What's happening in here?

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

Gotta give credit to Kayla for actually being motivated to make those weekly/bi-weekly what's going on fpp and PrawnSkunk for working on a completely open community driven news log. Those are baby steps, but we're heading in the right direction.

There's been a lot of times I've taken on a lot more work than I probably should have but then it all fizzles out because I can only get so far with what I have available to me.

I'm just at the point now of taking charge of some projects and running with them. I don't really know what else to do at this point, I used to run everything by all staff before doing anything but that obviously just isn't going to work right now.

I will always do my best to be upfront with all of you just as I always have. If I can give an answer I will. Ask away at anything event related if you guys want to. I do try to keep some of it on the DL for the surprise aspect of it (like when we're hiding images around the site for a scavenger hunt ) but I don't mind talking about most things. And I don't know if you guys remember but I've made threads asking for user ideas for events in the past and stuff. Would you all like to see another one of those?

[Rapta]

Re: What's happening in here?

Halogen I think you need a bigger font

[blanky!]

Re: What's happening in here?

Anything on the website layout? The front page looks quite confusing and everything about its code seems to be from another decade. I know Velocity had some progress but after April's incident I'm not really sure...

aka hire fission and the like already

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

Anything on the website layout? The front page looks quite confusing and everything about its code seems to be from another decade. I know Velocity had some progress but after April's incident I'm not really sure...

aka hire fission and the like already

I've been wondering what happened to the new site look for a while, thought it was going to roll out a long time ago. Looked nice. We definitely need something different though, the site just doesn't look all that appealing in it's current state.

[DossarLX ODI]

Re: What's happening in here?

Fission and qqwref have been on the development team in an earlier point in time. Both don't have any plans on rejoining from the unpleasant experience they had.

Trumpet knows someone that could potentially be joining the dev team, Synthlight had another person in mind although I haven't heard an update since a few weeks ago. The web development opportunities I mentioned should also help get some new developers onboard.

I plan on talking with Prawnskunk and Trumpet about a potential development team change because the current structure obviously isn't working.

[blanky!]

Re: What's happening in here?

Elaborate on the unpleasant experience. If posting here isn't comfortable then PM me on FFR.

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

Prior to last year, I literally only made files for this game and stayed out of judging and administrative stuff.

Near the end of last year, I was brought on to the Dev team as a UX designer. I had a clear application, and my understanding of the position was that I would be working with some dedicated game developers, and a UI artist, to make a new face for the game: the interface of a new engine, and a layout for a new homepage.
This was the same time as a huge number of other new staff members being brought on. The biggest deal was that Synthlight was contacted again, complete with a post about him being brought on the team again and his renewed activity (a post which I wrote, incidentally). He then immediately disappeared again. At least as far as I was concerned, being that I tried several ways to contact him and was unable (apparently other people could? More on this below)
With regards to UX design, I crafted the poll about homepage use that went up last year. I collected the answers and wrote a basic outline of what a new homepage should have and look like. While I visited Trello and Slack fairly often (admittedly not as often as I should have), I was never clear who I was supposed to be communicating these ideas with. I honestly had no idea what stage of development the supposed new engine and homepage were in; furthermore, I had no idea who to ask other than Zageron, who appeared to me to be the de facto leader of the development team. So I generated the ideas and outlines that were first assigned to me, told Zageron I did, and they've just kinda sat around since then.
At this point, I was very dissatisfied with how I was fitting into the development team. It was obvious to me that I wasn't really helping, and that I didn't know enough of the skills that were in actual demand to contribute in other ways. I asked that my title be removed. Zageron told me that I should take some time to reconsider, that maybe my stuff would be of use down the line, and that I should keep my title for the time being. This was the start of a long time- most of the start of 2015- where I had a dev title, occasionally checked into the dev Trello and Slack, but was not doing any dev work. I defended the dev team at the time, because I WAS seeing work being done. I would have gladly had my title removed at any time.

Also at the end of last year, I judged a batch. Upon the release of my notes, I was criticized fairly heavily by certain people because I apparently had "too narrow an idea of what a good file was for FFR." Out of respect for that criticism, combined with my college schedule, I decided not to judge any more batches. I thought that was the end of my judging issues- enough people had made it clear to me that they didn't like my notes, so I quit. Again, I have NO idea why I still have the title and would gladly have it removed.

My notes from the one batch I had judged were apparently late for the deadline, and therefore I should have lost my 2 submission slots that judges gain for submitting notes. I did not know that my notes were late. This was obviously my fault, but after 9 months of no communication at all about my submissions, I figured there was no problem with what I had been doing during that time.
Fast forward to about a month ago. I was contacted by a GM, who had stepped the same song as I had. Although mine had gotten a slightly better rating, this GM seemed really passionate about wanting his file in the game. Figuring it was a nice thing to do, I said that this GM could have their file in the game, as long as my file could be replaced with a different song. I thought this was, in general, a nice gesture, and good for the game as a whole because it would lead to more different songs being available.
Said GM then immediately turned around and said that since my notes had been late about a year ago, I had to lose those submission slots. I had also submitted my files for the March/April batch a few days late, so those were to be removed from the queue too. Again- obviously my fault- but it seemed rather rude to do this literally within the same paragraph as thanking me for doing them a favor. It also seemed like a waste of resources to be rules lawyering the batch about issues from several months ago, especially during a time where it was very clear that the last thing the site needed was additional administrative work that only slowed the flow of good files into the game. I was prepared to offer something such as having me judge the sets that still needed judging now in return for being able to keep those files in the batches, but the GM in question was fairly adamant about wanting my files removed. Fundamentally I realized the issues were indeed all my mistakes, so I came up with a list of the files that should be removed, they were removed, and that was it- although I freely admit (and I hope people can see why) that I was a annoyed about how it was handled.

Obviously, in April of this year, the site had its scoreboards fucked. I still had my dev title at the time (why, I don't know, I had asked for it to be removed) and I still had access to the dev communication sites. I don't know exactly what happened among the devs, but I do know that the sites were effectively dead of activity after these issues. Velocity quitting was a big part of this, I know that for certain. I also know that, after this, Zageron himself seemed to lose hope on the development side of things. I'd love to hear his take on this.

Seeing this, I redoubled my efforts to contact Synthlight over the summer. For several years now, I have had an idea of what I would do with FFR if I could buy it from Synthlight and run it myself. I really wanted to talk with him about the possibility of doing so.

Fast forward to the start of this thread. Synth is finally re-contacted! Note that this is also the source of the quote above that AJ referenced- I was telling Synth that I would love to own the site or actually be paid to fix FFR's problems as a real paid job. It's pretty easy to use that quote out of context to make me look bad.
Anyway, I finally got my chance to talk with Synth in Skype. He made it clear to me that he was not selling the site, and that he was back for good. I made it clear to him that the site had been lacking in direction for a while- Zageron had been holding things together the best he could, but since the score meltdown the lack of a figurehead for the staff was really hurting the site.
Synthlight promised me he would be very available, active on the site frequently, and really part of its reconstruction.
Out of respect for that commitment, I told Synth my plan for the site.
Core parts of my plan:
#1 priority over everything: Sort out the gigantic legal mess FFR is in. For example: To my knowledge, none of the code, art, or other development stuff is contracted. I think Velocity still owns all the code of the engines he worked on. If he wanted them taken down and Synth disagreed, the lack of a contract would likely let Velocity win in court, in turn gutting the site. Even if he wouldn't, failure to contract site resources is simple to fix and there's no reason to have even the possibility of a developer holding your site hostage hanging over you. This is Owning a Company 101 stuff. Another example of legal issues is that Synthlight himself is unaware of the terms by which artists are allowing us to use their music. Permission emails are not standardized: people call the game and site F2P, advertisement free, a non-profit company, etc. etc. What promises were made to which artists? If we started advertising again, which artists could/would complain?
#2 priority: part of making a standardized agreement for artists to let their music in the game would be deciding how money is going to be handled on FFR. Will we ever want to advertise in the future? Mircrotransactions? Make the game paid? (I sincerely hope not, but it's worth asking)
#3 Determine a staff structure. At this point, Synthlight tells me that he is 100% certain that the site can sustain itself by volunteer work alone. (Note to AJ: yes this means I'm not fucking getting paid to be a GM lol) I remain skeptical of this, but to this end I've talked with Trumpet about his suggestion that the code be open sourced and other ideas.
#4 Hire a developer full time. Using money.

After this talk with Synthlight, some things happened, some things didn't. I can safely say #1 and #2 were completely ignored, despite (in my opinion) the risk ignoring them poses to the site. #3 has at least been talked about among the staff, but nothing has happened. There was some progress with #4, with Synthlight having contacted a promising-sounding German rhythm game developer (I am not sure if money was involved or not, or even if that discussion has happened yet)

I'd love to let him talk about these developments himself, like he promised over a week ago, rather than have everyone hear it from my mouth.

About my promotion to GM:
Around the time when I talked to Synth, I also talked with Zageron. Zageron at this point was completely fed up with everything, and told me as much. He wanted to pass the baton quietly to someone and quit. Unfortunately, Zageron is a nice person, and he made it clear to me that he was held back by the feeling of leaving an empty place. Nobody wants to quit without at least trying to fill their position somehow, it's understandable. This was, as silly as it might sound, part of why I offered to have him promote me to GM. Another part was that I had already been doing some GM-like things. For example, for around a year now, I've been talking with OWA on Skype about difficulty ratings for both existing and upcoming songs, and for all intents and purposes should probably have been labeled an official difficulty consultant. I know how to convert files for the syncer's engine. I know how to frame fix files, etc. In a large part thanks to how incredibly organized and committed Dossar is, I thought he could give me some direction and I could at least try to do some good as a GM.

As you can tell from the above explanation, I came into the GM role really randomly. At first I didn't do anything as a GM besides weigh in on discussions on Skype. With that in mind I probably really shouldn't be a GM. At the same time I've found that I could help by sorting files for the hard songs batch with OWA, and I feel like I was actually useful for once in that capacity. So maybe I should be a GM? I have no fucking idea, and that's partly why I'm so defensive about it.

With regard to the above exchange with Kayla: I overracted. I'm sorry about that. I should mention, on her part, that she just PMmed me and apologized for essentially the same.
Both of us, I think, are tense out of a feeling of frustration at not being able to help FFR in the way we think we can.



So at this point, I'll reiterate:
I've carried my concerns right up to the top- Synthlight himself- and he's failed to deliver.
Every time he "comes back to the site" he talks a big game, then fails to follow through. Part of me is sympathetic- I can't pretend I don't do that occasionally, too- but a bigger part of me realizes, finally, that he's also really good at making empty promises.
To use a metaphor: Synthlight is the core of the FFR tree, and he is not there. You can prop the tree's limbs up as much as you want, but a tree without its core is still fundamentally dead.



As for what I'm going to do, after a year being somewhat integrated with the judging/development/GM teams each in turn, I've realized the problem is likely me. I'm aware I have my flaws- laziness, lack of direction, selfishness, etc.- but I feel like I've honestly tried to do good for the site. But merely trying isn't enough at this point, so I'll stop.

I've seen communities die before (shoutouts to k2xl) and I knew FFR was heading there, and so I've gotten myself involved in things I clearly shouldn't have in my efforts to try to do something, anything, to help the site.

If people want me to stay as a GM, I guess I will, and I'll do anything I'm asked to do to the best of my ability. If people don't want me to stay as a GM, wonderful. Remove me and I can finally be done with this mess, just as Zageron finally is.



And for fuck's sake, remove my Judge and Dev titles already please.

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

Prior to last year, I literally only made files for this game and stayed out of judging and administrative stuff.

Near the end of last year, I was brought on to the Dev team as a UX designer. I had a clear application, and my understanding of the position was that I would be working with some dedicated game developers, and a UI artist, to make a new face for the game: the interface of a new engine, and a layout for a new homepage.
This was the same time as a huge number of other new staff members being brought on. The biggest deal was that Synthlight was contacted again, complete with a post about him being brought on the team again and his renewed activity (a post which I wrote, incidentally). He then immediately disappeared again. At least as far as I was concerned, being that I tried several ways to contact him and was unable (apparently other people could? More on this below)
With regards to UX design, I crafted the poll about homepage use that went up last year. I collected the answers and wrote a basic outline of what a new homepage should have and look like. While I visited Trello and Slack fairly often (admittedly not as often as I should have), I was never clear who I was supposed to be communicating these ideas with. I honestly had no idea what stage of development the supposed new engine and homepage were in; furthermore, I had no idea who to ask other than Zageron, who appeared to me to be the de facto leader of the development team. So I generated the ideas and outlines that were first assigned to me, told Zageron I did, and they've just kinda sat around since then.
At this point, I was very dissatisfied with how I was fitting into the development team. It was obvious to me that I wasn't really helping, and that I didn't know enough of the skills that were in actual demand to contribute in other ways. I asked that my title be removed. Zageron told me that I should take some time to reconsider, that maybe my stuff would be of use down the line, and that I should keep my title for the time being. This was the start of a long time- most of the start of 2015- where I had a dev title, occasionally checked into the dev Trello and Slack, but was not doing any dev work. I defended the dev team at the time, because I WAS seeing work being done. I would have gladly had my title removed at any time.

Also at the end of last year, I judged a batch. Upon the release of my notes, I was criticized fairly heavily by certain people because I apparently had "too narrow an idea of what a good file was for FFR." Out of respect for that criticism, combined with my college schedule, I decided not to judge any more batches. I thought that was the end of my judging issues- enough people had made it clear to me that they didn't like my notes, so I quit. Again, I have NO idea why I still have the title and would gladly have it removed.

My notes from the one batch I had judged were apparently late for the deadline, and therefore I should have lost my 2 submission slots that judges gain for submitting notes. I did not know that my notes were late. This was obviously my fault, but after 9 months of no communication at all about my submissions, I figured there was no problem with what I had been doing during that time.
Fast forward to about a month ago. I was contacted by a GM, who had stepped the same song as I had. Although mine had gotten a slightly better rating, this GM seemed really passionate about wanting his file in the game. Figuring it was a nice thing to do, I said that this GM could have their file in the game, as long as my file could be replaced with a different song. I thought this was, in general, a nice gesture, and good for the game as a whole because it would lead to more different songs being available.
Said GM then immediately turned around and said that since my notes had been late about a year ago, I had to lose those submission slots. I had also submitted my files for the March/April batch a few days late, so those were to be removed from the queue too. Again- obviously my fault- but it seemed rather rude to do this literally within the same paragraph as thanking me for doing them a favor. It also seemed like a waste of resources to be rules lawyering the batch about issues from several months ago, especially during a time where it was very clear that the last thing the site needed was additional administrative work that only slowed the flow of good files into the game. I was prepared to offer something such as having me judge the sets that still needed judging now in return for being able to keep those files in the batches, but the GM in question was fairly adamant about wanting my files removed. Fundamentally I realized the issues were indeed all my mistakes, so I came up with a list of the files that should be removed, they were removed, and that was it- although I freely admit (and I hope people can see why) that I was a annoyed about how it was handled.

Obviously, in April of this year, the site had its scoreboards fucked. I still had my dev title at the time (why, I don't know, I had asked for it to be removed) and I still had access to the dev communication sites. I don't know exactly what happened among the devs, but I do know that the sites were effectively dead of activity after these issues. Velocity quitting was a big part of this, I know that for certain. I also know that, after this, Zageron himself seemed to lose hope on the development side of things. I'd love to hear his take on this.

Seeing this, I redoubled my efforts to contact Synthlight over the summer. For several years now, I have had an idea of what I would do with FFR if I could buy it from Synthlight and run it myself. I really wanted to talk with him about the possibility of doing so.

Fast forward to the start of this thread. Synth is finally re-contacted! Note that this is also the source of the quote above that AJ referenced- I was telling Synth that I would love to own the site or actually be paid to fix FFR's problems as a real paid job. It's pretty easy to use that quote out of context to make me look bad.
Anyway, I finally got my chance to talk with Synth in Skype. He made it clear to me that he was not selling the site, and that he was back for good. I made it clear to him that the site had been lacking in direction for a while- Zageron had been holding things together the best he could, but since the score meltdown the lack of a figurehead for the staff was really hurting the site.
Synthlight promised me he would be very available, active on the site frequently, and really part of its reconstruction.
Out of respect for that commitment, I told Synth my plan for the site.
Core parts of my plan:
#1 priority over everything: Sort out the gigantic legal mess FFR is in. For example: To my knowledge, none of the code, art, or other development stuff is contracted. I think Velocity still owns all the code of the engines he worked on. If he wanted them taken down and Synth disagreed, the lack of a contract would likely let Velocity win in court, in turn gutting the site. Even if he wouldn't, failure to contract site resources is simple to fix and there's no reason to have even the possibility of a developer holding your site hostage hanging over you. This is Owning a Company 101 stuff. Another example of legal issues is that Synthlight himself is unaware of the terms by which artists are allowing us to use their music. Permission emails are not standardized: people call the game and site F2P, advertisement free, a non-profit company, etc. etc. What promises were made to which artists? If we started advertising again, which artists could/would complain?
#2 priority: part of making a standardized agreement for artists to let their music in the game would be deciding how money is going to be handled on FFR. Will we ever want to advertise in the future? Mircrotransactions? Make the game paid? (I sincerely hope not, but it's worth asking)
#3 Determine a staff structure. At this point, Synthlight tells me that he is 100% certain that the site can sustain itself by volunteer work alone. (Note to AJ: yes this means I'm not fucking getting paid to be a GM lol) I remain skeptical of this, but to this end I've talked with Trumpet about his suggestion that the code be open sourced and other ideas.
#4 Hire an a developer full time. Using money.

After this talk with Synthlight, some things happened, some things didn't. I can safely say #1 and #2 were completely ignored, despite (in my opinion) the risk ignoring them poses to the site. #3 has at least been talked about among the staff, but nothing has happened. There was some progress with #4, with Synthlight having contacted a promising-sounding German rhythm game developer (I am not sure if money was involved or not, or even if that discussion has happened yet)

I'd love to let him talk about these developments himself, like he promised over a week ago, rather than have everyone hear it from my mouth.

About my promotion to GM:
Around the time when I talked to Synth, I also talked with Zageron. Zageron at this point was completely fed up with everything, and told me as much. He wanted to pass the baton quietly to someone and quit. Unfortunately, Zageron is a nice person, and he made it clear to me that he was held back by the feeling of leaving an empty place. Nobody wants to quit without at least trying to fill their position somehow, it's understandable. This was, as silly as it might sound, part of why I offered to have him promote me to GM. Another part was that I had already been doing some GM-like things. For example, for around a year now, I've been talking with OWA on Skype about difficulty ratings for both existing and upcoming songs, and for all intents and purposes should probably have been labeled an official difficulty consultant. I know how to convert files for the syncer's engine. I know how to frame fix files, etc. In a large part thanks to how incredibly organized and committed Dossar is, I thought he could give me some direction and I could at least try to do some good as a GM.

As you can tell from the above explanation, I came into the GM role really randomly. At first I didn't do anything as a GM besides weigh in on discussions on Skype. With that in mind I probably really shouldn't be a GM. At the same time I've found that I could help by sorting files for the hard songs batch with OWA, and I feel like I was actually useful for once in that capacity. So maybe I should be a GM? I have no fucking idea, and that's partly why I'm so defensive about it.

With regard to the above exchange with Kayla: I overracted. I'm sorry about that. I should mention, on her part, that she just PMmed me and apologized for essentially the same.
Both of us, I think, are tense out of a feeling of frustration at not being able to help FFR in the way we think we can.



So at this point, I'll reiterate:
I've carried my concerns right up to the top- Synthlight himself- and he's failed to deliver.
Every time he "comes back to the site" he talks a big game, then fails to follow through. Part of me is sympathetic- I can't pretend I don't do that occasionally, too- but a bigger part of me realizes, finally, that he's also really good at making empty promises.
To use a metaphor: Synthlight is the core of the FFR tree, and he is not there. You can prop the tree's limbs up as much as you want, but a tree without its core is still fundamentally dead.



As for what I'm going to do, after a year being somewhat integrated with the judging/development/GM teams each in turn, I've realized the problem is likely me. I'm aware I have my flaws- laziness, lack of direction, etc.- but I feel like I've tried to do good for the site. But trying isn't enough at this point, so I'll stop.

I've seen communities die before (shoutouts to k2xl) and I knew FFR was heading there, and so I've gotten myself involved in things I clearly shouldn't have in my efforts to try to do something, anything, to help the site.

If people want me to stay as a GM, I guess I will, and I'll do anything I'm asked to do to the best of my ability. If people don't want me to stay as a GM, wonderful. Remove me and I can finally be done with this mess, just as Zageron finally is.



And for fuck's sake, remove my Judge and Dev titles already please.

There's a lot here and I'm so tired that I can't address it all at the moment, sorry for that but just want to touch on the GM part. I'd say at least talk with all the other GM's about being on board and what you'd be doing if you were going to stay as such. It is a bit unfair to them to just have someone thrown in with no warning and really pretty randomly, and that's nothing against you of course. It also means you and I would be working together and we do have a rocky past, but GM and events have to cross paths sometimes (this is not saying I have an issue working together, just that these tensions need to stop).

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

Also the people who keep saying I'm not being transparent or whatever, kindly go fuck yourselves (this is directed at nobody in particular, I'm just mad okay)
I just spent over an hour on a Friday night typing up FFR bullshit when I should have been sitting around playing video games and drinking and masturbating like everyone else

EDIT- the more I think about it the more annoyed I am that this site has reached a point where I need to write a fucktrillion word essay about how fucked up the site is
I just want to be able to make arrow game files and listen to music and smash keys and let other people enjoy the arrow game files I've made too how hard does it really have to be

[korny]

Re: What's happening in here?

Hi19 whoa dude chill out bro

[justin_ator]

Re: What's happening in here?

I can feel his frustration though, and I don't think that it isn't justified.

[Rapta]

Re: What's happening in here?

Thanks for the transparency hi19 I-we appreciate it.

[Reincarnate]

Re: What's happening in here?

My questions:

1. Who is in charge of what on this site, at present time? Who is helping where? The more thorough the answer to this, the better.

2. What does Synth have control over that nobody else does?

[Charu]

Re: What's happening in here?

lol

But for real though, FFR's been "dead" ever since I got back on this site in 2012. Sure, more active, but it was clearly a ghost of what it once was, so to speak. Not that it's a bad thing. A number of new things have been implemented since I came back to now that made FFR feel a little newer than it was when I was in 10th grade screwing around in the computer lab.

Remember when talk of making this shit open source was around? Yeah, I 100% encourage this to be a thing.

I know Velocity kind of threw out the source code for R^3 for everyone. It be pretty cool though if whatever change one person did to the engine they could upload the recompiled shit for everyone to use.

[Charu]

Re: What's happening in here?

But as of now, I mainly use this site, albeit much less often than I used to, to just post random shenanigans to the peeps here.