New release: v2.2.0 FINAL

[slippifishi]

2 hours ago, stumblor said:

What are the public benefits to hacking PAC ?

From what I can gather, Freezy perceives one single benefit to hacking PAC: 

 

When he releases an update for DMDExt, it won't break for the _current_ PAC colourisations. Because Lucky's plugin is tied to the release build of DMDExt, Freezy has added a rudimentary fallback for PAC that DMDExt will use in the event Lucky's plugin is not available or does not match the release binary version, and the user will (hopefully) not see any exception.

 

His primary concern seemed to be that he would get support requests relating to these exceptions when they happen, as the failure or exception would be reported by DMDExt and not by lucky's plugin (or even lack of plugin), so to the end user it looks like DMDExt failed and users will go to github and raise an issue or come here to complain and @ Freezy. 

 

There may have been secondary concerns, but this was the one he was most vocal about in his beta thread - can you believe I commended him for his patience in trying to find the best solution for the community later in this thread?! That was just before he replied "it'll probably still hurt quite a bit..", little did I know he was quite literally describing the stabbing pains I would feel in my back:

 

The fallback assumes Lucky doesn't change the PAC format, which I really hope he does now so I can create some DMDExt incompatible files and spread them around a bit in an attempt to cause as many DMDExt fallback errors as possible. I probably won't actually do this and I am still just angry and reeling from the actions carried out yesterday (turns out deep breaths don't help), but right now I feel like increasing Freezy's workload chasing non-issues and wasting his time as much as possible is a justified reaction to his behaviour.

[Ashram56]

2 hours ago, zedrummer said:

I started saying "I think that if Lucky1 had principles against this conversion tool, he wouldn't have proposed a similar conversion afterwards", to what you answered that this is not an import tool, and that's exactly that, the same type of software! So I guess he has no problem with my converter...

 

I stand corrected, as I realize I had made a shortcut in my answer.

Yes he did propose an import tool inside PIN2DMD editor of Serum colorizations. But as I stated, he clearly articulated "if coloring authors are ok with it".

 

My point is not to be against the tool in itself, if it was operating within a controlled environnement where only colorization author would have control over how their work is being used. Anyone who works on Serum knows the constraints (ie free access, you made it pretty clear on your first page on pincabpassion), but those who developped for PIN2DMD do not necessarily agree with that view (in fact, flash news, they don't), hence why they did not convert to Serum. And want to keep their work closed.

 

By opening PAC, you essentially deprive them of that.

[zedrummer]

2 minutes ago, Ashram56 said:

but those who developped for PIN2DMD do not necessarily agree with that view (in fact, flash news, they don't)

OK, next time, I will tell, thanks for the info!

 

3 minutes ago, Ashram56 said:

By opening PAC, you essentially deprive them of that.

I didn't open PAC.

[Ashram56]

2 minutes ago, zedrummer said:

I didn't open PAC.

 

It's a figure of speech. Freezy did.

[freezy]

1 hour ago, slippifishi said:

His primary concern seemed to be that he would get support requests relating to these exceptions when they happen

 

No, that's like my third concern. My first concern is that it breaks the setup for all users on every release. Seems very hard to understand. Or purposely ignored, because that is the thing you have to admit: You prefer that every user will have a broken setup on every dmdext update, just so that you feel more safe.

 

Instead you go about Serum, table packs, who contributed what in this community, what's "fair game now", and how you want to waste my time. You're older than 12, aren't you?

[slippifishi]

1 minute ago, freezy said:

Instead you go about Serum, table packs, who contributed what in this community, what's "fair game now", and how you want to waste my time. You're older than 12, aren't you?

 

I pointed out (ironically) that one serum project has infringing content, and I have made no comments regarding who contributed what to the community or table packs.

 

I do feel that a hostile fork and stealing your code is fair game now - "If Freezy did it, why can't I?". And as I stated if you finished reading the paragraph, I probably won't waste your time (beyond replying here), and I am still angry and hurt from your actions yesterday hence why I stated what I did; if you are older than 12 yourself then you might have the emotional capacity to empathise with my situation and at least show some modicum of remorse or understanding, instead of attributing my statements to a child so you can ignore them.

 

 

 

[slippifishi]

30 minutes ago, freezy said:

You prefer that every user will have a broken setup on every dmdext update, just so that you feel more safe.

 

This is also a fallacy; may I remind you that I presented two options, one of which was to just not allow the PAC plugin; this was technically feasible, you could have detected lucky's plugin and rejected it, or even just exclude the PAC extension and refuse to run it with a suitably handled exception. This would not have resulted in DMDExt breaking for every update - I told you this option before you made your choice, and you expressly ignored it in favour of exposing PAC and condoning the commercial exploitation of VPIN files.

 

Would this have pissed people off? Almost certainly, I can imagine lucky wouldn't have been happy, users would wonder why their colour setups stopepd working for this update (easily mitigated with a readme), and some of the artists would be forced to choose if they want to release their files in an open format like VNI, but crucially, they would have a choice. You stole that choice from us.

[freezy]

29 minutes ago, slippifishi said:

I am still angry and hurt from your actions yesterday hence why I stated what I did; if you are older than 12 yourself then you might have the emotional capacity to empathise with my situation and at least show some modicum of remorse or understanding, instead of attributing my statements to a child so you can ignore them.

 

What I usually do is write my angry response into a text editor and then go do something else. Then, I after cooling down, I rewrite it without the emotional parts. That works mostly, but not always, as you can see by my last comment. So, I apologize for that.

 

Concerning "not allowing the plugin", that wouldn't have added any value at all, and the community would still have found themselves with the confusing fork situation. Nothing would have changed, and artists would just have used the fork as before.

[slippifishi]

27 minutes ago, freezy said:

What I usually do is write my angry response into a text editor and then go do something else. Then, I after cooling down, I rewrite it without the emotional parts.

 

Maybe you should do this before doing any git commits as well, or have a more transparent code review process (it is open source, after all), could have saved a lot of bother here.

 

27 minutes ago, freezy said:

Concerning "not allowing the plugin", that wouldn't have added any value at all, and the community would still have found themselves with the confusing fork situation. Nothing would have changed, and artists would just have used the fork as before.

 

As I said, it would have pissed lucky off, and maybe his hostile fork would be back on. But in that case you would have had some good ammunition and a much stronger argument to convince us artists and the community to remain with DMDExt and reject the fork; you had already tried to work with Lucky and the plugin option, but he hadn't played along so you had to go down the route of disabling PAC, you had no alternative except to release the keys to PAC and that was not your format to crack. I'm not just saying this for dramatic effect I promise, but if that situation had arisen I honestly would have sided with DMDExt, especially after you would have gone so far to accommodate PIN2DMD and had to revert at the last minute.

 

I don't really have much more to add, I have said my piece. My files are all hidden now so I have little else to offer the vpin community and will move on. If other artists do want to hide their files then you can actually do it yourself if Dazz doesn't respond to your request, look for the settings icon on the file page itself, it's well hidden on desktop but it is there.

[NetzZwerg]

10 minutes ago, freezy said:

Concerning "not allowing the plugin", that wouldn't have added any value at all, and the community would still have found themselves with the confusing fork situation.

From the feedback I got and what I read in the community posts, most of the users had the setup running without issues and were happy until today. Do you really think that the community members are too stupid to let the pac files work in their setup with the plugin solution? I mean they seem to get so many different things to work in their vpin and you say that having the plugin solution would confuse them? I do not believe that this is the real reasons for treating us like that. But anyway no matter what your real reasons were, as @slippifishistated you stole all choices we had and you also kind of stole our files by opening them for all AFTER they were already released and we are not able to stop this mess anymore. 

[lucky1]

26 minutes ago, slippifishi said:

If other artists do want to hide their files then you can actually do it yourself if Dazz doesn't respond to your request, look for the settings icon on the file page itself, it's well hidden on desktop but it is there.

 

Do you need the approval from @Dazz to remove your own files ? 

[slippifishi]

5 minutes ago, lucky1 said:

 

Do you need the approval from @Dazz to remove your own files ? 

 

There is only a "Hide" action, rather than "Delete" so I think in theory it's still there, but Hide gets it out of the category listing and breaks any saved links so will certainly suffice until/if Dazz physically deletes.

[eliory]

Hi, I did the update and everything works great, I  have something strange, in "Fish Tales" table, when the first logo comes up when you launch the table, then it comes up with a red color instead of a green color like it was before the update, why is that?

Any idea how to fix this please?

Thank you so much for all your hard and amazing work for this community. @freezy

[Dazz]

9 hours ago, Ashram56 said:

Well no, I'm pretty sure I'm not.

PPS IP protection only apply on asset and gamecode

ColorDMD IP protection only apply if some of their content and/or tools are being reused on an alternate HW, or alternate HW violates their patent.

 

My understanding of PAC format (and @lucky1 can elaborate) was that it could both protect colorization author, but also anyone hosting the files by removing any copyrighted assets.

If no copyrighted asset is included in the distributed content, then PPS cannot do anything about it. That's exactly how Pinsound operates by the way, in the context of sound: their SW/HW does not ship with any copyrighted content. The website hosting the original files is separate from their main website, and is a community based website (ie they did not provide the original sound packs), not managed by them.

 

So yes, colorization authors can do whatever they see fit: PPS can't come back to them because it does not have any copyrighted asset, and ColorDMD can't come back to them because their patent applies to an imaging device, not the colorization file itself.

Each individual frame that exists within a DMD is owned by their original IP holders... whether encrypted or decrypted, doesn't matter. You can twist and turn it however you want to try, but the IP is owned by the individual manufactures. 

Basically what you are saying is this...  *If* Visual Pinball was able to encrypt a table that an author took time to recreate using assets from the original game... then the author would have their prerogative to do as they want with that file, including locking it to a specific CPU/GPU or even selling it?  So why don't we just have Visual Pinball and Future Pinball have an option to fully encrypt the output file and lock it to only Intel PC's with Nvidia GPU?  This would keep anyone from running that specific release on an AMD/ATI machine even if the hardware could fully support it. Since the files are encrypted and that "removes" copyrighted assets then we could then allow authors to charge for their creations.

 

The primary issue here is that Pin2DMD doesn't want creations made for Pin2DMD using Pin2DMD editor to be useable on other hardware.  

 

What if VPW didn't want their next big release to be use by people with Intel / Nvidia machines? 

 

See how stupid that sounds... Unfortunately, that is exactly what's going in this battle.  

 

1 hour ago, NetzZwerg said:

From the feedback I got and what I read in the community posts, most of the users had the setup running without issues and were happy until today. Do you really think that the community members are too stupid to let the pac files work in their setup with the plugin solution? I mean they seem to get so many different things to work in their vpin and you say that having the plugin solution would confuse them? I do not believe that this is the real reasons for treating us like that. But anyway no matter what your real reasons were, as @slippifishistated you stole all choices we had and you also kind of stole our files by opening them for all AFTER they were already released and we are not able to stop this mess anymore. 

 

Again... I'd honestly like to know...

What makes DMD colorizations or DMD colorization authors so special when compared to the rest of this hobby?  

 

Fact is that PAC does not "remove any copyrighted assets"... PAC doesn't protect anyone or anything. PAC has been proven to be a relatively simple encryption. The copyrighted assets are still there in the file. It's simply smoke & mirrors. Just blow away the smoke and you can clearly see the mirrors.

[slippifishi]

No one is suggesting that encryption is some back door to bypass IP law, it clearly isn't - you keep editing your post (Freezy has some good advice for this!) but I'm sure you used the phrase "smoke and mirrors" at one point and that's exactly what that would be. Nor is anyone suggesting that the original IP rights holders don't own the rights to the contents of their game ROMs. 

 

Where I think you are mistaken however, is in the belief that my or the other artist project files are in some way coupled with the game ROM files (and thus the IP rights holders) - they are not. My project files describe a colour overlay that you can apply to any game rom, not just the one it says on the filename. Seriously you can, try it! Move the pin2dmd files to another game folder with a similar DMD output and the colours will kick in; a lot of it won't work, but occasionally there will be common triggers that will result in frames of colour appearing across games (try "GAME OVER" or the main score where it's not a fancy looking score). So another way of thinking about it is like this: the dots belong to the IP holders, but the colours belong to me.

 

41 minutes ago, Dazz said:

Pin2DMD doesn't want creations made for Pin2DMD used on other hardware.

What if VPW didn't want their next big release to be use by people with Intel / Nvidia machines? 

 

Comparing PIN2DMD to VPW is a false equivalency; PIN2DMD is a hardware solution first, with a software editor. VPW tables are a software solutionfirst, with a software editor.

[Dazz]

4 minutes ago, slippifishi said:

No one is suggesting that encryption is some back door to bypass IP law, it clearly isn't - you keep editing your post (Freezy has some good advice for this!) but I'm sure you used the phrase "smoke and mirrors" at one point and that's exactly what that would be. Nor is anyone suggesting that the original IP rights holders don't own the rights to the contents of their game ROMs. 

 

Where I think you are mistaken however, is in the belief that my or the other artist project files are in some way coupled with the game ROM files (and thus the IP rights holders) - they are not. My project files describe a colour overlay that you can apply to any game rom, not just the one it says on the filename. Seriously you can, try it! Move the pin2dmd files to another game folder with a similar DMD output and the colours will kick in; a lot of it won't work, but occasionally there will be common triggers that will result in frames of colour appearing across games (try "GAME OVER" or the main score where it's not a fancy looking score). So another way of thinking about it is like this: the dots belong to the IP holders, but the colours belong to me.

 

 

Comparing PIN2DMD to VPW is a false equivalency; PIN2DMD is a hardware solution first, with a software editor. VPW tables are a software solutionfirst, with a software editor.

 

Yes, I edit for grammar, incomplete sentences, and formatting for the most part.

 

Please re-read the thread... That's exactly what Ashram56 stated. "PAC removes copyright assets".

[slippifishi]

21 minutes ago, Dazz said:

Please re-read the thread... That's exactly what Ashram56 stated. "PAC removes copyright assets".

 

Ah I apologise I didn't realise you were addressing Ashram directly with those statements. I suspect what he meant by this was that PAC introduction coincided with the removal of copyright assets, but I will allow him to clarify as he sees fit or deems necessary, though he did defer to lucky who has already clarified this several times.

 

So you don't dispute I own the rights to my work?

[NetzZwerg]

1 hour ago, Dazz said:

What makes DMD colorizations or DMD colorization authors so special when compared to the rest of this hobby?  

That's not the question, nor is anyone saying so, apart from you.

The much more important question is, why aren't color authors worth as much as table authors? I am really wondering why it sounds to you to be special only for the wish to be treated the same like others?

Oh wait, you already answered that before: The hobby worked for about 20 years without a colored DMD... wow.

 

[lucky1]

4 hours ago, Dazz said:

Fact is that PAC does not "remove any copyrighted assets"... PAC doesn't protect anyone or anything. PAC has been proven to be a relatively simple encryption.

 

That is true because both PAC and VNI can contain copyrighted content but as long as they are used on a VPIN that is not a problem for YOU, BUT as soon as these files are used on real pinball machines YOU would have a problem because you host those real pin files. So by preventing the use of VPIN files on a real pinball machine in general through PAC it protected YOU from legal problems.  That it also protected the work of the authors is a side effect that was obviously welcome by them.

Does this make any sense to you ?  No matter how hard freezy or others twist the facts that IS the reason for PAC.

Believe it or not !

 

Real pinball exports don´t have that problem because they normally only contain the overlay data @slippifishi described in his post above. As long as the author does not use copyrighted material to generate replacement scenes,

e.g. to re-theme a table like done with the lupin table or to add scenes from the movie the table is about (e.g. LAH) everything is fine ! But that is the decision of the author and something I can´t control from the editor side.

BTW I never understood why you allowed the hosting of real pin files on this site at all, but that is your decision.

[Dazz]

1 hour ago, NetzZwerg said:

That's not the question, nor is anyone saying so, apart from you.

The much more important question is, why aren't color authors worth as much as table authors? I am really wondering why it sounds to you to be special only for the wish to be treated the same like others?

Oh wait, you already answered that before: The hobby worked for about 20 years without a colored DMD... wow.

 

 

No one is discounting the work that it takes at all to create anything for this hobby... DMD colorizations are no different. I've done several color palates and currently have a couple Pin2DMD projects at various stages of work that I was working on... Unfortunately, I have more pressing issues to deal with... You know issues such as server speeds, stability, and stuff required to keep this site running. This site takes all of my free hobby time and even more so when I have to get involved and mediate BS issues that shouldn't even exist in the first place.  

 

It doesn't matter if you are on the Pin2DMD or the Serum side...  I'm simply asking what makes DMD colorizations any more special and deserving of "protections" than any other aspect of this hobby? What deems DMD colorizations/display special?  We don't use encrypted file formats for ANYTHING else, especially only for them to lock them out from being used on other hardware.  As stated before, this encryption bullshit is a solution to a problem that's never been a problem. Encryption and hardware locking could very easily be added into other necessary pieces of software (Visual Pinball, PinMAME, Future Pinball, etc.) to lock out specific pieces of hardware if the developers wanted.  

 

1 hour ago, slippifishi said:

 

Ah I apologise I didn't realise you were addressing Ashram directly with those statements. I suspect what he meant by this was that PAC introduction coincided with the removal of copyright assets, but I will allow him to clarify as he sees fit or deems necessary, though he did defer to lucky who has already clarified this several times.

 

So you don't dispute I own the rights to my work?

 

Ok, so you feel that you "own" the rights to your "dots"... that's fine if you feel that way.  You also said that... 

 

2 hours ago, slippifishi said:

Where I think you are mistaken however, is in the belief that my or the other artist project files are in some way coupled with the game ROM files (and thus the IP rights holders) - they are not. My project files describe a colour overlay that you can apply to any game rom, not just the one it says on the filename. Seriously you can, try it! Move the pin2dmd files to another game folder with a similar DMD output and the colours will kick in; a lot of it won't work, but occasionally there will be common triggers that will result in frames of colour appearing across games (try "GAME OVER" or the main score where it's not a fancy looking score). So another way of thinking about it is like this: the dots belong to the IP holders, but the colours belong to me.

 

Comparing PIN2DMD to VPW is a false equivalency; PIN2DMD is a hardware solution first, with a software editor. VPW tables are a software solutionfirst, with a software editor.

 

I know how things work... I've been working on colorizations since they first become a thing.  I've created and released a couple color palates and have a couple Pin2DMD projects in work status.  I know that I can take my basic color palates and drop them into another game and they will work.  That's exactly what they are... they are palates used to quickly color the dots. Palate switching requires specific key frames to switch.  So, yes... your colorizations, specified for specific games, still use key frames from the original IP. Without the key frames from the original IPs, colorizations would be just that... a bunch of colors pulled from a palate displaying over random frames. If that is the result you are looking for without key frames, this can also be achieved using the 4 color selection in VPinMAME.  

 

Look... I've supported Lucky1 and Pin2DMD and its colorization authors since the very early days. I personally have a Pin2DMD in my cabinet and have for a LONG while now. I have no issues with his hardware or even him requiring a registration key to use it.  I do have an issue with how he's been stonewalling future development.  I said long long long ago that this was an issue that needed to be worked out between developers before I would even consider saying something about it.  I'd rather stay out of it and have a more constructive development discussion, but that has been going on for too long now and I take a stance.

I'd love for us to get over this chapter in development and come up with a solution for all and lets move forward... this whole thing is taking away from future projects on all ends and holding the hobby back. Let these file formats die and focus on the future. 

 

I'm starting to think that the VR guys have had this correct the whole time and screw any dedicated hardware solutions.

 

 

 

Honestly, I've never even looked into the Serum development or Pin2DMD colorization forums in quite a while... This issue was brought to my attention and requested that I help find a solution.  I just now took a few minutes and was looking into various threads...  I don't care who you are or what side of this argument that you are on.. 

 

You have to admit that this shit is SICK! I'm extremely excited to see stuff like this being done... SS to DMD looks awesome. 

 

[slippifishi]

14 minutes ago, Dazz said:

I know how things work... I've been working on colorizations since they first become a thing.  I've created and released a couple color palates and have a couple Pin2DMD projects in work status.  I know that I can take my basic color palates and drop them into another game and they will work.  That's exactly what they are... they are palates used to quickly color the dots. Palate switching requires specific key frames to switch.  So, yes... your colorizations, specified for specific games, still use key frames from the original IP. Without the key frames from the original IPs, colorizations would be just that... a bunch of colors pulled from a palate displaying over random frames. If that is the result you are looking for without key frames, this can also be achieved using the 4 color selection in VPinMAME.  

 

You are technically incorrect here, the "keyframes" (or triggers) are tied to a binary hash which is generated based on the current state of the dot array at any given moment in time. And to get ahead of the argument, no one can "own" a binary hash value; you can own the algorithm that generates it, but you can't own the raw value output - any algorithm can necessarily generate any value! 

 

I can see that you are determined to stick to your position rather than concede that you are wrong, and that's fair enough, the horse already bolted as I said and I'm sure many of us will be off, but I did want to return one last time this evening just to point out that you are in error in your position Dazz; turns out the D in VPD might have stood for Dazz all along!?!

 

All the best with serum, hope it works out for you guys.

[LynnInDenver]

BTW, for those colorization authors accusing @freezy of incorporating code from Pin2DMD and that it justifies continuing the hostile fork... did he actually do that for the internal PAC decoder, or did he just figure out how @lucky1 was encrypting the data to begin with and roll his own solution? Because if it's the latter, then that argument doesn't hold that DMDExt code is now fair game for lucky1 to take.

[Ashram56]

5 hours ago, Dazz said:

Each individual frame that exists within a DMD is owned by their original IP holders... whether encrypted or decrypted, doesn't matter. You can twist and turn it however you want to try, but the IP is owned by the individual manufactures. 

 

Well yes, except that you're confusing encryption and actual technical implementation... colorization files for real pinball do not contain the frames. Nor does PIN2DMD for that matter, the only thing that contains the frame is the ROM. And the DMD ROM is not included in either PIN2DMD firmware nor colorization authors files. @slippifishi already explained it at lenght, so did @lucky1, the only thing included is a binary hash, which on top of that usually only covers a specific section of the DMD. Even further: many hashes are the output of mathematical functions that are not bijective in nature (you can't reconstruct the input just with the output). Try reconstructing content with the CRC checksum of a file, good luck with that. Therefore this is NOT the asset, and therefore it can't be protected.  You keep affirmining that the colorization authors fall under IP violation, and because of that they have no right on their work.

 

This is 100% wrong.

 

5 hours ago, Dazz said:

What makes DMD colorizations or DMD colorization authors so special when compared to the rest of this hobby?  

 

 

Well that's an interesting question, for several reasons, but let me first answer it: Nothing make them special. Colorization authors have no additionnal rights than table developer, they are both entitled to control how/where they work is being used. And hence, in vpin world, they allowed the vpin community to benefit from them free of charge. If all of sudden table authors decided that they wanted protection to avoid their development being used without their approval (table packs again !), they could absolutely legitimately request some kind of authorization mechanism. Wether VPX would deliver is another matter, but they could request it.

 

DMD colorization however have the particularity that there's a natural market in the RealPin world, and therefore this DRM scheme was deemed important. Except to protect tables from being used in table packs - hey there's an idea here, it's unlikely any work done by table authors would be reused in the realpin world, so no need for protection.

 

Now as to why it's interesting that you, of everyone, would raise that question: to me it's revealing your inner thinking, you believe that you have the right to decide what is worth and what is not worth. You try to compare table authors to colorization authors, and state "if they don't need it, then you don't either". Conveniently forgetting that the output of the work done by colorization authors is not used only on vpin.  But even if it was true, that it was not needed for whatever reason, let's clearly reiterate: it's not anyone decision BUT the content owner.

 

It's just mind blowing that this very, utterly simple statement can yield to such massive debate. Content providers own the right on how/where to use their content. Plain and simple.

 

In any case, at this point, the cat is out of the bag. Major contributor to the colorization authors (just by the one who either responded or reacted to the various posts), I'm counting more than half of the available colorization) have expressed their concern and displeasure, yet you continue to argue. They are not happy, yet  you continue to diminish their importance and what they have accomplished.

 

So just like @slippifishi said, good luck with Serum. Let's hope for the vpin community sake that Serum content developer will appear and fill the void by recreating all previously existing colorizations. It will happen eventually. Maybe. Maybe faster than anticipated, although I have my doubts.

 

[Gwyllion]

I am watching the fight from the barrier....VPU has been and is being a "free" platform of exposure for the creators of the colorizations and it has been clearly seen that they want to continue monetizing and taking advantage of the Vpin community that in a selfless way is advancing more and more every day.

 

It seems terrible to me how 4 authors want to put the laws when this hobby is united against those who take advantage and want to make money.

 

Don't get lost in rights issues, it's very simple, if the authors of the colourisations want to make money, we don't want you here. You should be ashamed to give this image against table creators like VPW and other authors who work for FREE for the community.

 

For the future that PAC2, PAC3, PAC unlimited...., will also be cracked. 

 

Finally, THANK YOU for your work, the TOP tables are already coloured, and GOOD BYE.

[Ashram56]

24 minutes ago, Gwyllion said:

For the future that PAC2, PAC3, PAC unlimited...., will also be cracked. 

 

 

And there goes away the disguise: piracy and theft, that's what it is. I hope that you're coherent then, and you are not buying tables on Zen Studio Pinball FX, because oh the bad boys, they are in for the money ! And then, one would wonder... why would anyone develop a DMD extension for a paying pinball game ? It's not free ! They should go away !

 

Did you install TNA table ? Did you go as suggested by the table author to the music author website, bought the MP3 album and install it on the table (I did), or did you do a search on the Internet to download it somewhere ? It's no different than a colorization, somebody did some work (the music author), and expect retribution for it. If you paid for it, congratulations, you respected the wishes of the author. But then you are in contradiction with your stance that it should be free. If you did not pay for it and downloaded it somewhere on the Internet, well then at least you're coherent, and you're basically a thief.

 

If you think the world operate like this, with everyone contributing freely without expecting anything in return, be it fame or money, then you seriously need to remove your rosy glasses. Funny enough, I've seen this comment from other members of VPU in other threads, and these members are in no way what I would call "gold contributors" to the community. The ones that do contribute significantly (even Freezy) did acknowledge the amount of work and the fact that it's their work. I'm not a contributor in any shape or form, but I do acknowledge the work of others (and I contribute in other hobbies where my skillset is relevant, specifically realpin)

 

Also on a sidenote, colorization authors have absolutely NOTHING to gain by supporting the vpin community. Nothing AT ALL. They are NOT selling to vpin users, they are selling to Real Pin community, which is not hosted here. You got their colorization for free. And the 4 authors that you refer to, well they account for more than 50%, if not more, of available colorizations, and it's very likely that the remaining few that account for the rest would have a similar stance.

 

You're essentially blaming these authors to try to sell something that they developed to other market, for something that you got for... free. Think again.