A brief announcement regarding my FE5 menu translation

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It’s time for a public statement about FE5 things in order to avoid confusion in the future:

I’m retracting my support for projects using my menu translation.

To avoid leaving fans without a good way to play FE5, I’ve decided that existing works are free to remain up. I don’t want any new works or updates to existing works to be posted using my menu translation, however.

I do not want my name attached to this drama any longer. I am heartbroken and disappointed at how things have gone, and I would like to stop tearing my hair out over it.

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I’m sorry for all that’s happened, Zane. It’s been a sad few days for romhacking, and the broader FE community as a whole.

I do not think anyone finds you at fault for what’s transpired. Please try not to beat yourself up over it.

Be safe and always here to lend an ear.

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Hi Zane.

I’m Miacis, I’m the current person in charge of keeping the FE5 translation to date. If you retract your support, it will remain unfinished, with still a number of bugs to iron out.

As i’ve said before, your name has not been attached to any of this drama, and we’ve all made a very conscious and willful decision to keep you out of this as much as possible.

The beef between Ciro and myself never had anything to do with you, until you showed up in a now-defunct Reddit thread to involve yourself in it, yesterday. There’s a budding FE5 hacking community that is still relying on your work to survive. If you pull your support now, you’re not even giving us a chance to be “more than just your work”. I’m sorry to say, but we don’t have anyone with your knowledge of Thracia or assembly to replace your tools.

If you want to walk away and do not wish to provide help to anyone on this because of how much it weighs on you, I don’t think anyone will begrudge you. But if you explicitly go and forbid people from using what’s already there, I’m sorry, but you’re just throwing everyone that isn’t you under the bus, and that’s just not right.

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How’s that for a guilt trip.

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Hello, Zane. My name is EnDavio, and I’m the leader of a team which is currently working on translating Thracia 776 in Italian. We’ve been working on this project for months at this point, and we have made a considerable amount of progress, especially regarding the menus, which would use your translation as a base. Needless to say, if we were unable to use your menu font system, it would spell certain death for our project.
But that wouldn’t only force us to stop the development of our translation. There are other teams like mine, which are trying to translate Thracia into other languages, and they would have to stop as well.
This is why I ask you to reconsider your decision. This situation was not your fault. It all started because of an argument between some members of the PE team. We are all extremely disappointed at the drama that has surrounded the FE5 translations, and none of us wanted things to turn out like they did. But we can’t allow this to kill the hacking community for this game. And that’s exactly what you would do by not allowing future projects to use your menu translation as a base.

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Amberstorm said:
Yeah, no, you don’t get to make that call.

If any person who made something says “I don’t want you to use that”, it is realistically, well, within their rights to make that request. It was their love and dedication that made that exist in the first place.

Whether it be graphics, music, words, or programming; members of a community ought to hold the same level of respect for the originator of the work.

In saying that someone doesn’t get to not give permission; you’re saying that stealing is okay. Multiple threads on this forum have been deleted or forced to be edited because of stolen property – to say nothing of a fair few on other forums on the FE communities alone.

because of one example of drama

This is not the first time. This sort of thing has been ongoing for literally months.

Nobody involved seems interested in ceasing this behavior despite plenty of people requesting an end to it.

Miacis said:
But if you explicitly go and forbid people from using what’s already there, I’m sorry, but you’re just throwing everyone that isn’t you under the bus, and that’s just not right.

You, Miacis, say it’s not right to pull permission. Sure. Tell someone who’s suffering that they’re wrong, and not on the side of justice or whatever.

But you, Miacis, also posted things that were based on someone else’s work, a person who had never given express permission. And when told to stop, you… didn’t.

So why let Zane’s permission retraction stop you now? Just do it anyway like you did last time. It’s not that hard, is it?

Do you see how stupid that is? It’s a terrible argument. I shouldn’t use it. It barely has meaning, it doesn’t contain objective truthiness, it is filled with opinion and has low merit overall.

But, to me, your statement is the same. It isn’t something I want to have to entertain but it is nonetheless something that I have to read and consider fairly and levelly without letting my opinions bias the floor.

So, with that in mind, tackle it from how Zane’s had to sit here and deal with not one, not two, but a dozen of people asking him for help and set-up and and and and and. All for creating something that everyone does want!

Only for it to constantly create more and more aggravation, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and things that need to be carefully considered and weighed and muddled through; instead of actually just closing off as it should have.

And for literal months of this to go on is something that I find completely childish from everyone involved.

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How’s that for a guilt trip.

I’d say it’s pretty on-point. That decision would do way more damage to our community than anything Cirosan (or myself) ever did. I’d imagine most folks would probably be feeling a bit guilty about doing that.
Zane hasn’t been particularly involved with our community (and there’s nothing wrong about that, just so we’re clear), so I did want to make it clear that this isn’t just me and Ciro. There’s five more language teams, a new reverse recruitment patch, and a weapon reversal patch, all in progress right now. Maybe more.

But really, what’s confusing me most is how any of this was about Zane or affected him? To my knowledge, the last time he was personally involved in any of our dealings is when Cirosan failed to mention Zane’s contributions in that one VICE article, and BoH had to correct the record.
Which… again, has nothing to do with any of this.

If this fringe drama that’s mostly just been Ciro harassing me these days is heartbreaking to you, then why do a thing like this that’ll actively get people mad at you? That’s so much worse.

So why let Zane’s permission retraction stop you now? Just do it anyway like you did last time. It’s not that hard, is it?

Because Zane has so far acted like someone who can be reasonned with, hasn’t blocked me, or left me with no other recourse. I’d say that’s the key difference.
Bonus difference: Project Exile was a group project.

Only for it to constantly create more and more aggravation, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and things that need to be carefully considered and weighed and muddled through; instead of actually just closing off as it should have.

Okay, yeah, but that part makes no sense, because, for the last time, said drama isn’t, and has never been about Zane.

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These types of messages aren’t how you gain sympathy.

I think the lesson here is that whatever “drama” that’s ongoing needs to be resolved or figure out another way to get what you want.

Maybe realizing that your work is reliant on someone kind enough to give it to you a base to work with will put this into perspective.

As a Fire Emblem fan with strong passion towards Thracia, it’s regrettable that it has come to this. The work that everyone does is for the betterment of the community to help make a wonderful game accessible to all.

I urge those who are involved in whatever issues lead to this decision to put things into perspective into what you’re even arguing over.

There are bigger things than who gets credit for whatever work. We all hack or make fan translations for ourselves and the communities we serve and are part of.

Please consider this and work to resolve whatever differences the folks involved in “PE drama” have. I’m unfamiliar with what exactly went down, but it seems silly in the grand scheme of things.

Love each other. Please.

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Imagine having your personal agency stripped because some random strangers might get upset.

Also, nice that you admit you’re guilt tripping.

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gotta be honest, if your intent was to stay out of this drama then isn’t doing this like… The exact opposite of what you’re aiming for? Now everyone hacking FE5 is going to wonder why on earth they’re no longer allowed to use your menu translation patch as a basis for their own stuff and ding dong

they’ll be directed right to this shitstorm via you.

It’s your call but gonna be honest it’s a weird and kinda bad call to make given the situation.

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This doesn’t stop it from affecting him and constantly being too close to the surface of his being.

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While Zane is of course capable of removing support on something that he no longer feels comfortable working on, actively seeking to prevent others to stop working using his tools as base is like shutting down the skill system due to bad beef and forbidding any updates be made for it.

There is nothing wrong with not updating, but seeking to outright impede the community from improving their tools is selfish, and of course people will be angry when they’re being told that the tools they rely on are now impossible to update and now they need to return to hex editing or something

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Yeah I think it depends on how you define “support” in this context.

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Have to agree with this.

If your goal is to keep your name out of the drama Zane, this was… not the best way to do it. Telling people they can’t use your stuff is going to catapult your name to the front of the drama. It’d be better to just step back, offer no assistance or future updates for the menu translation, and state that you do not want to be contacted about it.

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I think the lesson here is that whatever “drama” that’s ongoing needs to be resolved or figure out another way to get what you want.

I agree. This is what a lot of us have been trying to do, but you’ll have to admit it’s hard to achieve sustainable results when the main person of interest has blocked everyone trying to contact him about it, refused to find a compromise, and directed his friends to not seek a way of resolving it.
I said multiple times that I was willing to offer all the work I had done in Lil’ Manster and have it integrated into Project Exile. Meanwhile, we’re getting discredited for our work on PE and threatened with legal action.

I understand not wanting to take a side and hoping we’ll all get together in the end, but at this point, there’s not a lot more that can be done, and if you have any suggestions to help with this, I’ll be glad to hear them.
Personally, I was waiting for the dust to settle, but oh look, my DropBox account died this week. =/

Yeah I think it depends on how you define “support” in this context.

I don’t think anyone will begrudge Zane if he decides he won’t help anyone with his tools ever again. What’s a bit uncool is taking our community down on the way out. This will stop peeps from asking him tech stuff, and replace it with peeps asking why his tools are forbidden now.
which, idk, sounds a bit more stressful to answer, to me.

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Do you honestly think your drama affects no one not directly involved? Your little spat has led to DMCAs threatening the ability of the entire hacking community to function. This situation was not caused by Zane, it was caused by the two of you. Shifting the blame onto a victim of your drama because you’re too conceited to not act like children over it is super scummy. Perhaps if you stopped acting like petulant children with one another this never would have needed to happen, and it’s entirely fair to take away the children’s toys when they’re fighting over them.

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The base menu translation was made by Zane. Therefore, Zane has the rights to do whatever he pleases with it. That includes revoking permission for its usage.

If you ask me, this whole DMCA thing went far, far, far beyond the line. This is a romhacking community, a hobby of questionable legality. We don’t need to attract Nintendo’s wrath because someone made a fork of a translation patch. If the Big N show up, it’s game over.

In regards to other translations, the removal of Zane’s menus shouldn’t matter for the actual scripts. The Shaya patch exists. The menus can also just be translated from scratch. Zane is under no obligation to assist in anything.

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You didn’t edit out their name in the image. I had to delete the whole reply because people can see the earlier version with the name in tact.

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Uhm, ok. His name is all over the PE credits, so I didn’t think that’d be an issue but awright. :+1:

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That’s his prerogative.

For the time being I’m going to lock this thread until the staff gets the chance to discuss this ongoing issue for the umpteenth time.

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