Well I guess the W/B rights holders(PPS?) had nothing better to do and sent Soren a C&D letter about his patches to fix BROKEN code. I don’t know for sure if this happened but he does still provide patches for DE games on his website...
He wasn't selling anything. He wasn’t even providing patched code. Just the patch itself.
I guess they used the “reverse engineering” clause.
What’s next? Pinsound? ColorDMD? PinBrowser?
Thanks for that. I don't surf that forum.
I'm still suspicious though since the other custom ROMS(DE) aren't removed. Probably a C&D with a non-disclosure part? Or am I being paranoid.. lol..
Quoted from MrMikeman:Thanks for that. I don't surf that forum.
I'm still suspicious though since the other custom ROMS(DE) aren't removed. Probably a C&D with a non-disclosure part? Or am I being paranoid.. lol..
I agree, that was my first suspicion too. Don't get why the roms are taken down just when Soren is taking a break...
Quoted from MrMikeman:Thanks for that. I don't surf that forum.
I'm still suspicious though since the other custom ROMS(DE) aren't removed. Probably a C&D with a non-disclosure part? Or am I being paranoid.. lol..
Isn’t the DE code owned by Stern ? Different attorneys
Quoted from monkeyboypaul:This sucks. Feel lucky to have downloaded the RS rom before this (thanks soren)
Me too i got the Roadshow patch. It’s in my game. Love it.
I did a quick google search after getting home today and found a way to get them all anyway before those other sites get forced to take them down.
Is there a list of custom ROMs made by Soeren or, even better, is there a list with custom ROMs by anyone? A few years ago I released a home ROM for Jungle Lord and I am currently working on something similar for Pin Bot.
Quoted from chad:If he was not selling, I do not see an issue.?
The original code belongs to Wms (Intellectual Property). That's all PPS cares about. They own it. While I'm not convinced they could prove harm to the brand(they certainly couldn't prove loss of revenue) in a court of law, who the hell wants to go through the ha$$le of testing that assumption.
Pisses me off that they don't care enough to fix buggy code but like to harass someone who fixed the bugs for FREE. Hell it could've even INCREASED PPS' sale of licensed parts to people wanting to restore older machines that are better with the updated code. Short sighted approach for PPS. *golf clap*
It's just an assumption of course that PPS got involved. The guy who did the patches is only saying that he is "taking a break"... And therefore removed all traces/code of ONLY his Wms/Bally patches.. Certainly smells of C&D.
Quoted from MrMikeman:Well I guess the W/B rights holders(PPS?) had nothing better to do and sent Soren a C&D letter about his patches to fix BROKEN code. I don’t know for sure if this happened but he does still provide patches for DE games on his website...
He wasn't selling anything. He wasn’t even providing patched code. Just the patch itself.
I guess they used the “reverse engineering” clause.
What’s next? Pinsound? ColorDMD? PinBrowser?
Is there a list of what games were patched?
Quoted from Stuieb84:Is there a list of what games were patched?
Most of the patches were for balanced scoring issues and fixing scoring "flaws" for competition/tournament play. Made these unsuitable tournament machines suitable.
Some ruleset improvements such as Road Show. Bugs were also squashed in certain games like HS2.
- Big Guns
- Creature from the Black Lagoon
- Demolition Man
- Getaway
- High Speed
- Junk Yard
- Mousin Around
- Pool Sharks
- Radical
- Road Show
- Rollergames
- Star Trek the Next Generation
- Theater of Magic
Found more.. Wow Soren has really been busy with the purging of his work/name. Stuff that was there last night is gone now.
- Dr Dude
- Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Earthshaker
- The Addam's Family
- Taxi (both Lola and Marilyn)
- Tales of the Arabian Nights
- World Cup Soccer
He might not want to deal with it, and I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think there's any ground for a C&D if he was only providing a patch, and not distributing original code. Can one of our attorneys weigh in?
So did anyone save all of these before he removed them?
Quoted from drsfmd:He might not want to deal with it, and I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think there's any ground for a C&D if he was only providing a patch, and not distributing original code. Can one of our attorneys weigh in?
So did anyone save all of these before he removed them?
I'm not an attorney but I do know IP rights are complex. You can't legally reverse engineer software. You can create your own if you want to but from scratch. Although with the WPC ASIC chip you probably need Wms code to make it work. Therefore you most likely can't legally make software that works on a WPC board.... Probably. My opinion only of course. I'm not a lawyer lol.
Also want to state that I don't have these (other than Roadshow that's installed in my machine). I had it done by someone else I don't have an EPROM reader/burner.
Cheers,
Quoted from MrMikeman:Although with the WPC ASIC chip you probably need Wms code to make it work. Therefore you most likely can't legally make software that works on a WPC board....
What about a board that wasn't made by WPC? By that logic, one could use such software on a Rottendog board, but not on an original.
Quoted from drsfmd:What about a board that wasn't made by WPC? By that logic, one could use such software on a Rottendog board, but not on an original.
As long as the Rottendog board doesn't use the Asic chip I guess you could.
This is one of those things I should have downloaded them all and stored for a later date - i still have a couple of them. Does anyone else have all or some of these downloaded?
I wonder if somewhere like http://www.romhacking.net/ would be willing to host the patches.
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Interesting..... looking fwd to see what's coming...
Did you hire Soren to do more work?
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
I also hope there’s more to this - by being less cryptic we could maybe all bask in this potentially upcoming glory...?
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Is this related to this?
With last update was 5 years ago?
Quoted from djsolzs:Did you hire Soren to do more work?
That's what I was thinking as well when I read that.
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Believe it when we see it, bud. 
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Ok. But does it really have to be at the expense of community sourced fixes? Using the law as a bludgeon doesn't get me excited for whatever you're selling.
This exactly
Quoted from A_Bord:Ok. But does it really have to be at the expense of community sourced fixes? Using the law as a bludgeon doesn't get me excited for whatever you're selling.
if this isn’t sunshine and rainbows and it’s soren getting f@cked then would the cactus canyon continued and ngg 2.0 creators be attacked too?
Quoted from multibrawlr:Same.
Me too. Only couple of years left to see the selling product with license , a bit like the seawitch playfield ...
Quoted from A_Bord:Ok. But does it really have to be at the expense of community sourced fixes? Using the law as a bludgeon doesn't get me excited for whatever you're selling.
PPS has made a couple of greedy, anti-community decisions. Maybe they don't have a choice because they are hanging by a thread.. or maybe they are just greedy a-holes. It's one of them and I couldn't really care less which. I minimize my interactions with such companies.
Quoted from SadSack:PPS has made a couple of greedy, anti-community decisions. Maybe they don't have a choice because they are hanging by a thread.. or maybe they are just greedy a-holes. It's one of them and I couldn't really care less which. I minimize my interactions with such companies.
PPS is a business. The only thing that matters to them is making a profit. They have no obligation to support the community. I'd say more about how I feel about PPS, but I'd rather not have my account locked.
Quoted from SadSack:PPS has made a couple of greedy, anti-community decisions. Maybe they don't have a choice because they are hanging by a thread.. or maybe they are just greedy a-holes. It's one of them and I couldn't really care less which. I minimize my interactions with such companies.
Me too.
It's one thing to protect your IP and it's another to be a complete a-hole all the time towards people doing something for free for the benefit of the community.
Quoted from PPS:Stay tuned ... hopefully more than you ever hoped for will be coming ...
Really hope it turns out to be true this time
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Really hope it turns out to be true this time
And not in 5 to 10 years
Quoted from Spyderturbo007:Me too.
It's one thing to protect your IP and it's another to be a complete a-hole all the time towards people doing something for free for the benefit of the community.
They where just patches (not even full roms) and all of the home roms are still out there.
I believe Soren was also going to do a patch for Indy 500, which -- among other things -- fixed a longstanding bug where the Souvenir score values were just a flat amount of points, rather than the incremental value shown on the display. Bowen Kerins pointed out this bug in his PAPA tutorial for Indy 500.
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