Anatoly wrote:

I'm always impressed with people being able to make a commitment & provide content on a regular basis.

I just need to be able to achieve that kind of regularity with my non-primary projects. ^_^;

I've been way behind with Vectorzone stuff, mostly because of being stuck in "Design Hell" as it were, I haven't even had a chance to work on the music update this week like I had planned, and even right now I've made no progress towards the next ADG which is due out this Saturday, so I'm basically gonna be doing nothing but work on that for the next couple days...

...and then I'll probably be distracted by Cube World all weekend, since the public alpha of it debuted yesterday... and killed the storefront rather quickly from the flock of people getting it before I even realized it was available, so that's gotta be fixed before it can be purchased again. ^_^;

Ancient DOS Games Episode 116 - Rogue / Dungeons of Doom is online!

Some people actually guessed Grand Theft Auto for this weekend's game... which wasn't actually a bad guess, considering the vast number of games out there called "GTA Clones", except for one problem. The original GTA (and GTA2) were NOTHING like GTA3 or GTA4, which is when the term "GTA Clone" actually caught on. :P

Ah well. I suspect a lot of people will get next week's game right. ;)

Also, I've decided to stick with text-mode games for this month, but I'm unsure which game to cover for Episode 118, so if you guys have any suggestions, feel free to make 'em here or send me an eMail! (Though if you want the game added to my requests list for a future ADG episode, it's better to eMail me so that I don't lose track of the request or forget to add it.)

Whatever you decide to review, if it uses 40 columns, please run it in CGA mode... the EGA/VGA character set looks horribly squashed and difficult to read in 40 columns - hated it since I first saw it. ;)
(Okay, there are exceptions - I can think of at least one 40-column game that requires VGA since it modifies the font.)

Gemini000 wrote:

Also, I've decided to stick with text-mode games for this month, but I'm unsure which game to cover for Episode 118, so if you guys have any suggestions, feel free to make 'em here or send me an eMail!

Zork and ZZT always spring to mind when someone says text-mode games.

So someone tell me something: How the Hell is "Pachelbel’s Canon" a song that's over 300 years old, in the Content-ID database on YouTube? >_>;

It's in the background at the end of Episode 11 in the adlib rendtion from Dark Ages, so now I've got a dispute going against that. Worse still, Episode 12, which is the next one on the list to upload, is Thexder, which uses Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"... >_>;;;

Basically, until this dispute is resolved I'm not risking starting another one.

Anyone have any idea how long it takes to hear back on the results of disputing a content-ID claim on YouTube?

Gemini000 wrote:

How the Hell is "Pachelbel’s Canon" a song that's over 300 years old, in the Content-ID database on YouTube?

Can't answer your question, but Pachelbel's Canon always reminds me of this. 😉

Gemini000 wrote:

So someone tell me something: How the Hell is "Pachelbel’s Canon" a song that's over 300 years old, in the Content-ID database on YouTube? >_>;

It wouldn't be the original composition, but the particular arrangement and recording that are licensed, and therefore detected by Youtube's scraper.

SquallStrife wrote:

It wouldn't be the original composition, but the particular arrangement and recording that are licensed, and therefore detected by Youtube's scraper.

I know but it's still stupid that the system somehow linked together an ACTUAL composition with an Adlib rendition. :P

Gemini000 wrote:

I know but it's still stupid that the system somehow linked together an ACTUAL composition with an Adlib rendition. 😜

That is insanely correct.

Youtube is a bit crap in that way.

...also, would you believe information about Content-ID is split across no less than SEVEN different help pages, some of which don't actually link to each other so you have to hunt them down in different help sections or from different pages? >_>;;;

So far from what I've learned, Content-ID isn't quite the same thing as a Copyright Strike, though it can have the same detrimental effect on an account if a dispute is unsuccessful or the content owner elects to block content through it as opposed to monetizing or tracking content instead. Nor was I able to find an answer in regards to this specific situation, considering it was the same song but not the same performance and it's the song, not the performance, that's in the public domain, nor was I able to find information regarding how long the dispute process usually lasts or who actually determines the outcome, nor do you actually have anything in your dashboard telling you how a dispute is going. Once you dispute a Content-ID match, the system effectively removes the match from your dashboard and video as if it never happened.

So right now I'm just sitting under a massive question mark about what's going to happen in the next few days and since I have an even more massive number of things to do I'm not going to keep uploading things to YouTube (especially when the very next episode has classical music too) when I could be putting that time towards working on things that aren't going to run the risk of getting blocked, taken down etc.

I'm gonna wait two weeks to see if anything stupid happens. ("10 business days" is thrown around in a few places in the YouTube help pages but not specifically in regards to how long to expect a response regarding Content-ID disputes.) If I get an all-clear sooner, or nothing stupid happens by then, I'll continue with my ADG uploads to YouTube.

Gemini000 wrote:

...also, would you believe information about Content-ID is split across no less than SEVEN different help pages, some of which don't actually link to each other so you have to hunt them down in different help sections or from different pages? >_>;;;

I would believe that.

I've thought about putting my crappy little show on blip or Vimeo or somewhere a bit more stacked towards content creators.

But Youtube is where the viewers are, and since I use FCPX, I have a one-click finalize-render-upload process which is quite nice.

I was hit with the ContentID crap too when I had a SNES SPC RENDITION of Ride of the Valkyries for a Terraria video. Probably the same "collecting rights society" too.

More recently, contentID identified that MDK Aug 1996 video I recorded to be content from the menandmotors youtube channel. WTF?!

SquallStrife wrote:

But Youtube is where the viewers are, and since I use FCPX, I have a one-click finalize-render-upload process which is quite nice.

I'm gonna let all of you in on a little secret:

It was never my intention to get rich or make a livable income off of Ancient DOS Games itself at any step of the way. My plan, right from the reset of the series in 2010, was to build up an audience and then flick the game-dev switch. Get back into making games and have an audience to help with suggestions for those games, to sell those games too when finished, and to help spread the word about them considering my terrible marketing skills.

People who produce quality content of any kind, be it videos or games, do eventually get noticed. My getting noticed was when Clint plugged ADG on his blog in early 2011. Mind you, even then, the audience for people interested in DOS games specifically, is small. Even Clint still gets the majority of his views from anything related to The Sims, though he's able to present his retro reviews to anyone who has even a remote interest. It's almost certainly thanks to his videos about The Sims that his retro reviews get as much attention as they do. (Though now that he's a part of Retroware TV, that undoubtedly helps too.)

In that same vein, my hope was to get my viewers interested in the games I make.

...and if everything went according to plan with Vectorzone, it would've been ready and out by now and all of you would be playing it (or at least trying the demo version)... but then, things went very much NOT according to plan, which is part of the reason I ended up moving in with my father. Only just in the past few days have I actually finally started crawling out of the "Design Hell" the game's been in, and if the new design continues to work out, I'll be back into the swing of making the game by the end of the month.

My concern is ultimately to entertain people and to do so in a way that allows me to support my art while intruding on my audience as minimally as possible. My website will ALWAYS be free of generated ads or inline text ads. (The link to gog.com is an affiliate link, as I get a tiny fraction of any sales made after clicking through it.) The ads on Blip amount to very little due me and I'd need to see a 50-fold increase in viewership to actually earn livable money from it. My games will never have ad-ware or such things embedded into them, nor will they ever have copy protection routines. (Short of the license keys that need to be typed in with the full versions of Super Minesweeper and PixelShips Retro, for the moment anyways... I'm thinking of removing them when I update the games to run using hardware acceleration as they do not run well at all on Windows 8. This won't be until after Vectorzone is done though.)

So for the moment, I'm a bit depressed and bummed out. I read more about Content-ID from various third party sites and I seriously doubt my dispute will go in my favour, judging from what I've read. Even if it doesn't I COULD counter the result, but this would be a remarkably stupid thing to do and potetnailly expensive if it ended up going to court, so if the dispute does not go my way I'll probably be removing all ADG content from the channel and using the channel exclusively for non-ADG stuff. If the dispute does not go my way, it will affect my channel standing and I won't be able to apply for partnership status for at least six months... which means for six months, any views of ADG content on YouTube and not on Blip will detract from what little money I'm getting which goes towards keeping my website paid for and occasionally (about once every two months) a DOS game purchase.

*laughs* I wonder how many people remember how Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic fame epically cut off his ties with YouTube early on. XD

In any case, rest assured that Ancient DOS Games will continue to be my primary project for as long as I have games to review and that I will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure you all get new episodes on a regular basis... YouTube or not.

Gemini000 wrote:

Only just in the past few days have I actually finally started crawling out of the "Design Hell" the game's been in, and if the new design continues to work out, I'll be back into the swing of making the game by the end of the month.

Good!

So for the moment, I'm a bit depressed and bummed out. I read more about Content-ID from various third party sites and I seriously doubt my dispute will go in my favour, judging from what I've read. Even if it doesn't I COULD counter the result, but this would be a remarkably stupid thing to do and potetnailly expensive if it ended up going to court

I'm sure everyone should appreciate the ridiculousness of this. We've become so used to machine-like bureaucracies that the transition to actual machine-run bureaucracies is barely noticed, and to our benevolent Content ID overlords, we're all thieves until proven otherwise (at our expense, naturally). In any halfway-sane arrangement, the onus would be on Big Content to detect and prove the existence of an infringement before a claim is filed.

I had a video taken down years ago, but didn't pursue it - I basically did rip a complete copyrighted song, so there wasn't a lot of wiggle room there... plus it was the sort of 2007-era youtube lulz that's probably best kept under wraps, anyway.

Well, I found out from Clint that he's never seen a Content-ID dispute like the one I've run into swing the wrong way and that resolutions to them tend to happen within 48 hours, weekends excluded, so here's hoping this all blows over fast enough.

Also, something I'd really like to stress and a big part of the reason why I was so reluctant to give YouTube a try:

VileRancour wrote:

We've become so used to machine-like bureaucracies that the transition to actual machine-run bureaucracies is barely noticed

I would like to point out that on the Blip dashboard on every page is a tiny little tab on the bottom left that has a lightbulb on it and says "Help". From absolutely any screen when logged into Blip I can send a message directly to the Blip support staff and get an answer within a day or two from a living, breathing, English-speaking person. The answers aren't always good answers, but I much appreciate the fact that someone's actually taking the time to respond. I even joked once about sending in three support requests in less than two days and the person who responded actually made a joke back about it. :D

I know of SMALLER companies than Blip with worse tech support than that and Blip isn't all that big a company in the first place. ;)

But yeah, as anyone would be quick to point out, the YouTube system is more advanced and that's where the majority of people are watching stuff because of how much more easily content links together and the emphasis on being able to upload ANYTHING, not just making web shows. There's just no human aspect left to it really. Even YouTube's HTML error pages seem to confirm the place is run by monkeys. (I got a 500 error just a number of days ago and it said to give a rather lengthy amount of raw data to a monkey if I saw it.)

Gemini000 wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

But Youtube is where the viewers are, and since I use FCPX, I have a one-click finalize-render-upload process which is quite nice.

I'm gonna let all of you in on a little secret:

It was never my intention to get rich or make a livable income off of Ancient DOS Games itself at any step of the way.

Since you quoted me, I assume that's a response to my comment.

I didn't mean "Youtube is where the viewers are" in the sense that it's a better way to generate revenue.

I meant that it's the place where people are searching for stuff, and are more likely to stumble on to one's videos. That's all, nothing else implied.

Gemini000 wrote:

People who produce quality content of any kind, be it videos or games, do eventually get noticed.

True dat.

Thankfully, I have a full time job doing something I don't hate. The video stuff is just a hobby.

I have never, and would never expect to see a cent from what I upload, it's just not of the calibre required to do that.

But as long as people keep watching and saying nice things about my videos, I'll keep making them.

SquallStrife wrote:

Since you quoted me, I assume that's a response to my comment.

It's a response to everyone, inspired by that comment. ;)

BTW: I've been recently running into more problems with YouTube. Specifically, 90% of the time when I try to watch a video, it'll only stream in bursts. Basically, it'll stream a MB or two, stop for a few seconds, stream another MB or two, stop for a few seconds, repeat forever. It's making it impossible to watch anything on YouTube in HD or even 480p. 360p is the only format that's small enough that it can still stream enough in each burst to keep the video going and not pausing like crazy.

Admittedly, this COULD be an ISP or router problem, but speed testing websites are showing my downstream and upstream rates to be normal. (And when they're not, I just click a few buttons to reset the wireless card in the computer and all the speed comes back.) Also, no issues at all streaming from Blip. It can't be a computer problem either because all three computers in the house have this same issue streaming from YouTube, and it also happens regardless of browser selection.

There's also a severe lack of support information about this on YouTube, and all the suggestions that have been made don't really amount to anything. In fact, every topic about this problem tends to degenerate into raging hate towards YouTube. :P

No word on the Content-ID dispute yet either.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 117 - The Kroz Series is online!

...and I'm dead tired from working on this almost all day since 6 AM so I'm going to bed. Good night! ^_^;

Any thoughts on why Kroz is Zork backwards? Some kind of tribute? A good natured ribbing perhaps?