RomU and NDS and time

Wow, this stupid thread is still here, shows what RomU thinks of what's his face!

 

Isn't hosting roms such as ds,ps, psp whatever "illegal?"

 

No man, its legal as fuck

 

Don't listen zerobahamut! This man is a degenerate criminal like the rest of us!
Run!, run!; to play.com!

 

Yes I do care, I care enough to stick my neck out and complain. A better question is why do I care. I do not care for myself, there is no possibility that RomU could post a dump faster than I can get it, the WWW being a slow current. My sources are not hidden or difficult to get but I have been quite careful in my previous posts not to reveal them.
I could have and I would have expected such posts to be at least censored and perhaps to have been banned. I did not reveal my sources for fear of any ban, no, I did not reveal my sources because it will harm RomU. My critique of RomU was hardly brutal, but I hope strong enough to ruffle a few feathers and get a few people thinking about service, delay and the ramifications of one mans call on hosted content.

There was never an intention for me to advertise an alternative service to RomU, however it is important for all RomU members to consider that alternatives exist. Again I never have made any attempt to highlight any such alternatives by explicitly naming them, I did (I think correctly) state that such alternative services exist and host(or link to) DS enhanced roms as standard.

Although my arguments have been obviously caustic to RomU management, at no point did I think that such words where so damaging to RomU as an entity that they could not be published. I may yet be banned for my thoughts and criticism of the management of RomU but I do have both respect and faith in RomU's management team to both argue, decry and dam my arguments. This is a tradition of RomU to shoot down the clowns rather than shut them up.

Do I wish to undermine RomU? For sure, why not ask and shake the system, my rant is not likely or intended to break RomU, my intention was always to open questions that have not been asked, the power of RomU is not that these questions will be answered or action will be taken, but that such questions can be made public. My rant may be unimportant to RomU as an entity but perhaps important to the community at the very least as a proof that RomU will not censor critique of service.

Romu is not the best site to get new roms, however it is more open and inclusive of many such services available. For me RomU would better serve the community by hosting DSi game dumps, I have yet to hear a valid argument against this. While RomU say no and everyone else, and I do mean every other WWW based service and non WWW service, say yes. RomU will, as time goes on, become a place where people chat about life, games and other but not a first stop place for new games. That would be sad and it is sad because it is happening now.

 

Just so's you know, me, ricky, and probably a few other people have talked about this to Seph (lolunderstatement) before. He does things his way and gets seriously pissy if people question him - possibly because he's used to people kissing his ass all the time, but that's just my thoughts on it.

Good for them.

I was just talking from personal experience - which probably isn't fair on people who show their opinions and aren't unpredictable, abusive assholes such as myself.

Oh, critique of service is fine, it's just when you start insulting people that shit gets real.

I'll paraphrase from when Seph blew a gasket at me for asking about the addition of a Flame Board. He said something along the lines of "I don't have to explain myself to you, I'm the owner of this site and I say no." Which is essentially what he or loony are going to end up saying. Further to this, hosting DSi enhanced dumps is something of a waste at this point in time considering that, if I recall correctly, there are only a very few games that are like this. Loony said the idea has not been rejected. I'd hazard a guess that RomU will wait until it's financially viable to host these games (and when there are a decent number available) before they decide to host them.

>implying that the majority of new games are DSi enhanced and that RomU is losing audience because of that.

 

I HAD a long block of text I had typed out, but then this Gaytway laptop decided to lock up and cut it's power, so condensed version you get.

1st off; NO reason to host unusable roms until dsi flash carts that can handle them become mainstream. That, and once people actually HAVE a dsi

2nd; Stop saying that they won't ever have them, because once THAT-^ happens, it will.

3rd; What, is Seph your personal servant? Does he have to jump through hoops, do barrel rolls and upload roms when you tell him he can? People need time off from working, some like to call it vacation. He and the staff are not bound to you like some dog on a chain. Would you rather him be a cold hearted mindless machine that never needs to eat, breathe, or live freely? He'd kill everyone who pose a threat to the natural processes if he was; meaning goodbye, community, hello faceless website.

4th; Having servers in 2 continents is expensive, especially when they get raped on days such as March 13-15, 2010(server overload, anyone?) Even with this upgrade, it can still fall victim to this, meaning they will have to initialize a ticket system to make sure the servers don't become strained.

5th; Would you rather have an untested, unverified rom? Some sites don't even CHECK their roms, or where they get them from, even if they say they do. You might just end up downloading something bad and end up rickrolled, or bricking your ds/dsi, as there are apps out there just for that purpose.

6th; might edit this later, I'm bored now.

 

I have to throw this out there, I've read a lot here that 1prinnydood isn't happy with his "deserved" customer service. If I'm wrong let me know, but after reading post after post of his that go on forever, you can't blame me for losing track.

But how can RomUlation be said to have bad service when it forks out 4k (I'm just assuming Loonylion's figure was correct) on servers just to continue making sure members (96% which don't pay a cent for downloads) here don't have a little cry over a game's link that isn't working etc.?

Personally if RomUlation is able to spend 4k monthly on a site for unappreciative people, they're more nicer then I even thought. If I had to deal with complainers like 1prinnydood daily here in the forums, I'd be making sure that 4k is going in my pocket rather then the servers.

 

Thank you for your words Suiseiseki(Ricky), my posts on this topic are not about blowing anyone's gaskets, I really do not wish to harm RomU. I have no hidden agenda and I do respect how RomU has managed to build into a world class site which under the leadership of Seph has gone from strength to strength. These are not the words of some hater who worries about account deactivation, I really do respect the guy and respect the service of RomU

This site is called RomUlation, the two main DS emulators have no difficulty in emulating the extracted DS content from DS enhanced games, further to that all DS flash cards released in the past 2 years can also manage the DS package within enhanced roms. I have not argued for pure DSi only games to be hosted. A DS enhanced game is a DS game with some bells and whistles and not DSi exclusive. You may purchase a DSi enhanced game and run it on a standard DS this is different from DSi exclusive games. I have not at any point argued that RomU should host such DSi only games.

No Seph is not my slave and as I say in my previous post I do not expect any change to happen with regard hosting due to my rant, what I always hoped for is people talking about the idea that DSi enchanced games being hosted by RomU may be a great idea. As an afterthought I would love to see Seph do a barrel roll, that would be awesome, don't you think?

Does not exist, the rom you get from Romu gets the same verification process that every other site in WWW gets. Some sites repack or unpack roms and mess them up, this is rare but most bad roms are due to bad dumps and poor release groups not doing their own proper checks(even the best groups sometimes mess up), this process of bad dumping and reporting of bad dumps usually happens well before dumps are made public, and if there is a screw up RomU is not able to fix that. RomU does not, and cannot, flag bad dumps, but is often quick to respond to bad dump info.

I am not the enemy at the gates of RomU, my rant is not a strong arm attempt at change but an argument against a policy that denies access to usable media within the concept of RomU itself, "to try before you buy". Who do I hurt by pointing out RomU is the only site where DS roms are available but refuse to host DS enhanced games?

I am not sorry if the concept of doing better offends a few of you. Sometimes asses need kicked, mine included.

Raysie I do not "deserve" any service from RomU, I post the odd screenshot and occasionally help people with difficult roms, hardly payment for a fantastic service. I have no right to ask questions or to try and answer them, do you?

 

I was actually referencing like the one time I've actually engaged in a serious discussion with you on IRC, which - although somewhat frustrating - was enlightening. Maybe my recollection of talking with you has just blurred into one nice big unpleasant debacle (and yeah, a lot of that is my fault) but it's always been my impression that you're quite happy to use your own methods. Which really doesn't bother me any at this point, though it has done previously.

I'm not making any excuses for any shit I've given you or anyone here though. I mostly did it out of boredom and a general frustration with the community at large.

 

Suis and ricky are different people, just so y'know.

 

the only thing stopping most people is their computers, the one I had over a year ago, was horrible with it's pentium4 and 256mb of ram with nvidia riva tnt2 'gfx' card

And yes, still waiting for him to press Z or R twice.

 

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and wish I was as awesome as ricky, though.

 

hax

 

Sorry for the confusion. My bad.

OK, If I may cut to the chase, a DSI enhanced game is a DS game with some features for DSi users, when Roms are dumped the extra features, mostly the use of one or both of the DSi's cameras, are not included, this added content is not part of the core game but it is still a DS game. The release groups have focused on delivering the DS game and not the added content.

Two high profile games have led me to my current thoughts on hosting usable content and DSi enhancement. Assassin's Creed 2 and Might & Magic Clash of Heroes.

Assassin's Creed 2 DS was hosted on RomU before it was noticed that it had DSi added content, then it was pulled from the site; the available dumps of the game are usable by most flash cards and emulators without too much effort on the users side. The dumps did not include the ability to add user generated content via the Dsi's cameras regardless of weather or not you owned a DS or DSi. The game was the thing being dumped and the dump worked OK for most people. To include the DSi enhanced content in the dump may well have caused problems for DS(and DSi) users who wanted to try the product before they parted with their cash. Considering emulation, I guess it is possible to emulate single or dual camera content using either web cams or forced input, perhaps if DSi exclusive games ever become the norm then those who work on emulation will want to look at this, but as it stands there is no industry incentive to produce DSi exclusives and therefore little will from emulative software spivs to produce bypass systems.

Might & Magic Clash of Heroes does not have DSi enhancements and is hosted on RomU but the original clean dump was unusable by any emulator or flash card due to anti-piracy measures(same as Zelda spirit...etc.). even though the original dump was fair and good. The original group who dumped the ROM worked night and day to re-dump the ROM in a usable state, and a usable ROM is now available on RomU(not sure if this version is on the download list, check the forums). If it where not for the input of forum postings this game would still be unusable via. RomU's clean dump. This is not a precedent but an example.

Good clean DS game dumps(due to DSi enhancement) are not being hosted on RomU while at the same time unplayable dumps are hosted. I do not argue for unusable dumps to be removed. I would argue that given the tight competition within the various release groups there is a given consideration that provided content should be usable, when that is not possible work can be done and fixes made. Those usable Roms tend to end up as posted links. In other words playable Roms should be hosted before pure Roms with preference for both(have a look at how RomU hosts Roms for older systems and you will see that many variations for a particular ROM are hosted, many are broken or user influenced).


On a more general note.

Having read through Seph's post, I do think he has been very accommodating regarding my thoughts, this is in the rant section for a reason.
For sure I have toned down my words since my original post on this thread and have considered many of your thoughts, and am happy to contradict myself given your input. My focus has shifted more from the original service rant to (DS) hosted content. It is always a little difficult to argue against the conditions of a free service, as I have no basis of investment beyond my limited time and input to these forums(for what that is worth).

I do still have to go to other places to test DSi enhanced games most of which are very poor, I would have liked to learn that via RomU.

 

Wow, is the servers rented, leased or bought? And what pays for all of this RomU pwnage?
I go to RomU forums (like many of us) to chat and stuff. This is a damn good site. Need help with making Ad money?

 

[Loonylion beat me to it].
Disable AdBlock; he was saying last night that he wants to ban everyone who uses it(he knows who has it XD) since the site's not making as much off ads. That, or he's going to implement something that removes download links as long as you have adblock.
Besides, the only thing you should be blocking are the rarely dangerous signature images(sometimes, on Chrome, you will run into pages that have a signature that is hosted on a known site that is recognized as malware hosting, which google will try to save you from)