Kitty Corp Meow Mix Forums

You want to know the real reason the community is dying? As someone who has fallen to being a constant observer of what goes on in the forums. I think I can come out with a few reasons.

It's not just that people make things some consider half-assed. It's not just people being download whores. It's not people making packs of recolors or [censored] like that. It's not just the fact that many people who started have gone on to other projects. It's not even people using other people's things to make things of their own, and it's certainly not because nobody is interested anymore.

Things are still being made, not all of them are great or as awesome as some things were when this community was at it's peak. The point is they are still being made, and people still are doing modded Brawl, if downloads being made on anything is any indication at all.

It's because this community is not as friendly as we like to make yourselves think, it's also because so many of our members never interact with other, more active members, never make posts, make themselves known beyond the vault, never allow the community to critique, foster and nurture their ability to create. It's also because too many out there think they could never do what we can do now, and compounding on that is that the atmosphere of the community has become one of jaded cynicism, no matter how much we blind ourselves to that truth.

The past hostilities between a certain project and the community poisoning things further not withstanding, this community is choking itself to death by the way many people operate and think around here. We often look down on people who do things we think are dumb, or because we think they didn't put enough effort into something, or because we hold newbies to this stuff to unreasonable higher standards than we did to ourselves and others when this community was just starting out a few years ago.

Nobody is going to be like myself, Pik, M2000, Beyond, SDo0m, TurboChaos, among many others in a day, a week, or maybe even a month. Getting better takes time, patience and commitment, but nobody is going to want to make any of those three things in a community where people are told to read tutorials or offers, more often than not, little meaningful help to other members. When people ask for help, they want to interact with someone who is knowledgable in what they are asking about, not a referral to some tutorial. Yeah, it means more questions for more experienced people, but it's also one of the reasons why so many never complete a mod of their own. Nobody does or says anything to galvanize the will of people wanting to get into the modding game.

Also as a whole, we've stopped fostering actual, productive creativity. As awesome as it is that we have Model Importing, look what it's mostly reduced us to: importing models from other games. The only one left who was doing vertexing mods, was a guy named Tyshy, and his stuff is of quality we used to be amazed by back when Vertexing Mods were reaching the middle of their climb to popularity. It's not even considered great by our standards now, but he's still making creative things regardless of what we think of what he creates or has created as whole.

Then there's the fact there are so few people who are proficient at Texturing and creating UV Maps for mods. It's another one of the reasons why so many new mods are little more than recolors, nothing more. Nobody has the knowledge. Nobody is taking things further. I may not be one to talk in this regard, having been inactive for so long, but that's far aside the point I'm making here.

Nobody is being engaging with other people. We're basically slapping words on a board without trying to have any meaningful interactions with our words and it's stifling. It's killing our community.

That needs to change. Badly, if there is to be any hope of this community being any more than a dying husk of what it used to be.

I can't import because I don't have 3DS Max or Maya; I'll eventually continue trying the FBX Converter, but, even though last time I got it to import to BrawlBox correctly, the textures were screwed up, and it crashed Brawl. First, though, I'm still bookmarking and organizing those bookmarks of every single hack on the Brawl Vault, so that I don't duplicate any already-made imports.(It really would be awesome if BrawlBox could import Blender exports)

As for vertexes, TyShy ain't the only one who's doing it; I'm currently working on my first vertex, to vertex all of Link to look like Peter Pan(With new textures to do that), and, other than some minor vertex issues that are only noticable if you're extremely zoomed into the model, I wouldn't say it's a half-bad vertex. Click here (http://www.mediafire.com/download/45pnf1fo7vf92rd/FitLink00.pcs) to see it; it's only in stage 1 of 3 of the vertex. It's not too good, because I can only manually transform vertices, without having an extrude or rotate button or anything like that, but it's good enough to not be crappy, that's for sure.

And as for textures, I'd say that even though most of my textures are recolors(Some, like my Project Super Smash 4 Luigi, for example, are textures, not just recolors), the recolors are rather high-end quality. You can see how high-end they are here. (http://projectrecolor.wikia.com/wiki/Windhunter7%27s_Project_Recolor_Wiki)

I think the real reason that this community is "dying" is that we aren't polite and respectful enough when we introduce the new members to the forum, and we don't chit-chat with people regularly. We could actually increase the community's activity by creating projects and asking for people to help out. That's why when I was on two project teams, there were about 15 or so members in each, only about 3-5 or so being on both teams.

This is very true. People rarely help each other. There arent very many tutorials being made. People get criticized for what they want to make for a hack or mod. The request threads are filling up with no one doing them. (Granted a lot of them are fan characters or have no detail or cant be done) This community is dying. That is true. I also feel like its a competition who can make a better hack compared to someone else.

I agree. As I tried to mention a while back, a lot of the people here are simply awful.

I can't create to save my life, but seeing some of the people that can kinda just act so funny is disheartening. It's a miracle I even frequent this forum with the attitudes I've seen displayed here. And I literally could not care if my account gets terminated or something just for adding my two cents, because I'm really not missing out on much.

I'd love to give examples but it's apparent that this attitude is abound in this forum. Take the time to look through, you'll see. A lot of people act like modding is a job, when it's really just a hobby and should be treated as such. No one is entitled to anything really, considering a lot of what's done here is done by choice.

this too. if your opinion is generally different compared to everyone else's or if you prove a point against someone, you generally get warned.

This is my biggest issue here. Very few people are willing to learn. They rarely ask for help. I get PMs all the time for help, and I try the best I can. However, it usually ends with them asking "Can you do it for me?"

Then they don't learn. Beginners need to start by asking questions and searching for help. I see too many entries when it says "Ignore this problem" or "I couldn't figure out how to do this," when the solution is so simple. And usually, these people go on and finish their models without even asking for help.

And then there are those who have been here for YEARS, and still don't create things to the best of their ability. That is what gets me going. They know it has issues, yet they don't take the time to figure out how to fix the issues. They just say "Oh well" and released an unfinished product. It's not their skill that's lacking, but their patience and work ethics.

I know that what I said in the WIP thread came out as harsh, and I apologize for that. But these kind of things make a huge impact on the community, with experienced modders releasing mods that I know they can do better with.

TL;DR,
No one is willing to learn. Not even experienced modders. And it makes me sad.

Also excuse any [censored]ty wording and grammar. I'm hungover and hella tired.  

Exactly. I don't fear being "warned" or "moderated," it's not hurting my feelings. No one on the Internet is going to actually visit me and physically kick my ass for speaking my mind, so I don't fear anything.

Simply put, those with more experience (or so they believe) think that they can really put others down or harshly criticize others and it's unfortunate. The community's been dying for a while anyway, a lot of people who make decent stuff don't get involved with the forums, they just make stuff. Those are the best modders in my opinion.

The modesty... it burns!

By the way... this is a joke. Don't get made at me please.

I agree; in fact, I'd say that your hacks are awesome compared to most, because you have effort and imagination put into them! :D

That generally really only happens if you go to far or it devolves into flaming or the argument derails the topic for too long.

@HO: There's speaking your mind, then speaking it to degrees of stupidity. Sometimes it's best to just drop it.

@Nano:

-but like I also mentioned Nano, many of the people who ask you to do it for them probably don't have the confidence to do it themselves. They've never tried and don't want to end up disappointing themselves. It's a poor excuse, but it's the truth.

To draw a parallel here: I'm good at drawing, pretty darn good, yet when I show my work to most people, you know what is the one thing I hear most people tell me?

"I could never draw like that."

They cut themselves off at the knees and flounder because of it. I try to encourage them saying they could, but they insist they can't. It's the same thing here on the forums and for our modding community, and nobody gives anyone words of encouragement to, as I said, galvanize their will to create.

I concur that the lack of help is something that's hindering the community.

When I first started out, I was really lucky Tormod was there to answer most of the questions I had to ask. Hell, I think I still have some of his old PMs. After playing his Evolved Pokemon PSAs and FD Link PSA coupled with how much he had helped me, I started to look up to him.

I knew at the time that my animations would never be as smooth as his and would never be able to code as well as he did, but I still tried and had the desire to be as good as he was.


And I can agree with this. Along with something else Nano said: people rushing things. I'm sad to admit that pretty much everything I've done has been rushed (although thankfully, my current ones seem to not suck as much ass as the old ones did). Whether it's working on a PSA with other people or working on my own, I always rush it out (doesn't matter why, just matters that I do). I've promised myself that I'd go back and make them better but we all know that it's not gonna happen for a looooong while

There's a whole lot more I want to put, but I'll save it for later.

The majority of our warnings are for necroposting and spamming, so I don't know where you got this idea.

There's that modesty again... It's starting to scorch me now.

I know, right? The only reason I actually can do my textures/recolors is because of the tutorial that I made, and if other people followed it, they'd be just as good as me. Same goes for when people ask where basic file placement, like the FitMario00.pcs, goes, and they thank me drastically; I was once a noob at this, so they can get even better at knowing this than me, rather than exaggerating their "uselessness"


I'm decent at modesty... :P
Dat joke op

I apologize if I come off as slow or if I misunderstand, but what exactly are you insinuating? Never once did I make a post going overboard about something I disagree with, considering, again, I don't frequent this forum for the reasons you stated, and I don't think my post is stupid in the slightest.

Bear in mind that it doesn't bother me if you find what I say ridiculous, but a more clear reason would be appreciated.

Cause I myself have a habit of speaking my mind to extremes. That's what I meant by degrees of stupidity. It's a cautionary from someone who's had a bad habit of taking speaking his mind to extremes himself.

It's nice to speak your mind, keeps you from bottling things up, but sometimes being so blunt about it just causes trouble.

@Nao: Read for a 3rd degree burn? :V

Why do you want to kill me? That's not nice.

*Burns to ash...*

Thanks a lot Velen...

Anyway... Yes... these forums are dying. People are unhelpful [censored]s, or are unwilling to learn nitwits with a lack of confidence... Not much is going to change unless the majority are willing. With how things have been lately here. I kind of doubt that's going to happen. Not saying I don't want it to... I just mean I don't see it going that way in the forseeable future.

So meh.

THE PROPHECY (http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=17547.msg718099#msg718099)

I'm so sorry everyone

Already happened, what with Sm4sh being released... :'(

Pls.

Oh, you don't say?

Thank you for saying this.

Gotta say that your statement is true.

Mewtwo2000 and DSX8 have been very helpful to me in the past with their PMs, even though they haven't answered in a few months.

SSB4 is certainly a reason for the lack of interest these days, but keep in mind that although SSB4 has things that Brawl doesn't, on the flip side, Brawl hacking has been able to create things that SSB4 doesn't have.  Take Project M's ocarina easter egg for Link.  And look at the SMBZ Mario moveset hack.  And, y'know, the based clone engine.

I didn't realize there were these sorts of problems with the community with attitudes and such.  Sorry about that.

No problem. You're not expected to know. It's something I've been observing for a while.

It's something that needs to change though. The current attitudes can't sustain KC:MM as it is.

While it is true that there are some people have a negative air about them, there are other users that are very friendly and helpful. DSX8 is a good example of this. He tries to explain when people ask, and gives honest critique. He doesn't make lazy mods, and takes his time with everything. Now I'm not saying there aren't other users who are like that, but DSX8 is just the first one that came to mind. For new modders, the community is somewhat "scary." You kinda have that feeling that you don't really belong at first, but then you start to feel welcome. When I joined, I wanted help with a PSA, which many people either don't want to learn, or think they can't. I pretty much had a PSA with ported animations, but after that, I learned how to animate and worked on that. Then I got started on importing, and while I've shown a few models, they're pretty much unfinished (materials and shaders) due to laziness. What I'm trying to get at, is that people that say they can't, probably haven't even attempted. You have to try before you give it up. And even then, keep trying, because you're not going to be like SJS, Albafika, or Nanobuds over night. It's going to take a while.

I have to disagree with the main statement.
The release of the next smash, the lack of interest over time from both hackers and users, people simply moving on with their lives and pursuing other interests, and modding this game being reduced to merely importing things is what has caused the most damage.

The "attitude issue" you mention is real, but it's not the main reason why these forums have been dying.

You think the biggest issue is we don't interact with each other?
Well, I don't know what you expect people to do... randomly talk about their deepest desires and darkest secrets in order to bond?

You say this community isn't friendly, but to be honest this has been a way more friendly community than most out there.
Just go look at any other community or website based on a hobby or the modding scene of other games, you'll see tons of elitist unfriendly [censored]s.
Actually, I think I've seen way more [censored]s in smashboards than here.

We even have a big off-topic section where people can be friendly and talk about other things they like.
Hell, some of the modders from the past are still here only for the off-topic section and the people they've met there.

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Reading the thread seems like some of you guys think it's a problem that people don't "help" others, but I ask you then what do you expect?
Do you expect the experienced hackers to go out of their way and waste so much time to try and teach the random noobs how to do things?
There's several tutorials about how to do pretty much all the things we have learned and developed over the years.
The knowledge is there, it depends on each person to actually pay attention and look it up.

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So you're the first member in the list of big dogs pantheon of brawl hacking?
To quote someone sometime somewhere tonight... "typical velen, narcissistic in every post".
Sorry, but I couldn't help commenting about this.

Have you stopped to consider that most people that have that attitude or don't pursue learning something or getting better, or developing a skill, don't do it simply because they have no time or interest in it?

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From all the people asking help, the majority are either straight up making requests or asking questions that already have an answer in some threads and basic tutorials.
It's understandable that people don't want to answer the same questions again and again.

You answered yourself the issue about requests.

I dont really see the point of this topic.

You can't really force people to be interested in brawl hacking, especially with Smash 4 being out.

Same could be said of forcing people to be helpful, though if you think the KCMM community is unfriendly, then you really haven't been around the internet.

I think we all know the Internet is a pretty horrible thing, there's loads of people that are simply horrendous. It's just that this forum doesn't make it any better.

I love Smash 4 but that doesn't prevent me from liking whatever Brawl hackers manage to create. But the points mentioned are true; unwillingness to learn, (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/143/193/cad-20080602-358b1.jpg?1309710446) of interest, etc.

And really, in the end, if people refuse to help, there's nothing anyone can do but move on. It does pay to be self-taught but some people simply need that help. I've seen so many topics simply ignored, unless it was started by someone of significance in the forum. It's unfortunate.

@Asuka: I am not going to quote that whole post.

@Oizen: I said it to you on Skype, and I'll say it again: It's not about forcing people to care about or be interested in Brawl Mods. The very notion of trying to do such a thing is stupid. This is about making doing so inviting.

I've been around the internet plenty. KC:MM is the one website I give most of a damn about. That's why I even made this topic: cause I care about it and think something can be done.

I'll now remember you as "The Rememberer".

This is 100% NOT the reason why. Unless there's indeed proof that Smash 4 is being hacked. Plus, Brawl hacking was dying before Smash 4's release.

Alright, imma break this down not just to respond to it. But so other people can read it.


Not really. There's some whispers and hints about it, but nothing outright.


It won't be possible until something like Homebrew is done for the Wii U


What?


Maybe because those PSA creators don't care about or have time to make CSPs or SFX packs for the characters?


... The problem is that the model is ripped from Brawl and is low poly? Literally, what?


But they aren't trying to hack Smash4. It's not hackable yet and it won't be for a while.

People have already explained the -proper- reasons it's 'dying', you're just looking at - and noting - all the wrong ones.

But then, most people in here only came to know about modding through Brawl, so whatever.

Well, if any of you guys have any sound advice on how to improve things, we're here to help, or at least listen.

To be honest, so far I see a lot of very good intentions, but not much in the way of resolutions or solutions. Unfortunately, good intentions only reach so much of the community.

honestly i like hacking brawl better than playing ssb4, mainly because there is no adventure mode in ssb4, but maybe if we can appeal to more newcomers maybe we can get them to join the community, for instense, when a new person joins the site there should be a warm welcoming and someone to help them, kinda like if i was new to the site and didnt have any hacking experience, there should be a list of hackers that i could go to for certain things, hope this helps

thanks, also i think sakurai should at least made a adventure mode without cutscenes like melee's, because i get pretty bored just fighting, adventure gave the game a little feeling of openness and freedom to explore.
But as for newcomers, i say if we lose some hackers we can always bring new ones in :)

To me, this is just another thread to lampoon what's wrong with this forum.

You've made a thread just like this before, but about nooby mods.
Are you kidding me? We have millions of help threads, yet PEOPLE DON'T CHOOSE TO READ.
"how do i hack smash"
We have a couple stickies on ONE SUBJECT, and people still don't read. To me, people aren't searching hard enough for answers.

Probably because you only look "skin-deep" into it, so to speak.

One way to try fostering a new attitude is something the forum has been sorely needing for a while now: new decorum.

We've had this same black and gray skin for almost 3-4 years now, and with Smash 4s release, it's about time the forum has a visual change of pace.

Some brighter colors, new buttons and a new banner would be a good place to start, I think.

Maybe replace the default and custom emotes we've had for eons with new ones too? Made from scratch?

Yeah, for the most part the biggest thing, I think is this forum needs to start with a visual overhaul.

Don't fix what ain't broken.

The layout and color scheme of the forum is fine. Would be neat to have themes, but I don't know the limitations of the engine KCMM is running on.

Smashboards has been pretty dark, but they have skins (or don't. Can't remember. Know the pre-rehaul did).

sorry. i ment new tutorials arent being made. a lot of them are out dated or have broken links or pictures. ive seen some threads that people need help with das donkey vertexing, which is super out dated.

OMG NO NO NO!!! This color scheme is awesome, and so are the icons!!!(In fact, this forum has the coolest color scheme I've seen yet, with SmashBoards coming in close)

It's not a matter of it being broken, Segtendo. How the forum looks affects how people perceive it. / look at it. Back when the skin was first made and done, it may have been cool, awesome and posh.

Now it just looks dark, dank, drab, and is representative of our currently jaded, cynical attitude as a forum. That needs to change. Changing the look of the forum isn't a negative thing, and on top of that, Pre-rehaul Smashboards had a far more engaging color scheme and overall design that had far more visual flavor, and even then, post-rehaul Smashboards has far more color than our forum does at a minimum. It has 50% Gray, Silver, and Gold.

What do we have? Black, gray, gray, and more gray and not much else, besides the buttons, links and banner. Pages for the boards suffer from the same thing. By comparison the forum's current theme is even less visually engaging than Smashboards as a whole, even though it's mostly bi-chromatic color scheme compared to our comparatively monochromatic one.

The greatest strength of the current skin is its simplicity, but that doesn't make it engaging, or necessarily universally appealing.

@Windhunter:

Pls.

I giggled.

this is not a good place to say what I really think about this community, but yeah, this thread is pretty right
I recognize myself I am very bad at taking criticism of my hacks and I only improve at something when I actually feel like doing it; but the thing we have to point out is that as Velen said, people barely helps and the request subforum is actually useless
my personal reasons to dont help others very much and dont take requests is that if I took the time for that, I would have no time to work in my own projects, and afterall it may sound selfish, but the most important thing to do are own projects

Yeah, i would love themes. Sometimes it feels dark and boring.

I agree with the part about criticism, sometimes the gaming community is never satisfied with our hacks, but I guess you cant satisfy everyone, but for the most part I really love this site, this site is the reason I got inspired to hack ssbb, without brawl vault I would have never been as good as I am without the help of others on this site, so if you ask me i love this site and dont really plan on leaving any time soon, keep those who are willing stay close.

well, people are not satusfied with hacks for 2 different reasons:
one can be because they dont know the character or the source of the character, (some people dont like to add a hack of a character they has no idea of who is it) and this happens to me frequentlyw ith my 2hu/animu imports lol
the other reason could be the hack's quality, now adays is very hard for a vertex or a texture to be VERY popular and liked, even model imports themselves can be taken down because of its quality, when they are half-assed-ly made or when it is actually greatly made, this factor can even make people like a model import even if they dont know who the character is lol
I dont really share that feeling of yours tho, Im not here because of the hacks, actually is strange when other people's hacks gets in my sd; but well Im no one to judge, afterall as I said I cant take cricism, the last time I got one, I think I took the DL down and ranted in my fb page about it  lol

I don't think the problems plaguing the community have much has to do with general hack quality.

There's always been poorly done hacks, and there's nothing wrong with it. When you first start out, you don't know much, so you shouldn't be expected to be some great hackamatician.

(Part of) the problem lies with users continually pulling excuses for why their hacks aren't up to par. Innovate! Use creative/artistic freedom! Try a different method! Experiment! Do anything but release your work saying "I'm aware of these problems, but..."


It's the other way around; people barely learn.

For me, I honestly don't mind helping people if they're actually willing to take my advice. I think it's great when people learn, in fact, I wish I could help more people make more interesting and creative mods. The problem is, what's the point of taking the time to do that if nobody's going to utilize or retain the information you give them?

For example, Beyond's model importing thread. He started it, but understandably couldn't finish because he was busy with other things. I continued it for him, finishing and updating it with several sections of extra information such as how to set up the model for each animation type and whatnot. I have no idea how long it took Beyond to start that tutorial, but it took a good chunk of my time to update it like I did, and I know that a lot of users use it to learn about model importing, which I am grateful for.

But just recently, a user I won't name posted that they wanted a "FULL, comprehensive, step by step guide to importing a character." Sooooo... did they even LOOK in the model tutorials board? They didn't even need to search; the guide Beyond and I worked on is PINNED. There are several tutorials posted here on different aspects of model importing. Do they want somebody to come to their house and hold their hand? Or just make their mod for them while they sit and watch?

For reasons like this, I usually have to gauge whether or not I should involve myself with helping a user based on how they act on the boards. If they're open to collecting and effectively applying all information they can find, then I'll be glad to tell them what I know. But if they're clearly ignorant of existing information and unwilling to the research and work necessary on their own to apply it to their specific situation, forget it.

Not to mention that often if you help somebody do something specific once (usually one-on-one), they'll keep coming back for more help with specific tasks. People with knowledge on your problem may be able to help you, but that doesn't mean they'll always be available to do so.

In my experience, helping most people like that is actually more trouble than it's worth, if it's worth anything at all.

The solution to this problem isn't simple, though. I can't say I have any ideas on how to fix it.


This, along with what I said above, and the fact that maybe nobody knows the answer probably contribute to the perceived lack of help on the boards. Modding is just a free hobby, nobody's obligated to do anything. I think if you truly like modding, you'll have the determination to figure out your problems somehow.

lol most of my hacks are characters that I made/OC characters because I'm creative and likes making my own characters lol, and I feel the same way about using other people's hack unless it's a hack that I don't know how to make or is just too lazy lol XD

also thanks I agree that a lot of people no longer values the thing that was valued back then

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Post Merge: February 20, 2015, 09:13:34 PM

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also thanks I agree that a lot of people no longer values the thing that was valued back then

dont get me wrong, Im not saying vertex and texture hacks are bad at all (I, myself cant texture, so Im nobody to judge texture hacks); what I mean is that people dont apreciate it as before, which I guess is a point we all agree with

Oh, sorry.

I remember the day where people pumped out vertex after vertex and it was astounding. People like Beyond, Waffle, and ShadowSnake made some [censored]ing amazing things.
We also had people like ItalianStallion, Robz, and Mewtwo dominate the stage game. Now, we have a few pro modellers (LlamaJuice, Peardian, I'm looking at you two) who have worked either solo or with others to get their quality models in game.

I always try to be as polite as possible on the forums. In fact, anywhere in public.

I'm not sure why some people act so snobby and stuck-up around here.
I mean, not everyone is like that, but I've definitely have seen a few.

It's kinda sad, to be honest. It has been only recently that I have gotten into hacking and I know quite a few others who have as well.

I'm sure the community will be back to it's hay days when they make SmashWiiU hacks a thing. Unfortunately, it'll probably be a year or two until then...

Getting back on the subject of how to change the look of the forum overall...

I was thinking about the idea of maybe shifting the site toward more "mellow" and brighter colors using a color triad of blues, teals and pale magentas. Give it a sort of "student lounge" feel.

-and perhaps come up with different motifs for specific groups of boards using relatively simple designs. Like a "workshop" motif for the boards relating to mods, and a "Cafe" motif for the General Discussion boards. While integrating the mixture of "cats" and "Smash" more into the forums overall identity, trying to give off the feel "We're a bunch of chillaxed kittens and old cats who love to do and mod Smash. Come right on in."

To me the community isnt dying becuase of anything like that, its dying becuase ppl loose interest over time, so manny years of something and your bound to loose interest.

I usualy checked vault every day tryed every hack i found but then after like 2 years it starts to be boring this happens with everything after some time ppl will just stop playing becuase they already did play the game for alot of time, now i havent played brawl for months becuase i was tyred of it, it wasnt becuase of anything else but becuase of get bored of playing ssbb.

So... you're suggesting that the sites color layout to look very close, if not exactly, like the color layout of the PM site? I don't think that would be the smartest option Velen. I'd choose another set of colors... maybe something like... the colors of the morning sunrise. Those colors are a bit more relaxing. Usually when you think of a sunrise... you think of relaxing things, out in nature or a peaceful place... Well that's what comes to my mind anyway.

@Carnage
That's just your reasons for not wanting to continue. Not everyone thinks the same as you. Also, punctuation goes a long way when trying to be coherent. You should try it some time.

grammar nazi are also why ppl tend to leavue the forums too...

For some reason some ppl feel the need that everyone that isnt a native englsih speaker must speak perfect english on a forum, i never had any english course or anything all my english came from watching movies and playing games and i dont feel the need that i would pay to have an english degree so i could write on a forum about ssbb modding.Srs this is one thing that pisses me off if you were talking my language and made afew mistakes i would like a normal person undertand that it isnt is native language so errors are bound to happen, but i guess most ppl  cant stand to a foreign guy talking their native language and making mistakes becuase they shouldnt be allowed to do so without taking a english course to make perfect pontuactions on every sentence.Also i said why i lost interest myself  and i bet some ppl did that too.

True; I only have like 50 downloads per texture I've made, and only like 70-100 per texture of an already-made import, whereas I've seen many people have like over 1,000 downloads for one basic texture.


Like Segtendo said,

Maybe add a theme picker, where you can choose your own hex color values and stuff(Similar to wikia.com's theme maker), if possible. I'm sure that since this is a Brawl forum, mainly about Brawl, an old-school type game that wasn't as well-liked as Melee, Project M, or Sm4sh, there are probably a lot of other old-school people on here, who like neutral colors for a forum; so a theme would be cool for some, but probably a lot of us here on kc-mm love it the way that it is.

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Post Merge: February 21, 2015, 09:37:59 AM

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I actually have respect for foreigners who speak English; they usually have better grammar structure when speaking than Americans, as Americans are lazy compared to many countries. I only find it annoying when I don't understand what they're saying, like if they use Google Translate to translate their speech(i.e. not speaking English), because I like helping people, and I can't do that if I don't know what they want.

It's indigo, silver and purple. I'm pretty sure that's not "Blues, teals and pale magentas." Only the banner has any color besides that...

At this point we have 5 pages of discussing and pinpointing issues, but just like Miacis said not real suggestions of how to fix them.

The thread is going in circles now and it's more of a complaint central.
So, any good reason to keep this thread alive?

There's the Board Problems, Suggestions and Updates (http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=2555.0) thread to make actual suggestions.

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I actually like the idea of changing the forum's theme, updating it could renew interest.
If I had to choose a color scheme, I'd go for one that emulates the interface, menus, and css of either Brawl or Smash 4.
Also adding and changing a few smileys would be nice, like updating the stock pics to the Sm4sh ones.



That sounds like a baby product oriented color scheme.
Or like one of those ugly 90's shirts.


But this is a brawl hacking site, not a yoga or tai chi seminar. :I

If you guys want to keep the community alive I think the best idea would be to show somewhere else your work. Smashboards' Brawl Workshop forum is pretty dead, but Project M's Customized Content subforum is alive.

Getting your work to reach more people is the best method to get one's motivation restored, which I feel it's the main problem most people are facing here.

Ouch, fair enough.

Basing the new theme off of Smash 4 or Brawls menus seems like a cool idea to me, yeah.

Will would like to insert the cat motif somewhere into it though.

I mainly use Smashboards because it's easier to look at, that and I know quite a lot of modders over there, I mainly lurk on here which is why I don't comment much.

To address some of things people have said, I try to help as much as possible to a lot of people who message me on the SB thread, not only that I'm learning and practicing everyday on modding, being taught by some amazing people who's willing to take time to help me (Taiko for example) as well as getting feedback in so many area's whilst at the same time being inspired by the level of detail from others (IWG and Nano are perfect examples of a goal I want to reach in terms of modding in the future, they don't rush and take their time making sure it's all in check before release) If it helps I can post more often though.

To me personally, it's the site design that puts me off, I don't want to come off as rude or whatnot, this is more of a standpoint of someone who works in web development and programming everyday as a full time job, is that this is site is very dated, it's using an old themed generated website (The theme is from here: http://www.fussilet.com/ (http://www.fussilet.com/)) , the vault goes down, a lot and can be very slow at times. It's hard to look at and not only that the site is very off-putting to anyone who joins, I remember that I ended up using the custom content thread on SB when I first started out because I thought that was more lively haha. I do apologize if that came off really negative but that's those are reasons I keep hearing from people and not only myself.

In regards to who is rude and who isn't, I don't really see that (at least, not as much as I imagined) everyone here can be nice and we all get along in my opinion, hell, if I'm honest I never really had any issues on either side in regards of anyone being rude, everyone here and there is nice basically, doing their own thing.

In terms of if the community is dying or not, I feel it's more on question on why the site is dying, the SB forums are more than lively from what I noticed so I don't think the community is dying, that's just my two cents on it though.

When I meant showing the work I didn't mean promoting the web itself though. Of course most people in a forum about a mod of Brawl already know about Brawl Vault :p

What I meant was making threads about one's work. Iwantgames, Nanobuds, Taiko and the rest of the Smash 3 team, drogoth and some others already have a thread there where they show their things, but the rest don't.

The main problems of Brawl's modding community are that people are leaving and almost no one is joining, but before going about getting more people joining with colorful themes and some other stuff I THINK that it would be better to try to get everyone together before any other thing.

I've seen some people saying that are losing motivation and are about to retire. Drogoth and Tabuu come to mind. "Fixing" that should be a priority right now. Of course no one should be forced to do something they don't want to do anymore, but I just feel that that's not the case.

While the community's attitude is definetely a factor I don't think it's as huge as the OP makes it seem, and I honestly never felt it was filled with a**holes, to put it in a way, anyway. I've seen WAY worse communities that are still very active to this day.

Oh; guess I was a little too literal interpreting your advice. :-\

some of these people who judge others because of their grammar are native english speakers,
and thats it
they only speak english.
as oppose to the misspellers who can speak and write more than one language

ive noticed some users never come back after the site is broken for a while

You missed the point of what I was saying. I'm not saying "Ugh, why don't you speak perfect English?" I was really saying to just separate your sentences better with a little punctuation, so it's not just a wall of words. I have nothing against anyone outside of the U.S. Don't misunderstand.


There are more colors than that. You are just pointing out the main ones. Stop being so ridiculous please.


I don't see how that matters at all. A color is a color. They're not derived from any activity. I just suggested those to maybe change the mood the look of the site gives. Nothing more.

You are correct. We are being hurtful and negative. QUICK, SPREAD HAPPINESS WITH DANCING!!! :kdance:

This place lost its charm.


I actually moved my stuff over at the smashboards. I comment there more because I feel I can get easier and more feedback over there than here.

I... hate, how more certain more experienced people on the modding scene  criticize others people's attempt in learning the ropes, and criticism IS good, but I refer to that unhelpfull and personal criticism.

That's why I wanna improve on the stuff I do, why I wanna learn to be better. So I can take request, so I can help others when I can and so I can lend a hand to those who need it.

And let me be bluntly honest. Only a few tutorials helped me into stage building. The rest I had to figure out by myself.

I wanna learn, and I want to improve. But something tells me that my answers to improve is not here.

I guess I can change that once I feel like Im exprience enough. I can make a stage making Bible if I must.

I've been here for 6 years this coming August. This place is literally my home. I check here every day because I have nothing better to do with my life.

I feel like this place is just... here. Many of our best hackers have just disappeared with better things to do. The tutorials we have are also way out of date. Perhaps a pro hacker or two should put up some tutorials of how they do things.

I don't even make legit hacks. I can do minor things. Maybe an occasional BRSTM here or there, but I've been just focusing on work, school, and other video games.

Don't get me wrong. This is a very good place. I just feel like we aren't what we used to be.

I think the main thing is that, like most communities, whenever something new and exciting comes out, people will move on from old to new. In this case, it's Smash 3DS and Wii U pulling many people from Brawl, and therefore Brawl modding. That's just the way some people are, they don't want to be stuck with an old cell phone when you can have the latest iPhone or Galaxy with all these fancy gimmicks and features.

But when it comes to the modding community itself, it definitely can't be argued that having low standards definitely hurts the site more than it helps, and that people should definitely try to do more than just the bare minimum. Quality matters over quantity every single time, and it applies to pretty much everything. Despite this, people aren't obligated to do their utmost best, and that's the sad reality of it.

The average person doesn't want to put so much time and effort into learning how to import models and rig, or how to do textures from scratch and remap a model. They want things to be done for them in a click and drag manner, so they don't have to learn the basic terminology and the rest of the beginner modding process. Or they might just be learning how to do simple recolors, or learning how to loop songs. Whatever it is that you make, you only get as much out of it as whatever you put into it.

Nobody started out as a complete professional, we all had to start from the very beginning and learn, either by ourselves, from others, or both. Some of us may have had some prior experience with programming or digital design. I myself got into modding because of Project M, when I learned I could insert my own textures and music, and my rather minor modding portfolio took off to what it is now. We all are good and bad at different things, no person on here is perfect or knows everything, and it's this combination of strengths and weaknesses that defines this modding community and makes it what it is. It may not be perfect, but deep down, when it comes to it, we're all people that love Smash and enjoy modding it to various extents, and that's what makes it worthwhile to be here, even if it's filled with a lot of terrible and cringe worthy mods... not going to point out any specifics, you know who/what/where they are.

I myself might not come here a lot, but when I do, I do feel a little sad that this place just isn't what it used to be, and definitely needs a jump start, like a new design facelift, or a way to generate more traffic and get more people to visit and make accounts, while offering some small incentive to do so, kind of like the badge system.

Ironically, your vault consists mainly of recolors. :P

I'm surprised this thread is still up. Why is it even?

Because somebody bumped it with a non-important post.

Can it die now? I don't see a reason for it to be here anymore.

Hahahaha, exactly man, I'm not being adamant nor modest about my work, and I know it isn't the worst, but far from the best. That's just the way I was when I was active. I liked the game for what it already offered, but the palette choices just didn't do it for me, so I made my own whenever I got an idea or I picked up a character I liked using. Then I got into the UTCP with Minty/Mars/Maritime for a while. Then I started doing recolors and background swaps for stages, and then importing from other games and doing some parts from scratch, and finally got into the Smash 3 project by redoing Brawl's textures from the ground up into a different style.

We all have our different paths and ways of doing things, but in the end, we do things because they make us happy, and we enjoy spending time doing something we like, especially if others end up liking something you make, and it fuels the fire for you to move onto and make bigger and better things.

Notice how I didn't say there's anything wrong with recolors :)
I only was pointing out the irony, because irony can be funny in a non-hurtful way. :kdance:

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Post Merge: March 09, 2015, 07:58:35 PM

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In fact, my Vault consists of ONLY recolors; even my Smash 4 Kirby and Smash 4 Luigi are recolors! Lolz :P

Then don't look at it.
Most "recolors" these days are just hue changes. Simple sliding of the hue bar in photoshop. Real recolors take more time than that. Quality ones take more shading to get the color changes to look well and to keep detail int he original texture. They require color palettes that actually flow together, and not just thrown on there.

Your recolors, windhunter, are an example of these. A lot of them look like lazy hue changes. No shading edits. No thought our palettes. It is easy to tell rushed recolors from you good ones. It takes a lot more practice and time to make quality recolors than simple ones.

I agree with all of this, people are too lazy now, people are too rude to each other, etc. I knew that there was more to this than Smash 3DS & Smash Wii U being out and I'm glad that I was right about that...sorta...I'm glad that it's not just the new Smash Bros games being out but at the same time it is upsetting how the community currently is. Course I can't say I'm the nicest guy and take every requests because I don't. There are a bunch of times where I could've been nicer, or I phrased my wording incorrectly so it came off as mean or whatever. :P
One of the key factors to people not bothering to learn how to do new things is that they just don't have the drive to learn. I remember back when I first learned model importing, what kept me focused on learning how to model import was the drive to make cool imports that I either thought people wouldn't make or make better versions of existing ones (whether it's the existing one had a legitimately bad rig or the model/textures were inaccurate, etc). It was that feeling of knowing I was learning how to create something awesome that kept me going. Hell that exact same drive is what kept me focused on learning how to make player models for Garry's Mod. Lots of people here either don't have that drive, or it's not strong enough for them to stick with learning how to do something.
Another problem is, like Velen mentioned, that experienced hackers are viewing newbie hacks with the same standards they view hacks from experienced hackers. A few examples are detailed rigging (like it blends smoothly and uses bones that most people overlook like the WaistNb bone) as apposed to the rig just looking clean and not having vertices move all over the place. Models having a bunch of different spec-maps & shine effects as apposed to the model using the right textures to begin with. A very common critic is normals/smoothness. Using the Weld & Smooth modifiers in 3ds Max is simple so a newbie just might not know those exist (thanks Nano for telling me to use the Weld modifier way back when I imported Sunshine Mario) but editing normals to make different polygons look seamless isn't as simple/easy of a task (depending on how perfect you want to get with it) but a decent amount of less experienced hackers get reminded about the normals being perfect in rude ways. Because of newbies being held to the same standards, they begin to feel like nothing they can make is good enough so they stop trying to learn because they think it won't make a difference.
One problem that a lot of experienced hackers have (myself included) is that we forget how difficult certain things are for newbies because we've done them so many times, and thus seems like an incredibly simple thing for us. Course I'm not saying that there aren't simple things that newbies don't know, folder paths for example are the easiest of things besides downloading the actual hacks. However, it's memorizing the folder paths that is the problem, some are easy to figure out like the Mario files go in the "mario" folder but because of how a lot of files are named, there are still files that are hard to find (the Adventure Level files for example *shudders*) or aren't as obvious, like where to put the CSS images.
There are times when newbies should pointed towards a tutorial, usually if they're starting from scratch like how to import a model. There's so much info to explain that showing them a tutorial is simpler and easier. If it's something specific then you explain what to do. Like for example, how to make a texture transparent. It's simply replacing the material and giving it another shader as apposed to something like "how to give a character a transformation like Super Saiyan" or something that has an existing tutorial that works. Not exactly sure if a tutorial for giving someone a transformation exists but it was just an example.
While I'm not a newbie at importing characters & stages into Brawl, I'm still a newbie at some other things related to Brawl and then just other game hacking/modding in general. I tried to get into GoldenEye 007/Perfect Dark hacking, but because there weren't many tutorials, and almost all the existing ones are years old & outdated, I couldn't really learn anything. Another thing was that all the experienced modders were so far above me that things that I assume were simple to them either made no sense to me or I couldn't follow what they said due to a lack of visual aids. That is another thing, a good amount of tutorials would benefit from pictures and stuff, which could be another reason why newbies don't get very. They can't find certain things or don't know what something should look like.
I know this is a big post, but I'm (slightly) more hopeful I'll get friendly response since one of the problems with the community is people being mean/rude to each other. One of the reasons I still bother to post things on the WIP Workshop is because there's usually at least one person who even acknowledges the pictures...which is one other thing that happens to newbies: Getting ignored when they're showing something off or asking about something. Getting ignored when you're trying to learn something new severally hurts one's motivation.

You worked so much on your post I had to say something.  :P
When I was learning how to hack psas, I've asked for help a few times and like half of my questions were never answered. You can see that by my first posts on those forums. The same still happening today with many newcomers. After those years here, I understood that BJ is right when he says that, in most cases, is not worth helping others, firstly because people tend to ask before they even try doing it themselves, you can see that by the kind of questions asked, and it's already a sign they hardly will put effort in learning things. In my case, that's enough to not want to try helping that person. Sometimes, you write a bunch of explanations, and the person never come back again to relate if it worked or not, or just end up asking you to do it for him/her, but then the person don't learn, and sooner or later will come back with more questions, maybe even with the same doubt.
That may be selfish but it's how I feel. It's the reason I usually don't reply people that knows nothing. Because... c'mon. Some people ask how to change a jab's damage. That's just a single number to change. The fact they never used psa or brawlbox before is no excuse for that, because with a minimal effort, it will take you 5 mins to find out how to do it, but instead of losing 5 mins, they would rather ask on the boards and wait from hours to days for some reply. And still, most of my posts have been on the A/A help section helping others, because I know some people are trying hard to improve their work, and there are nasty tricks in psa that would take ages to them to figure out by themselves. Most people don't have the patience I had to figure out things without help, but if they show a little they want to learn, I help.

My point with this is that the community has always been like this towards newbies. People don't trust newbies' work. When I posted my final smashes, which is the first thing I tried to share, my thread died without replies because "who is mortimer? who cares. more sephiroth plx". That keeps happening all the time around here. I've worked on them for 2 years before I mentioned, and that's how I learned 80% of what I know now. Now sometimes, people come and ask for the final smashes. I honestly don't know if I feel happy, disappointed or angry with that. A bit of all, maybe. But things evolved now, and there are more possibilities, so people that join now want to do all of this right away, but the amount of things they must learn is too overwhelming and they give up. Fact is, you can't try depending on others. You gotta do things like you're the only person in the world that can do it, and do your best. If you start asking too much for help, people tend to stay away from you, as you show you're not trying. We're not on the times when you could get 2000+ downloads with a texture recolor anymore.

I agree that experienced hackers tend to be harsh with newbies. But you have to say the truth. I see dozens of people praising animations, saying they are excellent and awesome, when they clearly are not. If you keep praising a bad work, the person will never try to improve. So far, since 2010, I only downloaded 4 psas that I use, 3 of them I wouldn't download if they were released today because the standards are higher. You don't need to be rude, but you gotta criticize. If the person feels offended because you're saying the truth, well, the person gotta deal with it somehow. Just because that work is the best thing you ever did doesn't mean it's good afterall.

Conclusion of all of this? My opinion: there's NOTHING you can do to make the community be what it was, because it never changed. A bunch of bright colors on the board won't change what people already is. In rude words, this is natural selection. Those who are not strong enough to stay here will be forgotten. If the community is not strong enough to survive this world, it will be extinguished. Only the strong survive the path of knowledge.
It's the reason of why I don't post much outside my thread. I've learned to not let myself get hyped with anything, because I never know if the person will overcome the challenge, or the challenge will overcome the person.

And, huh... don't get offended by my reply. It's just my opinion, afterall.  :)

You're completely right about sometimes just having to say the truth, there is a difference between criticizing and just saying something is bad. That difference is explaining why it's bad, that way the person can then try to correct their mistakes. Sadly, the number of people who understand the difference is outnumbered by those who don't understand it. Course there are times where someone is criticizing a work but the way they phrased their critic comes off as rude or a bit too harsh.
You're also right about times have changed, I still remember back in 2011 where model imports were still relatively new and so people made a bigger deal out of it. Vertex hacking was also still relatively popular, don't know if it was considered big at that point because I'm pretty sure I got into Brawl Hacking right in the middle of the transition from Vertexing to Importing, infact I had found it easier to do "vertex" hacks via importing a modified Brawl model as apposed to using the standard methods. People weren't as harsh as they are now when it comes to imports because it wasn't quite as common.
One benefit of this not being the "texture recolor = tons of downloads" era is that people don't make a big deal out of recolors anymore, unfortunately that doesn't stop all the hacks though. I totally understand why newbies go that route because it's simple and it's a good place to start, but it does annoy me when someone makes a recolor and is like "I've never seen this one before" and you just look at the other recolors for that character and find either the exact same recolor, or 95% the same recolor in the first 3 pages. Despise the ones that just barely change the colors, especially when it's a Shadow recolor that had been posted by 50 other people. :P It's dumb when the recolor barely looks different, and it's dumb when someone makes a recolor that you can find just be looking at the first few pages of a character. More lenient on recolors that I've seen before, but it had been like a month or something since I last saw, so you would've had to have looked through 10 or something pages. That's understandable, few people are going to look through tons of pages to see if their idea of a recolor had already been done.

Remember... you can't have opinions on the internet. Just some helpful advice.

:v

The reason for the change of colors would be to change the overall visual feel of the forum, not so much the people on it. That change would have to come from people themselves, but changing the look and feel of it can help.

Colors affect people psychologically. As it stands the forum has an overwhelming amount of black and grey in it with a very small spattering of color in places. Changing the overall palette can do good things for the forum in the long run.

Oh you meant that literally, I thought it meant something else, like change how everyone reacted. Anyways changing the color scheme could help, course then again...how long has the forums been black & grey/has it always been black & grey? lol

@StupidMarioFan1
I know what you mean about being rude.  :)  I was just trying to point a possible cause of why some people do that. I also don't agree with being too harsh towards newbies, because you will just make them feel unconfortable.
I was here when importing started, and I got a headache of just thinking of what I would have to learn (considering 3ds knowledge) to do that. Surely people were less harsh. After living with only vertex edits, model importing was a dream. Personally, I like more vertex edits than models, because I hate having an imported model over Mario with Mario's voice and attacks. Not to mention the rigging issues you have by not using the properly skeleton. The few times I downloaded them, I used 1 or two times and never again. With vertex edits, they look like the original character with a very different alt recolor.
It may be dumb, but I don't mind people uploading things that have been uploaded before. Mostly because, like you said, there are too many pages, many with several hacks with broken links. Besides, I think you gotta do here what you like doing, and not do things people would like to get. As long as new things keep comming, the community will live, even with its usual troubles.


Of course. :) I didn't get it.




I hope you're right, really. If somehow colors manage to make people more comprehensive, it's an improvement. But I don't believe it will happen. I like the way it is now, and I don't feel like it affects my mood or judgement in anyway. Well, arguing about preferences is pointless. Some will like, some won't. End of story.




Here is a fact. People who know how to do those things are people who tried until they learned because they wanted to do something. So they are usually busy with their own projects and don't want to use their time working for others. Very few people take requests. It's one more reason of why i think people gotta learn everything they want to do. Like, if you want to do a ninja psa, should you wait for someone upload a ninja model, so you can start? No. You should find a model and learn how to import it yourself. You won't just solve the problem, but will learn how to import models, and believe me, that opens a lot of possibilities in brawl hacking.


Another thing I forgot to mention in my last post. I think people here are too impulsive. Before starting working on something, they really should know if they really want to do that. I see people with dozens of unfinished projects, and they keep switching between them every week and never finish anything. After a year, half of those projects are either cancelled or given to someone else to finish. It's not a surprise of why we have so few psas released nowadays. No problem if it will take a year, two or more, to finish it. But FINISH it.
For example, Mr. Misfortune had asked me to use my psa in his brawl pack. He worked on his project for two months, and as soon as he got the new smash bros, he gave up everything and never even logged again on the vault. Those kind of things just create disappointments and hype people for nothing.
And I'm not saying you should work in 1 single thing until you finish it. We always get tired and need to change things sometimes, but be sure that the dozens of projects you're doing is what you really want.


 

Do also keep in mind that a large portion of our userbase is quite very young, and has always been since pretty much day one. (I suppose that is to be expected when we're talking about Nintendo products?) Not many of us were able to set ourselves into a good work routine when we were 13, or even had acquired any true critical view on our own work.

Thing is, back in the day, you needed to jump through some crazy ass hoops to make even a basic retexture, so generally people dropped out fast. Those who stayed solidified the community because really, once you had gotten the hang of it, it wasn't that bad.
Same could be said when we were all doing vertex edits. Now we've all got better tools and projects like P:M have got people easily jump-start projects on their own. "If one project succeeded, why not mine?" It also gives them a base of already-made customizations to start off from.

Let's be clear, I'm not putting the blame on anyone here. Not on developpers, and not on P:M (for once :P). I just think there tends to be a natural dilution of knowledge as a community like this progresses, and what used to be a steep entry step became a nicer slope.
I feel we didn't have as many of these "newbies don't learn/vets are too elitist" arguments back then, because vets more or less stuck with vets, and newbies stuck with each other. Now there's not as much of a divide, people need to interact with people of different skill levels they aren't used to dealing with, and now look at that, everyone's calling someone else responsible for it all.

I mean yeah, things haven't been going great in a lot of ways, and there's definitely some room for improvement. Our hosting iissues (and an advertising plan that comes with it...) need to be settled sooner than later, and I've been looking into doing some Tutorial clean-up duty.
But really, I don't believe the overall "mentality" has got anything to do with it.

Yeah dude, what's up with the hosting thing?

The community is probably dying because they don't wait the 5 seconds for the site to load and think we're offline/dead already.

We're a website who receives massive traffic (and the occasional DDoS), yet we essentially have no ad revenue whatsoever, so our meager hosting plan isn't exactly keeping up with the number of visits we get. Chances are we'll need to spend about 5 times more if we want to keep the website stable, and even though we don't exactly mind spending some of our own cash, in this case we're really gonna need a steady money flow to keep the place afloat.

So yeah, at the moment, we're trying to come up with exactly what kind of ads we want, where, how often, and with which formula (Google AdSense, Project Wonderful, or a mix of both). Thing is, none of us knows much about advertising, and how much would be enough, so progress is very slow.

If memory serves, our next hosting contract should start next month. Thanks to the most gracious donations we've recently received, we should be able to get a much better plan for this year. What comes after is still a bit uncertain.

I agree about the younger people being a large base. I've been in that situation myself. I got banned from my first community because I created a fake e-mail address to try steal information about a project the site administrator was doing.  :-X
The younger you are, the more impulsive and more reckless you are too. It's actually surprising that many young people sticking with brawl. The normal behavior would be forget about it and move to wii-u smash bros. But that's also a point that helps the community be the way it is now. Like you said, making textures was quite hard before, but now it's much easier. Means that they can do without trouble what people suffered to make before, and probably better. That, however, is not enough anymore, because hacking brawl evolved, and now you must work a lot harder as well to make a work acceptable by the community. So what happens is, though things that were hard are easier to do now, you had to know less things to make good hacks. Less tools, less possibilites and such. Nowadays, just a list of what you gotta know may be enough to scare a newbie.

Then, veterans have a lot more stuff to explain to newbies as well. And most give up or disappear or try depending exclusively on others. That's expected. But after some time, you also realize that it's useless explaining everything because those who had to learn won't put to use what you teach, and you eventually get tired of explaining the same things over and over. Also, the veterans had like 5 years to learn all they know. Newbies will get here feeling they have to learn this until next week. That easily crushes them.

With this, I agree also that there's no one blame. It's why I believe this is just a natural process that's happening. And with mentality, I didn't mean people are stupid or whatever. Just that we are what we are, and what's happening is just a proof of that.

Still, I liked checking this thread. It was good to see what people think about this place.

@Mortimer
The thing about not getting many downloads/replies when you're not very known and all that not only happens with mods but with pretty much everything. If Destiny was released by an unknown indie developer instead of Activision things would have been very different.

Yeah, I agree. One more thing that shows this is just a natural happening. After you "survive" that a little, you start getting some recognition. But if you'll survive, it's up to you.

Easier said then done that's for sure
That hits home for me with my tutorial thread. It also goes back to the fact people I've helped seem to want step by step through the whole process. That's fine and all but if they really want to learn asking for help as soon as they run into a single issue isn't good for learning. People here also see repeat questions that are constantly answered so don't bother responding. I enjoy helping them because it make me feel as if I have accomplished something but I'm not building them their mod. Those that are like that aren't going to improve fast enough for them so they stop. I've been here since the very beginning and I'm still learning due to all the new tools released and it's daunting at times but the results of the time are worth it. They just can't see that and it's killing us of the creativity of the vault.

Yeah. I also didn't mean I'm an example of success. Pretty far from that. I'm surviving so far but I guess that makes me something like a zombie, if you know what I mean.



Your tutorial thread is impressive  8) I don't see people who do those things often. I already thought about doing something like that (coding related in the case) but the fact people tend to ask before they even try or search made me change my mind. I really feel take will be a waste of time. But I know it isn't, because when people find what they want in tutorials, most of them will say nothing. They will just post when they want to complain about something or ask something that's not explained in the tutorial, and that creates a fake bad feeling about doing such a thing.  :P

Pretty much explains why some of my desktop pics were deleted even though they're censored for the forums.

Yeah I agree, I don't like my need help threads being ignored ether.

The thing that really makes my angry is when people report hacks for something small or something they just made up, like if someone reports me for not giving credit for a hack that I made by myself, or whenever I put my videos on YouTube people dislike every video I put on there, but everything else doesn't really bother me

I wasn't going to make a post here because I don't have anything new to add to the whole conversation, but I feel as I should chip into this.

Like other people have said, the community has taken a bit of a blow recently, despite the various breakthroughs (BrawlEx, Module research, BrawlBox, etc). From what I see, my reasoning for the community falling is because of a few reasons.

-People demand things to be handed to them on a silver platter, even if it's impossible.
-People have a severe lack of wanting to learn. People whom are too busy to learn are exempt from this.
-People can be rather hostile sometimes, myself included (as I can admit I can be rather mean sometimes). But not as bad as other sites.
-Sturgeon's Law having full effect on the Vault.
-Various people enabling bad behavior.
-Various people can't take criticism.
-People tend to have too much of a focus on Project M to even care about Brawl stuff.
-People tend to rely too much on the more well-known modders to make content, rather than make their own.
-Attack of the 503s (this is mostly a joke).
-People acting in a cringe-worthy manner (mostly noobs).

While the Brawl Modding community has taken a blow, I don't think it'll die out so soon. Because games such as DOOM 2 still have a modding community to this very day.

Because they were straight up porn. Sexual acts (even if they're censored) break the rules. Don't blame the community because you don't know the rules.

I tend to ignore Help Threads for a few reasons.

-People being entitled [censored]s and demanding help.
-Other people are already helping the user.
-The problem is an issue I don't know about.
-I don't want to deal with people whom are just too dense to understand certain things.

Don't take it personally, but don't be so entitled.

So you're going to blame the entire community on a handful of trolls?

Neither were many people :V


I wanted to talk about this, not saying that the other stuff is important (Sturgeon's Law gave me a good kek). But this is what I wanted to mention specifically.

I have, for the most part, started to gear more (or whatever is left of it) more towards P:M compatibility. Not because I enjoy P:M, but because there's more of an audience: more people have a chance to see someone's work there as opposed to here. Smashboards is consisted more of consumers as opposed to KCMM which has more creators (which are, for the most part, concerned with their own problems). More people are willing to test for P:M as opposed to testing for Brawl. Hence why I've started posting more on Smashboards than I usually do (which used to be never).

That being said, I'm not saying that KCMM has no people that are willing to test. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I've had more feedback on the Chrom PSA (shoutouts to Ultraxwing and Mr. Ryuzaki L, being the only ones lol) as opposed to Smashboards (Which, I still haven't gotten feedback for, and I'm sure I never will).

It's not that hard to type a couple of names. Just follow the rules. It's that simple.

And I know this is directed at me. You didn't make the Rosalind model for the PSA. You didn't do it yourself. So you need to credit whoever did. And there is no need to go and falsely report my uploads just because you're a little mad at me.

the only thing I didn't  do on that model was the bang, everything else was my work, and actually that Samus model did freeze my game, I just didn't never reported it, but I noticed that you love to report all of my projects so I reported yours for an actual reason, but I'm not mad lol

U wot cheeky [censored] m8?


Seriously though... those are a constant here. The entitled elitist attitudes as well. I try and behave here. Haven't gotten a warning yet, thank goodness, and I try to help others with things I know how to help with. It's not hard to be kind... yet it's easier to be a rude ass. I am guilty of that. But I usually don't get that way unless the person I'm dealing with warrants it. Either way... I think the community just needs to heal... Not be revived.

Easy there.

And such things give the cyan stars a painfull day. These revenge reports are really becoming common, something that grinds my gears. Just make sure these are indeed valid.

Oh and may I remind you, I believe Nano wasn't even

Edit: ... trying to offend, hes just faster than most of us to spot rule breakers, and JUST like us, we may commit mistakes in reporting.

Like, not crediting, something that I fround upon. Especialy, People that don't credit in their packs.

Well, if you have BV issues, mention it on the BV thread.

Plus, I found this site that insults other people's hard work (you would probably recognize this):

fnbv.tumblr.com (http://fnbv.tumblr.com)

I couldn't post the first one because the first word gets censored and pressing it leads to nowhere. It's a website where it judges other people's textures that they have worked so hard on.

Well, so what?

Everywhere you get critique for your art, be it youtube, paint, photography, everywhere. My stuff is in there, you think that stopped me 11 months ago?

Pretty sure most of the people in this thread know about this.

And if you cant take critique, then how will you improve?

Even IF they're just bashing your work. So what? You won't be less of a human if it happens to you.

This is an example of harsh criticism. People tend to not be able to take harsh criticism.

Even though it's mean, it's not hating. And that blog is run by one person.

To be honest, I don't need critique to be better. I can get better at making PSAs my own way. I don't care what others think of my PSA making, I'm proud of it, and if any of the others can't take it, they can stay away from talking [censored] about it. No offense, but people who critique should always know that people try their VERY BEST to finish a hack, even me, incomplete, or not.

That's how human others are, being supportive. :srs:


Honestly, it doesn't.

I suppose.

yea I see my Lumara hack on there, but don't really care because, the hacks that were on the website were actually good hacks, and I can bet that the person that made that website can't even do half of the stuff that he's making fun of XD

Um...

Yeah...

You're the problem with this community, buddy...

You are the exact type of person whom I have a problem with.

It's one thing to be happy with your work, but that bit about not caring about criticism makes you destined to fail with your endeavors. You don't only make content for yourself. If you publish your work for others to consume, criticism is necessary to succeed. If you cannot take criticism, then I cannot support your work. And I hope no one else supports your work either.

Just because you can't make something, that doesn't mean you can't critique it.

And stop white knighting. Explain why you think anything shown on FNBV is good in your eyes.

I believe that everyone on this site has patential and every hacker on this site is as great as the real game designers, I have seen many things that I thought were impossible happen on this website, and if someone criticizes your work it either means 1. They are jealous because they can't do what you can.
2. They are just lowlifes that have nothing better to do
3. Some people criticize in positive ways to make someone work harder

But no matter what everyone is great at what they do :)

...excuse me. Solid color texture 'hacks' are good?

I doubt people are just criticizing because they're jealous, or lowlifes like you say... I'm sure it's to help the one receiving it to better their work. Some don't always say the right thing, but I'm sure they're not all [censored]s. Those people that are bashing just to do it are trolls. They hold no value.

That line about every hacker here being as great as the game designers themselves is a little farfetched though... I highly doubt that. I'm not saying they couldn't be... but at the level some of the people are at, I don't think they even stand up to the ability of the game designers themselves.

This is one of the most stubborn, thick headed things I have heard on this site.
If you want to be a good modder/artist, you need to grow thick skin. Its part of life. Deal with it.

...
Your reasons are full of [censored]. So if I criticize someone's work, I'm a lowlife? I'm jealous of your Super Smash Sisters mods? No. If I criticize you, I'm telling you what is wrong with your art, and how it can be improved.

You guys obviously don't know what criticism is.

"It looks like [censored]"- NOT criticism. This is what the lowlife scrubs will say, which I RARELY see here.

"It looks like [censored]. Here are things you can do to make it look better: etc etc"-Criticism. Harsh, but still criticism, which is perfectly okay. If this offends you, you need to grow some thicker skin.

"It looks okay, but needs A LOT of work to be better"-Good criticism.

agreed but some people always have room to grow, not necessarily saying that everyone could be a game designer, but I remember how horrible my hacks were when I first started, XD and not saying that it's wrong to criticize, but it is bad when there is more criticizing than helping

Nano is right here... There are different forms of criticism... It's how you take said criticism that shows how you can improve. If you think it's an attack on you personally, then you'll literally stagnate. If you get bad criticism... weed through the tough rhetoric and find the things they are saying you need to change to help your work. Thicker skin would also help you do this.

KJP stole my post, but I want to break yours down into parts and give my own examples/thoughts



I look at where you are at currently, and I see myself when I first started out. I had ambitions (pretty much my whole thread lol). But as time went on, I knew that there were some things I couldn't achieve. Whether it was limitations at the time, it being impossible or even if I just didn't have the time. Something stopped me. And you know what? I'm happy that they did. Looking back at my Roy and Hector PSAs, I'm appalled that people (including myself) actually liked them.



I've downloaded your Cloud and your HW Link PSA just to give them a shot, to give you the benefit of the doubt. I can't say I'm disappointed in the quality of your work, but I'm disappointed that you didn't ask for critique or help.

Critique from others is the only way you'll get better.

Help will widen your understanding of what you're doing and will help you learn even faster (who'd have thought?)

Back when I started out, I was a complete noob. Yeah, I knew how to PSA (I got a lot of help from Tormod and occasionally from ABC) but I couldn't animate to save my life. So I started making a few things and when I started to gather more steam (started making more animations), I started to put them up on my thread. At first, I thrived on praise and people saying "Wow, it's X character! So cool!" , but as time went on I saw that I wasn't improving. I wasn't getting to what Tormod or DivineOverlord or SilentDoom were doing (it should come as no surprise at this point that I have a man-crush on Tormod).

So after "tricking (http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc489/abdmir/BrawlboxAnimation5_zps826caae2.gif)" KJP to post on my thread (not really tricking, but he had one idea which was incorrect and I took it lol), I became quick friends with him and abused that fact to get critique on my animations. And what do you know? My animations improved. A lot. Hell, I'll even put up comparison pictures:

BEFORE (There's 4)

AFTER (There's 5)


And after everything I've seen, done, and worked on, I am damn proud of the stuff I make now when I compare it to what I did in the past.

Completely disregarding critique won't lead you anywhere. At all.
Yes, receiving harsh critique all of the time sucks. But it should help motivate you to do better.
Not asking for help will not get you anywhere either. Reaching out for help is the best way to get better.

To top it off, you're publishing your work on a public website for the world (well, some of it) to download and try out. You'll never be free from critique, so you might as well use it to your advantage.

I reached out to you in a PM because I know what it feels like to have a bunch of ideas and want to pump them out. But the way you're going about it won't help you improve. Putting out (excuse my language) half-assed or incomplete stuff won't help you improve.

1. I wasn't even talking about you
2. You read that out of context
3. Some of those are the cases, just because u don't do that doesn't other people don't , and trust I have met people that do that for those reasons

You were generalizing all critics in your post. Speak what you mean next time, and I won't read it out of context.

Getting criticism from others is one thing, but people have to learn to criticize themselves too I think. You won't get better at things by staying in your comfort zone, challenge yourself in ways you haven't before. Try new things. And even if you just made the greatest thing, you'll should always find ways to improve it. Nothing is perfect, after all!

I feel like some people don't take criticism to part. They take it as offensive and get all pissy. It happened in a thread that I will not mention because it ended up in flames.

KJP actually created a thread recently on how to properly critique things.

Alright, you convinced me, at least give some critique to the Palutena PSA I made:

forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207880 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207880)

The problem with critique is people want other people first hacks to be as good as they hacks, they are making for years,i remenber a new user did a little mac psa and the animations were crude and the psa wasnt the best but it was his first hack, i replyed looking good for a first hack, but lot of kcmm veterans i wont name just said awful animations, you need to restart all over, how do you think a new user who did his best for a first hack reacted?of course they quit and fell unhappy, i saw this several times on the importing thread also, people trying their first import and get nothing but bad critique.

People here just fell every new user must produce hacks on their level,a person needs to improve itself starting low you can expect his first hack to be amazing but if you push them down they will just give up which happened to lots of cases i remenber with new users.

Im never satisfied with what I do, and once I receive a complaint from one of my mods, I immediately try to fix it no matter how old the mod is.

Because if there is a way to make the stuff I make better, Im sure as hell Im gonna take it.

Like what happened once in Smash 3, I had to retexture ROB from scratch twice (retexture=blank canvas, white and undetailed) I had to sketch in every nuts and bolt, shadows and dents, with no shortcuts or tricks. I made him pixel by pixel to make him better. And turns out that in the end, I made something that gave ROB the quality seal these charming veterans wanna distribute.

I learned how to photoshop HD textures, which helped me filling in blank spots on some other designs I made IRL.

I used to only made background swaps (some of the lesser skill required stage making), but then LC said something about "All being the same stage with the same colors" or something like that, I was pissed and I wanted to prove him wrong. So I started making custom stages just to prove a point that I could do something else with these PM stages. And because of that, I'm actually learning to use 3DS max which is something I never seen myself doing. And in the end leaving my comfort zone to do other better things.

And from simple stuff like these:
http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=33672 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=33672)
http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=34013 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=34013)

To these:
http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207550 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207550)
http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207173 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=207173)

Unlike how I used to be, I wanna be criticized in order to just make something good (or bad) better!

Of course, in the end is your choice whenever you take criticism or not, but be certain that you are ignoring an advantage.

I used to be like you, not accepting things and only wanting to do the things each of you are comfortable in, but frankly...accepting criticism may prove that you indeed care of what you do. And who knows? Maybe the one criticizing may help you hands on.

---

My English sucks today.

Never said criticism is bad, just mean ppl need to take in account the person experience.

If its a new user making his first hacks you should that that in account, you can expect a new user to make the same content as someone who has been modding for years, when ssb4 was announced we got alot of new users with desires to make ssb hacks for brawl and everyone of those got very harsh critiques for their first animations.

They were using the first steps we all did in the past like modifing existing animations and such, they were all very new to the scene but they never had any help from the veterans instead they got very bad harsh critiques for their first project.

Its like review a kids drawing and an artist painting you cant use the same standards for both and people were using the standards from vetarans and wanted amazing animation and codding wich were impossible for the kids, if you keep saying to the kid their job sucks and needs lots of work and its bad they will never become an artist becuase they will give up due to negativity from the beggining.

I like to critizice when i see a user doing an inferior work than what i know they can do, but this guys had no previous work and yet people were expecting top notch quality.

And then there are also people with no experience whatsoever documenting whether or not something's "easy". Which also can tick a lot of people off.(Including, but not limited to, me)

After all, you don't see me going around saying "That import sucks" or "That PSA took no skill whatsoever". Sometimes, people think that rudeness is the proper way to criticize, when it's not. People can easily critique things by analyzing what the problems with it are, but without saying what the problems are(And having no experience in something either also kinda makes it hard to believe that their critiques are right), you kinda can't take a word of what they say as correct, because how do you know that they're correct in their assumptions? Unless the person shows how the mod is bad, or shows somehow that he has experience in the field, I'm not entirely sure that they're critiques really are worth it, and lots of people here probably feel that way. And when a bunch of people here act like this, of not showing that they know what they're talking about, that's probably the main reason that people get scared of showing their work, because it'll just be called "bad" with no explanation. We need to focus more on analytical criticism, and less on subjective criticism.

I would LOVE to know an example of when someone actually did that here. Links to specific posts.

Well i can show you but i hope i wont get in trouble for this...
http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=46179.msg1300122#msg1300122 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=46179.msg1300122#msg1300122)

No offense to kjp but the entire post is just to kill the newbie psa, he had just joined and was using modified animations like we all did on the start, but he got a very harsh critique, basicaly saying everything is wrong, this isnt the right way to encourage a newbie in to the community, it was his first work he was probably still exploring psa and brawlbox, heck his first psa was better than my first psa by far and if i had that criticism when i was starting i would have probably had gave up everything altogether.

He's doing it to help the guy, not to be mean. Criticism is when you publicly address what's wrong with something. He isn't saying "it sux get on my level" or whatever. He's helping. You criticize someone to help them become better.

Everyone's first hack isn't going to be the prettiest piece of art. However with some criticism, you can help someone better themselves. A big part of working with graphics is the fact that you might need criticism from your peers. I work with it a lot, as I am working on becoming a graphic designer. We need to do critiques to help each other out with what you like and what you don't like.

Most of the post was just saying poor this, poor that, was it poor work? Of course it was but people need to set there bars accordingly to whoever they are seeing, it was very poor work for a veteran but a decent work for a newbie first time messing with psa imo.

The entire tone of the post wasnt to help but to say it was a bad psa overall, the only constructive criticism was the wait1 bone stuff, the rest of the stuff isnt constructive, saying poor animation, poor psa codding and such doesnt strike me as an help tool,newbies first always start with porting animations and experimenting, i know my first psas had alot of animation porting and size changing becuase thats how things go, one needs to crawl before walking.

If you thought that was mean, you have no idea of other things people have said.

The first example that comes to mind is FNBV. While I like FNBV, their critique is much more harsh than mine would ever be. (But you should take note that the posts on FNBV are almost always unedited.)

And people need to understand that harsh criticism (or any criticism in general) =/= (does not equal) hating. If I were hating on it, I would have flat out called it trash without elaborating about what I thought made it bad.

But even so, my post you linked isn't a a very good example of harsh criticism. Quite a few of you would be able to tell if I were to harshly criticize something. But I want to avoid that, as I'm aiming to work on not being so mean.

That's another issue with the Brawl Modding community. People are just too sensitive sometimes.

I never at once flat out said it was bad. I was pointing out the exact things I found wrong with the preview. Stop making [censored] up to make me look bad.

I think you need a good fundamental understanding of design if you wanna make some good mods. Try your best to understand how the original artists created, well, whatever it is you're creating. With this, you'd also want a pretty good understanding of painting, as you'll be painting quite a bit.

 You can also get fancy with zBrush and sculpt high poly models for things like clothes and intricate armour. You'd use these models to "bake" it's lighting into your low poly model. This makes texturing a breeze, relative to hand painting anyway (unless you're Pik)

Go check out Arrimus 3D. He has hundreds of tutorial videos on YT that are very applicable to Brawl modding.

As for why I think the community is [censored]? Well, multiple reasons. One, Smash 4 came out (which will be amazing when back-porting is finished), and two, no one takes criticism seriously. Honestly, I've critiqued quite a few members in WIP Workshop and largely have been ignored. I know I'm not particularly active in the community when compared to others, but I have been lurking since the beginning of Brawl hacking; I know a thing or two despite not having anything to show for it.

Some times people can be mean about their critique. When I was younger, I made really [censored]ty guns in CS. Like, combining random things and uploading them. You can actually still find them on gamebanana. Anyway, criticism was really harsh on that site back then. CS: Source had just come out and 1.6 was slowly dying, though it still had players, and dedicated modders making very crisp, beautiful models. I wanted to join, but I knew basically nothing, and just fiddled around in Milkshape, attaching things in different places and seeing what it looked like. If I thought it looked okay, I'd release it.

Problem was, people were relentless with their critique. Some were nice about it, but others were pretty terrible. All of my bad skins are gone now (just checked) but there was one guy who told me to dunk my eyes in acid if I thought my skin looked good. Honestly, that's when I called it quits on CS modding. Granted, he did have a point because my model was absolutely terrible. His error, however, was not taking the time to actually correct me. He was one of the creators of one of the models I had used, and thus had a great opportunity to teach a random noob. Instead, he flamed me hard.

But, on the other hand, I took good criticism seriously, as it's your best learning tool. So long as you seek out the proper information and apply it correctly, you'll get better. Be it modelling, texturing, animating, what have you.

Tldr, always seek out criticism, whether it's light or harsh.

I linked that one becuase i remenber where to find it, it was nothing personal tbh.

Like i said, for me it was a very harsh critique for a noob first try messing with  psa.

its like if i saw a noob model importer that had just joined and said

Poor model,poor texture,poor rig and poor lightning effect.

But Carnage. You have the constructive criticism badge. SURELY you must know what proper critiquing is.

Parts of that are proper criticism, where you actually explain the problems(For example, "obvious user of Marth's animations" or "Random enlargement"), but there are also parts that just cause feuding between the criticizer and criticizee(i.e. "poor recolor work", "poor PSA coding", etc., where it doesn't say what the problem is)

Remember, we can always get better at analyzing problems, maybe even offering fixes, or even implied fixes, which helps the community feel like the criticism actually helps. I'm not saying that I'm better than anyone else at critiquing; we ALL need to get better at being more analytical and fixing problems, as opposed to just saying "they're bad".(As analyzing the problems helps the user to understand how to fix the problem)


Just like the joke "You look like heck!" "You should see the other guy", but that doesn't change that the person still looks like crap. It just means that the other guy looks worse, but it doesn't change that you still look aweful; likewise, saying "That was mean!" and "You should see the other guy's meanness", that's the exact same type of dialog, just worded slightly differently.

And sometimes, it's good to be sensitive; if you're sensitive, then you'll know how to treat people more like people and less like someone to just argue against.


Exactly his point. The fact that he knows what proper critiquing is, that it's about documenting what the problem is, so that the problems can actually get fixed, and to encourage people that just because they're first model or anything like that may not be good, it doesn't mean that they can't get better at it, maybe even mastering it. For example, I originally used the paint bucket tool to recolor snapshots I took from Freddi Fish, and I even painted the same color on the shadows, making the characters not have shadows! Everyone starts as a noob at everything, even the masters. Even famous inventors, like Alexander Graham Bell, screwed up many times before being successfull finally. I think what Carnage is getting at is that the true definition of critiquing is not to mention something as poor work, but to mention the flaws, fixes to the flaws, and how to improve and practice. That's what it truly means to critique something.

You explained what i wanted to say better than i could, this is what i meant,  i wont go to a kids first work and say its poor work, it just desmotivates him to even do any more since he took a real harsh critique on his first attemp, what i meant is tone down the bar abit, you cant critique a noob the same way you critique a known hacker work, becuase you know he can do better and the noob is still on the ropes you can say what you would change and fix, but not to bring him down on his first attemp and alot of people do this on the community, specialy to the noobs that came with the ssb4 wagon.

This [censored] right here? This is what there needs to be more of.

THIS is how you bring health back to the community - you essentially nut up and work hard to get better. There's always going to be [censored] in the first releases, but it's up to the person to take a step forward and improve upon their knowledge rather than throw a [censored]fit whenever they're not given five-star appraisals from people with just as much 'knowledge' as the user - sometimes even less so.

Sometimes tough love is all you need.

About that whole Little Mac PSA debacle and anything else when the user aims high. Really high. I mean like, high as the [censored]ing twin towers and higher than that [censored].

When most users start out (that aren't Prodigies), they'll make small edits to a base PSA, maybe edit a PSA that they like. But nothing like that Little Mac PSA. Making a whole PSA having NO experience with animating or coding in ANY form is a bad idea. Yes, you'll get someone like SDoom that just KNOWS this stuff and it's natural for him. And that's completely fine. But that's him, and not 90% of the hacking population.

Telling someone "Oh, this is great but it needs X, Y, Z" is DEFINITELY the right way to do it if they're starting small. But if you're starting big and you want to make something of that caliber, you better be damn sure you're gonna get criticism and a hell of a lot of it.

"But they were trying!"

No, they weren't. If they were, the A/A Topic would be LITTERED with topics and posts with them asking questions with how something works and a question that isn't asked enough: WHY it works.

They only asked for "help" in their own thread. Hell, they even ended up stealing animations from JRush/ThriceWise's Little Mac PSA. The leader of the "project" said that he was going to "Make the best Little Mac PSA". To be frank, he sure as hell didn't show it.

[censored], no matter how much polish is on it, is still [censored].

This isn't bad. AT ALL. What KJP did is PERFECT. He didn't [censored] post the dude. He told him what was wrong with his PSA... which happened to be everything.


It should be the Kiss Ass badge... thats all you really need to do here to get it around here, since real critics are mean bullies.


This is when its important to grow thick skin. Critics aren't here to baby you and make you feel good. If your stuff is bad, then they will let you know its bad. No need for the bull[censored] to make the creator feel all happy and good. It gives them a false sense of accomplishment.

I never said anything about that critics should be babyish and go "it's ok" to everyone. I said that critics should state what the problems are, so that the person who is being criticized has some knowledge to lean on for how to better it.

Honestly, though, I would think that an experienced hacker like yourself would know the proper definition of what proper criticism is. It's not being mean. It's not being so Kindergarten-teacher-ish that you go "It's ok; he tried." It's none of that. It's defining the bad qualities, and offering advice on how to improve upon them. (I have like half of your hacks in my custom build, and when you act like this, I wonder how your mods are so cool and everything; unless, of course, someone properly criticized your mods when you were starting out)

crit·i·cism:
1. the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes.
2. the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work.

crit·i·cize
1. indicate the faults of (someone or something) in a disapproving way.
2. form and express a sophisticated judgment of (a literary or artistic work).

... Are you sure its me who doesn't know what criticism is?

This is EXACTLY what KJP did. He said what was wrong with the PSA, which was basically everything. He was being blunt and honest, not mean. Whats the problem? The poor animations. That tells the guy that his animations need work. The truth hurts sometimes. Its a part of life. But its also a part of maturing and growing up. Not everyone will be nice in their critiques, but if these people really have what it takes to be good in what they want to do, then they will take it all in and improve. If they quit, then this obviously isn't the field for them.

I did have people just like KJP critique my stuff. From ItalianStallion, Velen, Beyond, Pik, and others, I learned how to improve my work. Yeah, I would have the ass-kissers and say everything I made was good and perfect, but I know its not true. I would ask around for help to improve, instead of getting offended from harsh, but true, critiques. There were times when I wanted to give up a project because people didn't like how it was looking. You know those ZSS alts in PM 3.5? The ones that everyone thinks looks bad? I made those. So guess what? Through harsh 4chan and reddit comments, I learned what I did wrong, and they look much better now. Like Scout, I grew thick skin, sucked it up, and took in all the critiques from people. Look where I am now. One of the most successful people here on the Vault. I'm not even an artist; I study Sports Medicine. However, from years of practice, I was able to get this good at this small hobby.

The critiques I've seen do exactly that. It's really difficult to not make a critique sound negative, especially if there's a lot to fix.

As people have been saying, thick skin is essential if you want to get better, otherwise you'll just stay at the same level. I'm pretty sure most (if not all) the "pros" around here have received critique at some point when they were starting, and look where they are now. If they just took it seriously and went "aww these people are mean they didn't like what I did" they wouldn't even be here.

EDIT: And Nano's post.

Well time for me to add my two cents.

Like Scout, we didn't all start as good as we are now. Most of us had critics to tell us what we were doing wrong and how to improve upon them. (Most of them not so pretty) But it was accepting that our mods weren't perfect that helped us to improve, and become great (or in my case descent) Brawl hackers.

The dictionary itself agrees with me and Carnage that criticism requires definition of what the faults are. And no, saying "Poor animations" doesn't even close to do that. Watch "Chopped", "Iron Chef", or any other one of these shows that's a competition, and you'll notice that they ALL have the same thing in common: They document the problem. Why do they do that, you might ask? Because it is required by the definition of the word "criticize" that you indicate/analyze/however-you-wanna-say-it the problem. If someone makes a brand new car, and the exhibit for it has it in a specific color that's horrible-looking, you don't say,"It's a bad car", but you say,"It's a bad color" or something like that, so the person being critiqued can actually learn from his mistakes and better it. Saying that something's "poor" doesn't show how to correct it. Learn the definition of what critiquing is, and apply it, or you'll find that people won't take your advice. Because people can't take your advice if you don't give any!!! It's not that hard to analyze something! Just do it, rather than argue, saying that "it's not criticism", when it's the ONLY type of criticism that exists!

P.S. KJP, like I said before, has some good criticisms; but on occasion, he loses track and forgets to analyze. It just makes him human. We can all better ourselves in the art of critiquing others' work so that the only results are masterpieces.(Myself included needing to learn this)


Except that the word criticize, by definition, basically means to "analyze" the bad qualities. And analysis isn't negative. Negativity is derived from pessimism, whereas analysis is derived from logistics. Analysis isn't even derived from anything like opportunism or optimism or anything like that, because negativity is completely different and not even close. It's like comparing apples and oranges. You can't say that it's difficult to not make it sound negative if they're not related. That's like saying that "It's really difficult to not make a peanut butter sandwich sound negative". I could easily make it sound negative, by saying something like "Peanut butter sandwiches are evil monsters that try to eat you, and they're using ruby lasers to alter our thoughts," but I could more easily say something like,"I eat peanut butter sandwiches, but they could be better." Same thing. So, likewise, you can easily just document the problems with something when criticizing it, and say that it could be better, and to try specific things to make it better. For example, in the sandwich example, I might say something like,"Jelly instead of honey would make it taste better," which would be a critique of the sandwich, saying that it has a fault of not having the jelly, instead of saying "The sandwich tastes poor". You're making something that's really easy to do sound a lot harder than it is.

People like you guys who can't take 2 seconds to read something simple and know how to think are the reason that this community is slowly disintegrating into the vast nothingness of a void.

Most of what Taiko said and everything TurboChaos is 100% correct, that criticism instead of everyone acting like Kindergarten teachers is needed. But that doesn't change the fact that criticism in the proper way is needed, criticism by the definition of the word, as opposed to "criticism" that doesn't show what the problem is.

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Post Merge: March 24, 2015, 08:24:31 PM

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Ironically, I'm actually critiquing you on your definition of what critiquing is. ;D

If you are just gonna take bits and pieces of a definition, not the whole thing, and use it as an argument, then its not worth arguing with you over this.


... isn't this what KJP did? He didn't just say "its a bad PSA." He said that the animations were bad... yet you argued his critique? You're creating arguments against yourself dude. Saying the recolors were bad tells the guy that he needs to improve on them. What else is there to say? They're recolors. Its simple.

Okay this whole, right and wrong of criticism thing has gone on for too long. We don't need 2 pages of what criticism is. I'm sure we all know what it is. So stop bringing it up. You are arguing/debating/whatever the hell this is over nothing at this point. I think everyone understands the general point when this topic was brought up a while ago. I don't think any more needs to be said about criticism. Nano made it clear... Learn to take it... Grow thick skin... And improve. I think that's all that's needed.

But that's just it; if the person sees his recolors or his animation as fine or anything, he needs another opinion. And if there's no opinion on what the problem is, but just that it exists(i.e. "A bad recolor") that doesn't help. For example, when I asked for my Vibrant Fire Mario to get critiqued, KJP gave a definition of what could be improved for it, and it is a recolor. He said "The red is too bright, but the hue is fine." So KJP actually went along with the definition of the word and said how it isn't good.

And also, the underlined-bold text is just to emphasize the words in the definitions that you're ignoring; it's not to pick apart the definition.

And Nao-Chan is correct. Stop arguing, and just accept the definition that you yourself gave of it. Actually read your own posts, at least. Then maybe you'll finally listen. As for me, this is the last thing that I am going to say on critiquing. I could easily go on, but Nao-Chan suggested not to. I advise that everyone else does the same.

I ponder whether the people on this forum have anything better to do with their lives other than fight with each other over "bad mods" and talk [censored] to each other. Perhaps not frequenting it everyday can do you all some good.

If you're arguing about how people interpret and perceive a dictionary definition, then please get another [censored] argument.
So for the sake of this discussion, I'm not even going to address it.


They do.
While it isn't thorough, it is a valid criticism of an animation.
What you're talking about is analysis. Those are two different things.


Okay, I didn't want to analyze more bull[censored], but seriously this is breaking every bull[censored] meter across the world. Even in [censored]ing Somalia.
That isn't making it sound negative, it's straight up false.
False =/= negative


More [censored]ing fingerpointing. We don't need this.
EVERY individual had SOMETHING to do with the degredation of this community.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that I'm to blame.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Nano is to blame.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that KJP is to blame.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to you either that you're to blame.
You aren't in the right. Get over yourself.


Now follow their advice.


When someone says "Poor animation", it usually means everything is [censored]ed up.

Ok; ordinarily, I wasn't going to say anything more about this. But this statement...

is driving me crazy. "I hate peanut butter sandwiches", in contrast to my comment "I eat peanut butter sandwiches, but they could be better." There. Happy? A similar meaning, but one has more negativity, and both could be true.

That, and, also this comment:
The dictionary itself has these synonyms for "Critique": analysis, evaluation, assessment, appraisal, appreciation, criticism, review, study, commentary, exposition, exegesis
Not to mention that "analysis" is the first listed synonym. So no, they're not 2 different things.

Ok. Now that I got those two statements out of my head, I can ignore the other comments that I so want to answer, but know that I shouldn't, as this thread should stop talking about criticism.

Yup. You totally did that. -_-

I'm just gonna leave one more comment:

You guys want us more experience users and modders to help fix this community. We are trying to tell you how to get better. How to improve like us. How to be a memorable modder for your work. We really want to help you guys. But look at yourself. We give you advice that helped us be successful, and you can't accept that advice. What else can we do?

Then offer critiques, according to the dictionary definition, and the synonyms of it, as opposed to your definition that doesn't answer the "how". It's not that complicated. All I'm asking is for you guys to just be descriptive in your criticisms, so that people can actually be helped.

You do realize that this was directed at you too. Not just Nano. Generally everyone who kept bringing it up. Don't try and make it look like I'm singling him out of all this. You were in the wrong and causing this issue to go as well.

I typed out and deleted like 6 different paragraphs trying to find something to say

The real reason why the community is dying? Everything dies and we're dying.

We're a brawl modding community and Brawl has been succeeded by Smash 4. No we're not going to be completely burn out but we've definitely already peaked. Don't expect any huge surpluss of new users or anything like that. This is pretty much it give or a take a few new users in the future.

now shut up and quit complaining about complaining and criticizing criticism.

Are you kidding me?
THAT'S THE PART OF CRITICISM.

Most people, if they're familiar with the program they're making their thing it, will offer advice using any technique. Just look at the model import people. They offer helpful advice on how to improve their rig.

You're just ignoring all the criticism because you don't have thick skin.

I was going to type an entire paragraph for every individual response, but you guys have been not reading my comments in the first place, just skimming over them and only reading the parts you want to hear. This is the reason that the community is dying(Other than the Wii U games, including Sm4sh), that we end up having an argument for pages and pages on whether or not the dictionary is correct or not.

I repeat, I'm not asking for an argument of the definition of the word, as the word clearly states the definition. What I'm asking is for you guys to just be more descriptive when criticizing people, so that the people know what to do to fix the various issues.

People fight each other over anything in here. It's kind of like Fight Club, but a little more polygonal and sadder.


4chan isn't exactly the paragon of etiquette (read: [censored]/cuck every 5 posts or so), but they're damn effective when they need to be.

That reminds me of Gamidame's Vivian hack and how it blew up in his face over on fullchan because it still had the clover hairband.


You... you realize food and vehicle creation is a BIT [censored]ING DIFFERENT from Brawl Hacking, right?

...you do realize Food Chefs strive for perfection as it is and what to the average joe sees as good enough isn't for the elites, right?

...you DO realize cars are created in factories and have little - if any - human factor in their construction beyond setting the machines to do their work for them, right?

Hell, if we're even remotely going to touch the food comparison, even the average joes can tell that something is bad in a Brawl hack, they don't need to be experts in it to know something looks wrong.

...the story's a little bit different if the average joe has the overall intelligence that can rival Odie of Garfield fame, but I digress.


As opposed to a certain someone that thinks the others skimmed over their posts just because said others didn't agree with said someone, am I right? Those are much better. :v


...then why are you [censored]ing about it when people are told something is [censored] and needs improvement?

I'm starting to consider you have an issue with people just because you don't like them and not because they hand out 'mean' criticism. But then again, you're just ignoring anyone who makes even a remote amount of sense because HOW DARE THEY NOT AGREE WITH YOU, THEY MUST BE HEATHENS.


Oh... so you want the experienced guys to give you criticism, as long as it falls within that one specific definition that you want it to be, and by extension doing exactly the opposite of what the experience guys are doing.


Yet again, Nano has a [censored]ing point. You are being given pointers on how to not suck. How to actually go ahead, stomp your foot down, and proceed towards better hacking experience, and you're throwing a [censored]fit because it's not being given the way you want it, or it's not 'nice', or whatever [censored]ing excuse you want to come up with.

You don't want criticism, you want a hugbox for people to tell you that it's okay to do bad so you can continue doing bad while disregarding anything of actual importance or relevance.

Call me whatever you want. I have more integrity than to blatantly lie to people.

This is somewhat reminding me of another thread that spiraled out of control, and we have some returning cast here too, even the protagonist.


My apologies.

I think we all shared our toughts already. So why don't we go back on topic again? It might help ease the tension. (Or hopefully send this thread into the depest forums spot).


Everyday there is atleast one new user who uploaded their 1st mod on the vault. Its just that most of them don't make the cut due to them breaking many many rules.

And judging by various comments, people are returning back to PM/Melee and the occasional 64 and Brawl. I gave comp smash 4 a shot, I feel like its a megaman, Diddy, and Jigglypuff fest. I rage too much on that game more than other smash games.

Oh yeah, melee. Still quite popular after two games later right? Problaby the same happens to modded vBrawl.

Well, the "Constructive" badge was originally created to experiment with nomination awards, mostly out of user request. The people around at the time suddenly nominated a truckload of people who were following their threads, then nobody else has been nominated in the past... two years?

There's a reason we don't do nomination awards anymore. (Not disagreeing on your main idea, though. That badge indeed doesn't mean much anything.)

The only person who can give you the "criticism" you expect is yourself.

You and only you should know how to fix your productions. You're the maker, not the public. The public will tell you what is wrong, and very vaguely. Not how to fix it. You colleagues might help on the how, but that's not called criticism anymore then, it's called cooperation.


And this is a double words of wisdom combo.

I lost interest in Brawl hacking due to Smash 4. I only do the occasional BRSTM because there hasn't been many top-notch hacks recently. The same couple hacks and packs have been on the dail top ten for a few days. None of them are interesting.

Okay, you're right, still though, I am not a problem. Mabye to you, but the community, that's a different story. People still support my work, nobody cares if you don't support it, even me. Also:


Quit the smart-assitude, give tyshy a break, nobody cares what you think. Some of the stuff on FNBV is good, you don't understand because you're not supportive. :-\


You actually got a point, and positive about it too. I can live with it. Thanks for a quick tip, and positive attitude ;D.


Amen.

I am NOT a very good peace maker, am I?

Well...



I have a boss that behaves just like him. And there are multiple bosses that behaves that way. It is best to get used to it now, before its get put in practical use.

Also...
http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=73551.0 (http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=73551.0)

He did this thread, and you can see he's direct, but not offensive. A thread like that is supportive ain't it? Look at the harsh and nitpicky replies, and how the makers react.

No hate here is personal, you are a modder, we are all modders ('xcept for Seg, hes the DJ).
What you are supposed to do is prove them wrong, prove that you can do better. Because if you cry about it, you will go nowhere. FNVB is just that, its like a hurdle of society and growing up.

Take music careers, how oh how many hates can you get if you experiment with something new? Ho-boy! Look at Liking Park right know! FNVB is the Brawl Mod version of youtube comments.

Your choice really, wanna bite back hard, or bite back slowly.

(It is seriously freaky, its like Im saying all of this to my younger self....)

You're right. I can do this!
*And I have seen that thread before*.

Good! Now can we cease to bash each other over criticism?

Im running out of metaphors.

Brawl Hacking is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get...

Oh god, this one was [censored]ty-recolor-flavored.

Sure, I an agree to it.

Lol (can't find a better way to reply to that)