> There´s more to it than just the latest affairs - i could talk about your ranting about
> vp not beeing open source but i´ll save my breath.

Well, look what's happening now. Black's threatening to just quit and let VP expire. Could that happen if it were open source? Could one person hold VP hostage? No way. The fact of the matter is if it were open source we'd be in lot better shape right now. We'd have a lot more people working on improving it and there'd be no danger of being stuck with VP6 forever. Even so, after I expressed my opinions at the time, I changed it (because there was no point in beating a dead horse) to encouraging an alternative project should we ever need it. It's too bad people didn't seem to think that was a good idea or we might not be worrying right now.

> We will see what happens to vp within the next 4 weeks anyway...maybe no more
> discussions are needed because we´ve p*ssed off the one remaining vp-dev enough to quit.

Nobody is making Black behave like that. The little tiff with KC is being blown clear out of proportion again by other people by this banning, etc. particularly when I have yet to release any table and AJ himself said WIP pictures are allowed on VPForums regardless. No matter how you look at it, I haven't broken any forum rules because I haven't posted any Dr. Who table PERIOD thus far. And there were NO indications in that thread to make me think either KC or myself were going to be banned because of it. The thread was NOT out of control towards the end. It had plain and simple discussion in it. KC had already left the discussion as well and once again my WIP (like my T2 mod thread that was moved to the now non-existent debate area) got off-topic.

It all sounds like an excuse to me for Black to stop the current development of VP for some reason. I don't personally buy that he's just sick of it. He said before (in another post which he personally deleted along with my replies and some others) that there are companies interested in buying VP. Well, looking at it from a realistic perspective, VP in its current state is NOT going to sell very well to the Roller Coaster Tycoon sort-of buying public. They'd want a much more simplified version of VP that is easy to make basic tables with (none of this complex Visual Basic Script stuff). Thus, my prediction is that such a product would be completely incompatible with the existing VP and thus ALL tables would break and we'd be left high and dry. And no buying company would EVER want an earlier version around competing with the one they'd eventually release. Plus they would be crazy to let the product ever work with something like Vpinmame as they'd end up in court in VERY short order trying to sell a product that makes it possible to play commercial tables with an add-on emulator.

In a way, even though the thread had *NOT* gotten out of control, I'm not the LEAST bit surprised that it was deleted because the same thing happened before when I expressed concern about leaving the VP community high and dry (when he first made comments about companies being interested in buying VP). Black deleted those comments and some others as being "off topic." Well, this time I mentioned that Randy said (about a year ago or so) he would *NOT* leave the VP community in that sort of situation by making it incompatible with previous releases, etc. or leaving the scene and leaving us with an expired product that isn't going to be continued. Well, I doubt he'd want to have that sitting around if he was looking to sell VP at this time. Admittedly, this is 100% total speculation and I could be 100% wrong (but given Black's previous comments about VP possibly going commercial or at least shareware soon, I doubt it). I don't know what happened to Randy, but I sincerely hope Black isn't trying to sell VP behind his back while he's out sick or something. Maybe I am being paranoid, but even if I'm totally wrong and Black is just sick of developing VP in the current climate, etc. as he claimed in that thread until it was deleted, it's still something to be concerned about because he can and in a way IS holding VP hostage with threats like that.


> Reading through what i just wrote i´m not really sure if i should post this - it´s not 100% fair.

I think some of the things you stated and implied are just plain incorrect. Either you misunderstood the situation or you're looking at it from a very different perspective.

Let's look at it this way. If what I'm saing is total bologna and I'm really out just for glory and to steal everyone else's work (odd I give them credit for their work if I'm trying to steal it, though eh?), well then why has the debate forum been DELETED from VPForums? Someone PM'd me there and said they started a thread asking why I was banned there and it was going in my favor and I went to look for this thread and found the whole bloody forum missing! Apparently, they don't want ANY debate there or any feedback that implies there's something wrong there (someone else had an overmoderation thread going on there as well which talked about using copyrighted images, etc. which is all related to this playfield business). Yes, if I'm so wrong, why are they so scared to talk about it? Why have I *STILL* yet to receive one word from a moderator as to why I was banned from posting? There's something going on alright and it smells like a sewer to me.

I've got an official update to TOTAN sitting here as well right now (with a script rewrite by wpcmame that includes a GUI menu) among other upgrades and fixes. Again, why would I let wpcmame rewrite the script if I was looking to hog more of the credit? That makes no sense. But until AJ decides to straigten this mess out, I'm sure as heck not sending it or any other table updates to his table site.