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Phil1984

Opulent's SDA latest news post

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Most unfortunately, I recently let everyone down. I'm deeply sorry. It's clearly my fault and there is nothing I can do to undo it.
So much negativity recently towards me and the games.. and then this happens.
So many rash promises sincerely made and their possible resolutions continue to fade.
I'm left with nothing to offer you except the promise I won't do it again... which leaves me with only one course of action.
Thank you all for the good times and amazing demos, I hope one day each of you can forgive me.


I just checked out the SDA and have I missed something here? What has opulent done that is so bad to warrent that kind of news post. Is it simply because he hasn't got around to updating his website latley? Can someone please fill me in!

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Not sure. Perhaps it may have something to do with the demos CD. Maybe he let someone down by distributing certain demos that people simply gave to him personally. Or mayhap he feels he's let people down in not having updated for so long and now merely providing a ZIP with the new demos. But Doug has probably been through a lot of stress from what's happened to his wife, so I don't really know.

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It means that, although he still wants to help in some way, he simply hasn't the time to maintain the DSDA. That's all I'll say, Doug can tell you more when/if he wants to.

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myk said:

Not sure. Perhaps it may have something to do with the demos CD. Maybe he let someone down by distributing certain demos that people simply gave to him personally. Or mayhap he feels he's let people down in not having updated for so long and now merely providing a ZIP with the new demos. But Doug has probably been through a lot of stress from what's happened to his wife, so I don't really know.


If it does have anything to do with the CDs, I'd sure be happy if someone could tell me what exactly it was... I still have no idea what the problem is (well, was) there. o.O

In any case... Opulent, if you're reading this, then let me say that I at least think you've been doing a terrific job. Maybe there's things I'm not aware of, but I certainly don't feel I've been let down. So whatever's wrong... hang in there. Whatever problems there are, they will hopefully get resolved at some point.

(Eh, I'm not good at writing stuff like this, but I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say. >_>)

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The way he put it is kinda confusing... I don't know either.

About the Demo CDs, when Opulent visited Xit Vono and me in California, he gave each of us a HDD full of demos and goodies very similar to these CDs. So maybe he wanted to give em only from hand to hand?

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VinceDSS said:

About the Demo CDs, when Opulent visited Xit Vono and me in California, he gave each of us a HDD full of demos and goodies very similar to these CDs. So maybe he wanted to give em only from hand to hand?


Maybe, but in that case, he really should've told me. I would've respected it (although I'd have disagreed with it; I think that demos etc. should be made and kept available as much as possible so everyone can benefit from them), but it's hard to respect someone's wishes when you don't know about them. :P

Of course, given that and given that he did NOT say anything, I don't think that's the reason. Unfortunately, though, I don't have any better explanation...

Oh well. There's really only one person who could clear it all up. :/

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I understand your point as well, and wished the same has happened to the old CDrom.com demo archive... all the pre-1.9 demos got deleted... I wish somebody had a backup of these...

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VinceDSS said:

I understand your point as well, and wished the same has happened to the old CDrom.com demo archive... all the pre-1.9 demos got deleted... I wish somebody had a backup of these...


Maybe someone does and they'll turn up at some point. One can hope... >_>

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Alright, now I feel like a 15yr old drama queen.

Lots of details here in other gaming communities that I won't bore you with, but let me say that the DSDA post wasn't the result of any single event.

Schneelocke shared something that wasn't his to share. And I made it clear that he shouldn't when I gave it to him. I do think he was trying to be helpful and didn't mean to do any harm, but just didn't think it through all the way.
Few times in my life do I allow myself to be personally hurt or publicly humiliated... and this was one of them. If you tell someone a secret and they tell someone they shouldn't, you only have yourself to blame for sharing it in the first place.

(I realize this next sentance makes it sound like the world, or the demo world revolves around my individual actions... I don't feel that it does, nor did it ever. I am simply stating the current situation of the DSDA for me.)
The capacity of which I continue supporting these forums or the DSDA will be determined by how much time I think I can invest.
I would be thrilled if someone volunteered to continue the site... in whatever way they deemed fit. My only request is that you wish to carry on with it for awhile... I don't want to hand it over to someone who will leave in January.

let me close this useless reply with a personal message:
Of all the gaming communities I participate in, DOOM is by far the best. The game is the best, 99% of the players are supercool, we even have the best forums. :)

There weren't a lot of pre-1.9 demos at cdrom.com.... and I recall watching some of them... I don't think a single one of them was worth much beyond the nostalgic/history value to the players today. (some of the DHT is pre-1.9)

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Thankyou very much Opulent for your clarification! Your DSDA post makes more sense to me now.

For the record I think you have made an amazing contribution to the doom demo scene over the years and I thank you for your efforts.

To be honest when I read your post and got the feeling that you really didn't think you would be able to find the time to update anymore it did cross my mind to offer to help, or fully take over running your site. If you wanted to talk some more about this please pm me....

Cheers

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Opulent said:

Schneelocke shared something that wasn't his to share. And I made it clear that he shouldn't when I gave it to him. I do think he was trying to be helpful and didn't mean to do any harm, but just didn't think it through all the way.
Few times in my life do I allow myself to be personally hurt or publicly humiliated... and this was one of them. If you tell someone a secret and they tell someone they shouldn't, you only have yourself to blame for sharing it in the first place.


You did? Oh, I'm very sorry, then. I honestly didn't/don't recall that. And looking through the original thread and the emails we exchanged when you sent the CDs to me, I can't find any mention of it, either.

Oh well - again, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure you didn't actually mention it (and since you asked on the forums whether anybody wanted them, I just assumed that you were OK with them being distributed further, especially given that they're demos - not something you'd normally want to keep secret). Not a big problem, though; I know about it now, at least. :)

That being said... just out of curiosity, why the secrecy? I won't give out the demos to anyone if that's what you want, but I'm not sure I understand what the benefit is. Wouldn't it be better to make sure that as many interested people as possible can get them and view them?

Again, just curious. :)

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It is all about personal property.
I gave you private demos of mine and of other players.. as well as other data. Just because everyone else will enjoy it, doesn't make it their property or right to obtain it.
If my neighbor lets me photograph her naked, that doesn't mean she would appreciate the whole world seeing those images... everyone else wouldn't mind(she's pretty hot) but it is not my property to share.

I took a lot of time getting these demos (and game data) together. I'm convinced that I have more FPS demos than anyone. Why hoard this data if others could enjoy it.... so I deemed it okay to send it to those who had 'earned' it or who could appreciate it. That is why I offered in the first place.
IIRC, I sent you the CDs with my own money. I collected the data for years, put it together, and sent it to you. All you did was say you wanted it... and you did say thanks... but I obviously made the wrong decision then.
Of course, I didn't send you most of the private stuff anyway, but there is certainly some of that in there.
Your casual attitude toward the entire situation tells me that I shouldn't have shared it with you.

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Opulent said:

It is all about personal property.
I gave you private demos of mine and of other players.. as well as other data. Just because everyone else will enjoy it, doesn't make it their property or right to obtain it.
If my neighbor lets me photograph her naked, that doesn't mean she would appreciate the whole world seeing those images... everyone else wouldn't mind(she's pretty hot) but it is not my property to share.

I took a lot of time getting these demos (and game data) together. I'm convinced that I have more FPS demos than anyone. Why hoard this data if others could enjoy it.... so I deemed it okay to send it to those who had 'earned' it or who could appreciate it. That is why I offered in the first place.
IIRC, I sent you the CDs with my own money. I collected the data for years, put it together, and sent it to you. All you did was say you wanted it... and you did say thanks... but I obviously made the wrong decision then.
Of course, I didn't send you most of the private stuff anyway, but there is certainly some of that in there.
Your casual attitude toward the entire situation tells me that I shouldn't have shared it with you.


Yes, you did send the CDs to me for free, and I'm very grateful for that, but to be fair, let me say that IIRC, I did offer to reimburse you for the CDs and the shipping expenses, and you declined.

Outside of that, I can only say again that I'm sorry; you didn't tell me that you wanted to keep these demos (many (most?) of which already were published on the SDA, C-N, PDANG etc.) private, and I had no reason to assume there would be anything with sharing them. This is not about naked photos of your neighbours, after all; to me at least, it's more akin to - say - sporting competitions. If two football teams met and played a match, a reporter for the local newspaper who published the results afterwards wouldn't expect to be chastised for it, either, at least not unless it was said in advance that the results are not supposed to be published.

I've got to admit that I do not agree with the notion that demos should be kept private at all, and I won't lie about it and say I do. This is not a casual attitude at all - quite the opposite. I believe in sharing, free culture, and in not keeping things secret needlessly. That being said, I won't share the CDs with anyone else again, and I apologise again for having done so, but I also want to reemphasise that I don't see having done so as morally/ethically wrong. It would be different if you had said I shouldn't share them or if I had had reason to believe that you wouldn't want them to be shared (as would've been the case if it had been about naked pictures of a neighbour), but that simply wasn't the case.

In any case, only two people actually downloaded the CDs before I took them down again, so you may at least be relieved to hear that there wasn't much "damage" that was done.

However, let me end this post with a specific quote from what you said above:

Why hoard this data if others could enjoy it....


Indeed - that's just what I'm asking myself, and that's just what I asked myself when I decided to put the CDs up, too. Why hoard the data if others could enjoy it? To me, sharing the demo love is fundamentally a Good Thing(tm).

I do acknowledge that as far as your own demos are concerned, at least, it's your decision whether they should be made public or not, and as I said above, I will respect your wishes in that regard, but I still don't understand it. I *literally* don't.

(I'd also like to repeat again that it was not my intention to hurt or disrepect anyone, their wishes or their feelings; I genuinely believed that everyone would think that this was a good idea, and that the only reason you hadn't put up the complete CDs yourself already was a lack of diskspace/bandwidth/etc. and that thus, you, too, would be happy to see that I was making them available to interested others. So given all that, I've got to admit I'm feeling like I'm being treated a bit unfairly.)

(Oh yeah, and after all this, I hope we can resolve the whole thing amicably. I'll ask before giving demos etc. to anyone in the future (other than what's available to the general public at the SDA, C-N and PDANG already), and I apologise again for my mistake, while you acknowledge that I didn't mean to be a jerk and that I only had good intentions - how does that sound? :) If you want to, I can also still reimburse you for the shipping costs and the CDs, BTW - no problem there.)

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I was one of the downloaders, and I already had all these demos from Opulent himself, so no harm done on my side. I don't know who was the other downloader.

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Having built up a considerable collection of everything Doom myselfe, I can understand where Opulent is comming from. The workload and effort he put into his collection have made it something special and personal to him. For others it may just be a bunch of semi-intersting stuff on a cd, and they fail to see the effort behind compiling it, and how it is indeed a personal piece of work on its own. From observing Opulents constant dedication towards FPS demos, its easy to guess its the most unique Doom Demo collection in existance. Some people find stamps to be nothing but pieces of paper, to others they are treassures passionately arranged and sorted. Doug handing over a free copy of his entire archive to someone is a grand gesture, one that I would personally appreciate on a far less casual level than displayed here. I feel bad for Schneelocke too tho, because obviously he didn't understand the thought behind what he received.

Altho this topic is obviously between Opulent and schneelocke (and weirdly avilable on a forum), I just felt like pitching in out of empathy. Also, I'd like to add my personal thanks to Doug for being around for all these years, always totally friendly, respectfull and helpfull. We engage in this game for our own pleassure, but there is a few guys around who do try to enhance the fun for the rest of the bunch too, and Doug's one of them.

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Andy Johnsen said:

Having built up a considerable collection of everything Doom myselfe, I can understand where Opulent is comming from. The workload and effort he put into his collection have made it something special and personal to him. For others it may just be a bunch of semi-intersting stuff on a cd, and they fail to see the effort behind compiling it, and how it is indeed a personal piece of work on its own. From observing Opulents constant dedication towards FPS demos, its easy to guess its the most unique Doom Demo collection in existance. Some people find stamps to be nothing but pieces of paper, to others they are treassures passionately arranged and sorted. Doug handing over a free copy of his entire archive to someone is a grand gesture, one that I would personally appreciate on a far less casual level than displayed here. I feel bad for Schneelocke too tho, because obviously he didn't understand the thought behind what he received.

Altho this topic is obviously between Opulent and schneelocke (and weirdly avilable on a forum), I just felt like pitching in out of empathy. Also, I'd like to add my personal thanks to Doug for being around for all these years, always totally friendly, respectfull and helpfull. We engage in this game for our own pleassure, but there is a few guys around who do try to enhance the fun for the rest of the bunch too, and Doug's one of them.

Definitely agree with everything that you just said Anders. Doug's most assuredly a one of a kind person, and has made an enormous mark on the Doom community, for recorders and casual players alike.

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Phil1984 said:
I would be excited but all I see is a blank page :(

Odd, maybe it's your browser settings if it wasn't a freak cyberspacial glitch. Try the news page itself intead of the central url.

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myk said:

Odd, maybe it's your browser settings if it wasn't a freak cyberspacial glitch. Try the news page itself intead of the central url.


And now I see a white page with yellow text(not a good look), but it fails to load images or background. This occurs in Firefox 2.0, IE7 and Opera whatever. Any idea what is going on!?!

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The forum's been acting up, so maybe the Telefragged servers are messed up, but I don't get that weird effect on either IE or FF.

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"Works for me"(tm). Phil, can you see this? (it's the background image the SDA uses) Perhaps you have accidentally turned off image loading? Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a Telefragged problem -- as Myk said, the DW forums are a bit unstable at the moment, too. Sometimes people can't see their own posts, making for a lot of double posts and even triple posts. I've been unable to access the forums at all periodically (it just gives me an SQL error).


To get back to the topic of the thread: Very well put, Anders. :-)
Doug -- you are THE MAN!

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Nope I can't see that background image....its very weird, I'll just give it some time and see what happens.

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In FF you can temporarily do this to read the page; go to options/content and click the colors button, and uncheck "allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above". It'll be readable.

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Never fear guys, the problem was at my end and I have fixed the problem now.

Thanks for the replies trying to help me though :)

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