Clearing the Channel2011-08-17
There's a lot of animosity toward myself out there, and this tends to reflect upon the technical merits of my work. Those who haven't been around for the full fourteen years I've been around may not be aware of it all. I've no interest in vindicating myself, or demonizing anyone else, but I do feel it fair to admit my faults and explain my point of view.
Myself
Understanding my own actions requires understanding where I am coming from. I grew up in a situation where everyone around me was two-faced. They would politely smile to my face, yet talk about me behind my back. I hated it. I hated it so much that I swore to never be like that.
The one thing I pride myself on, that gets me in to no end of trouble, is that I am honest. Brutally honest. If I don't like something you are doing, I will tell you in no uncertain terms. I may have no tact, I may have no diplomacy, but you can rest assured that I will not bullshit you. I like that, and it's why I like Exophase. He's not afraid to call me out when he disagrees with me. He doesn't pretend to agree in return for favors later on. He's genuine (and yet he manages to uphold a positive image, he's much better at tact than I am.)
I tend to find the distinction between fact and opinion very clear, yet quite often my opinions are misconstrued as subjective refutation, which shuts down all communication as relations deteriorate.
A lifetime of this has eroded my filter between thoughts and words. I have great difficulty in not immediately speaking my mind, and often quickly regret over-reacting to situations.
I'm also not perfect. I am extremely opinionated on a great many of things, and my opinions aren't always right. I've been wrong on many things. I freely admit when this is the case and change my stances, yet this only seems to cause some to become even more upset with me. For some reason, this has been dubbed "flip-flopping", and is seen as a negative character attribute, despite it being perhaps the most primary tenet of scienctic reason.
I can be humble at times, and I can be boastful at times. To be fair, I've done a lot. I've spent well over a decade writing tools and emulators, free of charge, to help other people out. I've raised $2,500 and helped coordinate the decapping and preservation of all SNES DSPs, and have helped emulate each one. I've had a hand in helping to improve every single SNES emulator out there. I've spent roughly $10,000 to scan and validate all SNES game images, and have plenty more left to spend there. I try and be as humble as I can, but sometimes I'm just damn proud of what I have accomplished, particularly because I never believed any of it was possible from the outset.
And when people belittle what I've spent a decade and ten grand working on, yeah, I can get a little too defensive about it.
I also write a lot about emulation, because it's my hobby. Ask a random person about a penny on the street and they will likely tell you it's garbage. Ask an avid coin collector, and he'll spend an hour explaining to you the history behind the 1937 C-stamped wheat penny, and why it's invaluable.
Passion is what makes life enjoyable. Sometimes we take it too far. And sometimes, the internet blurs the line between hobby and obsession. Contrary to popular opinion, the SNES is not the center of my life. I enjoy studying foreign language, playing the guitar, drawing, and programming other types of software. I also wish I had an inkling of talent with regards to electrical engineering, chemistry, cooking and carpentry. When I often say that I have no time for something, it's not because I'm solely busy with my job. Yet when you go to the bsnes website, you unsurprisingly only hear about SNES emulation. It's easy to develop a skewed perception in that light.
From My Perspective
That said, I'd like to cover the regrettable mistakes of my past. For when someone remarks on anothers' character, they are speaking from experiences that you may not be aware of. So in the interest of full disclosure ...
It's important that you understand that I am explaining the below events from my perspective. Certainly, there are two sides to every story. And in some cases, additional information has been made available after the fact. I am explaining things from how I perceived them at the time, to help better explain my past actions. If it interests you enough, I'd encourage you to listen to the other side of each story.
Tomato
When I was a teenager of about 15, I worked with kammedo on a fan translation of Bahamut Lagoon. I was able to convince Tomato to help us translate the script from Japanese to English. Equipped with my $29 "Ultimate Japanese" book, and two hours of study, I considered myself an expert in translation. Upon seeing the one word I knew translated differently, which I took as censorship, I made the despicable decision to post about how he was "butchering the translation" on some random web forum.
This infuriated him, and for good reason. He quit working with me, and my ignorance cost me the opportunity to translate both Bahamut Lagoon and Star Ocean, and later I was denied the chance to work with Dejap on Dragon Quest 5, which resulted in a whole lot of duplicated effort. It also ended kammedo's goal of completing the translation as well.
The worst part of it all, is that now as an adult, with years of experience studying the language; I understand the concept of context. Tomato's translation was perfectly correct in that one instance.
A simple, stupid, ignorant remark had basically destroyed the one hobby that kept me going during a rather traumatic childhood.
Today I consider Tomato a friend, and am happy that he has forgiven me.
Dark Force
He heard about the experience with Tomato. I sent him an e-mail offering my assistance in ROM hacking, and so as not to appear desperate, I was overly boastful of my abilities. I did not find out that he took offense to this as demaning of his abilities until years later, long after a pointless rivalry.
It's regrettable the way hidden intent is implied behind our words on the web, when we only communicate with cold, emotionless typefaces. It does make you wonder how many major problems come down to basic misunderstandings.
The Dragon Quest community
This has led to the single thing I regret the most. I was still a child at the time, but it doesn't excuse this.
Upon announcing our completed translation of Dragon Quest 5, Dejap rushed to beat the release date by a narrow window, releasing their patch before me. I had similarly read that their Dragon Quest 3 translation was all but completed, as I had heard about the DQ5 translation for years (which was what led me to create my translation of it in the first place.) For some ill-conceived reason, I got it in my head that if I said I was about to release a completed DQ3 translation, they would again try and beat me to the punch, releasing the translation. Hahah, the joke would be on them.
Instead, what happened was that I had inadvertently gotten a lot of peoples' hopes up with the promise of a translation I didn't have, and I ultimately had to let them down. I can't say why I didn't even consider this back then. I would give about anything to undo this, but what's done is done.
As some small token of consolation, I did help DaMarsMan with tools later on to help complete the translation, but that does not make up for what was done.
Nach
Nach has never been anything but courteous and helpful to me. He provided decompression support to help my emulator catch on. He provided audio drivers so that it would work better under Linux. And he helped co-author a patching specification that I had hoped to supplant IPS with.
In all honesty, I do not agree with him on nearly anything. And I've called out many of his ideas, and the flaws I see in them. To be fair, I do feel it's important to list short-comings for any approach, especially for those not well-versed in these subject matters. However, he's as entitled to his opinions as I am to mine. Looking at it from his perspective, I've since removed most of the code he graciously contributed. I've called him out for not supporting the format that I tried to push. And I've been overly critical of all of his positions.
He has every right to be upset with me, and I regret no longer having his intelligent counterpoints to my own ideas.
Deathlike2 and grinvader
For years, I've struggled to convince others of the merits of accuracy in emulation. And it's understandable why. Being the underdog, it's nigh-impossible for me to convince others of why they should use my emulator, without pointing out what is wrong with other emulators.
After years of seeing me pointing out the flaws in their work, it eventually took its toll. These two have every reason to dislike me, and I don't blame them for doing so. I do however wish that they could walk a mile in my shoes.
Evan / badinsults
Evan has always been extremely courteous and diplomatic. As a fellow SNES preservationist, I greatly respect him and the work he has done and continues to do.
I am a bit obsessive-compulsive, and seek out perfection in all things. I know, hard to believe, right? My intention was to start my SNES preservation project, so that I could personally scan in all boxes and manuals, and dump the full 16MB address maps for all commercially released games.
What I had intended to do was provide one extra source of verification. I wanted to do all of the scanning from the same scanner, so that every image was of a very consistent quality. But my desire to work alone was taken as an insult, ignoring the hard work that Evan and others were doing. In reality, I meant to complement it, not replace or belittle it. He hasn't spoken to me since. I regret that we no longer converse, but I still feel the situation was a misunderstanding.
RHDN community
Long ago, I helped teach Nightcrawler SNES assembly hacking, and helped him by writing a variable-width font engine for his first SNES translation project. When he started RHDN, I stopped by and tried to help get things going by providing technical guidance to the novice users and such.
After a while, Aerdan / Kiyoshi Aman got into an argument with me after I was trying to help someone with a C++ question, and he banned my account. At the time, I was under the impression that Nightcrawler and I were friends of many years. I reached out to him for his help with a second account, and he banned it and ignored me.
I'm sorry to admit, I took it really hard. It felt like losing a good friend. I went off on a public diatribe against him and Aerdan — both of whom now dislike me intently — and disavowed myself of an entire community of people that I had enjoyed hanging around with.
In retrospect, it was entirely my fault for assuming we had a reciprocal friendship. To him, I was simply helping him out on occasion. In that context, his handling of the situation was fully appropriate.
Again, I want to reiterate that this is from my perspective at the time. Nightcrawler has his own take on the events that you are encouraged to read. But this article isn't about me demonstrating that my reactions given the circumstances were reasonable. This is me explaining how I felt at the time, and saying that I am sorry to all parties involved.
Anonymous individuals
I've gone off on a lot of people I don't know for being rude about my work. What they don't know is that I had been putting up with it for the better part of a decade, and it was beginning to take its toll on me. Seeing me increasingly snapping, seemingly out of the blue, only made matters worse.
I fully understand the perspective of someone with a 500MHz computer, whom has a fully functional emulator that runs every title they personally play, not seeing the value in purchasing a more modern computer to run a much slower emulator in return for benefits that do not matter to them personally.
I wish to no end that people could simply be courteous, and I've left no stone unturned in trying to convince them of the utility of my approach; but at the end of the day, returning ad hominems serves no purpose.
Counter-balance
And in that vein, this article is also not saying that everyone above is absolutely justified in attacking me personally, or dismissing the technical merits of my work simply because of a grudge. Even if I have insulted them, two wrongs do not make a right. It just lowers us both to the level of children. Ad hominem attacks are never appropriate, not even when I hypocritically use them from time to time.
By far, those like Nach who have remained civil despite everything, I am far more ashamed of my actions toward.
In closing
Maybe peoples' exact reasons for disliking me are different. I'm not psychic, these are just my best educated guesses. If they're willing to discuss it, I'd be happy to have that conversation, otherwise I will regrettably remain in the dark.
There are more people whom I have regrets for interactions, yet thankfully have not chased off. And there are also people that quite frankly deserve far worse than anything I've said to them. At the end of the day, one thing that is certain is that some people are just flat-out incompatible, and will never see eye to eye.
The friends I've hurt and the bridges I've burned are in most cases permanent. Simple apologies aren't going to resolve them, and honestly I do not have that much faith in myself for magically being able to become a better person overnight.
Although I'm always trying for self-betterment and absolute philosophical consistency, I'm likely to continue being insensitive far into the future. It is what it is.
The only thing I can ask is for people to judge me based upon the technical merits and/or flaws of my work. Talk is cheap, both from me and from others.
By having so many highly promiment enemies, it's not difficult at all to find ad hominem attacks against me, and blatant dismissals of anything I propose. But baseless hearsay and unasserted accusations are meaningless drivel.
And it may be too much to ask, but I hope that the people whom have the deepest rooted animosity against me can do the same. At the end of the day, my goal is not to piss people off; it's to make everything just a little bit better for all of us. We don't have to get along for that to happen.
I can respect and appreciate constructive criticism, and admit when I am wrong. An in that light, I can improve. And if I improve enough, we can all hopefully benefit.
Side-tangent: Discrimination
That said, the one thing I will not apologize for is my intolerance of, well, intolerance. No, that's not an oxymoron. Nor is it hypocritical.
People who seek to treat others as second-class citizens, and strip away their rights, simply because of immutable characteristic traits — whether it be race, gender, sexuality or nationality — are not worthy of any modicum of respect. There is no "other side" to the story.
When I rally against organized religion, it is the idea of theocracy gaining a stronger foothold that I abhor. Not a person's individual choice of beliefs. I am in fact quite envious: the relief one must feel for having all of the answers to life, and the confidence of immortality, must be immensely gratifying. It's no wonder why it is so popular.
I am absolutely tolerant of peoples' religious and political beliefs, even if we can have a great debate about them. However, if you use those to justify discrimination, that is unforgivable in my eyes; and I will call you on it. I do not consider any faith as a justification or untouchable shield for discrimination.
I will always be a polarizing figure about this: all of us are human beings, and we all deserve equal rights.