ROMhacking.net Becomes News Only - Files uploaded to Internet Archive

General Off-Topic
#1

Message: https://www.romhacking.net/news/3074/

Message Part 2: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=39514.0

Data: https://archive.org/details/romhacking.net-20240801

I am in shock right now. One of my favorite resources and sites is basically shutting down, in the sense how it operates. They will no longer accept new Romhacks and mods and the site will operate as a news platform. The site founder and operator put the entire database and files to Archiveorg for download in one batch.

Reading the message, there were shenanigans going on. It saddens me that there are toxic people affecting the life of others and their projects. I can’t thank him and the entire community enough for the platform and resources they built and provided for free. I wish him the best. I am also sad on a personal level, because this is a site I visit almost daily (or few days apart) just to see whats new.

So what does that mean for the future? Probably other Romhacking sites will grow based on this and alternative communities based on the uploaded data will emerge.

5 Likes
#2

yeah, sounds like a bad situation.

I knew there were several groups who felt like RHDN as we knew it was holding things back, as far as scalability, discoverability and web design, not to mention keeping IPS relevant as a patch format long past its sell-by date.

None of those legit-but-minor complaints warrants any weird cloak-and-dagger plotting, though, and I hope we at least learn which would-be replacements come from those subversive elements so we can avoid them moving forward. I don’t want to perpetuate a cycle of doxxing and harassment (i.e., with some big name-and-shame campaign), but I sure don’t want to support something born of it, either, even if sort of indirectly.

That was real decent of Nightcrawler to upload the database to the archive rather than just torching it. Cheers to them for carrying the burden for so long and being such an important and valuable resource for everyone.

As I mentioned on your podcast, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time with open source software, it’s that “the community” that does all of the work is almost always just one dedicated individual.

2 Likes
#3

But there is an alternative with neo rom hacking. I am glad people continue the work with the support from the original rom hacking staff. https://neoromhacking.net/

1 Like
#4

It’s on my radar too, after the recommendation by Nightcrawler himself in Part 2 of the message 2 weeks later (I should add this link to the original posting too): https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=39514.0

I saw the promising ‘NeoRHDN’ project by NinCollin on the forum. They have the right idea with an upstanding approach. I look forward to seeing how it develops as a possible option.

3 Likes