[VT-Vincent]

Hello Everyone,

Now that we have the forums and the prelaunch site completed, it's now time to work on the main VT Emulation website. I beleive the prelaunch site summarizes all we plan to be to this point, but one thing I would like to do is have the community provide strong input on the future of VTE so I've made this thread. Please feel free to use this thread to make all of your suggestions for the upcomming VT Emulation 3.0 website!

[Lucas]

Everything looks really nice and good. Congrats! Also I wanted to ask, you're going to have emulators like for GameCube, PS2, GBA SP, Games for them and that?

Regards.

[VT-Vincent]

We'll be hosting a wide variety of emulators for just about all of the commercial and some obscure consoles between the time of the NES and the Playstaiton 2 (we might include a few pre-NES consoles, but that’s still up in the air). Gameboy Advance will be included in the list, but games will not be hosted here, it would clearly be considered piracy. Some time in the future we may consider hosting a few well-made public domain games made by fans of emulation for the purposes of testing emulators, but that will be the extent of the game selection.

[Lucas]

Ok, thanks. That's good to know. I still didn't know if ROMs where conidered piracy. Also, one question. Why not upgrade to v1.1.2 the forum? It's just security update.

Regards.

[VT-Vincent]

Ah, thanks for informing me of that update. I'll probably take care of it sometime tonight when I can shut the forums down without any inconvenience to anyone. But I don't think I'll move to 1.2.0 when it's released, this skin was a nightmare to make and I'm not exactly excited over the idea of doing it again.

ROMs are considered piracy if you don't own the original game. In the past, if you owned the original game you were free to back it up in any medium of your choosing as long as you were the only user, but I believe the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) may have overthrown that. I believe the DMCA is very unethical though, who are they to say that users have absolutely no right to backup their legitimately purchased software for their own uses, even if it's on a dieing (or in many cases, dead) medium?

[VT-Vincent]

I use emulation to preserve a lot of my older games such as my SNES and Genesis games. One thing I'm sure everyone here is farmilar with is the fact that cartridges don't live forever, both my SNES and Genesis collections are in the attic, and both have at least a 80% failure rate. I also posess software based coppies of my GameBoy Advance collection, I like using the GBA on the go, but in my home I'd much rather use my 18" LCD than a 2" non-backlit screen.

[Lucas]

VT-Vincent, on Apr 17 2003, 11:19 AM, said:

Ah, thanks for informing me of that update. I'll probably take care of it sometime tonight when I can shut the forums down without any inconvenience to anyone.  But I don't think I'll move to 1.2.0 when it's released, this skin was a nightmare to make and I'm not exactly excited over the idea of doing it again. 

ROMs are considered piracy if you don't own the original game. In the past, if you owned the original game you were free to back it up in any medium of your choosing as long as you were the only user, but I believe the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) may have overthrown that. I believe the DMCA is very unethical though, who are they to say that users have absolutely no right to backup their legitimately purchased software for their own uses, even if it's on a dieing (or in many cases, dead) medium?

If you upgrade to v1.1.2 it won't damage your skin neither you will have to remake it it's just securities updates check the announcement. It's just source directory updates, security.

About the piracy well, it's true if you own it it would be good if you can use it on other systems. But well things change.

Regards.

[VT-Vincent]

Yep, the 1.1.2 update is pretty small, but it's the 1.2.0 milestone release that worries me, I think skin modifications will be needed to make that version work when it's released.

[Lucas]

VT-Vincent, on Apr 17 2003, 11:40 AM, said:

Yep, the 1.1.2 update is pretty small, but it's the 1.2.0 milestone release that worries me, I think skin modifications will be needed to make that version work when it's released.

Me too... And that will have to be a complete remake of skin because many added things will be missing in the new skin if you just use the same.

Regards.

[Kid Einstein]

Hmmm... I have suggestions, but I'm not sure whether if they belong to the site...

[VT-Vincent]

Any suggestions are welcome here, just as long as they don't cross any legal lines or violate the forum rules.

[Kid Einstein]

Hmmm... Well, if those are the only limitations...

Maybe you should add some sort of "Contributions" page... For emulator's FAQ's, reviews (From users) on emulators and a user based "rating" system for emulators. That would totally rock...

But then again, we have a little short on users around here

[VT-Vincent]

Hmm... would the proposed contributions page be for giving credit to those who's works appear on VTE, or would it be used for users to submit their contributions to the site?

A user-based rating system would be an excellent idea. Such a system would probably be implemented in VTE 4.0, so that it could be easily integrated into the planned database-driven site and also to allow for a larger audience. Such a move would probably happen about 1 to 2 years after the completion of VTE 3.0 and/or at a time when VT Emulation has a steady and healthy user base.

I should also note that on the topic of emulator ratings, the editor-given ratings are still in place, except with one exception. Any sub-7.0 or WIP emulators are no longer rated, they are placed in an "Other Emulators" category with a description of the nature of the category. For authors who have contributed their time, effort, and energy to projects they freely distribute, it doesn't seem fair to be handing out "1.0 out of 10" and "2.0 out of 10" ratings.

At this point, our user base is quite small, but it should be noted that the site technically hasn't launched. VTE is still in pre-launch stages; I simply opened the pre-launch site to give information about VTE and the forums to encourage discussion. Our promotion plan is to get the word out through the roots of the scene, the authors as well as some of the more prominent emulation sites. In addition to that, we're currently promoting VTE through the InviNex network as well as encouraging our readers to spread the word to other people who are interested in emulation.

[Kid Einstein]

VT-Vincent, on Jul 30 2003, 04:43 PM, said:

Hmm... would the proposed contributions page be for giving credit to those who's works appear on VTE, or would it be used for users to submit their contributions to the site?

Why not blend in both? Credits are bound to be along with contributions given to the site

[Iron Maiden]

I am sure this site was made for geniuses Why am I here?