readme.

... which is often sucks. Because every author writes what he wants to. And it could contain very little information for what's waiting for you.

Walkthrough is a spoilery stuff. It should be there for a people who wants to use spoilers or see the perfect walkthrough, but that's all. As for me, I'd like to get maximum info of size, item order and such BEFORE playing but without watching 100% run. Maybe it's just me.


Well, if no one likes the extended list, then I can suggest to put extended information I wrote to the individual hack page. Or make a special extended list on a separate page with blackjack and hookers. Aran;Jaeger, at least for me info you can provide these info about hacks. It will be really useful.

Seriously, we have over 50 uncategorised Half hacks with a different type of hacks there. Tenka is not a half hack because rooms are the almost same, but their connections and the map is changed. But I will not call it a Full hack like Final Stand (which is also can't be full hack because the map is unchaged. Yes, it's true). Seabed is a Full too (since Legacy is), but it's buggy and shitty. Could the shitty hack be named a Full hack? I doubt.

[Quietus]

While a lot of what you say is true, there is never going to be a magic wand option that categorises all hacks - at least not without having fifty categories.  It also needs to be remembered that the people viewing these lists may not necessarily be hackers.  Some are just players, and bombarding them with tech info serves no purpose.

[FullOfFail]

This is off topic from your current conversations, but I just wanted to let the staff members know I've been organizing the directory a bit. It'll take weeks to accomplish, but I'm renaming each hack and separating it into it's own Hacks folder, sub to the IPS directory. All of them will be uniform in titles, such as "h5_Cliffhanger_[Original]_[DigitalMantra]_[h].IPS". Just a note, the h5 part is just so I know what the hack number is for the hacks page, but it can be removed after I finish, or more preferably, after the layout changes. I just need the numbers to keep my place for the time being, as to this process is more of a long-term solution. All of this is for when we change layouts and start implementing new features, so we don't have to half-ass anything due to confusion.

If you're ever curious of my progress, this will tell you.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/68301023/HacksNumbersAndInfo.txt

[personitis]

OK. Then how to determine hard hacks from each other?
- snip extra text -
Is just "hard" enough to describe all this?

Possibly one or two additional columns or a bit more elaboration between the degrees to which each category is sorted.

Not to sound rude, but did you take my post as attacking yours and not even read my own? :Y

[Zero One]

Another post off-topic from the current conversation, but I've been granted access to an SQL database. So what I'm going to do is create a database to store the hacks. It'll contain details like Original Game (SM, M1, whatever), Title, Author, Images, Description, Category, Rating (possibly working on a review-based system that takes an average score of reviews) and obviously a download link.

I'll then be able to write various bits of PHP to generate a page for each hack on request. I should also be able to set up a good search system with the ability to order hacks by various criteria (alphabetical, category, rating). It should be able to quickly and properly organise all of the hacks. If it works well, I can do the same thing with patches.

Here is something I made for University. It should serve as a demonstration of what I'm aiming to do. When I have something to show, I'll make public a link to a little subdirectory for testing and comments.

[JAM]

Not to sound rude, but did you take my post as attacking yours and not even read my own? :Y

Nope, I read it. But I didn't thought that these 1 or 2 columns can be used for marking skill hacks, for example. Because "Too many columns" as everyone said. =)


FullOfFail
Alright. I've uploaded the hack with index "h0" following your rules. I've used "h0" because it's the very first hack known for Super Metroid (or at least one of the first).

Congratulations! Now we have 200 hacks!

[FullOfFail]

FullOfFail
Alright. I've uploaded the hack with index "h0" following your rules. I've used "h0" because it's the very first hack known for Super Metroid (or at least one of the first).

That's fine, but if any more are added, they need to be at the very end. The date when it was released has very little to do with the way I'm setting it up. All of those things will be done externally with code. I'm just building the database to make finding those things easier.

[JAM]

I've got it. Added some details about old hacks.

These hacks should be uploaded:
Zeran demo [our forum]
Elite [our forum]
Crazy [our forum]
Nightmare [our forum]
Escape From Metroid by Tenka Hiryu 2008 02/29
Metroid Seabed by Tenka Hiryu 2008 05/18 2008 05/18
SPECIAL METROID by ma2ken 2004 08/17
SPECIAL METROID2 by ma2ken 2005 03/19
SPECIAL METROID3 by ma2ken 2005 10/24
Another of Super Metroid by Banana father 2004 03/16
Addictive Metroid by after k 2006 01/23 approx.
Metroid Escape by after k 2006 01/23 approx.
Test by Jathys 2004
Rebuild 3 [m2k2]
Rebuild 4 [m2k2]
Darkness Spreads (if possible)
supermetroid kng oneroom
KNG_MORPH_DASH!_with_LION×REBEL

[FullOfFail]

I'll gather them. Gonna take awhile, though.

Btw, I ended up just dropping the "h_" part of the filenames, it wasnt listing right, anyway. If you want to add any new ones, just throw them in the regular IPS folder for now, I'll rename them eventually, just takes patience and time. Pretty much, just keep doing what we've always done. It's going to take me weeks or possibly a month to sort through everything, so I dont want to hold you up with any task.

[JAM]

Don't worry, I'll do it in next few days. I found even more hacks to upload. Some of them can be uploaded only by me (such as Super Metroid II, Short Troid, Darkness Spreads 1) because no one have backups from that time.

Then I'll upload all missed patches (from 02.2014 to now) and then I'll help you with test page you told me. =)

As for sorting, you can add IDs to beginning of file names like 000_, 001_ etc. Just idea. Because when adding just h1, h2 and such, you'll eventually get h10..h19 between h1 and h2.

[FullOfFail]

It wasn't only that the h1, h10 conflicted, but also that it's different filetypes, such as IPS, RAR, ZIP, etc, and the directory doesnt properly order them due to that. It's really no problem, though. Since I'm renaming them into a proper universal format, they'll be easy to find regardless.

If you meant by test page the list, that's pretty much something I'd have to do on my own. I just kinda have my own process, and another person helping me would make it harder, rather than easier. I'm just kind of a loner, in that regard.

But if by test page you meant the new hacks page, that's something you'd strictly need to talk with Vis more about. At this present time, I have no plans on working on that. My coding skills are limited, so I'd rather let someone more fluent in code handle it.

If you find yourself with alot of free time, splitting all the other patches you maintain into their own folder wouldn't be a bad idea neither. Just add another sub-directly like I did with the Hacks folder. Preferably, they'd need to be renamed so we can get the ball rolling early, but it's not mandatory. It's alot of work short-term, but it will pay off in the long-run. Whether it's us, or someone else maintaining the site in the future, it'll be so convenient to have everything properly organized.

[JAM]

Test page with patches. I talked with Vis about it. =)

Uploading the missed hacks will take a week.
Uploading the patches will take another week.

So, it'll be at least 2 weeks before I coulb be able to switch to something new. =)

EDIT: Bang! Bang! +37 Mbs of free space!
Got rid of incorrectly made IPS patches of size over 2 Megabytes. These hacks were correctly recompressed and reuploaded.

[Metaquarius]

Quietus mentionned this concern in another thread but I think there's already quite a bunch of crappy/glitchy hacks which don't deserve players attention at all. Uploading every single one of them on the main hack page along decent hacks is just absurd. On the other hand, there are top-tier hacks like Super Zero Mission which don't even have a description up (read the readme, yay great - link to thread please?), screenshots don't do it justice either. My advice is highlight what SM hacking has best to offer first, and not crap that gives SM hacking a bad name. [/rant off]

[JAM]

Metaquarius
Don't worry, I'll not upload EVERY existing hack. 2 hacks (one mini and one one room) are already excluded from my "to upload list" because it's complete shit like "my first try". Believe me, it is.

Next, for the cool hacks, we have A-List. But what to play when all hacks from this list is completed? I'll answer. All other hacks. Just don't play hacks with serious bugs, permastucks, graphic corruption (although I like Aedeldui (or how was it named?)) and so on. Even vanilla hacks can be fun to play sometimes. Without spike hell, of course. But there are players (mostly TASers) who'd like to play these hacks to polish thier skills. Why to remove it then? Although, it should be marked like "not for human playing spike hell".

IMHO there just shouldn't be hacks:
1. In which you enter certain room and got the game freeze. It can be easily fixed but author saying something like: "Oh, it's already released. If it has bugs, I don't care".
2. Vanilla hacks with VERY little changes (like Hypermode). All that is changed there is layout in few (about 5-10) rooms (forcing player to do all skills just to enter Brinstar) and 1 pink door is changed to Energy Tank.

As for screens, yes many of them were made just from loading the game through SMILE (or playing a little. You know, it takes time to make screen for every hack existing on the site). When uploading vanillas, for example, I'm trying to show what is changed.

As for description, I personally against "read readme in the archive" too. But some hacks are made by japanese hackers so I can't read their "readme". Some of them were just be found as IPS patches with no origin. I'll need help here. So, if anyone wants to say something about hack with no description, PM me. I'll upload that description.

[Lunaria]

If a hack is or isn't shit is rather subjective though, and I'd rather let potential players judge if they want to give something a spin or not. That being said, the hack obviously needs to run and not crash all the time, obvious bug riddles messes can be excluded since those are objectively bad. But if you're going to start judging whether or not a half hack is "good" enough then that can lead to some rather nasty subjective exclusion and inclusion. :/

What hack pages need is some form of rating system, and a comment system, preferably tied to the forum accounts. :P

Good search functionality and enough information on hack pages, and I believe any potential players can judge for themselves if something is worth playing or not. And should we really want to say something is shit, well, we can just have some sort of icon for those hacks to let people know that. "Absolute tosh, play at your own risk!" I'd rather have something like that over having selective judging.

[Zero One]

I agree with Crys; we shouldn't start censoring hacks based on opinions and preferences. Obviously, hacks that don't work or can't be finished should be excluded, but removing a hack because you don't like it shouldn't be done.

Getting a rating system working isn't hard. It's outright trivial with the database I was talking about, along with a search function that can list the hacks by rating or type.

[JAM]

Well, when I'm saying it's shit, I mean it. Really. Should I upload this hack to the site?

It's a one room hack and it's all looking like that.

As for censorship, yeah. You're both right. Shouldn't do this.

[snarfblam]

I think there's a little room for common sense here. Should a hack be excluded because you think it's bad or amateurish? I don't think so. Should a hack be excluded because it is absolutely worthless? If that glitchy looking pile of nonsense you posted is really representative of the hack, of course it shouldn't be included.

[TobiMikami]

It might be helpful to even just have a 5 stars thing where people can choose what they rate it and people can use that as a general average of what other people think, combined with some screenshots and a description would be good, at least, it gives the potential player a general rundown of the game and on average what people think of it as, I mean one person can say it's the best thing ever another could say it's the worst, but I do agree that not posting it cause you don't like it is a bad reason, even if it is only one person that says they like it they should still have the right to play it, at least that's my two cents.

[Zero One]

Well, when I'm saying it's shit, I mean it. Really. Should I upload this hack to the site?

It's a one room hack and it's all looking like that.

Fair enough; I'd be loathe to even call that finished.

[Lunaria]

I think there's a little room for common sense here. Should a hack be excluded because you think it's bad or amateurish? I don't think so. Should a hack be excluded because it is absolutely worthless? If that glitchy looking pile of nonsense you posted is really representative of the hack, of course it shouldn't be included.

^ This.

I was running on the assumption that everyone in here at least had some degree of common sense.

[FullOfFail]

I was running on the assumption that everyone in here at least had some degree of common sense.

Not me. Want proof? I added this:
http://www.metroidconstruction.com/hacks.php?h=h110