Drakon: exlaining myself

There's a lot of people who really don't know me yet have such strong opinions about me. Thusly I'm making a thread to hopefully dispel some of these harsh opinions:

1: People think I'm full of myself and don't like to give away my weeks / months / years of work for free.

This is not true. I'm proud of what I do so I like to post my work on forums that're related to my work. I post on more than one forum for the sake of exposure. I know a lot of people like to treat a forum like their girlfriend and going to another forum is like cheating but I realize the world is bigger than just one forum. I will NOT automatically post schematics or how I accomplished my work because I want people to see the results first. If people want to learn how I did these things all the need do is nicely ask. I don't want to post schematics etc unless there's enough interest generated. I praise other peoples work all the time and I give credit to other people who helped me with parts of the mods I've done. I refer to the mods that I do as "my mod" when it's something that nobody else offers. Calling something "my mod" does not mean I 100% came up with every part of the mod on my own.

I didn't make this forum for myself. I made this forum so people could post their work and not get flamed over frivolous things like using too much hot glue or making something that doesn't look like it was machine built. I do get annoyed when someone posts an idea before doing any research on the concept and I want a place where I can make people like that go elsewhere because that's not the right approach. I never found a forum where I felt like my beliefs belong and I figured instead of trying to change existing forums it would be easier just starting my own forum instead. The bacteria forum is still the best forum I was a part of but even that forum didn't quite feel right for what I do.

Regarding how easy and simple I make my instructions / schematics I will not tailor my instructions to absolute beginners / people who have zero experience. There's a few reasons why I do this. Most of the stuff I make is complicated and uses expensive / rare / fragile hardware that I don't want people to break. If you want to make some complicated circuit, you should first learn how to read a schematic and solder properly. And lastly...it's a lot of extra work making instructions easy for the average joe. If I use terms that you don't understand, go look them up.

For people who don't want to be bothered to learn how to follow my instructions I offer the option of paying me to do the mod(s) for you.




2: People think starting my own forum is creepy and odd.

I posted my work on nesdev, people made fun of me and complained about me using hot glue. I posted my work on the ben heck forum, people complained about me using hot glue. I posted my work on nintendoage, I got banned for having my own opinions about things. I posted my work on modretro, I was made fun of once, called a "dick" by someone who knew nothing about me, and eventually accepted. I posted my work on sega16, guntz wouldn't stop flaming me and nobody else seemed to care. I posted my work on various other forums, people sometimes cared, but couldn't afford to hire me and couldn't be bothered to learn my instructions.

Often the stuff I post the thread eventually dies and gets lost under new threads and if I ever need to go back to see how I did something it's a pain to find it. I like being able to sticky useful threads, I also like being able to make forum rules that aren't retarded. I like being able to moderate people who flame and are stupid. And I felt that even the more serious modding forums didn't seem to be interested in my work so I decided to make a forum that welcomes the type of work I do since seemingly no other forum really cares about it.

The majority of my commission work comes from people on youtube, people on forums usually don't like spending money on things. I like having a forum as well as a youtube account because it's more interactive and makes communication easier.




3: People ask me obscure questions.

Just because I added great rgb to a nes doesn't mean I know about rgb in your car dvd player and why it picks up interference. Just because I upgraded the audio in a nes doesn't mean I've built a snes sp/dif mod. I'm not some sort of hardware guru who can fix something that I've never tinkered with and don't have infront of me to tinker with. And if it's something I'm not interested in then without fair payment I doubt I'll ever tinker with it.

The other thing I get often is "can you overclock (insert game name here)?". No, you can't overclock a game, a game is a piece of software it doesn't have a clock speed. I overclocked a superfx cpu chip I didn't overclock or optimize any game programming. Overclocking a console usually results in it not working right. I won't overclock anything except for superfx chips because slowdown doesn't bother me, framerate drop does bother me. If you want to fix slowdown in games then learn how to reprogram the game rom image to be more efficient as most of the time this's the cause of the slowdown. Superfx overclocking works because refresh rate of the graphics depends on the speed that the superfx chip is going at. By default the superfx chip only draws at around 10-15 frames per second so no amount of programming optimization will make it render any faster since the framerate speed is delayed by a hardware barrier.

If you ask me something and I either give no answer or an annoyed answer, that's probably because 3 seconds of google searching would show you that your idea couldn't happen. You should always do research quickly on your own before asking somebody.




4: People sometimes think my prices are too high.

Try doing this stuff for yourself someday and then realize that a lot of money goes into parts, tools, time, etc.




5: I'm here to stay.

I'm not some flake who's looking to make quick money. I'm not someone who treats modding like a fad. I've been modding and tinkering with hardware / electronics / software since I was 7 years old. Modding and classic video games are both life-long hobbies of mine and I truly enjoy doing it and contributing to the community.

You don't need to explain yourself, you only have to look on comments on YouTube, Engadget, and any other similar site to see that most people who are not likeminded, tend to be less than kind. Most people want to be noticed on the net, and you either do that by having awesome knowledge or being the opposite. Also, judgement on the net is something that takes time to get used to, there is almost no accountability after all, so some behave as such. That's the net!

I get several requests each and every day for making stuff and most of the time they clearly have no intentions to pay the going rate even if I took them seriously, so best not to even reply to such messages; only the ones that are serious, and if you have the time to take on the work. I'm sure you're the same. People who ask questions about their projects but via YouTube or my Wordpress site I say "join my forum and ask your question there", after all, give and take!

Anyone and everyone can make a forum, you said a while back that you don't care if anyone visits or uses it, which is fine, you're perogative of course, however one piece of advice - if you want to appear "know it all" or aloof, or not share all your knowledge to others, and seem to (I quote: "I like being able to moderate people who flame and are stupid") then, well, you ain't going to ever have a busy forum or one that lasts - people don't respond well to that. All said though, your forum here, so your rules, and if as you said a while back you don't care if no-one uses it, then that's fine.

Like I said, anyone can make a forum, many do and barely any succeed; so there is always the question to ask as to what you want to achieve; given the choice of either building profile on a larger forum or running a small forum - there are merits on both options. Also ask yourself why it will succeed. As you said in the Introductions thread (I quote) "bacteria seems to be obsessed with keeping people from leaving his forum" - yes, absolutely - a forum is only as strong as it's members make it, so if you want a long-term successful forum, you have to work hard to get people to join and even harder to keep them - that's a fact on the net.

I want to build a community of people who actually take this hobby seriously. If there isn't that many people out there then so be it. But my philosophy is let people decide if they want to stay or go. I'm not looking for success, I'm looking for a forum that's not full of duct tape portables.

Even still if someone posted a duct tape portable here I'd still try to support them as everyone has to start somewhere and part of the fun is learning and improving techniques and knowledge.

everything that people said about you in your first post, extremely stupid. why would people say that stuff? i think making your own forum is awesome! prices being high? yeah thats expect-able id like to see most of them try the stuff youve accomplished! making your forum being creepy? wow. i have nothing else to say to that but wow.

and yea im definatly a modder who is "here to stay"

Modding-Halfling wrote:

everything that people said about you in your first post, extremely stupid. why would people say that stuff? i think making your own forum is awesome! prices being high? yeah thats expect-able id like to see most of them try the stuff youve accomplished! making your forum being creepy? wow. i have nothing else to say to that but wow.

and yea im definatly a modder who is "here to stay"

It's amazing how people base such strong opinions on me after like one post. I had people ask for schematics then I'd reply that I didn't want to give them out due to the difficulty, expensive parts required, and the fact that the instructions were in japanese. Next thing I know I was being called a dick. I would post one project on a forum and getting people accusing me of stealing the work from someone else. I was being called a "hack / fake" and getting people complaining about stupid things like using lots of hot glue to keep things from moving around and breaking. They said using hot glue makes it look unprofessional....friggen ben heck a professional modder uses lots of hot glue. Sure....parts of my mods came from stuff other people had done, but a lot of other parts of my mods had never been done before. And I've had people approach me saying that making my own forum makes it look like I'm full of myself. I told the guy I didn't call this the "drakon forum" or the "drakon is the center of the universe" forum I called it "console mods" and explained that I was tired of how people get treated on most modding forums. I like having a place to chill where people can have constructive criticism and actually try to understand effort other modders put in even if it's not "professional looking". Like the logos you've been making...they're not pro looking but they're not bad either so practice makes perfect.

The only thing I really look down on is stuff where the person obviously really didn't put in any effort. If someone's modding just for attention then that person shouldn't be modding.

Also good to hear that you're here to stay there's a lot of flakes who get into this for free schematics and then leave.

i find that extremely dumb, rude, and im not that kind of person. im like a dog. nice and loyal.

Modding-Halfling wrote:

i find that extremely dumb, rude, and im not that kind of person. im like a dog. nice and loyal.

Yeah I know you're not dumb like that but a LOT of people on forums are. I constantly get people saying the same opinionated stuff about me so I figured I might as well explain things clearly. This way if someone has a stupid opinion about me I'll just give them the link to this thread instead of having to type it all again.

well i still dont get why they say stuff like that in the first place. i mean... you seem like a solid dude. and did i read that right? up there you said people were calling you a hack/fake? thats pretty stupid because i bet more than half the people calling you stuff like that still havent actually completed that type of mod.

nuff said.

Yeah well their mentality is that since I call something "my mod" they think that I claim I 100% came up with every part of it. Like most people a lot of my work is built from information and ideas that other people did but with new things added and having these techniques being used in new and different ways.

i find that really dumb. again. claiming that is understandable. you claim 100% of the WORK. not the idea in general.

Don't be bothered about what people say about you, over time they realise they are wrong. Crikey, the mis-information and mid-conceptions regards me in the past, that I had to "put right" wasn't even funny, yet look at things now, given time people realise they are wrong about me; I put myself on a block to be ignored or joined and let people make their own decisions, and the result was a popular forum and a lot of follows; could have gone the other way instead.

Give it time Drakon, and don't feel you have to explain yourself to anyone but yourself. "It'z da internetz".

Have convictions with what you do, and if others like it, great, if not, "meh".

Your Crystal clear noise mod on the Sega Genesis is dumb.
I like the RF sound more better.

Jazzmarazz wrote:

Your Crystal clear noise mod on the Sega Genesis is dumb.
I like the RF sound more better.

The sad thing is that someone actually posted on my comparison video that he preferred the muffled audio of the un-modded system.

wow lol

Drakon wrote:

Jazzmarazz wrote:

Your Crystal clear noise mod on the Sega Genesis is dumb.
I like the RF sound more better.

The sad thing is that someone actually posted on my comparison video that he preferred the muffled audio of the un-modded system.

I know, Im right under his comment telling him off. xD

Jazzmarazz wrote:

Drakon wrote:

Jazzmarazz wrote:

Your Crystal clear noise mod on the Sega Genesis is dumb.
I like the RF sound more better.

The sad thing is that someone actually posted on my comparison video that he preferred the muffled audio of the un-modded system.

I know, Im right under his comment telling him off. xD

Yeah I think I told him he's a complete retard and people started whining and saying he should be allowed to have his own opinion. I think I said something like "well I'm allowed to have my own opinion too and my opinion is *insert something really rude here*"

I had countless people tell me that they prefer the composite video nes because it uses the pallette that they grew up with....I feel like shooting myself having a few colours be slightly different is worth pixel perfect graphics.

I guess, on the other side of the coin, if you take a retro system and pimp up the audio and video quality, the system can become less of a "down memory lane" retro system. It's like crackles on old vinyl LP's (younger members won't know what life was like before MP3's!), some old music sounds better because of the crackles/memories and lose their charm if digitlised. That might be what he meant, maybe. For example, the crappy music and effects on Intellivision suit the system, if they were improved, they would lose appeal, IMO.

What i'm meaning with video, is there is a great reason to improve composite to RGB on many systems (TurboGrafx, etc) however for some, no point (SNES, N64, etc), however making an image crystal clear to the point of seeing the definition of each pixel is great, but the blurriness from the original system can sometimes be better, especially for nostalgia.

I'm not the nostalgic type as soon as cds became the norm I said goobye to cassette tapes. In fact I was the first person in my house to buy a cd player back in like....1992. I sold my nes as a kid because the stupid zif system started failing. And I really think the snes looks much better with good clear rgb / s-video over composite. I would imagine the n64 is about the same difference.

bacteria wrote:

I guess, on the other side of the coin, if you take a retro system and pimp up the audio and video quality, the system can become less of a "down memory lane" retro system. It's like crackles on old vinyl LP's (younger members won't know what life was like before MP3's!),

lol we still listen to records all the time. like i said the other day on the mbb forums "i found a sweet old elvis record up in my attic" by the way hes not "dead" hes just gone home

Well i have seen people say that the Rf on an atari looks better.

yet they forgot to mention the heavy ac waves, and snow.

i hadnt had an atari in years, but it was EXACTLY like i remembered it, bad.

and ive got hot glue in mine just not as much. main thing about it, it WORKS.
theres nothing worse than having a dead system because a wire popped off of a chip and hit something else.

its why ive got a dead toploader. i composite modded it years ago and eventually a wire broke off and hit who knows what.

you actually introduced me to the idea of gluing the wires down.

thanks.

My pleasure.

mvsfan wrote:

Well i have seen people say that the Rf on an atari looks better.

yet they forgot to mention the heavy ac waves, and snow.

i hadnt had an atari in years, but it was EXACTLY like i remembered it, bad.

and ive got hot glue in mine just not as much. main thing about it, it WORKS.
theres nothing worse than having a dead system because a wire popped off of a chip and hit something else.

its why ive got a dead toploader. i composite modded it years ago and eventually a wire broke off and hit who knows what.

you actually introduced me to the idea of gluing the wires down.

thanks.