Hi Csabo,
It's always nice to hear a different point of view. Thanks, everybody, for weighing in so far
Csabo wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:23 pm
Could someone please clarify the official stance (if there is one) on listing platforms where unofficial conversions exist?
...
Should C16/Plus4 be added to Rebel Planet, or be removed from Das Gift? Or maybe since "Das Gift" is freeware/type-in, unofficial conversions
can be listed? (Or, perhaps, leave everything as-is because accuracy does not matter?
)
Yes, there is an official stance. And yes, accuracy matters. Which, incidentally, is why I'm not happy with listing unofficial conversions other than in the Notes section.
Actually, Strident and Alastair summed it up pretty well in their respective posts. But let's start off with the site's FAQ:
"We only list official versions. Ie. if someone hacked the C64 code for some game and made it run on the Oric, we won't list the Oric because the game wasn't intended to run on it. Unofficial version might get a mention in the Notes section of the game entry.
Of course, we're wrong on lots of occasions so feel free to submit info if you know something that we don't." (emphasis mine).
I didn't say anywhere that we're infallible. That doesn't mean that we don't care about accuracy, but that we're at the mercy of the information we can find in the amount of time we have for the job. To my knowledge we don't have any dedicated C16 experts, so I'm happy to see your input
This is kind of disappointing though. My good friend Lavina wrote a bunch of BASIC adventures, those are listed when one views the C16/Plus4 list of games by platform. A bunch of conversions - which are perfect replicas of the original - are not. In my view, those are the same in terms of being "unofficial" adventure games - you can't buy them in any store, etc. To put in another way; the point of the game-to-platform connection in the database should be to answer this question: "Can I play this game on platform X?"
That's certainly
one possible purpose - but as Strident said:
"In this case, the aim of the game-to-platform connection is to document what platforms a game has been official released for. Otherwise you could start adding all sorts of random workarounds, emulators and unofficial conversions and swamp the platform entry with so much noise that it becomes useless."
So the question we're trying to answer is: "Did the author of the game intend (or sanction) this game to run on platform X?". In the case of commercial games, that's relatively easy. In the case of BASIC listings, that's a huge challenge. Ideally we could have an unofficial conversion subset of tags, but unless someone comes along and programs that, it's not going to happen. I realise that it's not an ideal situation, as there are a lot of excellent unofficial conversions out there.
Garry wrote:Unfortunately, this policy does not seem to apply to C64 games. The C64 entries are essentially just a dump of what's on GameBase64 and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of unofficial conversions, especially type-ins. And they don't even give credit to the original games, original game names, original platform or original author.
A bit of history - and perspective - is needed here. Back when CASA 2.0 launched, featuring author information, platforms, systems etc., there weren't a lot of hands available. Mr. Creosote and Dave had done all the coding, but actually filling out the database was up to me. So filling out the ~1,800 C64 entries and 2,000+ Spectrum entries was going to take a
long time, so when I got the chance to get a head start by receiving the data from Gamebase64 and World of Spectrum, I said yes and thank you as I didn't know if or when anyone would want to help with the work.
But again, I'm happy to remove wrong entries and update author info etc.
Oh, and to go back to your starting point. C16 should not be listed for Rebel Planet. Neither for Das Gift.