Why is all homebrew software marked as public domain? I don’t know about you, but I still hold copyright on my software even though I release it for free. The last field of the serial number should be the country where it was made.
BTW KR155E, now is a good time to update the pages of all the CC10 entries. Maybe the CC08 and CC10 entries could have a tab of their own too?
I agree, even though I haven’t put serial numbers on any of my projects. “Public Domain” is not a country (plus it makes the serial number asymmetrical. ;-)) All kidding aside, the meaning of public domain varies from place to place, and in some countries, there is no real way to release something into the public domain. Whoever writes the software holds copyright (regardless of if they declare it public domain) and copying of that software may be considered copyright infringement. The best course of action to take if you want to guarantee availability of your software to everyone is to release it under any one of the many free software licenses. As far as the serial number goes, I think it makes more sense to use the last 3 digits for their intended purpose anyway.
You’re right that it’s not a correct term. When the homebrew scene started on the VB, I just adopted the GoodTools naming scheme and did not correct the decision since then.
I have started correcting this by changing all the homebrew ROM names. We now need a new last field name for the serial numbers of homebrew games. Maybe “HBR” for homebrew? “WLD” for “world”? What do you guys think?
I will do more update to the homebrew section as soon as I get around to it. If anyone wants to submit info, images, videos, descriptions, etc of anything (for example your own compo projects), that’d be great!
I’d like to label compo entries and winners somehow, but I am not sure how to do that, yet. An extra tab is a good idea, but I’d also like to label winners somehow. Hmm.
The idea of using the last 3 digits for the country where it was made is a nice one, but couldn’t that be a bit confusing? Nobody would understand what’s meant who didn’t read this read or some explanation somewhere.
I’d agree with Fwirt that those digits should be used for their intended purpose: the region the game is intended for. In the case of homebrews it’d be “the world”, “the scene”, “the internet” or similar.
Proposals:
“HBR” – Homebrew
“WLD” – World
“INT” – International
“UNL” – Unlicensed
“RF” – Region Free
Instead of making something up, we could also just omit the last three digits for homebrew projects. Those are not coded into the ROM and were only prited on boxes and stuff anyway.
What do other devs say? Maybe we need to set up a poll for that.
KR155E wrote:
The idea of using the last 3 digits for the country where it was made is a nice one, but couldn’t that be a bit confusing? Nobody would understand what’s meant who didn’t read this read or some explanation somewhere.
I don’t think it’s confusing at all. When I see “USA” or “JPN” or even “DEU” on something, I’d probably assume that it was a country code. Additionally, it’s not really necessary for the end-user to know what the serial number means. Personally, I think HBR or PD are just as cryptic as a country code. If we were going to choose a worldwide country code, my vote is for “INT”.
What I mean is, if, for example the serial for Blox 2 was VUE-VB2M-DEU, what would that make people think if they don’t know what the last three digits are intended to stand for? They’d probably think that the game is in german, since they’re used to serials that end with the region, like USA.
Or how about VUE-VSUE-SVN for Soviet Union 2010? 😉
I would agree with KR155E on that point. As a gamer, if I saw a serial that ended in DEU or JPN – I would assume that game is either in german or japanese. That said though, I don’t (as a gamer) tend to look too hard at serials when looking at games.
HorvatM wrote:
The last field of the serial number should be the country where it was made.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it means (or should be interpreted as) “country of release” or “country to be sold in.” I’m sure all of the physical carts were manufactured in Japan (Taiwan?), and many games are identical between their U.S. and Japanese versions, meaning even most “USA” labeled games were probably developed in Japan.
I don’t even think home-brew needs a full serial number, but even if (for whatever reason) you think you need one, it’s completely redundant to use “INT” or whatever at the end, since practically all home-brew is being released “world-wide” at this point.
