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Taking a step back... from the edge


Bikerdude

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charging ahead and making unwanted creative changes were not appreciated.

Till this day I still don't fully understand why I never stopped to think before acting, when collaborating with other mappers.

 

That was probably already an implied mandate but most of the Team has been too busy for this type of QA work so they left Biker to his own devices.

And my lack of foresight and comms was my downfall.

 

Regarding what SHOULD have happened when I made a mistake, or did something someone didn't like or just plain fucked up. The effected PERSON/S should have called me out on it STRAIGHT away! Or someone from the Team should have told me when they were informed.

 

But instead what apparently happened on a number of occasions is I found out after the fact that conversations were had behind my back, which then allowed SHIT to fester. This then meant that any subsequent mistakes I made, just added to the shit pile and coloured/distorted everything I did and have done since - in a nutshell bad communication from both sides.

 

Biker was not only a busy worker, he was a mission maintainer and was an ambassador for the intentions of the TDM team.

Which is as mentioned in this thread, why I offered to leave a few times. Its why I stepped back from being an admin and subsequently a team member

 

Gave the revised mission out to other people to test, and then lied about being given permission to do so.

Its utterly pointless trying to discuss this or any other point with you at this point, but FUCK you with bells on. Outright calling me a Lier is not only a lie in-itself but a distortion of the facts to suit your own narrative.

 

I don't know at what point years ago when it started, but your attitude towards me has always been off or confrontational. You seem to have taken issue with almost everything I have done or gone just out of your way to be obtuse, and this direct insult is just the latest example of that.

 

@All,

 

Yes I am an idiot, Yes I am my own worst enemy, Yes I have been over bearing, Yes I have gotten carried away, Yes I failed to communicate and yes I have failed to consider other people feelings. But at no time did I do any of the above with malicious intent or malice.

 

I fucking hate that I have managed to destroy a few of the good relationships I built on here, but in some of those their is blame to go around. Contrary to what some people on here believe, I don't go out of my way nor has it ever my intent to be a fucking arsehole -

 

 

 

 

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Till this day I still don't fully understand why I never stopped to think before acting, when collaborating with other mappers.

And my lack of foresight and comms was my downfall.

Beeing unable to stop the flow is only a problem while working on other authors' missions. While working on your own stuff that flaw actually is a strength (especially if you have fun doing it and there is no deadline).

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FUCK you with bells on. Outright calling me a Lier is not only a lie in-itself but a distortion of the facts to suit your own narrative.

 

 

Well, people can decide for themselves if I've represented it unfairly...it's all in the public exchange here, where Melan certainly seems to contradict your suggestion that he gave you permission to make the changes you did.

 

Excerpts:

Melan: "How could I give permission? Ask Bikerdude. This... this whatever the hell it is, it is not my mission. It has been substantially altered against my express wishes."

 

Bikerdude: "@Melan, I did PM you."

 

Melan: "No, Biker, you did not PM me about this... You asked to fix one bug, and you proceeded to remodel the mission."

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Well, people can decide for themselves if I've represented it unfairly...it's all in the public exchange here, where Melan certainly seems to contradict your suggestion that he gave you permission to make the changes you did.

Lying requieres intent. And it does not look like there was any. Try adding the next post of that thread to the evidence.
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To all people chiming in and trying to argue this issue from one side or another - I know the intention is good, but please stop. This is a thread from bikerdude announcing his stepping down from tdm and giving his side of the story. We all expressed our surprise and our feelings about that, and since then some of the people actually involved in the whole affair came here to express a bit of their feelings as well. Its clear now that this whole thing is the result of a long series of situations that went on mostly private within the team. We were not involved in any of it and thus have very little knowledge to judge anything. I guess its cool and all to try and bring the converstion to a "lets just forgive each other" scenario but Ive noticed that some people are going for a dismissive stance somehow implying that this is all due to a bunch of primadona mappers bringing down a well meaning contributor, when we know this is not accurate and that those guys are a lot better than that. Just because most of the people involved chose to keep their feelings largely private and refrained from adding too much to this discussion, it doenst mean they are not justified in their position, that it doesnt need to be considered. I think this is getting a bit too emotional right now.

Edited by RPGista
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It's been made clear (even by Bikerdude himself) that this behavior has been repeated time and time again. A person will naturally start to become suspicious if a person keeps apologizing for transgressions that they continue to do again and again. If it's not a lie, it's a complete failure of empathy. It doesn't have to be intentionally malicious, but you can sure bet people will get angry for it. I've dealt with this on a personal level a number of times and it's annoying as anything.

In cases of missing empathy, apologizing is not common either. Also he obviously feels bad for it. That highly suggests that the empathy is there and working as expected.

So no, it most probably isn't lack of empathy either. My bet is on mere lack of self-control combined with some forgetfulness.

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I don't think the issue here is anyone actually stealing a mission. I guess Bikerdude is just a perfectionist who likes to improve on other people's work, even if told to not do so.

 

No, it's not stealing, but that kind of brushing it off is exactly the "not getting" part Springheel mentions. People can pour a lot of heart into making maps and assets, and devote a lot of their spare time making this stuff, often sacrificing their sleep or leisure time, because they have this drive and passion to accomplish something here. And they're right to be proud of it. "It's not perfect, but it's finished. I've solved a lot of problems to make it, and I've learnt a lot". Now when someone steps in, messing around with this stuff like they knew better, that's an equivalent of a slap in the face. I bet a lot of you will think that's exaggerated, but it isn't. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone here has bad intentions. But we all know what's paved with the good ones...

Edited by Judith
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Now when someone steps in, messing around with this stuff like they knew better, that's an equivalent of a slap in the face.

I understand, but on the other hand if Bikerdude is known to be carried away, you should not give him your map to optimize. I have the same issue with someone in Bloodlines, he can optimize maps nicely, but he can't stop to add details here and there! So when I don't want that, I just don't give him the map source: game over.

Edited by wesp5
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True, and I'm sure that would work within TDM team or among regular forum members; most people been here long enough to know, more or less, what to expect from each other. It's not that simple with newcomers, though. Case in point: Some1stoleit's map. He couldn't have any idea what he agreed to. He even seemed to be amazed with that kind of "support".

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Use a license. Perfect middle ground. Done.

Anything done against the license would obviously be disallowed here.

If you feel the need to DRM your content, then maybe you shouldn't be contributing to The Dark Mod in the first place.

Any DRM seems contrary to the very nature of TDM and I'm sure many members including myself will be heavily against it.

Indeed, as I argued in my first reply to Judith, attempting to implement any kind of DRM scheme in a GPL open source project is utterly pointless, and not worth spending any developer time on.

 

It's not really DRM just some sorta obfuscation of the map data.

 

I would hope that most mappers would offer their source map to the community anyway

but having both the "security option" and optimization benefits of that change would be cool

as long as the classic behavior is available too.

 

Exactly. The stripped map approach is not a DRM scheme, it is a size optimisation that as a side effect would also make it more difficult for someone to appropriate the map if they were inclined to do so — in the same way that compiling C++ code into machine code is a performance optimisation that happens to make it more difficult (although not impossible) to reverse-engineer, even though that is not its primary intention.

 

I would therefore only suggest implementing this if the size optimisation was actually worth it. It might be that the size of brush and patch data in the .map file is actually negligible compared with the amount of data in the compiled proc file, especially once both have been ZIP compressed for distribution.

 

As far as people stealing maps is concerned, I don't think there is an actual real-world problem with this, and the fact that an obviously stolen map would never be added to the in-game downloader seems like a fairly good line of defense.

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Just to be clear, I never voted for any kind of DRM system in TDM, and I never will :) Obviously, the community wouldn't tolerate maps being stolen. The real problem is people leaving the mod without making all the things they could have made, or stuff they had in progress.

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As a mapper I would hate that approach (even if it were more efficient) because much of what I've learned from mapping was by opening other people's maps in DR to see how they did certain things. But I'm in favor of strong language emphasizing our standards for using people's creations, best practices before release to avoid past problems (like artists have absolute decision-making & veto power over their work), and trying to make sure people acknowledge them up front before any work is started.

 

This issue has come up so many times in our community since 1999 that it's best to think about it from a "best practices" approach and not get emotion wrapped up into it. There's rules that should be followed no questions asked and no accusations of intentions need to even be brought into the debate.

 

As for people leaving & unfinished work left lying around... IMO there is so much unfinished work still actually being worked on that that argument is really a red herring. Entire awesome campaigns started ages ago will never be finished, Hammerite Imporium, Cosas, T2 Gold, etc, etc, and that's ok. There is more than enough work to do with what's been cleared for other people to work on in the proper way.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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It's not about unfinished work in the "abandoned" category, with permissions to be used by the community. I was talking about the loss of talent, and the people discouraged by the way their work was treated. That's why talks like this one, about practices and "work culture", are both interesting and important.

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It's not about unfinished work in the "abandoned" category, with permissions to be used by the community.

Interesting. If there are many projects like this, Bikerdude, why don't you go and finish them? You said you deleted all of your current work anyway :).

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@TDM Team, just take a group vote and decide once and for all whether you want me here or not.

 

 

I don't think there's any question about this. We would like you to continue participating in this community.

You've already been reprimanded and stripped of authority.

 

 

The remainder of this discussion is just a debate about the severity of your infractions.

(Which, in my opinion, is of dubious value but I cannot speak for those who you've upset.)

 

I honestly don't see why you can't have internal forum access, SVN privileges to access development

resources, etc as long as you don't have forum moderator or mission archive admin privileges.

 

And it's quite clear that you aren't to speak on behalf of the Team without consulting with the Team first.

 

I think you've as much understood all that and it's just a matter of internal discussion to review

the consensus there.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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To all people chiming in and trying to argue this issue from one side or another - I know the intention is good, but please stop. This is a thread from bikerdude announcing his stepping down from tdm and giving his side of the story. We all expressed our surprise and our feelings about that, and since then some of the people actually involved in the whole affair came here to express a bit of their feelings as well. Its clear now that this whole thing is the result of a long series of situations that went on mostly private within the team. We were not involved in any of it and thus have very little knowledge to judge anything.

 

Why does he publicly announce it then, and even adds his side of the story to the posts? If he doesn't want this discussed, it's simple. Either contact the team, and the people he had issues with, or just leave without a note. And, frankly, from his posts, i can't really pick any kind of regret either. It all rather says "I don't know what i have done wrong, and i'm not willing to change anything, but i'm sorry.". You know, i wouldn't comment on it, if it wasn't all public anyway.

 

Also, asking for a vote to leave or stay? Jeez, does it get even more dramatic? You know, i always liked Bikerdude and his work for the mod, but, clearly someone is digging his own "grave" here.

Edited by chakkman
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@Biker - Just a thought, but why not just stick to making your own missions? It's obvious you love to build things and be creative, and you're good at it. If you're only working on your own stuff, nobody can tell you what to do and there's no risk of rubbing anyone the wrong way.

 

Even if it's not permanent, maybe just for a little while? That way you can still contribute to the community and all of this other drama goes by the wayside.

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and stripped of authority.

To be clear, I gave up my admin priviliges and team membership of my own volition.

  • Why does he publicly announce it then,
  • and even adds his side of the story to the posts?
  • Also, asking for a vote to leave or stay?
  • This was originally supposed be a simple explainantion for why too a steao back, had I left for the community at large.
  • I did this because at the time I didnt think I was EVER coming back and because I was and still am angry about a lot of things.
  • I did that to draw a line under all of this! one way or the other.

Just a thought, but why not just stick to making your own missions? And all of this other drama goes by the wayside.

At this point, thats all I would do. That would be welcome, but atm its the unwanted gift that just keeps giving.

Edited by Bikerdude
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Well, regardless of whether the Team reprimanded you or you imposed it on yourself the result is the same.

 

In a sense the Team reprimanded you by admonishing you in PM or on the forums but nobody formally said

"if you keep doing X, we'll need to revoke privilege Y" is was more of the same kind of gruff bluster that

the Team has historically engaged in with members they disagree with.

 

Pretty grey and if you'd payed attention to old developer arguments in the internal forums you would've seen much

more extreme flaring tempers and team members being outright assholes to each other with no real consequences

other than some general animus.

 

In some respects we operate like the Unites States "separation of powers \ checks and balances". Coders have some powers,

mappers, artists, etc. Grayman has a little more authority because he's a jack of all trades. But it usually takes a LOT

of abuse or misbehavior before we decide to ban someone or revoke access (etc) because we all depend on each other.

 

Though I'm sure some of the Team is not too happy to admit it right now, your absence means that adding new textures and materials

to the project is going to be much slower and more of a burden. We'll have a lower influx of prefabs and QA testing prefabs

will take that much longer.

 

Take this how you will. Springheel has an affinity for trying to get people to go into philosophical discussions to

unveil their underlying thought process. He'll keep making you explain what you were thinking and then

remark about why it meets some standard definition of "x bad behavior". It's an effective argument strategy if all

you care about is "winning the debate" but it's not good bedside manner for healing a damaged relationship

and probably is why a few notable members have left too.

 

Too cold and logical with no leeway for personal issues is just as much a recipe for alienation as

is being to passionate, opinionated and rash. Just my 2 cents.

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Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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What? What the hell happen? You harming this mod?! How?

 

Bikerdude please think this through, i agree with the ones that say, you should stay, don't let any small fight diminish all the years of work you did for this mod, he exists because of you has well, i don't know what happen but imo going away is not the answer.

 

Take a break if you may but please return, imo this community needs your expertise.

Im with him, friction happens at times, but dont let that discourage you from discussing it with the party involved, misunderstandings are sometimes unavoidable,

text is not exactly the best way to convey feelings of support, and sometimes end up in the eye of the beholder as something completely different.

 

Take a break but dont leave :) and if the party involved watches this it should clear up this debacle.

Best wishes from someone who himself has been on a major hiatus due to health problems.

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