I need to blog more often but I like keeping this game secret and I don't feel too interesting beyond that. What are YOU up to? What do you hope to get done before 2017?
Hi there! In case you didn't know, I created newgrounds. No, it wasn't made by some giant company - just some dumb kid who now has help. I also co-founded the Behemoth; we made Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Icon by Pegosho, banner by OmenaKettu.
Age 45, Male
NG Webmaster
Drexel
Glenside, PA
Joined on 12/15/99
- Rank:
- Commander
- Global Rank:
- 375
- Blams:
- 2,636
- Saves:
- 23,485
- B/P Bonus:
- 55%
- Whistle:
- Normal
- Trophies:
- 103
- Medals:
- 3,430
- Supporter:
- 11y 7m 11d
- Gear:
- 15
Comments
Hopefully I will get 2 Dubstep tracks released by the 24th of December, just still making my tracks sound better and stuff. I think them will be my last tracks on the site for a bit until I get a new nickname and have a better start, etc.
Working on a game for pixel day 2017 :)
Trying to learn new things, such as python language and using copic markers...
Excited to hear about your new game! I been just working on our URealms Live show show mostly this year. Our season finale is this coming Saturday on the 17th and we made a cool animation/motion comic for the ending!.
Here is a frame from it. It's coming out pretty cool!
http://i.imgur.com/vsGrVsR.jpg
Next year we are planning on taking URealms Live, which is a fun D&D style show for others reading, and turning all the campaigns we have done so far into motion comic/animations. When we start releasing episodes I plan on releasing them here on Newgrounds as well. I'm also still hoping to push to get episodes of Coe's Quest done, but we been having trouble with scheduling and the animation budget.
Excited for your new game. I played the crap out of Castle Crashers and Battle Blocks!
Looking forward to the episodes! Speaking of live D&D style, has anyone ever done anything where a live person is the Dungeon Master but hundreds or thousands of people can play along? It would be really cool if there could be a system that accommodates thousands of players... For example it could be multiple armies battling and each individual may have their own random events happening but the live Dungeon Master would still be describing the broad overview and introducing new challenges into the game system, real-time...
My only big goal before 2017 is to get all of my software on my new computer setup so that I'll be good to go for next year. I am hoping I can still use my Flash 8 software, but I fear I'll have to use Adobe Cloud and I have heard awful things about it. I just want to animate, dang it. :'(
Other than that I'm happy, healthy, and can't complain. I have a new job I really love at a public access tv station. Can't wait for your new game, Tom! Thanks so much for everything you do for this website and us peeps.
make pico 2 already
Currently? Well, got a lot more music side projects -- a few of which may be finished before 2017 and most of which will probably be forgotten about until I rediscover them like 7 months later, like most of the content for my upcoming album. Man, some of those projects are a decade old now, begging for attention.
I got a new (cheapo) Nady mic off some Walmart giftcard money and change I had laying around from last year, most of which was scrounged from under vending machines, but with some noise cancellation and normalizing, it doesn't sound too bad, only the barest bit of hum, which is nonexistent with good input. May start up a demo reel for voice acting, or just fiddle and do some spoken word poetry, or a couple of scripts I have from old plays I wrote back in high school. There are two old tracks I intend to revisit now that I've got better equipment, now that I think about it.
Oh, and I'm writing a novel, doing a portrait of Jukka Nevalainen, and going on a 9 hour drive to Arkansas in about 6 hours. Lots of fun stuff now that it's Christmas break and I seem to have kicked my depression in the ass (knock on wood).
The only thing really getting on my nerves so far is a combination of constantly finding more stolen crap in the AP that needs reporting (and the subsequent AP cleanup thread backlog) and the fact my mom hasn't been home in over two months. She's shacked up with a rich old dude, which sort of leaves me stranded, since I can't drive. When I'm not bumming rides to do odd jobs or play Pokemon Go with a side of pep-talks-your-friend-needs-to-hear, I'm working from home or fiddling with those other side projects I mentioned. It's been a pretty good year so far, minus my dad passing. If not for that, I'd be running a computer repair shop.
Oh, a few more NG related things I forgot to mention (damn lack of edit buttons and sleep) -- trying to put more time into the portals, finishing up audio review requests I have from the past year, keeping a better eye on the UJ, and watching the audio portal like a hawk.
I'm noticing a lot more unfinished betas and alphas slipping through UJ and stolen audio getting scouted, and it also seems people are reviewing less. Stolen and rule breaking flash seems to be well handled over in the EGB, no small thanks to active mods and helpful tipsters, but a lot of illegitimate audio is getting scouted via people begging scouts in reviews or using other means to dupe people into getting their pirated crap out there. Perhaps my biggest goal is to help stop that happening, as it's a huge threat to our community.
The review bit? Well, who doesn't love more reviews? I'm seeing a shortage of them lately in comparison to earlier years, and really, reviews were a lot of what motivated me to improve my work. Why not share the love?
Keeping infringing content off the site is gonna be a big theme in 2017. Excited for the project system to move over to the new layout, so we can keep progressing with trying to tighten up the initial notifications and follow-up enforcement. We definitely need to expand the base of users who are committed to keeping liabilities off NG, in both incoming and existing projects. Will have to keep finding ways to make that a more interesting / rewarding effort, as well as more ways to encourage reviews.
Puns, puns, puns, puns, puns, etc. Also some art. I have to make my other OC, his and her facial expressions, Christmas cards, a Christmas drawing for newgrounds, more drawings, a Happy new years drawing for newgrounds, puns and a whole lot more art for newgrounds (yeah, I think you get the point now. Also I'm working on some pranks like this:
That's exciting to hear. I've been browsing NG since childhood, and it's a dear thing to me. I guess that kinda means you're my hero. Stolen, not-mine, copyrighted, spam, etc. material slipping through the cracks threatens not only NG but threatens you -- with loss of traffic and profit and legal action. Putting a stop to that crap is a big motivator for me, and it means a potentially brighter future for us all -- for the real content to get noticed.
It's a shame how inundated our servers are with stolen audio. The mods can hardly keep up. @NekoMika and the others often have to mop up batches of 400+ in the AP cleanup thread at a time, some of them years old and even scouted, having begged for scouts from unsuspecting users in reviews to get their songs online. Apparently the blatant message to GD players not to upload songs they didn't create, regardless of copyright even, doesn't deter people from stealing music, impersonating popular artists. Some who have come to NG due to popular demand still have their (yet unsubmitted) songs stolen, and when those illicit submissions get removed, the submitter often whines "Robtop should have partnered with SoundCloud. NG are pricks! Hurry up and scout me, guys!" It really highlights how ungrateful, ignorant, and self-serving the smartphone culture (GD players) can be, and the lack of netiquette of thieves in general. There was a point in time I was so discouraged from writing reviews after finding out I'd reviewed a couple stolen songs in a row from an impostor account. It's just ridiculous and infuriating, especially for those of us that work hard and are legit. I can't say I never knew how they felt or thought it wasn't a huge deal at first, but it didn't take long to wise up. I feel like we need to raise awareness, like digital cancer or something, haha.
I have a question. Is it possible to introduce a couple changes to the flagging system -- i.e., a certain (perhaps undisclosed, like the whistle level requirements) number of people flagging a submission as stolen or copyrighted disables downloads and/or makes it behave as if it were submitted by an unscouted person, while also stamping it for review by mods as normal? Perhaps if several of the songs are flagged from the same submitter, the account itself (and possibly the IP) could be flagged for review. Many thieves are repeat offenders, and the whistle system already works on good faith. Higher whistle levels could mean more weight pull here. Of course, this would be open for abuse if someone just didn't like you, but same goes for all of our other systems.
Hell, maybe an appeal system would be nice; abusers lose the privs, and that's that. Mostly, I think there needs to be an update of the categorizations to reflect our new copyright policy -- flag as Spam, Copyrighted material, and Stolen. I don't know if there's a bot that ranks flagged submissions in order of number of flags, categorization, etc., but giving highest priority to the greatest risks, such as copyright, would likely help immensely.
There's innumerable things I think about, wondering how to combat illegitimate content. I know you've probably heard most of them before. Has anyone publicly announced (or is it anywhere in the new AP TOS) just how futile it is for GD users and thieves in general to submit songs and beg for scouts now that we've mostly caught on?
We're adding a flag for games and movies that appear to have unlicensed audio, so I've been planning a more formal post once that is in place. For the Audio Portal, making a post about it would likely fall on deaf ears - the GD abuse crowd doesn't seem to really be in touch with the site at all.
It gets half tempting to require supporter status before you can upload music, which would upset a ton of people but could also make things run much more smoothly AND improve NG's chances of sticking around long-term. Curious what would happen if we did that - could grandfather in existing artists who have been scouted.
3 madness collabs before the year ends. I have some work to do...
I go through phases every few months of aggressively monitoring the portal so I'm spending a depressing amount of time just collecting blams and saves right now. 2017 might be the year I finally upload something, I've been inspired by Deathink's recent games.
Also went from a bronze whistle to a gold one in less than two months, so all those audio thieves are good for something after all ayy
Would it be too aggressive to have a fee for uploading audio? Like a dollar or even less per song could be enough to deter the geometry dash uploaders who just throw out a few songs and leave.
It gets REALLY tempting to require at least a history of supporter status before you can upload audio - if we did that, scouted artists would be grandfathered and new artists would have to pay at least $3 for one month of supporter status. This would be pretty drastic and should only be done if we feel the ongoing abuse is too overwhelming - we're still working on updates to try and reduce the amount of abuse.
You're right there. Most of the GD abusers and indeed newer users in general seem totally out of touch, unconcerned with rules, unaware of how scouting works or how the mods catch them breaking rules/unpublish stuff, or why we have to; indeed a few I've explained this to didn't seem sorry, but they did understand and stop. Announcing may help motivate other users to help look for stolen/malicious/copyright submissions. Otherwise it'd probably be a waste of breath.
I would be sad to see the day that you had to be a supporter to submit, mostly because I don't have even 3 dollars in paypal money, and I don't yet have a bank account. I have 67 cents to my digital name. I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who never would be able to submit their stuff that way. If we have to do it to stem abuse, we have to do it, of course. I just can't help but think there must be a better way.
I can recall back when I joined the AP, your first submission had to be approved -- at least I think -- by a mod. It must have been a heavy workload back in the day, but that entrance exam of sorts prevented a lot of fraud.
I want to attempt an animation, but I will probably die off before I can actually complete it.
Im gonna send u a link to my game, plz check it out? idk???
I hope to help at least 2 or 3 people in the forums lmao.
Oh, congratulations on 20K fans! I totally missed it :'D
Oh, and as for what I intend to get done before the end of 2016... I've just finished composing my best, longest and most complex piano composition of the year, so once I am able to play it as flawlessly as possible, I want to record it, and upload it to NG!
We shall see what becomes of that.
> has anyone ever done anything where a live person is the Dungeon Master but hundreds or thousands of people can play along?
Funny you should say that. It's something I been messing with. Have you seen microsofts new streaming platform they bought out called Beam? http://beam.pro
It has a full API for programing on screen commands ala twitchplayspokemon style so users can send inputs on the stream page. I plan to mess around with it in the offseason and see if it's something I can do with fans. The biggest problem with twitch.tv or youtube for streaming something like this is delay. If you have even a 15 second delay, everything is SUPER slow because you have to have vote time and ideally you want a short vote time (maybe 15 seconds) and near instant delay so that games can be played quickly.
SynthSoda
In 2017 I plan on actually finishing cartoons and actually contributing to this site.