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Help Forum Creatures Agent Archives?    Silverpelt      6/5/2012 I have a huge collection of agent, breeds, metarooms and other random things and I was wondering if I should upload it and share it for posterity? Everything would be hosted on a site like Mediafire, Dropbox, or Google Drive. I'd remove things if asked by the authors with good reason, but otherwise the idea would be to ensure that we don't loose any more agents, breeds, or metarooms then we already have.   Lollipop Lord C-Rex     6/5/2012 I remember another user trying to do a similar thing about a year ago but they got a lot of criticism and it caused quite a few arguments. I recommend attempting to contact the authors first, if they don't respond then put them in the archive anyway, if they ask you to remove them though you should. Also if you have anything that I've made feel free to include them as long as you say that I made them.   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/5/2012 By and large it's frowned upon to host another person's files without permission--I've seen multiple people suggest archiving files wholesale, or actually trying to, and always with a very negative reaction. "They can contact me if they don't want it up there" is what most of them have also suggested, and it really doesn't cut it; few people are aware of what is happening throughout the CC, especially those in the foreign CC's who may not frequent English sites much if at all. Expecting them to contact you if they happen upon your site seems pretty unfair, and they may not be very flattered to see what you've been doing "behind their backs"--because that is how it would look to them, if they were still active but you still didn't try to contact them. If you really must host other peoples' files, try to contact the authors first, for permission. Even if a person's site has been gone a while, I know some people who still kept the same E-mail addresses and could still be reached well afterward. Sometimes even if a person's Creatures site is down, that you can find them still active in a different community, like DeviantArt. BTW, there's really little point in trying to "preserve" something that's already being hosted elsewhere, or when the author's website is still online. Searching for other backups technically should be the first step, as it can narrow down the number of authors you'd need to contact. The file's readme may also contain conditions about rehosting etc. You will want to include the readme if it has the creator's name and info in it, or else it really would be stealing. Not everyone puts their name in the agent description, and for breeds in particular it's really the only place a person can put their name. I'd also be careful about where you host these files--make sure it's a place that will let you delete files later if it becomes necessary, in case someone does ask you to take their files down. Not all sites care about letting you delete things you've uploaded on them, which would put you in a pickle if an author did decide after the fact that they didn't want you hosting something of theirs.   Moe     6/5/2012 I've always been Pro-archive myself. If you think about how many C1 and C2 cobs have been lost, it's a staggering reminder that people and websites don't last forever. Frankly, if I had a massive archive of all the C1, C2 and C3/DS agents and breeds, and the means to do so, I'd host every last one of them without a lick of concern for the original author's wishes. The legalities of freely distributed 3rd party content are fuzzy at best, so best of luck to anyone who would even bother trying to make a case. Unless the author had a darn good reason for needing it taken down, such as the agent being in beta, or needing a critical update, I wouldn't hear their pleas. As far as credit is concerned, I think it should go where it's due. Trying to preserve archive and readme integrity would be nice, but ultimately there are a lot of agents and breeds that nobody knows who made, and others where it's plainly known without a readme. We've always been a relatively small, close-knit community. I don't think plagiarism or stealing has ever been a huge issue, and even in the event of theft, the original author is/was almost always known by the mass majority. If you really think and boil down the issue, it's a pathetic matter of pride, petty selfishness, and a convoluted perspective of the reason they made the content to begin with, and the game at large (it's just a children's game people...let's keep this in mind in everything we do). But then again, I'm the kind of developer who makes content for people to enjoy, and for whom no benefit arises from having people visit my website in particular. The more places it's hosted and the more downloads it gets, the better, because that is what it was made for. And for some perspective on my post...I used to be one of those kinds of authors who didn't want his stuff stolen or posted elsewhere, but then I grew up and realized that it didn't matter, and trying to get credit wasn't why I developed. Everyone knows what I make, nobody has stolen anything thus far, and even if they did, well maybe they'd make the agent better than I did, so more power to them as developers because we need every last one. Edit: For clarity, I'm not directing this at anyone or any developer. I'm just venting, because this issue bothers me. In my search of beloved C2 cobs from my youth, I've found many have vanished.   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/5/2012 I respectfully disagree. Given how much work a person might put into an agent, breed or metaroom, it seems self-centered and lazy to me to upload it without even asking for the author's opinion. As if typing out a basic email takes more effort than making an agent? Legality has nothing to do with it. Courtesy does. I'm not some horrible person who wants to hoard their agents because they can't handle not being in complete control of everything they make. I'm against uploading other peoples' agents against their wishes, or without their permission, because I recognize that some people feel threatened or have their feelings hurt when other people take liberties with their creations. Expecting everyone to ascribe to your own level of maturity is unrealistic. Not everyone feels the way you do. Not everyone can feel the way you do. Congrats that you can distance yourself that much from what you make, but that doesn't mean everyone else can, or should be expected to, or that we should look down on those who don't. The reason I've been a part of this community for so long is because the people here are considerate of one another's feelings. To me it seems like you're saying "to heck with it, it's the author's problem if they can't deal." It seems entirely contrary to the fundamental sense of empathy that has made the Creatures Community what it is.   Silverpelt   6/5/2012 @Ghosthande The sites I chose allow for deletion at a later date, I choose them for that fact along with the fact they have the ability to allow me to upload entire folders. There is always a reason to preserve something even if it is being hosted elsewhere currently. Sites may be up for years then suddenly be gone, all it takes is one missed payment to their host or the domain registrar and the Wayback Machine only works so well. @Moe Your post is along the lines of why I wanted to share this collection of mine. So much has already been lost and it was made for the enjoyment of the community at large. My personal feelings is that everything I create comes falls under something like the creative commons and as long as it's not being sold by someone else I don't care if it is shared or even if I'm being given credit.   AquaShee   6/5/2012 There was this guy once who had a garden full of flowers. Whenever people visited him he'd give them a flower, for no reason other than to see their smile and to have the pleasure of their visit. People came from far and wide to get his flowers. Then one day he moved to Madagascar for his job and no one knew when he'd be back. This was a shame because people really loved his flowers. People went about missing his flowers for a while, until his mother-in-law gathered a big box of them, dropped it in the middle of the town square with a big sign above it saying 'Free flowers'. Problem solved. The Community Scribble: make (y)our own metaroom!   Moe     6/5/2012 Calling it self centered and lazy to upload another developer's work is an erroneous judgement call which is completely inapplicable to an archivist, whose actual motive is to preserve the community's work (not to mention the massive amount of work involved in creating an archive of ALL the content, much less organizing it). We may have had empathy in the community, but we haven't had much foresight, and it's cost us a great deal. At the risk of violating courtesy and ruffling a few feathers, I'd save the content. I might take the time to inform the authors I could about the archive, but it wouldn't be in the form of a request. I might not be very popular for this move, and some people might be "hurt" or "threatened" by it (for which I see no noble justification), but I'd do it and lose no sleep for it. But you don't have to worry about me. I don't have the means or the content. I just hope someone who does takes up the task and gets it done, and done right. What we need is a massive website, kind of like modern mod communities, where you can "submit" agents and tag the authors and categories.   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/5/2012 I think it's self-centered and lazy not bothering to contact the creator when the person is still active in the community. Why can't a person try to get in touch with the creator? Because it takes too much time? If the author is gone and their site is gone then by all means--it's the only way to preserve the agent, so it makes perfect sense--but snubbing an active member of the community because you can't be bothered with common courtesy... I just see no other way to interpret that. It takes like two minutes to type out a quick email, no more. There's also a difference between saving content, and uploading it. I've saved the original .zip (or other archive) file for every Creatures agent I've ever downloaded to this computer, and also have them backed onto an external drive, just in case my computer ever goes down. But I've never uploaded anything that isn't mine, although I have fileshared privately a few times. If my site ever went down, I'd hope that people would save it--because as a programmer, my domain is tied to my livelihood. If my site went down, chances are I'd either be dead, in a coma, or living on the streets somewhere with no home, much less a computer. But if someone just decided to upload my stuff now, I'd be rightfully ticked. I plan to revamp quite a bit of what is currently online, and my site isn't in any "danger", so uploading my stuff elsewhere would be little more than unfounded paranoia. My concern over other peoples' feelings comes mostly from how young some of the members are. It's one thing to have a disagreement with an adult who already feels confident in their own abilities can hold their own in a discussion--it's another to snub the rights of a thirteen-year-old, a twelve-year-old, et cetera, who is just getting their feet wet in the world. I've also known people who were shockingly oversensitive, took even mild comments as insults and would cry over them... I thought it was pretty ridiculous, that they were overreacting and being extremely immature. Some people are just like that. But it's not up to us to determine what other people should be comfortable with or where their boundaries should lie. Our only choice is to respect them--or to throw it in their face. I would really love to have some kind of "semi-official" database/archive of agents and other downloads. Having a centralized database would cut down on a large portion of the issues inherent to user-made archives of the type people normally suggest. It wouldn't just be a "blind torrent" of whatever a person happened to have on their hard drive. Authors (and downloaders) would know where to look, if they only had to look in one place, not on a random user's web site or a file uploading site. Agents could even be stored there if they weren't offered for download, eg. while the author's site was still up. The only problem would be keeping the site up and running. You'd almost want multiple webmasters.   AquaShee   6/5/2012 Edit: This post is supposed to come before Ghosthande's! I'm getting slow. I am very, very saddened to see that preserving bits and bytes for a videogame has become more important than just being a nice person. The people who created creatures stuff and who are now gone all published their creations on their personal homepage. Remember back when gathering agents led you from website to website, across all of Geocities, seeing all those unique designs, hearing all those annoying midi tunes and watching those animated gifs of dancing Norns? People who made Creatures stuff back then didn't just want to share their agents with us, they wanted to share their little corner of the internet. Back then a website was something personal. If you put a doormat underneath your desk you could wipe your feet every time you clicked those large, sparkly "Welcome" images. Putting all agents in a big zip on dropbox would make us lose that part of the community. And as you've said yourself, we've already lost so much. And I like to think that the feel of togetherness, cozy personal websites and creators being more than just a profile on a huge database is more important than the actual agents themselves. As for the agents, they're luxuries of the purest form. They're pretty to look at and many of them are quite cleverly coded, but they're not worth ruffling anyone's feathers, even if you think said feathers have no justification for ruffledness. In a sense, agents are a form of art. And art is about emotions. If you care about art, you should care even more about the feelings of the people who made the art. They're the ones who developed their talents and explored their creativity as they created their agents, they're the only ones who should feel entitled to them. If someone were to actually preserve some of the old agents, I hope they manage to reconstruct the website that hosted them along with them. Because that would have been the whole package as intended by their creator. I do agree with the massive website idea though. Although I think the community is too small to actually support it, it could give us plenty of room to grow. And it would allow us to centralize the multiple language groups. (since such a website could be multilingual) Not to mention that any agents uploaded to said website by their creator would be archived forever, unlike the agents only hosted on personal websites and which shouldn't be rehosted outside their 'context' in respect to their creator. Respect which I hope is still more important than shiny bits and bytes for a video game. The Community Scribble: make (y)our own metaroom!   mip     6/5/2012 I think this shouldn't have to be an issue of archiving everything and ignoring author reactions or archiving nothing and letting content vanish. The idea suggested in the OP can and will work fine as long as the OP takes an active approach to communicating with the community and authors. If the community is well aware of the archive and requests for credits or file removal are promptly dealt with, I can't see why anyone would have a problem with it. There's no need to upload anything which is currently available elsewhere on the web. I believe the OP's idea is purely to archive and make available content they have saved which cannot be found elsewhere and would otherwise be in danger of vanishing entirely. Considering that this sort of content is often shared more privately in the community anyway, I don't see why it would be that much bigger a deal to broaden availability to the wider community. Even if material which is already available accidentally gets uploaded, a member of the community can just let the OP know about it. If there's one thing I've noticed about the Creatures community, it is that you are all generally rather helpful and informative. If you see something like that, contact the OP so that they can remove it. Drama averted. The idea for a one-stop-shop site for finding and downloading Creatures content is amazing but I would imagine it would take a hell of a lot of coercing to get people to move on from the fragmented collection of private websites that has historically prevailed. To create a site like that I think you would probably need to follow Moe's approach and not be afraid to step on toes. It would require a lot of free time and devotion and considering the amount of drama it could produce, I doubt it will ever happen. It's a shame because personally I believe content should be shared and enjoyed by all and such a site would do wonders in improving author recognition and content useage. Exploring the Ark A journal for C3/DS - updated last: 5 May 2013   Moe     6/5/2012 I guess the real difference here is perspective and the reasons for development. I figure I make my content for people to use, so why shouldn't they have every avenue to use it they can. I don't need egotistic self-fulfillment by being asked for permission. Take it, go, modify it, play with it, have fun. That's what it's for--not for me to be idolized for it. (I imagine this is what God thinks of the universe...well... not the wrathful jealous gods that kill people for kisspopping 'incorrectly'.) The idea that I would need to be asked first...like someone owes me tribute...I just don't understand the need. I'm not being facetious here, or trying to belittle or accuse anyone. I truly don't 'get it'. I can't see it as anything other than an ego trip. The very need for courtesy is perceived as a selfish desire for admiration in my perspective. Wanting a courtesy, thinking it would be nice for people to ask for permission, is ok, but needing it and being hurt or upset for not receiving it? That just doesn’t make sense to me as anything but a very base and negative expression of the human condition. I suppose one could say the same thing about disregarding people’s feelings and posting the content anyway, but from my perspective the very withholding of content and negative emotional reaction to having it mirrored is in error, and thus should be ignored (a very brute force approach to morality, which is in itself probably evil, however effective at achieving the goal). So we’ll just have to agree to disagree and work on a compromise. In my view of the Creatures repository database website, active authors could upload their content themselves, thus giving permission without being asked. And moreover, the submissions could be moderated to ensure that only acceptable submissions are published (like CC.com’s Cob section, but more versatile).   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/5/2012 I do think it could be pulled off... the sheer number of submissions to sites like CCaves here shows that people at least aren't opposed to having a site they can submit their works to (yes, without "moving on" from personal web sites). I think the only real issue would be stability, because just like any personal web site, there would still be the danger of the webmaster leaving the community, not paying their hosting bill, etc. It wouldn't be so hard to have multiple managers, but when money and payments and the like come into play... that's when it seems like things would get dicey.   Moe     6/5/2012 At least the database would be in a single location, and could be transferred or archived if the webmaster vanished. With how really nice modding websites have taken off (think: nexusmods.com), there are probably simple content management systems available, so development would be quick. Then you just need a staff, and probably volunteers to go through and collect, post, and tag all the different agents from C1 forward. The only problem is hosting costs.   Liam     6/5/2012 I don't think it'd be any more dicey than any other community-content-driven website such as this. Ghosthande is right, though -- it is expensive, and someone has to take up that financial responsibility. If they want to, cool. A number of people have tried to make archives -- I've been involved in a couple of attempts that just haven't been able to get off the ground due to lack of time and manpower. Any such archival effort would need to be communal to succeed. The modding-as-an-artform is not a discussion that's really relevant to this topic, I don't think. The simple fact is that the community exists because we have collectively created some awesome additions to a game, and continue to do so. We attract new members because they want to play with these new additions, and we hope they someday add their own mods to the pool. Mods and their accessibility are the most important part of ANY modding community, which is exactly what this is. Personally, I think there is a choice involved. If you don't want your content distributed, I think you have that right. You put the time in to create it, you should be able to decide if you want it accessible after you or your website disappears. If you're not around to make the decision, I think it's fair that your content be made accessible, with the proviso that if you ever come back you are able to ask for it to be taken down. Without agents, breeds and metarooms (mods), we wouldn't be here talking about this today. With that in mind, I think it's pretty important to keep them available, within those reasonable limits. - Liam / K'aeloree Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community   Geek2Nurse     6/6/2012 I love the idea of an archive...like SeeYou7 (which is amazing, BTW!), but with local copies of agents in case the hosting sites go down. I'm with Moe, my greatest enjoyment comes from knowing someone else is enjoying something I created. And I'm perfectly okay with anybody hosting any of my few little agents wherever they want to. Just be warned that I keep going back and fiddling and updating them, so you'll have to work to stay on top of making sure you've got the latest version. --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.   mip     6/6/2012 For a full community archive, does a website even need to be created? Silverpelt suggested using sites like Dropbox to host his/her private collection. If you were going to set up a larger archive in a similar manner to, say, SeeYou7's listings you could do so for free or very little by using a blog for the listing, imgur or an equivalent for image hosting and Dropbox or an equivalent for file hosting. This has rather gotten away from Silverpelt's original question of whether it would be okay for them to upload their personal collection. Personally, I say go for it and just be flexible if people ask you to take certain things down. Exploring the Ark A journal for C3/DS - updated last: 5 May 2013   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/6/2012 Depends on what kind of archive... if you just want a mass list of agents that people don't necessarily know what they are, a site like Dropbox will work fine. For a proper archive with preview images, agent descriptions, any author information, etc., a full web site really is necessary. At the very least, a person will want to know what an agent looks like and what it does before they download it, which a "mass grave" of archived files won't give you.   Moe     6/6/2012 We keep talking about costs, but it's not like Creatures is a hugely popular phenomenon that is going to get 6 gigs of traffic a minute. Sure, during the initial upload and release, you MIGHT top off at a few gigs for the entire month, but after that, it would be regular hosting costs wouldn't it? Nothing most webmasters aren't already paying. Just look at CC.com's Cob section. We've got plenty, and Rascii doesn't seem to by cringing too much. lol   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     6/6/2012 No, but any site costs some amount of money, unless it's being hosted on some free two-bit server. Even if the cost wasn't much, it's still a cost that someone would need to be responsible for paying. That was my only point.   Devil COBbler GirlySatan     6/6/2012 As far as an archiving website, I do know someone that owns a server (or several actually), and is also a creatures fan, but we would have to get some people together to try and figure out who wants to write the site to make it easy to upload zips, make restrictions or guidelines, make sure items have the correct installation numbers, note if it works or not, and any other information that could be useful. As far as payment, I know they use googlepay/paypal, and their invoicing can direct you to a site that shows if any bills are outstanding or paid. They have really good pricing too. Feel free to ignore my late late late post about the topic. but maybe I should say something since I actually have been archiving and listing everything I can about C1 objects that I have collected... I don't believe it's a matter of people being self centered when it comes to requesting permission. Lots of the items I have came from the early days of the internet, where people could easily (and some have) copied code and tried to pass it off as their own. Personally, I have had my code copied before (in a class), and it made me upset because I was trying to help someone with their code. So I get that. Asking an authors permission was just a way to try and guard against that (whether it worked or not, I doubt it). I think it became a norm too, since people saw other cobblers were asking for others to get permission to host. There were some people who didnt mind their items being hosted elsewhere too, which grew over time. Now we have opensource and with that comes lots of people that feel code should be free to transfer and edit as one sees fit. It's well documented what changes have occured by who, and there isnt much drama about who deserves credit, or if someone copied someone else, etc, because its pretty easy to find out and shame anyone who is lying. When we first started making COBs, after people relaxed about hosting permissions, credit became a huge thing. I see fewer people worry about this now, but some people think it's important that the work they did is credited. I think its really just about wanting credit and respecting a persons art/work. They came up with this idea, and they had a specific way of conveying it on their personal website, and im sure some want some validation. When I started doing my website, hardly anyone knew about it, but when random people linked me on their sites and said they loved my work, it felt pretty awesome! I wasn't seeking it, but it was nice to be validated for all the hours of work I did. We are all doing it for free, after all. Also to think about, some may want to know who is displaying their art, and know they are trustworthy and respect their wishes, which is totally natural. Not everyone who joins the community is someone you get along with, so would you trust them with your stuff? Moreso, if they dont care what you think and do something you asked them to not do anyway, clearly they are not someone who respects your wishes, and probably wont care about your work either. I have a lot of items in the database. A LOT. There are nearly 700 different zips that I went through, and sometimes there is more than one COB in a zip. And dont forget the .rcb's, rewrites, etc! I went through every single one. It took a lot of hours and a lot of work, because I also tested all of them. I understand it takes work to organize and go through and put together. However I still tried to email the people that are still around that requested permission to host their items. I try to respect authors wishes, even with the enourmous amount of work I have done to make this website. If they are no longer available, then I have their stuff available. Muppetboy, for example, has a ton of COBs, but he can't host all of them right now. I have a lot of his work that is not available on his website, and he is cool with that. So, I don't think it's about "growing up," or ego, or wanting to be idolized, or any of that. Some people just have specific idea's on how their items should be made available. I think its rude to not even try and ask, but just state that you are doing it. You arent making sure that its ok to host. Thats like saying "I dont care how you think your creation should be presented, because I have my own ideas about it." I put a lot of hours into making and putting in every bit of information into that website. I make sure that its ok for me to have those things on there. Even if I didnt understand why someone doesnt want their items available elsewhere, it's still their creation, and you have to respect what people want to do with their work. Devilishly Yours, GirlySatan   mip     6/8/2012 Ghosthande, I didn't quite mean setting up a Dropbox and directing everyone to that folder. I don't know whether Blogger has a similar feature but on Livejournal a user can create a shared journal called a community. Depending on the settings for the community, anyone with approval (this defaultly means anyone who joins the community) can make posts there. Each post can be marked with tags and anyone can use tags to sort posts. A combination of good tag use and a couple of directory posts could make something along the lines of SeeYou7's breed and agent directories. Basically, each post lists one agent/breed. In each post a file link (from mediafire/dropbox/etc), picture (imgur/imageshack/etc) and detail (what the file is/who made it/where it came from/etc) is required, along with tags to make the post easy to search for. A template and/or guidance can be made to standardise posting to make searching easier. This set-up should be free or pretty close to it. The reason I say "close to" is because I think it could benefit from having backup links, preferably with one coming from a permanent source. But it's pretty easy to re-upload a file for free and edit out an old dead link, and it becomes easier and easier for anyone to do so after the file is shared. I don't know if I'm making much sense here - would it be easier to quickly make up a community journal and give an example of what I mean? I can always delete it afterward if we agree that's not a direction we want to go in. Exploring the Ark A journal for C3/DS - updated last: 5 May 2013   Malkin Manager     6/10/2012 The current Creatures Caves practice is contained on this thread, Uploading COBs. When creators say 'if you want to host my stuff, feel free!', Laura and I have been interpreting that as 'explicit permission to post on CC.com'. My TCR Norns

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