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Offline Thorn

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Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« on: February 06, 2014, 05:00:31 pm »
If you've been poking around the web, you know that today's an important day for Sonic Team. News came out that they were developing something absolutely crazy and that we'd get it on February 6th. The fateful day has come, and surely enough, crazy has come with it! Behold, Sonic Team's latest game!

Oh, and I guess this exists too. Don't cry too hard.

Moving on, let's talk about the last few days here. I hit a breaking point on Sunday with a large group of people on TSC and stepped away from the site, as I've considered doing for quite a while due to that group. I left my resignation in the staff forum that night along with some thoughts of mine put into writing. I figured the staff would get in touch, we'd talk things through, somebody would take my place, and that'd be the end of it. Instead, the staff didn't even notice the topic. Two days later, people noticed that my user group had changed, and panic ensued as people thought I was hacked. Parax linked my resignation letter in the chat, and the IRC chat that had barely said a word in months suddenly started getting very concerned. I got blasted with messages in Skype about how utterly wrong I was, with some of those messages actually contradictory while all arguing the same point. Despite all of this, there was no reaction from the site owner and no indication that somebody would step up to fill my spot.

If the site largely disagrees with many of my points, then it means the IRC chat is an extremely quiet majority while TSC-related Skype groups have become an extremely vocal minority. While I didn't say it outright in my letter out of respect, the main reason I left was because the things I did hear vocalized made the user base seem like a bunch of total asshats, constantly insulting each other, making arguments based on fallacies, and speaking in a language that can only be described as "Twitchese". However, with the sudden revelation of people on IRC actually caring, I feel that I need to reverse course, but I do still feel that my knowledge isn't up to par. I am constantly checking with other people I trust, then taking their opinion and making sure it makes sense before enacting it myself as an admin. With that said, I spoke to Umbreon about how we progress from here, and we both agreed that we need somebody closer to the competition to have authority around here. While we both respected each other's thoughts on who to choose, we really only agreed 100% on one person.

As of the time of this post, flying fox is a Global Moderator on the forums. We will be talking with her about who else can be trusted with authority as we assemble a group of people that know the competition well for efficient handling of BS calls, rule changes, and forum discipline. Parax and I want to do what administrators do — administrate — and thus we need to delegate some tasks to those that care instead of making those that care report to us for every trivial thing. Beyond the staffing changes, be aware that the shelter of "well, I said it on Skype, not TSC" will no longer work. If you are participating in a group built for a TSC event and/or speaking about issues on TSC with other TSCers, then you are still involved in the TSC community and assholery will not be tolerated. Some rude people have hung around for far too long by hiding just out of TSC's "reach", and it comes to an end starting now for the sake of the entire community.

Parax and GerbilSoft have been discussing the site's functionality or lack thereof this week, so that we can use the chart structure for more than just individual level charts. Given this, I expect that we can bring tournaments, Race Nights, and the like to TSC's charts to get some activity into the IRC and forums. The lack of a social scene here besides the occasional 13-year-old halfwit that joins the site is very depressing and needs to be reversed.

I want to hear some thoughts on what the site can be and should be. Consider who is here, who is silent and who talks, who we want to be here, what Sonic's becoming (you really should have clicked that second link in this post), and where TSC stands in the grand scheme of competition sites and Sonic sites. It's clear that leaving the status quo here will simply continue the site's decline, but we can't abandon our infrastructure either.

Oh, and SonicAD, when you see this next week, I need to be re-added to the SOp list. :P
« Last Edit: February 06, 2014, 10:55:11 pm by Thorn »
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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2014, 05:18:25 pm »
we expect to bring many of the social events currently being hosted on SRL back to TSC

have i told you lately, that i love you

Offline Diamond

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2014, 05:32:24 pm »
I have to congratulate Flying Fox on her new Global Moderator position.
Also, the new Sonic game looks very promising.
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nah jk I can't quit

Offline RigidatoMS

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2014, 06:32:23 pm »
Now I understood why I saw you like a Architect Eremitus. Add me on Skype: Rafael Mota Santos
:P
Quote
Parax and GerbilSoft have been discussing the site's functionality or lack thereof this week, and we expect to bring many of the social events currently being hosted on SRL back to TSC. Considering we ran a league in the past and that we can easily construct SRL-style chat bots, we know that we're capable of running Race Night on TSC alone with some tweaking, among other events. The lack of a social scene here besides the occasional 13-year-old halfwit that joins the site is very depressing and needs to be reversed.
I'm a 13 years old boy that joined this site before my birthday. That was a bit offensive for me.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2014, 06:57:00 pm by Lord of losing Rings »
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Offline Magnezone

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Offline Thorn

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2014, 10:20:08 pm »
^ why does puyo tetris end your life

i am good at the puzzle games and making pretty patterns
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Offline Magnezone

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2014, 10:27:21 pm »
I may have assumed that I was quoting a link to the video to the Sonic-related fanfiction project apparently made official and foregone checking if it was actually what has ended life for me out of instinctively deciding I never wanted to see Knuckles as a top-heavy puddle at the bottom of the uncanny valley ever again

I did not mean to offend Puyo

Offline Parax

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2014, 12:49:43 am »
I'm really hoping that significant things do get done this time around, but it is very clear that certain things need to change in order for that to happen; else, in a month or two from now, this will just be a memory, as it has wound up being in the past. :(

I do too. Believe me, Thorn and I both very much want to make some significant things happen soon. I'm not sure how much I should say right now, because we haven't fully fleshed out what we want to do yet, but hopefully you'll be hearing a lot more soon.

Just wanna say for the record though that I think Thorn initially misquoted our conversation in his first post, though - we never talked about bringing Race Night to TSC. I actually think it's fine on SRL; they already handle the race thing very well and it's a great way to pull Sonic runners from SRL over to TSC.

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2014, 02:26:25 am »
Relieved to hear you are here and composed Thorn. You may not know me beyond a handful of conversations but I did get pretty worried about how you personally were reacting to the reactions to your reactions (this makes sense).

I know by status I am still a lowling within the community, hopefully clawing up steadily, but if any of those administering change need a further perspective don't hesitate to throw an idea my way. I see myself as a stuck in the middle kind of runner. I love ILs and TSC, I love the Twitchese citizens too of course (the runners at least, chatters need to prove they aren't mongoloids to me on a case-by-case basis).

For change, the idea of expanding the reach of race nights certainly seems like a smart opening step. It is borderline already set up for mass consumption. Whether this is what you want or not though is down to US. As a community. I feel this is an opportunity to embrace many ideals for the site, rather than slanting further into any one given persons mindset.

The concept of full game runs still sits weird with me. Yeah sure seems decent I guess, you could link any streams to any runners (or YT videos if they aren't streamers). Maybe even move in a unique full-game (but EXTREMELY heavily moderated) category for each game. At the end of the day we want to complete whole games as fast as possible. How do you do this the fastest? By getting every level down to as low a time as possible, meaning we already sit in a pretty strong position in regards to this right now.

Not to force an idea, but the general consensus in the irc when Parax linked your letter was one of sadness and confusion. Obviously I can't speak for these fabled Skype groups, but you can say you are disinterested or unenthused, but you are still relevant.

Also I feel like Knuckles has sucked all of the bad design out of the other three. Yep.

Offline RigidatoMS

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2014, 11:29:04 am »
About the new game, I'll say that this game is going to fail. The reasons are:
1.Nintendo isn't selling the Wii U and 3DS like they expected.
2. If those models of Sonic and Knuckles shown in the first prewiew trailer appear in the final game, that will be bad.
3. It looks like Sonic Team isn't developing the game.
4. How will be scheme of the game? This is a bit confuse for me.
5. Some stages will have the influence of Sonic X-Treme(S. Saturn not finished game), like I saw in the site given by Thorn.
6. We all know that Amy isn't a preferable character. One of my reasons to hate Team Rose in Sonic Heroes.
This is my personal opinion.
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Offline InferSaime

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2014, 11:51:14 am »
All right Rafael I first want to reply to your post.
1. You're right that nintendo is losing money on the WiiU but I'm fairly sure that MK8 and smash bros, that are coming out this year, are going to boost the sales. And the 3DS is actually doing pretty well so it's a good choice to put the game on those systems imo.
2. You're basically basing a book on it's cover(I hope I got this expression right) people are going to need to get used to these designs. These designs shouldn't be a reason for saying the game will be bad.
3. They're not but I don't think that's a bad thing since ex-Naughty Dog devs are working on it. And I'm sure a lot of people agree with that Naughty Dog games are really good.
4. Just wait.
5. Please explain how this is a bad thing?
6. Where did you read that Amy isn't liked by the fanbase?

Tbh I was suprised and sad when I read that you stepped down, Thorn. I do have to agree that there been a lot of insults but I think it's because a lot of people around tsc are frustrated and are expressing them on the other users (yes I do this sometimes >_>). Well what I would like to see change is that there gets to be more use out of the twitter and facebook of tsc.

Offline SonicandInuyasha

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2014, 04:25:13 pm »
All I can say is that I can't wait for the show to come out. The new designs I think are cool, Sega said on there facebook page is that the new designs are only for the show and the game. Wait... did Sega pull a Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures with this? It's nice seeing videos games like Sonic and Pac-Man getting new shows on tv, I think we need more of that. About the Sonic boom game, looks cool.
I love to play Mario and Sonic games with a mix of Donkey Kong and Kirby games. Yes I'm a Nintendo nerd.

Offline RigidatoMS

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2014, 06:04:17 pm »
Game status:
RMS2010 was won by Infersaime and left the game
Yeah, 75% of the things I said were super idiot. But I was just saying: I'm an official hater of Sonic Boom game/TV series.
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Offline GerbilSoft

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #13 on: February 09, 2014, 03:01:43 pm »
You might notice some changes today.

Among other things, I updated SMF to 2.0.7, and I added alternating row colors to the forums. The solid blue (or purple, or black) was getting irritating, and since most other programs use alternating row colors already, I decided to add it here.

Also, you can now see who is reading a given board or thread. (The text has a transparent background on some themes, which might make it hard to read. I'll fix that later.)

More changes will be coming soon.

Offline GerbilSoft

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #14 on: February 10, 2014, 01:21:54 pm »
The colors, Duke! The colors!

Usernames on the forums now have the colors representing their forum user group.

Offline PvtCinnamonbun

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2014, 04:39:46 pm »
I’m relatively new to speedrunning Sonic games, and while I don’t speak for the Sonic Generations community as a whole, let alone the entire Sonic speedrunning community, I’d like to share some of my thoughts and experiences and provide a few suggestions to keep TSC alive and active.

Sonic Generations lends itself to a divided community. There are at least a dozen different categories to run for ILs. Despite this diversity, there’s not a strong community for the game. For a game that has only 15 or so active Modern runners, we almost never talk to each other. Outside of random conversations on Twitter and YouTube comments, I have almost no interactions with other runners, and I would say I’m one of the more community-oriented runners because I stream the game so often and engage with people who come into my chat, stream monsters and runners alike. The way the community is set up, it is much harder to collaborate with and learn from other runners because we don’t have an easy way to interact. As hard as it is for people who somewhat know of each other to discuss our game, it’s even harder for new players to enter the community because of the degree to which we’ve internalized our strategies. Learning the game is much harder than it needs to be. Given the amount of research required to even learn one level in Generations, it’s no shock that so few people pick up the game. In fact, several prominent runners have retired in recent months (KAKIPI, Millernus, Craig), taking their knowledge with them.

TSC is in the middle of a similar situation. We have all these extremely talented runners who don’t leave much documentation of the game outside of times and videos. If TSC is to thrive, there needs to be an easier way for new runners to learn the game. The current setup for the forums is to ask a question about the game and wait for an answer. I’d be much easier for new runners if there was some sort of community wiki for ways to learn Sonic games, various tricks, level routes, boss strategies, etc. If nothing else, creating such a wiki would allow current runners to collaborate, interact, and pool their knowledge.

Offline Gpro

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #16 on: February 10, 2014, 04:47:59 pm »
CriticalCyd and myself have been working on a Sonic Heroes speedrunning wiki that's still in the making, but maybe a link to it should be provided here at TSC as a reference or something? I dunno. I was just asked to post it here, lol.

http://sonicheroesspeedruns.wikia.com/wiki/

Offline Parax

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2014, 05:52:36 am »
I get what you're saying, but I just wanna point out that we DO have Video/Guide sections on the site already. It's up to you guys to actually use them. :P

Offline Gvozdevik

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #18 on: February 11, 2014, 01:04:49 pm »
Parax
This database is small and old
For example City Escape ramp-through-level trick
There is no brief information on it, I heard only some words from Talon on his speedrunning video.
And if you look at video, you can't understand anything from it, he just spindash on ramp and somehow get it (and sometimes not)

Offline RigidatoMS

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #19 on: February 11, 2014, 03:22:09 pm »
Parax
This database is small and old
For example City Escape ramp-through-level trick
There is no brief information on it, I heard only some words from Talon on his speedrunning video.
And if you look at video, you can't understand anything from it, he just spindash on ramp and somehow get it (and sometimes not)
This trick is so simple that nobody needs to explain. You only need to watch and learn.
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Offline PvtCinnamonbun

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2014, 08:42:40 pm »
This trick is so simple that nobody needs to explain. You only need to watch and learn.

But how would somebody know that without playing the game and learning the trick? If this site wants to remain a Mecca for Sonic competition, it needs more than a list of times, a scarcely-used forum, and woefully inadequate guides. Speaking as someone who's new to the site, this place seemed a lot more awesome in years prior based on forum posts. People were engaged as a community and came up with fun challenges like beating SA2B levels without using A. I just want to see this site do something, anything besides TSC race nights and leaderboard disputes. It's hard to attract and retain members when almost nothing happens around here

Offline Ben

Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2014, 01:04:09 pm »
The lack of a social scene here besides the occasional 13-year-old halfwit that joins the site is very depressing and needs to be reversed.

I've always found the forum structure and naming very awkward. There have been a few occasions in the past where I've been looking up a specific topic, not having any idea where to look. I wouldn't be surprised if this has put others off bothering to use the forum too.

Also the prominent members section could do with an overhaul. Looks like it hasn't been updated this decade. Maybe someone else could write a paragraph for the people who haven't written their own?

Offline Thorn

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2014, 01:40:33 pm »
^ I'd actually like to see Prominent Members read from the top of the Sitewide Rankings instead of from the forum, simply because it's what any outsider would expect. That said, I'm not sure how practical that is to code, for reasons already stated.
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Offline DGF

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Re: Sonic's future goes BOOM and site shenanigans
« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2014, 10:40:36 pm »
PvtCinnamon, I agree with the current Situation of the speedrunning community as far as Sonic Generations is concerned. While I can only speak for myself in this situation, I personally say that I haven't been as involved as I wanted to be mainly because of Schoolwork (The fact that I'm junior whose majoring in Engineering) and the fact that my pvr can't stream for any reason. So I'm game for some group chats or possibly a an entire page dedicated to Sonic Generations speedrunning. if you're interested, just Skype me because I'm going to "try" to make more time for skype chats and such due to some of the members asking me.

As far as the Sonic Boom Subject, I looking forward to it but I'm not making any final judgements until I see it in action. I personally don't mind the Knuckles and it's just another case of people overreacting about the designs again. The game also looks promising, although I enjoy most of the sonic games in general. It looks like Sonic Advance 3 in 3D and I LOVE THAT GAME!
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