Talk:Action 53

Brez
...This doesn't seem to relate to a city in northern Italy, nor any Bennington something-or-other, nor any Active Enterprises employee. I also tried ROT13, giving OERM... Maybe Rodney Bryce? Eighty5cacao 17:26, 2 February 2012 (MST)
 * This issue has been taken to a less public forum. --Tepples 04:37, 3 February 2012 (MST)
 * And the categorization that prompted this discussion will be abandoned as of 0.04 in favor of "NESdev Compo" and "Other" anyway. --Tepples 15:45, 15 October 2012 (MST)

Pogo Cats
Pertaining to this post, is Pogo Cats banned indefinitely from Action 53, or are you allowing more time for its bugs to be fixed before Action 53's final release?

I guess this boils down to, "What is the maintenance status of Pogo Cats?" Though, given the last time I tried to ask about the maintenance status of a homebrew program, I should be able to guess the answer... Eighty5cacao 00:22, 20 March 2012 (MST)
 * The maintainer is still working with me through NESdev BBS private messaging on getting the scrolling bug in Pogo Cats (vertical mirroring version) fixed. --Tepples 03:52, 20 March 2012 (MST)
 * In fact, Yggi sent me a fixed version this morning. I tried it on my PowerPak and everything worked as advertised. --Tepples 07:33, 20 March 2012 (MST)
 * I suppose the next question I was going to ask was, "Can you describe the glitches in more detail?" However, I've been a bit too busy to try it out myself in Nestopia / Nintendulator, and I don't have a PowerPak etc. (You don't have to waste too much time answering this.) Anyway, thanks. Eighty5cacao 10:09, 20 March 2012 (MST)
 * There is a scroll split just above the mountains. In the first vertical mirroring version, the part of the background below the scroll split flickered. --Tepples 11:13, 20 March 2012 (MST)

Failure to meet subjective requirements
Which game(s) is/are failing, and what specific requirement is the issue? (Sorry I haven't spent enough time with all the games to guess myself.)

Could exceptions to the "and"/"MUST" be decided on a case-by-case basis, at least for graphics? Eighty5cacao 19:37, 18 May 2012 (MST) (last edit 10:36, 19 May 2012 (MST))
 * Formerly in a collapsible box
 * What should the subjective requirements section say about audio?
 * List specific bad practices that would cause a game to fail the subjective requirements. For example, in a platformer that implements fall damage, a bad practice is to kill the protagonist as soon as s/he has fallen a certain distance, even if s/he is still in the air. That exists in Action 52. The correct behavior is to wait for the protagonist to hit the ground before showing the death animation.
 * I don't want to name names lest developers find what might be perceived as rudeness via Google, but it was a compo entry. (A53 started as a rewrite of the compo multicart.) I'm already in discussion with the developer of the game in question to correct the hitbox of certain enemy characters. It's mostly a matter of having the time to do so. But you had a good point about listing specific bad gameplay practices and about stylization. --Tepples 03:42, 19 May 2012 (MST)
 * Do we need to explicitly mention that air friction may be a valid excuse against the guideline on falling damage? Eighty5cacao 19:36, 10 July 2012 (MST)
 * I believe that's covered under "without a very good reason". For example, the author of a video game that involves reentry of a spacecraft into an atmosphere should be able to explain the drag mechanic. --Tepples 04:06, 11 July 2012 (MST)

TIGRS on Wayback Machine
What is the reason that we are not citing the Wayback Machine's copies of the TIGRS [//web.archive.org/web/20100914175024/http://www.tigrs.org/ homepage] and [//web.archive.org/web/20100802105245/http://www.tigrs.org/?page=ratings rating criteria]? Is it simply a matter of "defunct = outdated = irrelevant"? Eighty5cacao 21:42, 22 May 2012 (MST)
 * It could be. Once TIGRS disappeared, any hope of getting the general public to recognize its self-rating symbols died. There's no longer a library of other products to compare something to as an example of whether depictions have become "graphic". And if it shut down for a reason, that reason [guessing] might have related to a severe flaw in the rating system, third-party exclusive rights issues with its criteria (patent?) or rating graphics (copyright? trademark?), etc. --Tepples 04:24, 23 May 2012 (MST)
 * Admittedly, this is a change of topic: Do we need to mention trademark among the legal requirements that MUST NOT be violated? Eighty5cacao 19:48, 10 July 2012 (MST)
 * I'd prefer to deal with trademarks by rewriting in-game dialogue and the like. Compare how the Nazis were turned to Badds in the North American version of Bionic Commando (Lucasfilm's meddling for which TSR was often misblamed, among others), similar changes were made to the console versions of Wolfenstein 3D, and the "tetrads" were turned to "blocks" in the Virtual Console rerelease of StarTropics 2 (probably Tetris Holding's meddling). It's not a rejection rationale as much as something to be done once I decide to include a game. I may go into more detail once I split the page about Action 53 the builder from Action 53 the collection. --Tepples 04:03, 11 July 2012 (MST)

Platformer development tips
I hate most of these platformer development tips and I disagree with most of them too. Can't you add an additional mode (and/or secret levels) which causes it to not do this? For example, to require fixed jump, to not change hit boxes larger or smaller than the objects due to harmful or whatever, to add ratchet scrolling situations causing game unwinnable, adding difficult jump sections and so on, requiring objects for uses which are not known at first, placing bonus point objects in deadly pits, etc. I agree with not applying falling damage until the player hits the ground, but to me this is mainly because you might want to have some platforms which are safe to fall onto from a high height. I think inertia is not a bad thing to include, although you do not have to include it. (Once I have even made up a computer game where you have a fixed jump height, which is so high that you will take falling damage when you hit the ground, unless you jump onto a higher platform or land on a safe platform which suppresses falling damage.) --24.207.49.17 11:44, 15 October 2012 (MST)
 * In fact, I disagree with some of the points in those articles as well. I'm clarifying that they're just rules to consider that some amateur game developers never even stop to think about. I've explicitly marked it non-normative. --Tepples 14:46, 15 October 2012 (MST)

Abandoning BNROM
Eighty5cacao wrote: "TODO: will discuss changes to the technical requirements now that the official distribution of this project no longer uses BNROM"

A few games in the Streemerz bundle are not yet accepted to the Action 53 collection. The NROM games Driar, I Wanna Flip the Sky, and NES Virus Cleaner are currently licensed only for the Streemerz bundle. And in the Streemerz bundle, all games except Streemerz still run in the simulated BNROM environment. I have, however, seen what I might take as a request to port it to SUROM though. --Tepples (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2012 (CST)
 * Sorry, I shouldn't have left the pronoun "I" out of my edit summary perhaps. Also sorry for not remembering the multiple branches of the project and their licensing implications. (Is there still planned to be a branch that fully uses the capabilities of the "multi-discrete mapper"?)
 * How is this actionable on the article as it stands? --Eighty5cacao (talk) 10:18, 17 December 2012 (CST)

Objectionable content clarification
I'm curious to know by what/whose standards "vulgar slang or hateful terms" are being defined, particularly in relation to the fact that there's already a game included called "Slappin' Bitches". Apparently this doesn't hit the threshold for vulgar or hateful so I'd be interested to know where that is. 120.148.10.188 18:31, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The game was ROM-hacked to be titled simply "Slappin'". I haven't set the threshold, but this particular instance was a comparison of women to dogs that added nothing to the game. --Tepples (talk) 03:45, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I appreciate that. 120.148.10.188 13:11, 4 March 2014 (UTC)