Dear friends, as some of you have noticed, I have started to close down some of my other sites. Some people have approached me asking whether the same would happen to Planet VB, so I want to tell you all: don’t worry! 😉

There’s important changes in my private life coming up and I need to set priorities. That means that I need to get rid of some (dead) undertakings to focus on the most important ones. In detail:

Planet 3DS is already gone. It was fun while it lasted but it had been dead for years.

64DD.net was PVB’s sister site for over a decade, and the decision to close it was not as easy to make as for Planet 3DS. But the forums have been pretty much dead for years, the code is rotting and the site is overrun by spammers. It was only work and not much fun lately.

Pokemon-Mini.net is the only active PM community and requires next to zero maintenance work, it will stay where it is.

The gamiac project hurts to cancel after several years of development and before it could even open its doors. The vision was to scale up the concept of PVB and create an in-depth multi system game database plus social network like community features. It would also have been a network of websites with a central user account where each site (like PVB would’ve become one) has its own niche and pulls only the data relevant to the covered system(s) from the central database. It was largely finished and not too far from release, but getting it out and maintained would’ve killed me. I guess it was a way too huge undertaking for a single person after all.

Planet VB will not die, rest assured of that. Actually, the current plan is to take the existing gamiac code and stript it down to only the new PVB version. That new version will mean a huge step forward in many aspects. It will, for example, make it possible to put a large amount of control over the site in the hands of you, the community. Hopefully I can get that done this year. For the moment, though, I am pretty much addicted to VB game development. 😀

Thanks for the update on this! Very glad to hear that PVB is here to stay. This site helped me love the VB for what it is, repair my own VB and after that taken care of repairs of many PVB members their VB displays!

Good to hear our beloved PVB stays, I was on the planet3ds site fairly regular, but only seeing the news, which was from other sites anyway, I was not posting or anything, I did wonder why the shortcut I had on my phone sent me to pvb, that’s now answered. Bit sad to see it go but there are heaps of others to check for 3DS news so not a big issue really.
Big thanks for keeping PVB up, it is a top place to be.

That’s good to know. Pvb is the only site I check daily, i don’t always sign in, only when I intend to post. But thanks to smart phones I always check in throughout the day.
I’ve always found pvb useful and the people here helpful and friendly.
Here’s to many more years of planet virtual boy!

I am, of course, glad to hear about PVB not only sticking around, but getting an upgrade, but the real take-away from his post is that KR155E is getting back into VB game development! That means more BLOX-caliber games are coming, woot! 😀

i had no idea pokemon-mini.net was your site, chris. i still want a mini and a flash kit, and it is because of that site.

pvb is a fun community and i really enjoy my vb. i’m happy to hear that it’s sticking around and getting an upgrade. there really is no better place to discuss the virtual boy.

KR155E wrote:
64DD.net was PVB’s sister site for over a decade, and the decision to close it was not as easy to make as for Planet 3DS. But the forums have been pretty much dead for years, the code is rotting and the site is overrun by spammers. It was only work and not much fun lately.

Does this mean permanent closure but still everything accessible for posterity or deletion at the end of the month/quarter/whenever 64dd.net runs out?

KR155E wrote:
Pokemon-Mini.net is the only active PM community and requires next to zero maintenance work, it will stay where it is.

Any chance a backup of http://wiki.sublab.net/ or its information exists and could be made available?

cYa,

Tauwasser

Tauwasser wrote:
Any chance a backup of http://wiki.sublab.net/ or its information exists and could be made available?

Oh, I had no idea the wiki was offline. I’ll do my best to get it reprinted on PM.net!

KR155E wrote:
The gamiac project hurts to cancel after several years of development and before it could even open its doors. The vision was to scale up the concept of PVB and create an in-depth multi system game database plus social network like community features. It would also have been a network of websites with a central user account where each site (like PVB would’ve become one) has its own niche and pulls only the data relevant to the covered system(s) from the central database. It was largely finished and not too far from release, but getting it out and maintained would’ve killed me. I guess it was a way too huge undertaking for a single person after all.

Certainly I understand changes in private life, but why not put the project on the backburner for the time being until things are more settled (while still rolling out the PVB code)?

I mean, a project like this in and of itself will be relevant for a long time to come :). See: Planet VB :P.

KR155E wrote:
Oh, I had no idea the wiki was offline. I’ll do my best to get it reprinted on PM.net!

Whoa, thanks for the quick fix, should’ve asked sooner 🙂

cYa,

Tauwasser

KR155E wrote:
There’s important changes in my private life coming up and I need to set priorities.

That reminds me a bit of my personal situation. For some reason, I got sidetracked from Virtual Boy collecting for a while and got into NES collecting and then classic Atari collecting (my Atari 2600 collection is quite embarrassingly large, I must confess), and then I realized I was getting way in over my head with the collecting and needed to set my priorities straight, based on other happenings in my personal life. Thus, it is just about Virtual Boy from here on out, as it is definitely the one system that is worth it above all others!

Lester Knight schrieb:
i had no idea pokemon-mini.net was your site, chris. i still want a mini and a flash kit, and it is because of that site.

pvb is a fun community and i really enjoy my vb. i’m happy to hear that it’s sticking around and getting an upgrade. there really is no better place to discuss the virtual boy.

The flash kit you mentiond works great:
http://youtu.be/pUvJIluPb08
😉

Pokemon-Mini.net is similar to PlanetVB in a sense that it is the best source of information for that specific system you can find.

I’m running into a very minor glitch where the icon for PVB in my favorites will change from the Virtual Boy to a white background with, I think, a VB. If I load the page again from my favorites it goes back to normal.

KR155e was originally helping with my site as well neogeoplanet.com, but to be honest the Gamiac was too advance for me, but wow was it impressive. I’m glad he’s continuing with other sites, but I think you my friend had a huge/awesome idea, but you needed help to make it happen. I wish you luck.

:thumpup: 😀 :thumpup: