Originally posted by GlitterBerri
What's wrong with "Development History"?
At face value, nothing. However...
Originally posted by Waffle Ryebread
The Cutting Room Floor has always strived to be different from other sites by showcasing unused/prototype content that still exists in available ROMs or disc images. Because of this, I ask that you not submit videos or magazine/brochure screenshots of prototype or unreleased games, unless you are using them to illustrate how something in a ROM was used at some point in the development process.
It's incredibly disappointing to go to a site like X-Cult, see a section marked "unused levels," and click it only to be greeted with a grainy black-and-white magazine shot of something that sort of resembles an unused level, without any real data to back it up. How can you even be sure that level isn't just a mockup, pieced together from graphics that never really existed in a ROM? (If you're familiar with the Sonic 2 "Dust Hill Zone" fiasco, you know what I'm talking about.)
Sites like that are a dime a dozen, and while it's interesting to see what may have been, quite frankly I'm growing tired of rampant speculation and rumors. I much prefer cold, hard data: stuff I can see and hear for myself, stuff that I can poke with a hex editor and see what makes it tick. Real proof of what may have been.
Granted, this was all posted like a year ago, but his point still stands, as it *is* difficult to discern from grainy screenshots just what is and isn't actual unused/early developmental content. There are many mock-up screenshots out there, which were never intended to actually be a part of the game, and are just showcasing something. The beauty of TCRF is that everything on the page is *still in the game* in some form or another, and can be brought to the surface in some manner (hacking, editors, graphics/text viewers, etc).
Be that as it may...
Originally posted by Waffle Ryebread
In the future, if the demand is great enough, we may create a separate section devoted to preview videos and screenshots (The Speculation Bucket? ), but for now, I'd rather not clutter up the wiki with them.
So, there you go. The idea isn't a bad one in and of itself, but it *needs* to be put in its own section. Moreover, I have this nagging personal fear that allowing such content could easily overshadow the rest of the site, as everyone scrambles to upload every magazine screenshot, developer's interview (just because one of the CT devs, for instance, said Gaspar was planned to be a playable character, doesn't mean it's *true*; he could've just been joking, after all) and declares "OMG BETA CONTENT THIS WAS GOING TO BE IN THE GAME OMFG!"
Basically, to keep such sections from becoming a mess of utterly horrific proportions, we'd probably want to stick with *verifiable* "in-development" info. Info which isn't always easy to obtain; and we've already expressed disdain at loading pages with [citation needed] links.
|