The Dink Network

Reconnecting and Reminiscing

May 31st 2018, 12:43 AM
pillbug.gif
Hello Dinkiverse,

I am an early years Dinker, primarily active during 1997-2000 when I published some half-baked unfinished DMods and did a lot of shit-posting. I posted on the old rtsoft.com Dink forums and then did lots of lurking and shit-posting on The Dink Network until about 2006. I spent my awkward formative teenage years messing around in the Dink community. I'm getting some strong cringe and embarrassment feelings looking through my post history, but I'm glad it has been retained. I owe Tal an apology, maybe others.

Since 2006 I have been in Silicon Valley working in tech startups. The HBO series "Silicon Valley" is scarily accurate to what I've been through. I took 2017 off from corporate work to focus full time on an indie game development career. I learned a bunch and have an ongoing MMO game project. Unfortunately, as of 2018, I'm back in a full-time job to pay the bills and the game project is nights and weekends. Dink and Dmods are a huge reason for where I am today. DinkC was my first foray into programming and it taught me the basics which I could then identify in other languages and systems.

During that time I peeped back into The Dink Community to get inspired and in touch with my roots. I played a few Dmods and saw Tim's posts. I left a comment: https://dinknetwork.com/forum.cgi?MID=179399#199138.

I recently saw Seth tweet the "Dink Smallwood: Two decades of duck decapitation" video. Upon watching the video, I ordered a copy of COMTPATD volume 1. Reading the book has been a real rough history lesson. Logging into The Dink Network I saw my old hotmail and ICQ accounts. Unfortunately, my hotmail has been deleted due to inactivity. I logged into my old ICQ account to find an old contact list containing the like of Dukie, CoComonkey, and Redink1. I was saddened to read that Dukie had passed at a young age. I remember telling my parents I had made friends online with a guy from Belgium. This was in the early Internet days and they were unsure what to make of it.

When I posted in 2017 I think I was aware of Tim's passing, but not distressed about it. The "Old Man" part of the title made me assume he had passed of natural causes. When I chatted with him back in the day I always assumed he was much older than me because he was well written and had more awareness of the world. After reading the book and researching the details of his passing I was really bummed out. It was hard to read Tim's review of Mike the Magician and to read that he felt we were buds. I regret not checking in sooner. I feel like I may have even stopped by and lurked throughout the years but didn't participate. I really did admire his early work and was saddened to hear that he felt so poorly about it. My perspective has always been that any creative output should be celebrated. It's much harder to take an active path of creation over a passive path of consumption.

I am very grateful for Seth and Dan Walma keeping Dink alive throughout the years. The world is a harsh place built on a foundation of suffering and The Dink community is something very special that has brought people joy, friendship, and creative expression.

I've had a few thoughts on the future longevity of Dink from a marketing and mindshare perspective.

+ In the indie game dev scene "game jams" are a regular occurrence. They generally have a time limit (48hrs) and a theme. I could see Dink and DMods being used as a fun alternative way to participate in game jams.
+ Speedrunning is a big gaming sideshow and cottage industry. Is anyone speed running the original Dink? I could see that being at an AGDQ or something.
+ Steam Itch.io, GOG.com etc For increased mindshare and distribution I would suggest getting the Dink game on as many platforms as possible.

I've often fantasized about making a hit as an indie game dev and getting famous. Then following up the hype of the indie success with an exclusive DMod as the next release almost as a troll move.

Anyways, thanks for reading all this. It has been cathartic for me.

I'm happy to help out the community in any way I can (marketing, software dev) and will be lurking more to see where I can contribute. I'm not going to commit to building a DMod or anything because we all know how that story goes.
May 31st 2018, 02:42 AM
dragon.gif
Quiztis
Peasant He/Him Sweden bloop
Life? What's that? Can I download it?! 
Thanks for the read and welcome back, the Dink Network is really something to look back at. Always wanted to visit Silicon Valley heh

I was also shitposting a lot in my early days here jesus it's cringey to look at now . Dink was an early coding experience for me as well, even though I mostly played around in the editor back then and didn't make a proper DMOD until 2010.
May 31st 2018, 04:14 AM
sob_scorpy.gif
DinkDude95
Peasant He/Him Australia
The guy with the cute D-Mod. 
Thanks for the read! That was really refreshing. This is a strange community. It's still part of my routine after years and years to come home from work and before I get to work on my side hustles I sit down and just lurk the DN for a bit. It really is strangely cathartic to be around this place.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about putting Dink on other platforms (namely steam), This thread was probably the biggest discussion about it, Seth chimed in quite a bit. Worth a read.
May 31st 2018, 09:55 AM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
It was a pleasure to read what has happened to you after such a long absence.

For MANY years, I too was little more than a lurker and downloader on the DN. But, about 2 or 3 years ago, that changed and now I log in, chat, and have contributed 3 dmods.

Thanks for being part of this odd experiment in software and community, and most of all, thanks for coming back and offering "to help the community in any way [you] can (marketing, software dev)" too!

May 31st 2018, 11:32 AM
wizardg.gif
leprochaun
Peasant He/Him Japan bloop
Responsible for making things not look like ass 
Building an MMO as an indie company. Boy that's brave. Do you anything up for that I could see? (I'm in school for game design so I like seeing WIPs.) I could ask you so many questions about that game but this probably isn't the place for that.

If you want to help out you could probably offer beuc some assistance in getting dink to be playable in a web browser. Or maybe even getting an editor to work in a browser.
May 31st 2018, 04:39 PM
pillbug.gif
@leprochaun

you can follow my game project at: plebland.com (temporary name from another game) where I push updates.

My specialty is full stack dynamic web projects. I'm definitely interested and already following the work Beuc is doing. An in-browser editor would be a big win. I thought I saw a thread with one. I will look into it more.
May 31st 2018, 06:11 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
man youre not the only one to say dink should be put on steam/gog. gotta help us convince stubborn ol seth
June 1st 2018, 11:06 AM
wizardg.gif
leprochaun
Peasant He/Him Japan bloop
Responsible for making things not look like ass 
Well there's practically nothing to your game right now, but props to you for having a playable so early.
June 1st 2018, 05:33 PM
duck.gif
Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
Hah, an apology? There are a few people, some active and some not, that I would like to be on better terms with, but I wouldn't expect an apology for anything. In the roughly 20 years since I first appeared here, I've been wronged in ways that are much more substantial than insults on the internet.

I owe everyone an apology for agreeing to play webmaster and then almost immediately fading into obscurity. Anxiety and depression are monstrous.

I always wanted to make a D-Mod. There are probably still people around here eager to chastise me for not doing so. It'll probably never happen.
June 2nd 2018, 03:40 AM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Welcome back, we have tried to convince seth at looking at a steam/gog release but no progress on that...

June 2nd 2018, 03:53 AM
custom_fish.png
SabreTrout
Noble He/Him United Kingdom
Tigertigertiger. 
Great to see you well, Bunniemaster.

June 3rd 2018, 10:23 AM
farmer.gif
Beuc
Peasant He/Him France
 
For itch.io, with GNU FreeDink (and freedink-data) this can be done, here's a temporary test:
[temporary]
(although I can't get compression to work there, there's a ticket about that)

For Stream, they requires $100 per upload I think, so that's quite inconvenient.

No idea about GoG.

But that'd be only for Dink itself - instead I'm thinking of providing a way to:
easily and legally bundle your D-Mod + FreeDink + freedink-data + source code,
so you could publish your game anywhere you want,
what do you think?
June 4th 2018, 02:14 AM
pillbug.gif
Beuc I think that would be a great Idea. That would let authors do standalone Dmod publishing. It would be great for the Game Jame use-case
June 4th 2018, 03:03 AM
pq_cthunik.gif
GOKUSSJ6
Peasant He/Him Poland
Everyone should get a pizza for free in each week. 
GOG doesn't have any fee for adding a game, bear in mind that they will check the game up and if it turns out that for them is too niche. It won't be added. There has been some moments where they didn't add a game that is considered good until the community intervened, see Opus Magnum.
June 5th 2018, 08:16 AM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Not sure about steam fees anymore , i think most easier way would be that one member / group from the dink community gets the free dink version on steam and the rest of others can release their content under the main game as free dlc or workshop mods through the person or the group , this way no need for multiple payments and we can get in the best content. Maybe we can all pitch in to get free dink on steam since greenlight no longer exists?

The other way would be if seth and his robinson technologies release the official base game on steam and probably allow the community to make workshop mods.

All these years i never realized the gnu free dink could be released on stores free , beuc i truly hope you can get free dink on these digital stores somehow , i put up some screenshots when i added dink as a third party game on steam client and random people still ask me where and how to get the game and play.

June 6th 2018, 12:31 AM
burntree.gif
Striker
Noble She/Her United States
Daniel, there are clowns. 
Good to see you again, bunnyman.
June 6th 2018, 03:17 AM
farmer.gif
Beuc
Peasant He/Him France
 
@liquid141: do you have some docs/examples on how workshop mods work?
Not sure I understand how these mods are accessible through steam.

Btw let's keep in mind that most D-Mods are massive copyright violations (MIDIs, graphics from other games, etc.).
Getting a D-Mod on a place a little less confidential than the DN may get a DMCA take-down.
June 6th 2018, 11:32 AM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@ Beuc:
That is an excellent point (about massive copyright violations)!

Also, once an "illegal" dmod ends up on a "pay to play" site, the law would certainly not find that use of other's copyrighted material would be "fair use".

(the following is from Copyright and Fair Use from the Office of the General Counsel in Harvard University)

Fair Use of Copyrighted Material
What is "fair use"?


Fair use is the right to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions without permission of the copyright owner. The doctrine helps prevent a rigid application of copyright law that would stifle the very creativity the law is designed to foster. It allows one to use and build upon prior works in a manner that does not unfairly deprive prior copyright owners of the right to control and benefit from their works. Together with other features of copyright law like the idea/expression dichotomy discussed above, fair use reconciles the copyright statute with the First Amendment.

What is the test for fair use?

The fair use defense is now codified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The statutory formulation is intended to carry forward the fair use doctrine long recognized by the courts. The statute provides that fair use of a work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use, scholarship, or research)” is not an infringement of copyright. To determine whether a given use is fair use, the statute directs, one must consider the following four factors:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
June 6th 2018, 12:43 PM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Hi Beuc i dont have much experience on the workshop thing here is a few docs

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/workshop

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/workshop/implementation

DMCA is a huge problem , however as i have seen on how things are on the sega genesis workshop , unless reported it can exist. Also will it be a issue since nothing is copied fully or profits are gained?

Here is a example for how workshop works for the sega genesis collection

How to upload

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=675208296

Workshop mods list

https://steamcommunity.com/app/34270/workshop/

So anyone can actually upload their own custom rom for the genesis games . anyone who owns the game can subscribe to the mod and any updates etc get delivered automatically.

Which i why i suggest that either you or a group would be best suited to get freedink on steam and after that you can either opt for curated workshop aka mods that you approve or free for all anyone can upload.
June 6th 2018, 12:47 PM
custom_king.png
redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
I think one of Seth's concerns with putting Dink on steam is it would fragment our small community, where some D-Mods would be here, some would be on workshop, some would be on itch.io, some people would use different forums, etc.

With that said, Steam has turned a blind eye to some extremely rampant copyright violations in their workshop, like:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/34270/workshop/

They host tons of Genesis roms.

Edit: liquid beat me to it
June 6th 2018, 01:03 PM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
haha yeah some of the mods on the workshop are plain pirate stuff , steam has left it to sega to moderate and sega takes down stuff only when reported in large.

I understand seth's concern though but aren't most of us already on steam but yet active here ?

We can always forgo workshop thing and direct steam users to get the dmods from here , A lot of those visual novel devs are doing that due to the censorship from steam, their uncensor mods can be gotten from their own site, we could avoid the DMCA issues.

Just the base game and one or two best dmods that is clean and would entice users to hunt down more dmods could be packaged as Dink HD CE ( Community Edition ).
June 6th 2018, 02:38 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
yeah there's tons of copyrighted stuff on steam. they even have the entire my little pony movie on there.

steam's probably gonna go the way of youtube-style copyright bots one day...
June 7th 2018, 02:41 AM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082

just to show how serious they are about content
June 8th 2018, 03:13 PM
farmer.gif
Beuc
Peasant He/Him France
 
Thanks for the pointers liquid141.
Submitting a game there sounds like a shitload of problems, e.g.:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/onboarding
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource
not to mention the censorship you mentioned, and all the agreements one has to sign:
https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/sdk_access_agreement
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#6

This is lot of work and money just to have a chance to be lost among all the other games there.
When we have an infrastructure such as the DN which has none of the above hassles, I believe that, in the Indie Dev spirit, we better stay independent.

I understand that it may be faster/easier to install Dink from Steam if you're already on Steam, though Dink is easy enough to install.
Just so I understand: could you just tell people interested by your screenshots to, well, install the game for free? Or would there be significant resistance?

Disclaimer: I'm struggling again with distros that prevent me from pushing a security update of my own package and I'd like to transform certain people into Dink ducks so I can righteously vent my frustration. I may be more disgusted by intermediaries than I already am naturally

P.S.: itch.io also just changed its terms of services without notice, with a "give us all rights on everything you send", now I'm even more pissed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180518090028/https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms (simple and respectful)
https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms (long and ugly)

That being said, I'm still keen on the "D-Mod as stand-alone game" idea.
June 8th 2018, 05:38 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
you dunno it'll get lost among everything else unless you try. maybe it'll get one of those fancy front page banner slots, even.
June 8th 2018, 07:02 PM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
yeah i doubt dink would get lost just like that given its history , i have said to people , made threads on gog , steam to get the word out . People kinda prefer to get the game on steam or gog ...

Its how gaming goes on now....
June 8th 2018, 07:14 PM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Does the assumption that this is "how gaming goes on now...." protect us from any kind of DRM or copyright issues?

The original two games are probably safe, but I strongly suspect that only a very few of the dmods on the DN are 100% "DRM-free content".
June 8th 2018, 07:26 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
there's a ton of copyrighted stuff on steam. it'll be fine.
June 9th 2018, 02:30 AM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
DRM ? gog is for drm free ...steam , its upto the developers to implement drm on steam there are many games on steam that can run perfectly fine without steam.

I know not many keen on the idea in fear that it would break up the community , just releasing the base game with no workshop support would be ok then ? people will have to visit here for the dmods and we can avoid the copyright issue.

Also standalone dmods will be a excellent feature , sometimes its just nice to jump into the dmod directly and saves space as you wont have to keep everything.
June 9th 2018, 11:47 AM
spike.gif
SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@ Skurn:
there's a ton of copyrighted stuff on steam. it'll be fine.

I freely admit that I do not use GOG or Steam. Do you mean that there are developers who post games on Steam that have made use of other's (possibly) copyrighted material?

@ liquid141:
DRM ? gog is for drm free ...steam , its upto the developers to implement drm on steam there are many games on steam that can run perfectly fine without steam.

I know not many keen on the idea in fear that it would break up the community,

I think that could be a real possibility too.

just releasing the base game with no workshop support would be ok then ? people will have to visit here for the dmods and we can avoid the copyright issue.

That sounds like a good compromise, though I would include "Mystery Island" with "the base game", assuming that it too should "avoid the copyright issue".

Also standalone dmods will be a excellent feature , sometimes its just nice to jump into the dmod directly and saves space as you wont have to keep everything.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about bundling the dink.exe module with a standalone dmod?

June 9th 2018, 01:47 PM
peasantmp.gif
Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
I freely admit that I do not use GOG or Steam. Do you mean that there are developers who post games on Steam that have made use of other's (possibly) copyrighted material?

actually, both probably. but when its getting sold, then its an issue. but our situation would only be deleting things from the workshop if we used one.
June 10th 2018, 12:31 AM
duck.gif
Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
I think Dink being represented on mainstream platforms isn't inherently a bad thing, but I do think hosting user-made content on said platforms runs the risk of fracturing or otherwise complicating the community. Let the in-game D-Mod browser stay in place, assuming that doesn't run afoul of other services, and all should be well.

GOG's heavy promotion of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 in recent months seems like an ideal example. They've run a handful of news articles in which... uh, the big Jazz Jackrabbit 2 fansite (?) is featured, even encouraging fans new and old to visit the site in question for user-made add-on content.

Stand-alone D-Mods, on the other hand, aren't worth the trouble. How many people are excited to play exactly one Dink adventure that isn't the original Dink Smallwood?
June 10th 2018, 07:35 AM
custom_king.png
redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
The words of Tal are wise.
June 10th 2018, 09:54 AM
duckdie.gif
liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
i have to admit what tal said makes a lot more sense, can't add in anything more....

about the stand alone dmods , i kinda prefer it ....like right now i have got dink hd on mobile with some mods and nothing on pc so if a new dmod were to come out , i have to setup dink hd all over again on pc, if it were standalone i could just launch into it directly . The dmod maker wont have to bother with compatibility , he could just set it up to run in the best way possible standalone.
June 11th 2018, 01:03 PM
farmer.gif
Beuc
Peasant He/Him France
 
What some see as fragmentation, some see as expansion.
What some see as protecting, some see as suffocating.

The Dink Universe had numerous websites around 2000 and it was lively if anything.
Dink got new users when GNU FreeDink hit the GNU/Linux distros.

I don't have the truth, though make sure you don't have a cognitive bias where you only only a threat when things go outside the website you're staff member of