Sharing custom content from classic games.

[GiraffeeDreams]

I was playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 earlier and went about making my own skatepark as you do, I was wondering if anyone else plays anything where you can create custom content and save it?


Some games give a code to share your creation with others like on Micro Machines '96, others you could copy from a memory card like THPS2.


In short, I was thinking about using this space to share our creations, share tracks and parks and cities and what not, if this appeals I might just create a Dropbox and leave the username and password here so we can all upload and share our creations.


Any thoughts?

 

[fatman514]

Sounds like a pretty neat idea to me . If you need some sort of hosting, perhaps, I could help you out with that, provided the content stays legal .

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

As far as I'm aware there are no legal implications of sharing save game / memory card files, this could be the play-create-share for the Pandora.


In terms of hosting what did you have in mind? Only really need a very small amount at most so a public dropbox account would probably be the simplest route but I'm still interested in you're idea.


As long as no one uploads any ROMs or questionable content then it will all stay legal.

 

[fatman514]

The rom part was what I was getting at . As far as drop boxing goes, I don't even know what that is . I was thinking of maybe going the torrent route, but have it heavily moderated to prevent illegal content from making it's way onto the site. We could have a system in place where all content must be approved by a moderator (your or I), before it's posted.

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

Drop box is a free online storage service, individual memory card files are tiny and you could probably have a save file from every game by every member on here before hitting storage limits.


I simply don't have the time to moderate, a torrent would probably be unnecessary, what I had in mind was people just upload a memory card file to the server and name it appropriately, others could download these memory cards and load them in their own emulators.


What do you think? Take a look at drop box.

 

[fatman514]

Well not moderating it, could be disastrous (at least in my home country). Believe me, I'd much rather "let it be" and let people be free to upload whatever they want, but us being the operators/owners/hosts etc would make us fully responsible for all content present on the dropbox regardless of who the uploader is/was, so if they're was ever some sort of copyright law violated (i.e. a user uploads an unlawful rom), guess who would take the hit? Us (at least me anyways..... I'm in the States, could you guess???? lol). I don't know if you would be liable in the UK, but I know I would be. That's the only thing that scares me.


Aren't copyright laws fun?

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

I'd be just as liable as I'm moving to the states in may, I simply wouldn't have the time to moderate, although between us, perhaps inviting others to help moderate as well.


The nature of drop box means that it'd be one username and password for everyone, so anyone on there could also remove dodgy content just as easily as uploading it.


We'll have to see how it goes between us, and generate the interest to get people using it too.

 

[Fzero]

Sounds a good idea to me too.


I dont have any saves myself, but would get on this in future if we were sharing custom content... I like the idea ... and i like playing around with customising in games.


Gnarbike Trials in one such game, i have on my phone, which allows you to create custom tracks but i dont think it has a share option.


Could you not use an existing drop box type site, like http://www.dropitto.me/ to upload to and then have a thread here for sharing the links?


Or even create a little website for this, but still using an existing dropbox so you are not responsible for that -legit content- side of things?


If it happens, id definitely be up for d/l and playing on some custom made courses/tracks/maps/worlds ... and would enjoy making my own im sure

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

I got the idea from playing littlebigplanet, making levels and downloading others, well the ps1 and other consoles have games with content editors, I'm no expert (or even amateur) at making a site but if someone would like to put one together you're more than welcome.


In the end I'd just like a simple way of sharing our in game creations, we could try Dropbox and if it becomes popular then we could move to a custom site to host them, ill upload all my THPS parks and maybe skaters.


For code based content like MincroMachines '96, that give you a code to share with others to share content we could just open a public google docs document.

 

[fatman514]

Sounds a good idea to me too.


I dont have any saves myself, but would get on this in future if we were sharing custom content... I like the idea ... and i like playing around with customising in games.


Gnarbike Trials in one such game, i have on my phone, which allows you to create custom tracks but i dont think it has a share option.


Could you not use an existing drop box type site, like http://www.dropitto.me/ to upload to and then have a thread here for sharing the links?


Or even create a little website for this, but still using an existing dropbox so you are not responsible for that -legit content- side of things?


If it happens, id definitely be up for d/l and playing on some custom made courses/tracks/maps/worlds ... and would enjoy making my own im sure

I think that would be just the same as using Dropbox directly as far as the law is concerned. I mean It's really no difference, it's still the same idea, but you did give me an idea. It's not exactly what we want, but what if we were to hunt down other links that already exist on other sites, that's content not provided by us and we just "index" it as hyperlinks? This I'm unclear if it would be okie dokie in the US as I know it sure as heck didn't work for TVlinks back in the day (located in the UK, it was a TV show indexing site for those who don't know). Now, its not like we're going to be intentionally sharing anything unlawful here, just custom made content using official editors. It's just so risky sharing anything online nowadays when you leave it open for all to share and download. The internet was never meant to be so restrictive *sighs*. There's nothing unlawful about our intentions, it's just the other users, I'm concerned about who may start uploading infringing material which we would take the fall for .


Perhaps we could utilize some kind of service that allows you to only allow certain file types to be uploaded. This could eradicate the risk here, but at the same time it could make things pretty complex, as this is going to be a cross platform kind of thing (covering multiple consoles). I'm pretty stumped at this point. How did copyright get this bad?

I got the idea from playing littlebigplanet, making levels and downloading others, well the ps1 and other consoles have games with content editors, I'm no expert (or even amateur) at making a site but if someone would like to put one together you're more than welcome.


In the end I'd just like a simple way of sharing our in game creations, we could try Dropbox and if it becomes popular then we could move to a custom site to host them, ill upload all my THPS parks and maybe skaters.


For code based content like MincroMachines '96, that give you a code to share with others to share content we could just open a public google docs document.

Well I guess you could say I'm an amateur at least when it comes to web design/making websites, so that helps. I like the google docs idea, great thinking!

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

The most efficient and simple method seems to be Dropbox with occasional moderation, anyone willing to help would be welcome to.


Perhaps we're over thinking it, it may be that only a handful of people will ever use it, let's just set up a drop box and keep an eye on it and decide from there.

 

[fatman514]

Okay, sounds good to me .