[TaxiService]

Oh lord, sparky. Try not to do anything stupid. ·⁔· If you have to leave everything try to travel to another country that can give you more possibilities for survival. Like, somewhere where there are plenty of jobs so that you can pay some rent and live normally. Maybe australia or canada? I don't know? Maybe you could sell everything you've got and try to live somewhere else? Dude i dunno what to say. Just good luck and keep surviving, dude. I know that society kinda sucks, but what can you do. Money is, sadly, a necessary thing you'll have to deal with if you want to have a, for lack of a better word, "decent" life. By decent i mean that if you want to have some commodities such as an internet access and a computer, you'll need to pay those thingsss so blurgh
Anyway i wish you the best of luck. If you somehow end up in the state i'm in (i am not sure where on this planet i'll be in the future. either australia or the UK) send me an email or attempt calling me! I might be able to pick you up and let you stay at my place a little, assuming i won't end up being a hobo as well.

[nil]

I personally don't care much if you release the full version maps, although I don't think I'm going to bundle them with MD or integrate them in the database.

Best luck, Sparky. Hopefully you'll be able to find something new and meaningful to continue with your life. Don't be consumed by money, but don't reject it either.. If you want to help society, you may have to accept it yourself. Try to find a job and make sure you talk to people, find friends, and talk to them. At this point of my life, I feel like I don't want to receive money for the work I put into my projects (I even have a project that is more used than MD, but I won't state it here) - but, I know that kind of life is not going to last me long, especially when I get out of school. I hope to see you find something and one day, come back to say hello.

[Mgalekgolo]

Sounds good, you should get nil to sign of on this so we can all play some full maps.

Good luck on any future endeavors you wish to embark upon.

[Sparky]

Mike-N-Go wrote:

Quote:

Placeholder..

Edit3: Marked body as placeholder for massive editing; I had it wrong about legality of distributing halo maps (or so nil says). Check back latter.

1. I am considering allowing the distribution of Halo 1 multiplayer maps, such as beavercreek, and I'd like to know what you think about it. I know we've had this discussion before, but now that Halo Mini Demo is available, and it has been about 12 years since Halo 1 was released... and about 4 years since Halo 1 was even available anymore, I'm considering putting all the original Halo 1 multiplayer maps on HDM or the BDCN site.

2. This is somewhat unrelated directly to #1, but is related to plans for this year. I'm leaving very soon, like even this week. By leaving, I don't mean leaving MGM or HDM or whatever, but I mean actually LEAVING, as in, I will no longer have computer access AT ALL, because I'm leaving home. My entire life is changing, and I don't know how you knuckleheads are going to interpret this, but this means I'm not going to have the means to be able to have anything to do with the internet anymore. I don't even know where I'm going; it's like I'm walking out the door a lot, and at one point, I'll be walking out and not coming back. As it is, I hate coming back, but I'm just picking up and leaving; going to be dirt poor, no job, no family, no home. Gonna be rough like nothing else, just with any luck I won't freeze to death. You guys are probably all comfortable in your homes or apartments, and with your families. I'll probably have more nerve-wracking run-ins with the police, but I'll try not to get locked up for trespassing (we'll see how long that one lasts, eh? Haha...). If that explanation is thorough enough, I think I'm done. If I had to make a guess, I'll probably suffer almost every hardship life can throw at me. I probably won't live that long, but I never expected to live to 2014 anyway. Good luck, folks, with life. I guess I'm apprehensive a little, but I have no control over how much I suffer in life, only in my decision to trust in God.

EDIT: I think it's better not to know or care where I'm going. I hate this life, and I hate what society has made of itself, and I hate and want nothing to do with money, which means I'm not going to have anything but the clothes on my back, maybe a toothbrush, and my God. I don't even know why I bother telling you people this! I'm not asking for your help, what I am doing is telling you what I am doing now so that you can know what is going on with my plans and projects, which are probably now dead, as of October this year, or whenever the hosting is up. I'm going to have to cancel whatever plans I would have otherwise had, whatever they were, since my life has changed now. *shrug* That's how things happen.

[Sparky]

There are no legal issues, since we would be using a partnership contract with Microsoft.
Taxi, it's donations, just like you would donate money to support a web site. It's even looser than a business would typically do things by selling things for a profit. In this case, donated money would support: the modder / modding team, blamdevcom.net, and Microsoft. Each would take a percentage, just like when you sell music on iTunes and Apple takes a percentage. Blamdevcom.net only takes as much as it would need for hosting expenses, Microsoft takes a fixed percentage, and the modders get the rest, which is always the majority. Right now from modding, Microsoft gets no money and we get no money. From this system, the player community financially supports the developers and modders (they are considered the same in terms of how they accept money) and everyone else who owns the IP or works on things. Nobody steals money (although I think Microsoft like any other IP purchaser can just do nothing in this situation and get income -- this is why I think so little of publishing companies).

It is VOLUNTARY to give money for playing a mod. It's like, if you rate a mod very highly and want to support future mods by those mod authors, you would send them money. Same thing here, but legal. In fact, Microsoft would not be able to do this without a third-party company; this is why they started 343i in the first place, to be a third-party company to handle Halo development and its communities. But the details of this contract are not able to be discussed here.

[Mike-N-Go]

Quote:

Placeholder..

Edit3: Marked body as placeholder for massive editing; I had it wrong about legality of distributing halo maps (or so nil says). Check back latter.

[TaxiService]

Woah dude. I guess that getting paid to do mods would be pretty awesome. I do need some money, and modding is one of things i love to do,
but i have some concerns.

- Is this the right thing to do? Mods have always been free! Y-you can't ask someone to pay for mods! It feels like i'm Valve! Were you thinking about a donation system or something?

- Is there market? If we started doing this thing, will there be people willing to give us money for what we do? Won't people go to other communities that make mods for free? Like halomaps.org? I know you meant to merge it too, but what if they don't merge!

- Is this legal? Will M$ accept? Are they gonna suck our blood? I am afraid to be bound to them by some legal bullshit stuff..!



but yeah, i dunno..! I-it doesn't feel right to sell modssss

[Sparky]

What is the Blam! Developer Communities Network?

BDCN Business Model Short Description wrote:

As a business, the Blam! Developer Communities Network (BDCN) manages the licensing rights to the Halo 1 source code as an intermediary between Microsoft's legal department and the developers, such as people from Gearbox Software, MacSoft, etc.
It also offers modders the ability to sell their mods to the player community.
With Microsoft, it is a partnership.
With developers, it is a licensing rights manager.
With modders, it is a central location to discuss ANYTHING about the game.
With players, it is a place to download mods for ANY Halo 1 platform, and to financially support mod teams and developers that they like.
I now ask the halo communities to combine into this single location.
The benefits include:
Free web-related resources, such as e-mail addresses, ftp accounts, etc.
Free migration from their old server to this new free server.
Everyone who was a community leader maintains their leadership and benefits from using the resources.
They maintain their history also of their existing sites by having their forums and wikis migrated by myself.
They could participate in all the features of the BDCN and turn their hobby into a little bit of money profit if they mod.
That's basically it in a nutshell.
The BDCN is where developers and modders and players can meet to discuss ways in which the Halo epic will evolve
Halo Nation will jumpstart the Halo information pages
Halo Fanfiction will give more content to modders and modding teams who need story content for their mods
The authors who are skilled at writing fiction can work directly on modding teams with the modders.
I'm also developing the Zeus Halo Map editor
Which is an online editor of halo .map files
http://zeus.blamdevcom.net/
The potential for this is multifarious, not simply a merger of communities.
Developers can continue to work on the Halo source code instead of going through Microsoft's finicky legal department.
Modders and Players can have indirect access to the source code and work with the developers directly
Microsoft makes money.
Modders make a little money.
It's a self-sustaining business model.
Everyone benefits.
I await your comments. I extend an invitation to participate. The sooner each community participates, the more say they can have in how the BDCN evolves.
Take it from another Halo community leader, great things can happen with this.

[Sparky]

HaloDemoMods.com wiki:
The white page issue has been resolved. We're no longer using page attachments for the mod pages. Instead, simply use the "Download" field when starting a page for a new mod. The wiki is no longer read-only, so you can make changes again.

EDIT: I think I'm going to have this problem for a while; I don't know what's causing it, but I'm about to clean up the LocalSettings.php file to try to figure out why this issue is happening.

[Sparky]

For those who need to use a cheap e-mail address for questionable web sites or for junk mail where you don't even want to see it, then you can use a free e-mail account like AOL or Google or Yahoo or Hotmail. But if you can't use those for whatever reason, then we have a new e-mail account that is shared and that can be used as a junk mail thing.

Do not use this email address for web sites that send you passwords or other sensitive information.

Login: http://www.blamdevcom.net/webmail
Login Name: trashcan@blamdevcom.net
Password: MgM_Trash)(

This will be a shared e-mail account for registering at web sites where you're "not quite sure". On most sites, you can always change your e-mail address later on, at least by contacting the site administrator and saying "my e-mail address has changed to ____".

If it is used, fine. If not, I'll remove it at some point. Just don't abuse it, please.

[Sparky]

E-mail:
If you still want an e-mail address @halodemomods.com or @whatever_halo_community_site_is_affiliated_with_blamdevcom.net_including_BDCN, then send me a private message and I will PM you your new login and password. All former e-mail accounts have new passwords, so tehpillar and others will need to talk to me if they want to keep using the e-mail service. You can also send me a message using my e-mail address, sparky@halodemomods.com.

To connect to the webmail using the web site, you can use any affiliated domain URL followed by "/webmail":
- http://www.halodemomods.com/webmail
- http://www.blamdevcom.net/webmail

Your login there for your username would be username@domain.name and your password would be what I sent you. I don't think you will be able to change your password unless you tell me what you want to change it to and it is considered "secure enough" by the e-mail tools.

To connect to the webmail using a mail client, use this information:
IMAP connection
Mail Server Username: user+halodemomods.com (example: sparky+halodemomods.com)
Incoming Mail Server: mail.halodemomods.com -- Port 143, No SSL, Password Authentication
Password: whatever_i_told_you_in_reply_to_your_PM_here_on_MGM
Outgoing Mail Server: mail.halodemomods.com -- Port 2525, No SSL, Password Authentication, SMTP server
Outgoing Mail Server details: same username and password as the "Mail Server Username" above.

If it asks you if you want to change the path prefix when you send an e-mail for the first time, say no, "don't change". I don't know what would happen either way, but declining this on the first attempt still sent the message through and worked fine. If you tell it to change the path prefix, let me know what happens.

[Sparky]

The HaloDemoMods.com wiki has been successfully migrated to the BlamDevCom.net server. Let me know if you find any dead links, or just go in there and fix them yourself.

I decided to revise quite a few things.

First of all, if you visit "halodemomods.com", then you will be redirected to "http://www.halodemomods.com"; if you visit "www.halodemomods.com", you won't be redirected. This is to force the usage of "www." in the main domain URL so that the wiki login sessions are not broken. Up until a few minutes ago, if you were to visit "halodemomods.com" and log into the wiki, you would not be logged into the wiki by using the URL "www.halodemomods.com". So now it forces you to view the site as "www.halodemomods.com" and redirects "halodemomods.com" to "www.halodemomods.com".

Secondly, Zeus should be able to handle bitmaps.map file uploads now, or in the very near future. There was an Apache mod server issue that was preventing that particular type of file from uploading. I'm presently checking it and if it doesn't work, it will be fixed within a couple hours.

Thirdly, I am not using so many subdomains. If you want to access HDM e-mail, use http://www.halodemomods.com/webmail . If you want to access the Mod Database (and the Mod Database is going to be "deprecated" within a few weeks as I revise the uses of the HDM wiki according to the bigger strategy), use the sidebar link on the wiki page or search for "Mod Database" .

[Sparky]

Think of it as such:

Modder (or a collaborative team) uploads their mod or map file and is presented with the question "Would you like to request a $1 donation?" [Yes | No]
Players who download that map will then have an opportunity to donate $1 to the author(s) of the mod / map. Whoever is listed as a recipient of the donation would receive a cut of that dollar donation. So the player could either donate more to the authors of the map or they could leave it at $1. They would not need to buy the map in order to use it, though.
Some folks might not want or be able to receive any donations at all, so they simply say No to that option.


Accessible from the download page should be space for

a rating in stars and

a comment field. Suggestions?

[kiddten]

Sparky wrote:

- Modders and map makers will, if desired, be able to sell their maps and mods to players for $1 as a donation

yes I see it says donation at the end but how you've worded the rest makes it sound like it's mandatory to pay a dollar. if so, that's really really dumb.

[Sparky]

---- Conversations hereafter regard the Blam! Developer Communities Network and the improved plan for Halo Demo Mods. ----