54 replies to this topic

[SUCCESSOR]

And in this light, this 'announcement' amounts to nothing, doesn't it.

My point was only on the act of stealing the repo. It is a shame that there is so much baggage, personal resentment, and other BS muddying up this situation.

Edited by SUCCESSOR, 27 September 2023 - 02:08 AM.

[connor.clark]

This was locked when I first looked, so I'll paste the comment I gave in Discord:
 

The repo isn't private.

 

Would be lovely if they wanted to start contributing to ZC again. There hasn't been much interest shown in that though - this is the first sign of interest these people have shown for many years!

 

This is all quite bizarre, and every person that's been involved on their end has been various levels of wrong (re: basic software license stuff), extremely hostile, communicating soley in legalese, or deluded... so it's difficult to quickly respond publicly to all that's been claimed. We sent Jarrod a thoughtful response a week ago but didn't get anything back until this. We could make that email public, but not sure if it'd help much.

 

The main reason we moved the repo as we did (rather than reupload it to GitHub) was that 1) their level of involvement in development has been nil for so many years that we hardly thought to consider them, 2) to the extent we did consider them, a member of their discord "OK'd" it, and 3) it allowed us to retain GitHub redirects and release page assets, and reduce some possible confusion as to where ZC is being developed.

 

Just to end the weird legal threats, we may just "give it back" (and maybe this will spark them to do...something with ZC again?), so I'm slowly recreating the GitHub releases now in case we go that route.

 

 

Since this is a public conversation now, I suppose I'll share the email communication between Jarrod and us. Note that there was far too much said prior to this within their Discord and DMs to reasonably share here, so I won't.

 

 

Subject: Request for Repository Transfer Back to Armageddon Games on GitHub

EmilyV99, connorjclark,

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to you on behalf of Armageddon Games regarding the ZQuestClassic (Zelda Classic) repository on GitHub.

It has come to our attention that the ZQuestClassic repository was recently moved out of our organization without the explicit consent of the appropriate parties. We understand that there may have been reasons for this change, but we would like to clarify that such a move was not authorized.

We kindly request your assistance in transferring the repository back to Armageddon Games, as the appropriate parties were not consulted nor granted permission for this action.

We would like to assure you that Armageddon Games is committed to working collaboratively and respecting the rights and contributions of all members. We value the work you have put into this repository and believe that it can continue to thrive within our organization.

We sincerely appreciate your careful consideration of this request, and hope to continue our collaboration on this project.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Regards,

Jarrod Woerner
Founder, Armageddon Games
614.382.0966 | PO Box 654, Blacklick, OH 43004
https://armageddongames.com

 

 

Hey Jarrod,

I'd like to first quickly cover the reasoning for moving to a new GitHub org. In hindsight I know it's come across as vindictive or sneaky, but I hope I can at least convince you it wasn't meant to be, and its only goal was to further realize a new future for ZC.

For the last year or so, we've been slowly removing "Zelda" and associated Nintendo IP from ZC, including renaming the project from Zelda Classic to ZQuest Classic. In preparation for an upcoming major 3.0 release, we recently accelerated that rebranding by preparing a new website, renaming the repository, commissioning some new media and logos, etc.

As part of this rebranding effort, it made sense that we should also address the "Armageddon Games" label attached to the project. As far as any of us knew, Armageddon Games through years of inaction had abandoned the project. Additionally James, who we understood to be in contact with you or whatever remained of Armageddon Games, requested we move the repo to a new organization (though it's now unclear he knew what that entailed).

With all that in mind, I transferred the repo to a new GitHub org. I didn't expect anyone to care, or even notice, as my summary impression of Armageddon Games has been "they don't actually exist anymore; ZC is an old project, it makes sense everyone would have moved on".

The work done by the early developers of ZC is a fantastic gift to Zelda fans. Perhaps the most important aspect of that gift was the decision to license it as GPL, ensuring a future for the project as long as someone was willing to pull up their sleeves and do the work. We are those people - as both our custodianship of the last couple years and our big plans for the future show. Core to the spirit of open source software is to be willing to pass on the baton to people willing and able to advance the project, when you no longer desire to. It saddens me that this is not the perspective anyone associated with Armageddon Games shares for a cool project they once dedicated themselves to, but no longer work on.

> We would like to assure you that Armageddon Games is committed to working collaboratively and respecting the rights and contributions of all members. We value the work you have put into this repository and believe that it can continue to thrive within our organization.

For the last 2 years all aspects of managing ZC (including feature work, bug fixes, planning, release management, community outreach, various bills, etc), has been handled by myself, Emily, and a couple other devs, all of us completely unaffiliated with Armageddon Games. Further, the last time a member from your community Armageddon Games was involved with the project -- Zoria -- it resulted in a terribly toxic environment and stunted the project, which was only resolved when he was forced to leave the development team. Since then, all users of ZC have come to know us as the custodians of the project. I invite you to take a look at the changelogs of our recent releases since Zoria left the project, I think you'll find that ZC feature development has accelerated since the removal of Zoria.

To be frank, it's very perplexing to me what you see as the current role of Armageddon Games with respect to the ZC project, and I don't see how returning the repository to the Armageddon Games GitHub org would bring any value to the project or its users. The members that do pay some attention to ZC are unreliable. James - thinking he was speaking on your behalf. Zoria - who has multiple serious instances of harassment towards others in the community, and displays little understanding for how to interact with people or understand code, as shown in this blatant misunderstanding [1] he used to rile up members of your community (he claimed we removed compression and passwords from ZC, both of which are obviously false). Even a very small token gesture of requesting donations from the community via a Patreon link on the website you manage (zeldaclassic.com), you deemed to be inappropriate and thus took down.

In reality - you have a community Discord, but no apparent common goal or software project being advanced by your members.

If you wish to contest this transfer, I suggest you open a dispute with GitHub. We will respect whatever decision they make. It's our belief that the project will be somewhat harmed if the repo is sent back; and that attempts to hold onto ZC without any serious plans to develop it further will only serve to confuse users and make it harder for them to find where the project is actually being heartily developed.

[1] https://github.com/Z...718b53#comments

P.S. Could you clarify the status of Armageddon Games as an official entity? I see that just a few months ago, the LLC as registered with Ohio was dissolved.

We'll be discussing complying simply to end the matter. It's tiring fielding such a variety of bad legal takes, from "you aren't allowed to use our code" (yeah, that was a talking point early on in Discord), to "you have committed multiple felonies for exercising a privilege granted to you in a GitHub org (transferring a repo)". It's further perplexing that all this effort to reign back control over a project is coming from people that couldn't have cared less about ZC for many years now. It seems "Armageddon Games" _as a group of developers_ doesn't even exist any more, even legally (as far as that ever mattered). Just odd that these people are more interested in roleplaying having a "game company" and running a open source project, and spitting wild legal takes rather than ... work on ZC.
 

[SUCCESSOR]

It seems odd to say that AGN has abandoned the project while you've been acting in the role of official developer for AGN all this time. If you didn't want to continue in that capacity why not start your own development somewhere else? It's clear that PZC would have supported that development. Maybe the official development would have stagnate or maybe someone else would have taken it up. But you continued to develop it instead.

If the goal has been to move away from Zelda IP then why would you need to do so from the position of Official Zelda Classic Development?

[Nightmare]

OK, mistake #1 Dimi and Connor, now I make you two look like an arse:

https://www.angelfir.../zelda1/zc.html

I have been around for 25 years. So take that.

Now to take care of Connor:

I am very well a member of AGN staff and own a stake in Zelda Classic (quite a lot actually). Just because I don't "moderate", "administrate", or "code" doesn't mean I don't care or give a damn. IN fact, I've kept this project alive during its darkest times. Whether it's Breaker, kenage, and Cronic, or when Zoria got sick, or even your group, I have been there. I have seen it all.

I also have more project management experience than you can imagine. So I'm not photogenic and a terrible voice? You couldn't manage a project out of paper bag. Why couldn't you tell your overseer why the compression issue wasn't a big deal? I did the math. If you went through with that commit, you would've increased file sizes by two to ten times. Zoria might have his issues, but really, you covered that up and removed that access just because you didn't want to explain it and we would know something was up. You would've driven costs up beyond the point that your websites couldn't keep up. So yes, I had my reasons.

Also, this is very personal: If I put 25 years developing quests and my heart into it, why do you get to make money and I don't? Why doesn't every quest developer? There's a reason the license was made that way, and I had to leave to make my own engine and develop on my own. I respected that. You, my friend did not. All you had to do was clone the repo. You chose to steal, which is wrong, in law and in the eyes of God.

For that, you will pay the price.

-James

[Timelord]

Deedee had no more involvement in the moving process than I did. Unless I'm misremembering, Emily's legal name has already been changed. Neither this forum post nor the Zelda Classic announcements page is a "legal document". You are using made up legalese to form excuses for asshole behavior. This will hold up neither in the court of public opinion or a court of law. Kindly stop making a fool of yourself.

 

Without evidence of a legal Petition for Change of Name  on record, nobody would know that; and even if this is true, without knowing it, a former legal name is still valid, while anything else on its own, is not. If that person can show a valid court sanctioned legal name change, naturally we'd respect that, but short of that, facts must be used. At the very least, we acknowledged their chosen names and various usernames when detailing them. 

[Haylee]

Okay, I have one more thing I've gotta say.

 

Nightmare. Sincerely consider what it is you are doing. You are willingly burning bridges with an entire community that you have built up goodwill over the last few years with that has been a massive struggle for you to do so before. Connor is not talking about you when he says that AGN does not exist. If anything, you are the only real remnant of AGN that seemingly has any real investment in ZC. Connor was speaking to the devs of ZC. The people you are batting for, and I mean this as bluntly as possible, do not care. If they win, ZC dies, plain and simple. If they'd like to prove me wrong, then sure, maybe some significant development will come of it, but dude, all of your work goes away if you continue to bat for these people who seemingly do not have your level of passion for this program.

 

I don't entirely think you grasp the reality of what is happening here. If you want basic math here, it's AGN vs PZC, and quite simply, PZC wins that race 10 to 0. It's not just about ownership of ZC. The active userbase of AGN itself if you exclude admins, mods, and devs is quite literally in the single digits. Emily, Deedee and Connor's dev server is more popular than that, and PZC even more so. This decision would not only ostracize pretty much the program's entire userbase, but you'd basically be willingly giving up hope of the community ever evolving again.

 

I do not want your contributions to die with you dying on the hill that "I have had more years of experience, therefore I'm better by default," because that is absolutely what will happen if you do if you keep going this route. You'll just be forgotten, and I don't think anybody wants that to happen.

Edited by Haylee, 27 September 2023 - 03:13 AM.

[Timelord]

This was locked when I first looked, so I'll paste the comment I gave in Discord:
[...]

We'll be discussing complying simply to end the matter. It's tiring fielding such a variety of bad legal takes, from "you aren't allowed to use our code" (yeah, that was a talking point early on in Discord), to "you have committed multiple felonies for exercising a privilege granted to you in a GitHub org (transferring a repo)". It's further perplexing that all this effort to reign back control over a project is coming from people that couldn't have cared less about ZC for many years now. It seems "Armageddon Games" _as a group of developers_ doesn't even exist any more, even legally (as far as that ever mattered). Just odd that these people are more interested in roleplaying having a "game company" and running a open source project, and spitting wild legal takes rather than ... work on ZC.
 

 

This is the singular thing that Jarrod has asked of you for weeks. You abjectly refused to comply, and that is the reason this has gone to this direction. You are choosing career seppeku, rather than simply diverging and doing what you want to do. You own messages admit and attest that you had no right to do what you have done, and yet you still somehow feel justified in lying, stealing, and abusing property that you do not own. 

 

Return it and this instantly ends. The very provisions of the license termination under which you face a permanent ban of developing, sharing, and using the ZC software, express that. I am also curious if your contracts with Google (and/or Meta) permit any of the actions you have taken, permit you to work on competing products, or if Google (&c) would have an issue with what you have done, or have been doing. I know that when I worked for various companies, I would have been fired on the spot, not only over this conspiracy, but merely for coding for an off-brand product.

 

In any event, if you return it, this will be over and AGN will likely just forget your actions. As to your comments about lack of AGN involvement over the last 2.5 years:  Yes, all due to total lies and fabrications that I was 'fired by WarLord', an event that in reality, never transpired. I would have kept working, and would have had others working on the project in that duration, while Emily went off with a fork and did their own thing.

 

The fact here is that this is the second instance of someone taking over the project by force, and also forcing others to be unable to continue their work, perpetrated by the same person. In a bottom line statement, if I was never fired, then my decisions of the past stand, and none of you have any legitimate authority at all. You should be happy to get out of this without being sued or criminally investigated, as those are still on the table; as is ruining your career if needed. If you want your legacy to be one of piracy and theft over software with fewer than 200 active users, and truly want to die on that hill, so be it.

Okay, I have one more thing I've gotta say.

 

Nightmare. Sincerely consider what it is you are doing. You are willingly burning bridges with an entire community that you have built up goodwill over the last few years with that has been a massive struggle for you to do so before. Connor is not talking about you when he says that AGN does not exist. If anything, you are the only real remnant of AGN that seemingly has any real investment in ZC. Connor was speaking to the devs of ZC. The people you are batting for, and I mean this as bluntly as possible, do not care. If they win, ZC dies, plain and simple. If they'd like to prove me wrong, then sure, maybe some significant development will come of it, but dude, all of your work goes away if you continue to bat for these people who seemingly do not have your level of passion for this program.

 

I don't entirely think you grasp the reality of what is happening here. If you want basic math here, it's AGN vs PZC, and quite simply, PZC wins that race 10 to 0. It's not just about ownership of ZC. The active userbase of AGN itself if you exclude admins, mods, and devs is quite literally in the single digits. Emily, Deedee and Connor's dev server is more popular than that, and PZC even more so. This decision would not only ostracize pretty much the program's entire userbase, but you'd basically be willingly giving up hope of the community ever evolving again.

 

I do not want your contributions to die with you dying on the hill that "I have had more years of experience, therefore I'm better by default," because that is absolutely what they will do if you keep going this route. You'll just be forgotten, and I don't think anybody wants that to happen.

 

They can continue this work as before, if they return the repo to AGN, and fork it. Literally nothing impeded them from doing this properly, and legally; and when challenged they absolutely refused. This is the result of their hubris. 

[Magi_Hero]

Zoria,

Your input into anything ZC related should've become barred when you purposely coded malware into the program preventing a users quests from being run.

[Timelord]

This was locked when I first looked, so I'll paste the comment I gave in Discord:
 

 

Since this is a public conversation now, I suppose I'll share the email communication between Jarrod and us. Note that there was far too much said prior to this within their Discord and DMs to reasonably share here, so I won'tt

 

 

P.S Jarrod, Nate, James: Did I not say that none of these people would treat your confidential or personal messages to them as anything but public? I quite literally predicted this, too, so now the gates have been opened. Nothing in this discussion is private now.

[Timelord]

Zoria,

Your input into anything ZC related should've become barred when you purposely coded malware into the program preventing a users quests from being run.

 

You should have been banned from this forum when you nuked years of messages on the AGN ZC discord. That is equally topical, as it relates directly to what is happening now, including admissions by persons involved. For the record, I never embedded malware. A block on one specific person, who at the time was banned literally everywhere, isn't malware. Look up the definition sometime. In any event, that lasted for one day as users decided that despite a global ban of that user, their quests shouldn't be blocked, and I abided by that decision.

 

Also, please stop deadnaming me. Thx.

Edited by Timelord, 27 September 2023 - 03:31 AM.

[Deedee]

Why couldn't you tell your overseer why the compression issue wasn't a big deal? I did the math. If you went through with that commit, you would've increased file sizes by two to ten times. Zoria might have his issues, but really, you covered that up and removed that access just because you didn't want to explain it and we would know something was up. You would've driven costs up beyond the point that your websites couldn't keep up. So yes, I had my reasons.

We did tell you, in discord, that there was no compression change. NightmareJames — 09/12/2023 5:12 PMAlso, I will be resigning officially from Z - Pastebin.com

Here is the commit:

feat(zc): remove encoding layer for save files · ZQuestClassic/ZQuestClassic@a0c81ae (github.com)

What this does is remove a useless second-layer of encoding; aka "scrambling it so people can't read it as easily". It is already still encoded using Allegro's system, but the second system on top of that has been removed. This has no change on compression or quest safety.  Additionally, we removed the allegro packfile password; this is *not* the quest password, but rather, a useless password used to access the stuff distributed with ZC (like the built in default tileset); the password was "longtan" for everything and it served no purpose beyond being an annoyance at best.

Claiming that we removed compression is entirely false, and easily disproven by literally opening up a quest and saving it again; you will see that it is still compressed. Claiming that we removed passwords is entirely false, and easily disproven by opening up a passworded quest; you will see that it still asks for the password. The only thing that skips the password is if you build a debug build instead of a release build and use that, as debug builds skip the password check entirely (not that passwords mean anything; we had this discussion all the way back when ZC was made open source). Please do not spread misinformation.

[Magi_Hero]

You should have been banned from this forum when you nuked years of messages on the AGN ZC discord. That is equally topical, as it relates directly to what is happening now, including admissions by persons involved.

In reference to this, I did this and have parted ways with AGN. I have no regrets.

[Timelord]

We did tell you, in discord, that there was no compression change. NightmareJames — 09/12/2023 5:12 PMAlso, I will be resigning officially from Z - Pastebin.com

Here is the commit:

feat(zc): remove encoding layer for save files · ZQuestClassic/ZQuestClassic@a0c81ae (github.com)

What this does is remove a useless second-layer of encoding; aka "scrambling it so people can't read it as easily". It is already still encoded using Allegro's system, but the second system on top of that has been removed. This has no change on compression or quest safety.  Additionally, we removed the allegro packfile password; this is *not* the quest password, but rather, a useless password used to access the stuff distributed with ZC (like the built in default tileset); the password was "longtan" for everything and it served no purpose beyond being an annoyance at best.

Claiming that we removed compression is entirely false, and easily disproven by literally opening up a ques and saving it again; you will see that it is still compressed. Claiming that we removed passwords is entirely false, and easily disproven by opening up a passworded quest; you will see that it still asks for the password. The only thing that skips the password is if you build a debug build instead of a release build and use that, as debug builds skip the password check entirely (not that passwords mean anything; we had this discussion all the way back when ZC was made open source). Please do not spread misinformation.

 

I was specifically asked to go through two years of changelogs and list anything not Kosher. The literal change history was something like 'removed quest encoding', not 'stripped 007'. In general, the term encoding references the compression (see format QSU, quest, unencoded), a quest file format that is not compressed. (It is not my fault that the revision history uses a term that is not contextually appropriate to define a change.)

 

This led to a misunderstanding as I was merely sorting through years of revisions in which I was uninvolved. I was not granted sufficient time to go through every actual code change for those years, and doing that would be entirely unreasonable for the purposes for which I was asked to do it.  

 

I am also not responsible for outbursts or overreactions of other people. I merely highlighted the notes in the changelog.txt file and reported why they sound dubious. I specifically praised and approved quite a lot, and I pointed to many things that seem to be (IMO) foolish to do at this time, notably anything that drags the release ate out without primal merit. 

 

If you have further questions about this topic, please make a new thread as it has zero bearing on this matter. 

Edited by Timelord, 27 September 2023 - 04:06 AM.

[Bagu]

I dont wanna discuss AGN decisions, or authorities.
I just recognized a kind of disorientation, in the direction the development takes.
...this has begone, when the Timelord had been ditched...
Maybe, there are too many persons involved, in the progress. ...I don't know.


Don't get me wrong.
I appreciate the effort of all the ZC Developers and I'm very grateful.

I love a lot of the newer features, but currently I continue working in 2.55 Alpha99, cause the large number of
frequently updates (including engine and zscript changes) is just too much for me, to overview (on each new update).
...In fact I'm working on my personal MotU modul, for Alpha99.

I'm gonna update again, as soon as 2.55 reaches Beta state.

I really hope, the trouble will finally end, soon.


...please excuse my worse english ...I'm a stupid "Kraut"

[Timelord]

I dont wanna discuss AGN decisions, or authorities.
I just recognized a kind of disorientation, in the direction the development takes.
...this has begone, when the Timelord had been ditched...
Maybe, there are too many persons involved, in the progress. ...I don't know.


Don't get me wrong.
I appreciate the effort of all the ZC Developers and I'm very grateful.

I love a lot of the newer features, but currently I continue working in 2.55 Alpha99, cause the large number of
frequently updates (including engine and zscript changes) is just too much for me, to overview (on each new update).
...In fact I'm working on my personal MotU modul, for Alpha99.

I'm gonna update again, as soon as 2.55 reaches Beta state.

I really hope, the trouble will finally end, soon.


...please excuse my worse english ...I'm a stupid "Kraut"

 

 

Ich stimme zu, dass es zu viele versionen gibt. Mein plan war anders. :/

Edited by Timelord, 27 September 2023 - 05:26 AM.