Illusion City English 0.5

GREAT!!! I've been waiting for disk6 for a while now tomorrow will be a good day to play

ok, and ATM im already waiting for disk 7 it took me a couple of hours to finish disk 6. oh, this game is so cool!

Game reprogramming
Adriano C. R. da Cunha
Japanese/English translation
Takamichi Suzukawa
English/Portuguese translation
Adriano C. R. da Cunha

I was always wondering why this was never finished, is it lack of time on Adriano’s part? Or is there a technical hurdle in disk 7?

He completely left the MSX scene. I remember hearing that he thought it wasn't worth the hassle anymore. I know it sounds bitter, but I think he made the right decision. I understand it's not just complaining and badmouthing, but an entire negative atmosphere which can weight a lot on one's shoulders. He made many contributions to the Brazilian MSX scene and I truly believe his work wasn't appreciated enough. We are still using some of his software today, after all. If he's happy today (and, judging from what I've heard, he is), I fully support his decision as well. I just miss him and his kind of energy. It was a lot of fun seeing Knightmare with CD music for the first time, back in 2003.

it's still going on... there's always someone saying the keyword: smooth scrolling...

It wasn't that at all. If it were simply people asking features / changes, I'm sure Adriano would still be with us, because if you think about it, if people asks for changes, it is only because they appreciate the work done and they are using it, right? I can't see why someone would ask for improvements in a software they don't use or care. It is only a compliment, and you aren't required to do anything just because someone asked you.

What happened was really bad: name calling, people calling him a mother fucker, saying he did things that was bad for the MSX brazilian community, hacking / pirating his software and distributing against his will and things like that.

Adriano got tired of this behaviour and quit the scene. That's too bad, I miss his energy and commitment to the MSX scene.

Yes and no. I've seen it happen quite a few times here on MRC. Someone comes with an initiative (software, hardware, whatever) and besides a few compliments what follows is quite a big "wish list". And of course this is done with the best of intentions, but not aeveryone will experience it like that. And I've seen it happen quite a few times that people experience it as criticism which I can also understand. You've done something with the best of intentions and what follows is a list of "what is wrong with it" / "what can be improved". This can be demotivating for people.

That is what I mean with what I said ealier:

One of the symptoms of this disease that this kind of communications usually ends up in name-calling, etc...

Noted & Thanks.

Well, people are people and they do what they do. It's not unique to the MSX scene, it's what we we do in general. We just wanna be right, be best or better, we wanna be supreme or superior to the next peep. Call it what you want, it's human nature. I'm not saying that's cool (I leave my opinion out of this equation)

Rather embrace the suck or hide underneath the table. And I'm sorry Adriano took the latter option.

I might have done the same, if I would get streams of negative reactions like that. Sure.

It takes a strong man to inhale the criticism and grow from that. With Adriano leaving the scene and abandoning this project, I still can't enjoy Illusion City as it was given to us by Micro Cabin. And that, that sucks x-mas balls.

Who shall rise and make this project to an end, and what can I do to help that goal become a reality?

But you are not everyone. And everyone reacts differently. There is no real right/wrong in it either. I just hope some more people think twice before commenting.

Probably. I don't know enough of this specific case anyway

Don't be to harsh on yourself. It may look easy afterwards, thinking "I should have done this or that", but the fact is that noone knows what the result of that would have been either. Would it have de-escalated? Or just the oposite. Even being on "the right side" of a discussion doesn't give you any guarantee. In the end, there is a risk that you can't do it right, no matter how. Just take a look here on MRC. If you ban people who escalate discussions, you are "censoring". Or you don't ban them it's your fault the discussion escalated.
You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't...
I've been a moderator on a forum way bigger than MRC. On that forum, we were very, VERY strict concerning our rules. We banned users on a daily basis. But even being that strict wasn't a 100% solution. Almost nothing is black/white... And in hindesight all looks so easy...

I understand Adriano's choice completely. Lack of respect on anything people contribute, but goes both ways though.
Feedback and bug reports should be used more often though to create better products, since there's enough unpolished software around, which are being sold at premium prices.
Fortunately there's also plenty of polished warez around and some devs, that actually do listen to feedback.

I wouldn't mind a fully translated version either. The new release of WebMSX will support Turbo-R, so I will be able to add this translated version to my site!

I should note that Adriano found out pretty early in his work that Illusion City doesn't make use of any turboR-specific features apart from speed. So it's actually an MSX2 game, though it runs much better if you have a turbo-equipped machine (7MHz preferred). You can already add the currently unfinished version to your site if you wish. You can also set the emulator's CPU speed higher than 7MHz to better match turboR's speed.