> were angry, but rationally angry. Kinsey on the other hand called me, among
> other things, a "sodomising fucking rapist" without any censure).

You know what, I 100% believe it too. Kinsey has called me some pretty nasty things in private as well.

> However, unless we're thinking of very different things, PacDude is
> misrepresenting the vote which happened shortly before my last banning. There
> were only two choices in the poll, and while they were about half a page long,
> the options boiled down to:
>
> 1. Free mods* should be made completely illegal under all circumstances.
> 2. It should be completely illegal to make a free mod under any circumstances.

I recall "2" being more like you had to ask permisison first and/or wait 30 days. Even so, they DID change the rules *after* the vote. They pretended like the forums were suddenly a democracy, but it was all just propoganda designed to make a few "middle-ground" people feel better about their actions. You can plainly see by the outright censorship going on there right now that the place has NOTHING to do with the users. It *is* a powertrip for the moderators. They are clearly getting off by putting others down.


> I broke none of the rules agreed with AJ, nor even any of the rules imposed
> after the "vote" - in which, incidentally, most people who disagreed with the
> moderators were banned from participating, and in which less than 1% of the
> VPForums membership took part. AJ has refused for

I agree this is all true as well. Most people at VPForums *are* leeches and they don't give a crap about ANYTHING as long as they can download the tables SOMEWHERE. Of course they didn't care Nicky was gone. He opened up a site and released tables on a daily basis. They got to have their cake and eat it too for awhile there.

A few other members seemed to have the attitude if they didn't support the moderators, the community would fall apart or something. How ironic. It hasn't been two months since I left VPForums on my own and came back under some small pretense that they'd at least make an effort to deal with the mod forum better before they decided they didn't like my "posturing" and so they banned me from posting. Meanwhile they're all slandering me over there (TiltJP doing the slander and Kinsey laughing it up) and I can't even defend myself. I mean do I need to say more?

> PacDude, who hasn't even flamed anyone or released unauthorised mods, gets
> banned for simply disagreeing with the moderators.

I was disagreeing with a single moderator this time, although it had nothing to do with him being a moderator. I was having an argument with a KC about image usage and even then I hadn't released any table with those images and so they have no ground to stand on. KC even admitted this to me. Apparently one of the other moderators (probably Black/AussiePin) decided he was tired of me ranting and there you go. AJ supports this crap because he's afraid Black will cut of VP too. I couldn't give a crap about what Black does. It's not worth it. I'll leave the ass kissing to someone else (they seem to be doing a good job in the Happy Birthday Black thread on there right now; everyone is acting like Black made VP all by himself when Randy did most of the work. Black did a few thing for VP5 and a few things for VP6. Randy did all the rest and yet everyone seems to have forgotten all about Randy lately). Let's face it. The only reason I'm banned instead of getting a warning is they're deathly afraid Black will abandon VP and he got pissed in that WIP thread even though it had nothing to do with him.


> Countless other authors and forum contributors have left, sick of the hideous
> atmosphere caused by the stupendously incompetent "moderation". (After all, a

Just look at Worf's own comments there lately. He's been fed up for over 6 months now with the atmosphere there. He actually agreed with my debate forum comments that the place was not being run fairly and I've never seen anyone accuse him of anything before. Meanwhile, he barely bothers to check on VP these days and he used to be one of the most active members.

There are practically no
> active authors left now on VPForums apart from Kristian (who has disagreed with
> the moderators on occasion, and will hence now be on their McCarthy-style

I agree it wouldn't take much for Kristian to get banned next. He's on dangerous ground by being a so-called "modder" that improves existing tables. I don't think anyone would disagree that's he's getting darn good at it too, but I once got darn good at it also and look where it got me. I've fixed, updated and polished over 13 tables to virtual COMMERCIAL QUALITY (hell most of them are better than all the commercial games out there save ProPinball perhaps) and do I even get treated *fairly* on there? Hell no. I give and give and they treat me like crap. It reminds me of an old girlfriend. And she's NOT WORTH IT people.

But it amazes me still none-the-less that you hand these people a product that most fans of other genres could only DREAM of (accurate commercial quality FREE recrations of pinball tables) and they rip you apart in return. Utterly amazing. 3 years ago the Pinball community would have KILLED to have something like VP/VPinmame and now they take it for GRANTED. They act like another pinball release is "just another download" (the same thing happens with Mame these days and has been happening that way there for years). Do they have ANY IDEA how much *WORK* I've put into a single pinball release? I'm in peak form (efficiency wise) and the latest Dr. Who update of Krellan's already existing and working table still took about 100 HOURS. A year ago it would have taken me 500 hours. I spent 30 hours on the new Time Expander alone. If I was doing this as a commercial job, that's at least a couple of thousand dollars worth of work for ONE TABLE. Take TZ and TAF (probably a couple thousand hours between them over the past year and a half) and you can get some idea of the amount of time and effort that went into making and improving those 13+ tables! "Modder that slaps images on" my ass! It was pratically a 2nd job and one that I've never seen one penny for! And yet people finger point, posture and outright FLAME me because I disagreed a few times about some POLITICAL BULLCRAP on the forums?

I've never asked for or demanded a SINGLE THING for my table work, except maybe that people treat each other like human beings on there and make some effort to get along. If that means making the rules more friendly and with less red tape, than that's what I argued for. The moderators acted like I was trying steal the food out of their kids' mouths or something and most of them have never worked on a single table! They act like VP authors grow on trees over there. Hell get rid of such and such. We don't need him. We still got Scapino, after all! It may be awhile (that render method he uses looks very time consuming), but he seems to prefer the older '70s and '80s tables, though so don't get your hopes up for a Scapino Twilight Zone any time soon. That might be pretty hard to do with just decals and EMReels anyway, although Flash Gordon is pretty nice. I'm surprised it plays as well as it does though using all those drop walls for lights, etc.

> Discounting PacDude and Kristian's great updates of existing tables, there's
> hardly been a significant VPM release in months - Checkpoint is the last one I
> can think of. Almost anyone who might be able to take

I've seen Destruk claim he was leaving and then come back. He cranks out tables like crazy, but leaves others to finish them. Not a bad idea, really, but he doesn't get many takers because there aren't many authors out there to take them. He wants to see a table for every Rom, but to get someone to put the tender loving care something like Twilight Zone has recieved from multiple people you actually have to *care* about the table you're working on. That doesn't happen when you try to make tables assembly line style.


> contribution. Most of them, as you can see from the forums' own stats, don't
> even bother to READ any thread that isn't a table release, far less contribute
> to one. Thousands of leeches are not a sign of a healthy community.

Look at Mame. The only reason Mame still survives is that there are a core group of dedicated authors that do it for THEMSELVES. I found out long ago on that message board that if you don't contribute you don't get any say on future development. I didn't waste my time after awhile since I'm no C programmer. People flame over there just the same and whine and bitch and moan about games, but the core team have their OWN forum (an e-mail digest) away from the regular message board where they don't have to put up with BS from users, moderators or staff members.

But the thing with Mame is that the code is open and anyone is welcome to improve it. You can start your own modified version of the entire program if you want as long as you provide source code to the public. You can submit your changes to the other devs and if they like it, they'll include it in the official release. I've never seen devs there get upset when someone improves their Atari driver or whatever. Aaron Giles has been like a superstar over there, but I've never known him even to refuse improvements if someone provides them. I've tried to follow *his* example with VP. If wpcmame offers me a script rewrite, I take it because I know it's going to be better. I may have to adjust a few things, etc., but hey, it's for the TABLE and the TABLE is what matters. We're talking about a goal to recreate real pinball tables in simulation here and who wants to fight and bicker about who's version is better? The real table is better! If people would work together instead of arguing over ego matters, we'd a have more tables and less time writing these ridiculously long diatribes.....

> (Blimey, this was going to be a two-line correction about PacDude's account of
> the poll. Guess I just wanted to post a proper obituary for the good old days
> when we just got together and made nice pinball tables.)

I just heard an advertisement on the radio on the way home today and it was for having your own "professinoal quality gameroom" and they were pushing everything from slots to pinball tables. They even mentioned several available by name (Indiana Jones and Star Wars are the two that stuck out in my mind). Hell, I'm starting to think maybe I should direct my TIME and EFFORT into a real JOB that pays MONEY and then instead of making VP tables that people don't appreciate, I can go out and buy the REAL THING. Who needs VP when you have the real TZ sitting in your family room?