The Zelda3 IQ incident won't end [solved]

Recently my IQ hack has been flagged for Non-compliant (as 4 times before) only this time the thing was actually accepted and was in fact removed from Romhacking.net.

The extend of spam and hate towards this project on that site was incredible and all because I decided to actually "make it legal". That was my only goal: to prevent the game from being carted (as it should be - for legal purposes). But the reaction was: this is malware, non compliant, virus, obfuscation, fabrication (I like this word), patch contains the rom, one emulator only game etc etc.

It is interesting to see, how people react on something new. And when they don't see what they like, they started to invent multiple lies and basically start making things up along the way to achieve their goal. Maybe the IQ game was a candy in a locked box for them and they could not open it, so they started hated it severely.

I also submitted the Guide for the IQ, also flagged as non compliant and also removed from site. Reason: "this is no wiki how". Only hacking documents are allowed. We don't have a proper segment for this." lol

Despite the hyper-negative treatment of this project by the users, mods etc of Romhacking, I still want the Conker game to be published there, as the site has a lot more users than this one.

I will also probably release the IQ hack unlocked, as I would rather see it carted, then to listen to all the usual nonsense, that happened up there.

Hacks
Noncompliant

Zelda3 IQ Test

flagged by
AWJ

2016-09-10

14:31:18


This xdelta patch turns an original Zelda 3 ROM into a deliberately corrupted .zip file that can be opened by snes9x or zsnes but will choke most GUI or command-line unarchivers. Presumably this is intended as "protection" against reverse-engineering the hack, developing further hacks from it, or playing it on a flash cartridge (or, incidentally, on any emulator other than snes9x or zsnes, as the patch readme explicitly warns) Besides being generally skeevy and malware-y and arguably violating this site's rule against emulator specific hacks, the fact that the patch turns an uncompressed ROM into a .zip means that the patch necessarily contains the entire original, Nintendo-copyrighted game (albeit in compressed form), which is a bit of a legal worry.

deleted item:
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2575/

lol* well Puzz what shall I say? Your way to protect your rom was an intellectual masterpiece - I think nobody can retrace how you managed, and further, you only made it playable by one emulator, that fuoya zsnes (or whichever name that was.

I am honestly sorry about hearing from people that do not approve your way of completely locking your game from being copied.

Anyways, from a more philosophical point: your rom is an intellectual masterpiece (I know I use this word twice ) - it really demands high intellectual talents, and I would not like to know how you concepted your rom - I think this involves even much higher intelligence!
So what I want to say... your rom is like Sudoku, and most people do not like intellectual challenges. Therefore, the chance of piracy is going against zero in my opinion. Cartmakers will not make profit out of it, just due to the nature of your game: too few people are interested in solving mind games.

My suggestions: make peace with romhacking, release it unprotected and stay above it.

This might be sad in some way, but this as always been the same for generations. Many copy protection schemes from companies have failed in the past. Eventually even the most protected games and systems get defeated by hackers, so it's kinda a lost battle in advance.

While you can't really change the way people think in this new millenia, I think the only way to combat piracy is probably by staying in the grey zone and keep up with every other rom hacking release so far. Keep up the same basic ips formats as before. Don't try to change how it works, because you'll quickly notice people are afraid of change.

This is pretty much the same thing with gaming companies who introduced draconian copy protections like DRM to protect their games about a decade ago....or when SecurROM introduced limits on their games. Companies that tried to combat piracy to that great lengths usually shoot themselves in the foot for trying to do so...it ended up frustrating even legitimate users and sometimes legit users even end up turning to hacked versions of their favorite games because they are more enjoyable and don't contains rootkits...
(*hint* Sony's DRM rootkit for example)

When something is too much complex, users tend to frighten. So I'd suggest to keep things simple for your future releases.

I removed my topics and most of my posts at RHDN to avoid getting into arguments with everything that I do. This is like having more then one Erock user to manage on every post that I make (just joking erock, no offense meant :-P)...

...but yeah, I keep a low profile until release, and then release a simple ips patch. If it's accepted, I'm fine with that, if it's not, I'm also fine with that. Word to mouth, I'll be damn if this game still doesn't get popular even if I release it just here at the end of the day, most people who are interested in Zelda 3 come here anyway! Like lurkers who never register... like me ages ago before joining a rom hacking community.

You are welcome to hate this speech, I just feel combating piracy is a lost battle with the grey zone work we all do anyway ;-)

Anyway, this is just my ''two cents''.

I thank both of you for your thoughts.

I actually don't know which road to take: release it unlocked and resubmit it, or renounce on that toxic site and stick only to this site, which is not dumb enough to remove quality material from it: either games in different formats or guides for them.

I also actually don't know if the Exlorom is compliant or not, since when you remove the zip lock, you get this format of a rom, so you need to further change it to Lorom to completely unlock it.

PS
The zip lock was actually accidently hacked already. But this only reverts the zip thing and not the Exlorom into Lorom. So it only unlocks the surface. I'm actually not sure if the Exlorom can be carted or not.
The GUI version of the new NSRT program can auto-undo the changes by loading the rom in it, and pressing add header and then remove header. Works only if the rom inside the zip is 6MB or less. Of course I can simply put it to 8MB and block this program off as well, however this seems pointless now.

My suggestions: make peace with romhacking, release it unprotected and stay above it.

Seems reasonable. You want to know the funny part: I primarily decided to go for the zip lock due to your new Morning star code. With my method you can not even extract it with hex.

Nobody's commented on the guide part yet. My recommendation:

Package the guide with the patch.

I've seen some games do that. It's then up to the player's willpower to see whether they want to read it or not.

I don't have much to say about the hack itself being flagged, but I agree on the guide, include it with the patch. I at least agree with the takedown there, they really don't have a section for it, and their docs section is designed for hacking and reverse engineering info, not players guides, even for the original games, much less for hacks. Either include it with the patch or start a release thread in the forum and link it there.

Puzzledude wrote:You want to know the funny part: I primarily decided to go for the zip lock due to your new Morning star code.

Which is kind of ironic because that item doesn't provides any benefits. It's actually a slower item than the hookshot which is more effective.

I actually wished you'd get the goldstar first and the hookshot as an upgrade. It would effectively make more sense.

From what I've seen with two different let's play of my beta, they also noticed how the morning star is a much slower item.

Hey puzzledude, I think you should release it unlocked. It seems like you are letting a few bad apples spoil everyone else's fun. If 1 person out of 100 repros a hack and the other 99 just play it on their favorite flashcart/emulator, then you are letting that 1 person have power over your decisions and making it more difficult for people to enjoy your hack.

For example, I recently played superskuj's Secret of the Past hack on my sd2snes flashcart and had tons of fun with it. No locked hack, no DRM. Now there might be someone who has made a repro of his hack, but there's probably many more people that just played it on their flashcart or favorite emulator like I did.

I would love to play IQ test, but since it is emulator only I'm not sure I will ever get around to it. I sit at my computer doing work all day and play SNES games on my TV to get away and take a break from the computer. I've played the version 1.0 demo that you released back in the day since it works on real hardware and it looks like 2.0 is even better.

I think when it comes down to it, and why people get angry at you over in the comments, is because they just want to play and enjoy your hack in whatever way they're used to (be it a flashcart or certain emulator) and you're making it difficult for them. I think they feel like they are being punished for something they have nothing to do with, which is the people who make repros.

As for the guide, you can include it in the patch download. There was a Kirby's Dream Course hack recently uploaded to Romhacking that included a PDF guide in the patch download.

^ That's pretty much how I feel too. I enjoyed the IQ hack but I never finished it because I too prefer to play video games on a TV sitting in a cozy chair, not hunched over my computer at a desk (slight exaggeration). I've just always found gaming on a computer to be a less immersive experience. I even have a slight emotional attachment to my CRT-TV due to nostalgia and the fact that these devices are disappearing from the Earth (due to technological progress).

As for the guide, you can include it in the patch download.

I personally wouldn't do that in this case because of how massive/excessive his guide is. It is incredibly thorough perhaps to the point of being too thorough. At least no one can rightfully say that he half-assed it or cut any corners. LOL

Anyway, I think the IQ hack is really cool. It's intelligently and painstakingly crafted and dares to think outside of the box. It creates an experience very different from the original game so no matter how many people want to moan about this or that aspect I still think that it is a top notch hack.

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Well, I guess I no longer have 666 posts...