I really should be in bed by now, but this is just too frustrating to ignore. People ask me all the time when I’m going to release software — a beta version of the Homebrew Channel, source code for the Twilight Hack, IOS37 patches, whatever — and I hate it. Why?
This thread is embarrassing: http://www.console-scene.info/forums/wii-homebrew-discussion/1244-wii-miidia-v0-1-alpha.html
The only thing that dCiSo has done wrong is letting himself get badgered into naming a specific date. Doing so always ends up in tears. People, nobody here is getting paid to do this. Some of us have paying jobs, or difficult classes, or other demands on our time. If somebody is being generous enough to write software and give it to you for free, you have no right whatsoever to demand *anything*. Not even if you were “promised” a release on a certain date.
People have been coming on IRC all day and asking about this. No, I haven’t actually seen this program. Yes, I think it’s real, even not having seen it, because dCiSo has been talking with me about some of the networking issues he’s run into over the past month or so. That, and I think he has better things to do than make up bullshit and post it. No, you are not owed a video or more screenshots — these things take a lot of time and effort. (All of the videos I’ve made have taken a couple of hours to prepare — and I only made them because I already had the right hardware, which is not something you should assume.)
How much of this doubt and cries of “hoax!” are people who genuinely doubt the existence of WiiMiidia, and how many are just people trying to manipulate dCiSo into a release to “prove” something?
24 responses so far ↓
1 Minishlink // May 17, 2008 at 7:11 am
I have the same opinion. 🙂
(and I can’t develop my sentence because I don’t know how to say what I want to say in English :s )
2 AcADIeN // May 17, 2008 at 7:18 am
Yeah, as a programmer, I learn that if it’s free, deadline mean nothing, so it’s better to just don’t tell when you will release your stuff. dCiSo doesnt owed anything to anyone (well except maybe bushing and the gang that helped him out) but for us, usual internet user, we did nothing for him, except complaining about the deadline. Why? I don’t know, maybe cause there was a lot of fake stuff (and still are) released on the internet. Be patient and stop blaming him about the deadline (unless you paid him big $ for it)
3 Frozen // May 17, 2008 at 7:21 am
If a bunch of whining douchebags make this project never get released I’m going to be pissed. It infuriates me that people can be this impatient so much that it drives dCiSo to want to drop the project.
Releasing software before it’s ready, even if you said “oh it’ll be out friday!!!” is only asking for problems, especially when it’s something like Homebrew that can easily brick a system if done wrong.
Keep doing what you’re doing, release things when you’re ready, and if anyone tries to push you around don’t give in. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you guys with major projects and how much shit you have to put up with.
I have a ton of respect for you guys, (bushing, marcan, dCiSo, etc) for all your hard work, and I’ll be over here waiting patiently for the next “big thing” from the homebrew community, no matter how long it takes.
4 tapper // May 17, 2008 at 7:36 am
There are probably a lot of lurkers that silently (and patiently) follow the homebrew community with great interest and are grateful for all the hard work.
Unfortunately it’s often the assholes that are the loudest. Stuff like this has also killed the motivation of other projects (emulators, games etc.) over the years and it sucks.
I hope you (and all other coders out there) will be able to ignore these people.
5 Ninth Sage // May 17, 2008 at 9:26 am
I am one of those people. Well, I lurk less than most, but anyway…I recently registered at a site or two because the lame ‘we’re entitled to this homebrew so release it NOW (whine whine)’ people who were on there made me really angry. It isn’t like the whole community was made up of those people, but those people are just ignorant. I believe that they are the reason that some projects start and never finish (because the dev gets tired of listening to them).
6 wowfunhappy // May 17, 2008 at 10:06 am
I completely agree with EVERYTHING bushing has said in the above blog post. The problem doesn’t just exist with homebrew- for example, I’ve seen it happen in Super Mario 64 hacking, where VL-tone, who was currently in the process of creating the first-ever SM64 level editor, was being badgered by people asking for a release date- and yelling when the date wasn’t met.
I don’t even have to point out that even in the world commercial software, release dates are often not met. The best example of this is Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
True, release dates are met MORE often in the world of commercial products than in the world of free software, but then, that makes sense, since with commercial software, the creator is making money, and plus, he must convince his customers to spend their money on what he makes.
But the fact is, what can you do? People will be people, not everyone is going to understand the problem. Even if the creator doesn’t specify a release date, no doubt he’ll be bugged to specify one.
If possible, it’s often best to keep the project secrete until a release is ready. Often this is not possible- the homebrew channel, for example, requires the input of the community, and thus, must be publicly known. If a project can’t be kept secrete, than the creator should try to keep the number of screenshots, videos, and other “teasers” to a low. Of course, the creator will no doubt be bugged by others to release more screenshots…
…the only real solution is for the developer to not let himself/herself get bothered by people requesting things. Not everyone can do this, but unfortunately, sometimes, that’s the only option.
7 Ezop // May 17, 2008 at 11:28 am
I feel for dCiSo he and a lot of other people have and are making a massive contrubution to the homebrew scene.
I hope he does’nt just shelf WiiMiidia, you know because it will be, for most of us (if not all) the app that nintendo should have released in the 1st place (I would’nt mine if nintendo actualy sold DVD/Music players but they dont).
Cheers dCiSo please keep it up, then maybe you can see about a Mii Messenger 🙂 😛 (yet another app nintendo should release).
8 Newbie // May 17, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I’m sure understanding that… Everybody has a job, school, family, etc. And I do know some people tried to turn their hobby into primary income source… didn’t remember anybody who really succeed. It rather turns out they abandon the hobby completely…
Since Roman Empire we know – the crowd always wants free bread and free entertainment and it don’t care who really pays for that.
Just rephrasing what bushing already said: Be wise – don’t make any promises to a crowd. Otherwise it will tear your apart. 🙁
9 Hounsfield // May 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I agree with the statements above. People should not feel entitled to have a release of any free software on a particular day. If this is all real, this guy is doing all of us a huge favor. Nintendo could probably get most people to pay for this sort of thing.
With that said, I can see why people are so suspicious. A functional copy of the program supposedly released to 37 beta testers and not one of them posts it anywhere despite a request by dCiSo to do so…
This situation does seem odd but we should all give the guy a break. We are less than 24 hours past when he said he would release the program, it’s way to early to be calling this vapourware. We’ll see what happens over the next day or two.
10 The Fly // May 17, 2008 at 1:36 pm
dCiSo is destroying the scene! You all take it up for him but did not see even a beta of it!
If he even gave a small sign of live people would not react like this! But its a hoax and maybe in a couple of months something is released!
11 Fox // May 17, 2008 at 1:46 pm
A programmer should never announce a date of release. Finishing a program without bugs is already difficult, adding ourselves the stress of a deadline, it’s a suicide. 🙂
A rule that a programmer shouldn’t forget: “When something could going wrong, this will go wrong.”
12 Stalkid64 // May 17, 2008 at 2:27 pm
The Fly: You are what is wrong with this scene. Did you even read that post before spewing more unfounded garbage?
13 Cubear // May 17, 2008 at 4:08 pm
hey i ttotly agree wtih what u said heer but i was wonderin if u could tell me when the official hoembrew cahnnel will be out??? ?
14 I_R_on // May 17, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I was that asshole in the console info forum who cried out loud about the thing being a hoax. I do not know anything about dciso. If I knew
him probably I wouldn’t have done that. My mistake writing all those things not being 100% sure. Yet, when writing those things no
intention I had of causing debate in the forum or urging dciso to a release. Like you, I hate those guys that demands bells and whistles,
those demand big supplement to the existing piece knowing nothing what it takes and the most: the ones that try to bribe the poor man with
his 3-5 dollar and feel himself as the long time friend of the guy.
And I was one of those who asked about the thing in the irc channel. Asked to bushing, being a hoax or not. And when he said he did know
the guy and thought it was not a hoax then I posted an apoligy in the forum.
And for the topic, let alone a release date any declaration of commitment about a thing you will be doing will be a suicide for a self
motivated coder. Now I think dciso made this mistake or let’s say choice to make his users happy. Let alone this choice, he did a possibly
deliberate (now I made a mistake yelling out loud hoax, I don’t say it certain) broken release, told about 37 beta testers that suddenly
dissapeared, mentioned even with a full filename about a beta test version that no one knows where is. If you don’t catch up to something
and still not frustrated your peer then tell him/her lies to make it up. There our unconsideration goes, that man hasn’t got much time in
his hands when he did this. So we overlooked this fact…
15 TioSolid // May 17, 2008 at 6:16 pm
The unique thing that botters me so much about the homebrew scene is how people release things and let them die after that. Many homebrew applications do wonderful things, but got discontinued after the second of third versions ;/
16 chelz // May 18, 2008 at 2:21 am
I take it the main complaint of ‘the crowd’ is that things are too private and secretive.
If dCiSo really wants to reduce the pestering to a minimum, he could adopt a much more open method of development.
-Post the latest code to a public repo
-Comment the code really well and/or keep a blog talking about the latest significant changes in the code
-Always have public betas (with explicit warnings that it might not work fully or at all)
-Encourage people to make their own videos (devs don’t have to waste time making them and it spreads the word about the project)
The person I see that does this best has been segher. He puts his code and work out and let’s people do whatever with it. The only barrier to using segher’s stuff is whether you want to take the time to figure it out or not.
Marcan was similar for a while but his svn was taken down after the VC explosion and afaik hasn’t been put up again.
Being pestered is a result of releasing anything at all, but segher holds his own and probably has quite a large ignore list. Seems to work fine.
The core mistake here seems to be that there is this half-truth half-rumor of a private beta, so people think they’re on the outside and not getting to play with the latest release, while from what I understand it’s only not being released because it crashes. The pestering isn’t going to go away until *some* release is made, regardless of whether it crashes or not. I say he should release what he has with a huge warning and something like “v0.01”.
17 Anonymous Coward // May 18, 2008 at 5:30 am
“V0.0001 alpha” isn’t enough of a warning for people who want their media centre now damn it!
Then when it bricks a few hundred Wiis because it turns out there’s an obscure bug that appears every time you do something you do didn’t test for (click three times in a blank space or something equally silly), guess who they’ll blame and who’ll be on the receiving end of a couple hundred posts complaining it wasn’t ready for release? And a couple of thousand more complaining that it’s crap because it doesn’t have a built-in skin editor.
So, no fixed release dates.
– He’s not getting paid for it.
– It’s in his spare time (which may suddenly disappear).
– It’s difficult enough to get something off the ground in the beginning without having to also do constant videos, put posts on blogs, check in code to CVS, and then having to field thousands of suggestions and patches which probably conflict with one another when the structure of the program is barely worked out in your head yet.
– There’s still the danger of putting unfinished code on-line and having someone brick their Wii, probably because they can’t even get the compiler settings right.
Later on when things are more or less worked out you can have all the open source and blogs you want, but until then things are private and secretive because that is the only way which reduces pestering to a minimum. Otherwise it’s like feeding a monster.
18 T34P075 // May 18, 2008 at 7:36 am
I agree…ya’ll just keep up the good work, it’ll get done when it gets done, and badgering for a release only aggravates the developer and makes it LESS likely to get a release!
19 chelz // May 20, 2008 at 12:17 am
>”“V0.0001 alpha” isn’t enough of a warning for people who want their media centre now damn it!”
If that plus a stern warning before the download link and possible a warning when running the program itself, nothing is.
>”Then when it bricks a few hundred Wiis because it turns out there’s an obscure bug that appears every time you do something you do didn’t test for (click three times in a blank space or something equally silly), guess who they’ll blame and who’ll be on the receiving end of a couple hundred posts complaining it wasn’t ready for release? And a couple of thousand more complaining that it’s crap because it doesn’t have a built-in skin editor.”
Something bad happening after they were warned something like that might happen?! NO WAY! How about installing any kind of homebrew is “dangerous” and ninty takes out full paragraphs in EVERY ONE of their EULAs to tell us.
>”So, no fixed release dates.”
Agreed, but not because of your reasoning. Simply being more open will negate the need for “release dates”. In community projects where new things are evolving daily, it makes no sense to have set points. People will grab the latest releases, make videos, and be happy. Those crazy enough to *still* bitch, will rightfully be ignored and hopefully banned.
Of course idiots will *always* find something to complain about, what I’m arguing is that people who are complaining now aren’t idiots because there actually is grounds for complaint, *things are too closed*. Once you eliminate all the valid reasons for complaining, then the few remaining complainers can be guiltlessly banned.
20 bushing // May 20, 2008 at 4:49 am
chelz: how are your projects coming along, these days?
21 gametaku // May 22, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Well people abandon their projects because making homebrew is such a thankless job on the Wii. so many people trying to get into it are new to homebrew in general and demand too much have no decency in dealing with each other or the developers. They make demands that are larger than any dream they could have, and have patience shorter than Gary Coleman.
I want to get into the development side, but everything looks too difficult for me to even attempt anything. I’m still learning C, I have no idea how to even get code up and running on the Wii. If anything, I think I’ll be messing around with the DS,a dn that’s not even an easy way to get into the scene.
22 gametaku // May 22, 2008 at 12:46 pm
And i forgot to thank you bushing and everyone else developing for the homebrew scene. I havn’t been able to get stuff to run correctly on my Wii yet, but I think that’s because I had a bad boot.elf in my root and havn’t been able to refoormat my card nor write to it in a while.
23 Emme // Jun 3, 2008 at 7:54 am
The only reason I never doubted MiidiaCenter was real is that it was visible in the HomebrewChannel video that you released a while ago, and I trust _you_.
In the beginning I was with dCiSo just like most of you, people can be extremely stupid. But I think he made some bad communication mistakes and a small part of what happened was his fault too. I’m not just thinking of naming release dates, but also all the beta-testers and beta-release-on-rapidshare thing.
Now everything is quiet on the MiidiaCenter front, I wonder where did he go, and if there will ever be a release.
24 Emme // Jun 3, 2008 at 7:55 am
The only reason I never doubted WiiMiidia was real is that it was visible in the HomebrewChannel video that you released a while ago, and I trust _you_.
In the beginning I was with dCiSo just like most of you, people can be extremely stupid. But I think he made some bad communication mistakes and a small part of what happened was his fault too. I’m not just thinking of naming release dates, but also all the beta-testers and beta-release-on-rapidshare thing.
Now everything is quiet on the WiiMiidia, I wonder where did he go, and if there will ever be a release.
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