MechaVault

Random Status Update

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:34:34 GMT

Life...laziness..college..You could for the most part say that my life = College nowadays (as well as for another 2 years :| )..Anyways, as hinted at in the very first line of my previous blog post I have been pretty busy doing other things non byond related so my games are yet again at a standstill...I apologize to anybody actually waiting on somethin to pop up but I'm sure you yourselves already know how it is...Now, here comes the part where I predict when more work can be done..Trying to stay true to my word of actually using my membership (thanks again MdNight), I'm guesstimating that I'll at least be able to work on my games, or even US in particular starting around Dec. 20th..I should be breaking from college by then (yay!) so I should have adequate spare time to do whatever I want including program (for fun that is). Peace out for now folks and remember, college ain't easy nor is it fun. :|

A Somewhat "Strange" Predicament..

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:51:57 GMT

Just idling my time by during my Fall Break from college (sorry US fans :( ) I stumbled upon a email from a random person in my inbox stating:

Hello fellow cheater,

I seen a cheat on gamewinners from you. I need to find out if you are the original author or did you copy it from another website to share it.

Someone else is claiming that they are the original author but I think you are and you submitted it originally on gamewinners.com! So this is causing some issues.

If you discovered it yourself, please describe how you did with a reply.

Please, Please reply, this is majorly important!

Did you write the following?

URL : http://www.gamewinners.com/Cheats/index.php/ Dragon_Ball_Z:_Budokai_Tenkaichi_2_%28Wii%29

"
Finding Dragonballs

Smash through breakable objects on battle maps and run into the Dragonballs to get them. You must also win the battle.
John I

"

I am not from www.gamewinners.com and have no affiliation with it.

-Jeremy
G3

Seeing nothing too much wrong here, I replied stating that in fact I was that same person who submitted the cheat..(they post the email of the submitter and I've been using the same email address for well over 6 years) to which I received the following in response:

Hello,

I figured you were the original author! I hope it makes you mad someone else is claiming they are the author but that is just the start of it I am afraid. I desperately need your help and officially claim that text! It is pretty easy for you to help. Let me explain in detail:

I am not from Gamewinners.

Have you heard of Cheatcc.com and the owner Dave Allison? He has a laundry list of publishing content without permission but now he has gone even further.

I believe Mr. Allison copied this particular cheat you gave gamewinners to his website. The significants is that he has been copying cheats from gamewinners for many years and he was able to get a copyright on his website. He claims he is the SOLE author of all cheat code content on his website. He is then suing other companies and people that own gaming websites that have similar cheats.

To verify please see this page: http://www.muddlawoffices.com/cases/allisonvwise.htm

Dave Allison sued me almost 3 years ago and I have been fighting every since. He only provided 12 examples of cheats I had the same. I own cheatmasters.com and you can imagine how many cheats I have on cheatmasters that has been running since 1994. CheatCC started in 1997. Allison has sued at least 4 others that we now of for sure. I am the only one that is fighting the issue but I am also fighting a medical condition that keeps me from finding another job. I have a sever type of arthritis attacking 20+ joints throughout my body. I do not want sympathy it is just a fact that res tricts me from getting just any job. The income from my websites is the only income my family has. Dave Allison is demanding I turn over my website to him for a settlement or a huge amount of money which I could not possibly pay. Most others he has sued gave up their websites to him and may have paid the legal fees as well! Allison now runs those websites!
We have contacted Al Amaloo‏, the owner of gamewinners but he would like to stay out of this as you can imagine. They do not have any ownership in the content since people like you are the real authors. Mr. Amaloo has said they keep the emails they get however, so if you do not have the original reply perhaps you can ask for it. Mr. Amaloo has been very help in this matter.

I know this is all hard to believe but I really need your help. It is really a simple thing for you but serious and complicated for me. I do not work for gamewinners but you can send them a quick email asking if Cheatcc is being investigated for copying their content. Others have and got replies fast confirming. So I encourage you to ask them if that helps you.

I would like for you to sign a simple document that states you are the original author of that particular text found on gamewinners and that you did not submit it to cheatcc. We can let the jury decide how similar it is on cheatcc.com. I am asking many gamers to help out in this way. My lawyer thinks I should find 100 People! The issue is that the copyright law does not allow anyone to copyright someone elseÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â¢ ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬& Aring;¡Ã‚Â¬ÃƒÂ ;¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã ;‚Â¢s work. Clearly Dave is not the author of all cheats on his website but try to explain that to a Judge or jury that may not understand the gaming community! They will understand people coming forward saying that they wrote a particular paragraph (cheat) however.

I will need your full name and country/state where you live to prepare the document if you decide to help me out. I need the name for the signature and the state for the notary. Any other information is optional. I will not ask for more information then that.

I do ask you to research this all for yourself. Look up your cheat(s) on cheatcc.com! I hope it makes you mad like the others I have contacted that Allison is claiming he wrote that text when he clearly copied it and hundreds more directly from gamewinners!

I have attached an example document so you see how simple it is. You only have to sign and date it one like this. Nothing else needs filled out but is optional.

I have a ton of information to give you and I hope you have an interest to find out more. Dave Allison claims he wrote your cheat and that you are not the author! I hope you help put and end to this jerk. Your signed document would really help a LOT!

Use google too. Search for "cheatcc and crave online" , " Cheatcc lawsuit" "cheatcc steals";

Here are some examples to research some to show I am telling the truth about the situation:

http://www.daledietrich.com/gaming/ heatcccom-and-crave-online-media-settle-cheat-codes-dispute/ comment-page-1/#comment-35430

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/02/stupid_lawsuit_/ ( This was actually about my lawsuit at the time, the first one)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheat_Code_Central - read "Controversies"

http://www.candiedskull.com/bully/index.html - read the top ( hard to miss)

Can I count on you? Please, it would greatly help me and my family fight this jerk! You can not believe how much of a nightmare it has been fighting this since he has an official copyright!

Want to verify all this? My Lawyer:

http://www.muddlawoffices.com/cases/allisonvwise.htm

Charles Lee Mudd Jr. - cmudd@muddlawoffices.com

www.muddlawoffices.com

MAIN OFFICE
3114 West Irving Park Road
Suite 1W
Chicago, Illinois 60618
773.588.5410
773.588.5440 facsimile

Now, being the wary internet user I am I did in fact check out the links and it seems pretty legit while also being a pretty unfortunate situation. It's only that much more believable in that I looked up an even older cheat code submission for Dragonball Z Tenkaichi 1 on PS2 from gamewinners I did(yes, I am/was a hardcore DBZ fan & I'm John I by the way for the finding dragonballs cheat), and it appeared word for word, punctuation for punctuation on the cheatcc website also. Seeing as the guy doesn't seem to want much info wise, I'm pretty doubtful of it being a scam but still wary in that I could be somehow dragged into such a lawsuit...I'll make a final decision later on...It's somewhat odd though that this same cheat code central with non working cheats/codes I recall visiting back in elementary school (I'm now a 2nd year college student) still exists and even still has shady activity....But who knew submitting a single cheat code could get me potentially involved in something like this..What a interesting evening tonight turned out to be..

US Status Update

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:22:58 GMT

No further work has been done on the game due to "unforeseen circumstances" as well as foreseen circumstances (ie. college). I'll see if I can fit it in my schedule somewhere but until then, I'll at least try to host the current hub version of US on a daily basis.

Quick Status Update

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:29:05 GMT

*Attacking system done
-All the features making the attack system fully capable, are NOT done
--Units to flesh out system in the works (a little past icon stage)
--Revisions to units coming up (including individual stats and special abilities..quite possibly even icons also)

With the changes to the attack system, some features will become obsolete and others will be added, so the interface will also be in necessary need of change. I'll try to stick with the within a month scope but can't promise it nor promise near perfection.

With that in mind, I may release a strictly playable version minus a fully overhauled interface..Sure it'll be less pretty or slightly less convenient, but it'd still be pretty playable.

Really Random Poll

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:54:30 GMT

Based on my forum posts, blog posts, games, quality of games, number of games, behavior, overall conduct around the site, etc and/or any other criteria you can think to go by, which race(ethnic group) do you think I belong to? Not that it truly matters nor do I plan to take offense to guessing wrongly but I thought it would be somewhat interesting to pose the question. When/if you do vote, feel free to comment why you think such. I'll eventually post the correct answer but as I said earlier, I'm a bit curious to see the responses just for knowing's sake...

P.S. US updates delayed a bit for uh "life" but I'll try to stick to the no later than a month thing..

Ultimate Strife

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:05:45 GMT

Progress so far is running along quite smoothly. Not only has programming been started but I decided I'd clean up the code a bit since after roughly 4 years, it's gotten quite messy. With the change to the attacking system comes the exclusion of a few older features that may have been underused and/or clunky (teleporting, summoning, etc) and the addition of a few other features (new AI again yay..) as well as a change in interface and such as needed.

Keep in mind, that most of this hasn't been done yet but I expect and plan to complete all this (and more!) in the future. Just maybe publicly declaring my little plan of action can keep me consistently focused for a bit and help me maintain my word.

Now I can't promise that all this will be done swiftly not knowing what life entails but I can at least assure that a newly playable version may be up soon, within a month at the most.

Ultimate Strife

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:06:32 GMT

Yet another (and hopefully the LAST) redesign of the battle system. This very well could shape up to be drastically different compared to previous systems but it's still a work in progress in the planning stage as of now.

Third Party Router Firmware

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:16:40 GMT

I was just wondering did anyone else here use some third party firmware for their routers and if so which one? Does it seem to be worth it? Since my router conveniently started losing connection repeatedly on a daily basis shortly after my warranty ran out, I've considered using one. My router in question is the Linksys WRT310N and I'm checking out DD WRT with a bit of confusion at the moment but I'm still doing a bit of research before I even think about attempting it. While it is VERY annoying having your connection randomly dropped and spending hours trying to reconnect for more than a few seconds practically every day, I guess that's still better than stable dialup or even nothing at all..

Hosting Irregularities..

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:21:19 GMT

For some reason when I host my own games using either dream seeker or dream daemon, the info of it being Live won't appear on my page yet when I host another game such as Seika, GTA online, or etc it does show said info. Anybody know what's up with this?

I'm pretty sure the games are actually joinable since Dream Daemon says its reachable (nice feature I might add) but it seems kinda odd for just my own games to appear invisible, even after an extended waiting period.

Games in question are Gone Fishin' & Ultimate Strife which are actually being hosted here and here.

SSSSS Update

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:13:11 GMT

As the description says, there has indeed been an update to my old game. Updates include:

*You can now enter word combos using only spaces(I was stubborn but thanks Foomer)
*The ai has been tweaked
*Medals have been added(check the game page under standings)
*Foomer ai added (since his typing skills are leet)
*Minor bugs not displaying health and names fixed
*Help window updated to reflect changes
*Potential bugs for multiplayer fixed

Check it out here. And the review too while you're at it (or better yet, make a new one :D)

Also, it'd be pretty cool if someone could make a hub icon for SSSSS (as you can see it only has a banner) and maybe some medals. I can't compensate you monetarily but you will of course receive hub credit. Enjoy the game folks.