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Secretchronicles / TSC

An open source two-dimensional platform game.
https://secretchronicles.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
205 stars 49 forks source link

The Name of the Game #92

Closed Quintus closed 10 years ago

Quintus commented 10 years ago

We aim at going further away from the original Mario games, so renaming "Secret Maryo Chronicles" to something else seems appropriate. Our hero will have to be renamed as well.

Chatlogs on this for 2014-06-21

Valete, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

My thought is to have something of the form "Secret [M...] Chronicles" where M... is a new name starting with M for the character. Leaving "Secret" and "Chronicles" in the name will allow us to keep building on library or other secrets concepts that we've been discussing for the plot.

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

I'm thinking the M above (if we go with that name pattern) might be a German name. Mario is an Italian plumber, so we could always have a German character. This would fit well with the number of contributors from Germany; it's a part of SMC's history. What German names might work well that anyone in the world can identify with?

...and no...I'm not going to suggest Secret Marvin Chronicles.

...and it should not be Secret Michael Chronicles either (though Michael Hardy could always be the villain :P )

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I'm thinking the M above (if we go with that name pattern) might be a German name

An interesting idea. The name should probably indeed not be Italian, but I’m open for any suggestions and will not insist on German names. Most of you come from the U.S. if I remember correctly :-).

...and no...I'm not going to suggest Secret Marvin Chronicles.

:shipit:

I'm thinking the M above (if we go with that name pattern) might be a German name.

Suggestions as per a German name book I have lying around here:

Also, if you want a name nobody uses and that I doubt is present in any other language, I suggest Markward :-P. (This is not a serious comment, that name is totally archaic and not used today anymore).

...and it should not be Secret Michael Chronicles either (though Michael Hardy could always be the villain :P )

That name and its relatives are so popular in Germany that "The German" as a personification is carricated usually as "der deutsche Michel". Although we have bad memories regarding a guy with this name in SMC, we shouldn’t make our decision after that.

Vale, Quintus

Luiji commented 10 years ago

Markward

Whether it's a serious comment or not, that's an awesome name and we should seriously consider it.

By the way, there was an Italian by the name of Markward (just looked it up): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markward_von_Annweiler

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

"Secret Markward Chronicles" - Markward is an interesting name, but I honestly have a little trouble getting my head around it in SMC...I guess I'll see if it grows on me.

I still really like the German name idea, but we can keep discussing options.

Yes, Merlin has connections with the Arthurian legend, but people will certainly not think in terms of German connections - they will think of English legends. If that's what we want, we could go with it, though.

"Secret Melchior Chronicles" - Interesting...

"Secret Markus Chronicles" - Generic, anyone can identify with it - not necessarily tied to Germany

It might be hard to find a name that people around the world readily identify as German as opposed to Mario which is intrinsically Italian. Then again maybe the reason we all know Mario is an Italian name is because of Nintendo.

Luiji commented 10 years ago

What about abandoning the idea of making the M stand for the main character's name? What if we named it after the place where everything takes place?

Secret M Chronicles

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

We'd need to decide where everything takes place.

I like the idea of having something involving libraries or chronicles in the name, though. Secret is good, too, but libraries/chronicles are awesome. The M of course is necessary for neither of these.

I was also trying to keep the old SMC abbreviation, but we could learn a new abbreviation with time.

DarkAceZ commented 10 years ago

Secret M Chronicles

This is not a bad idea, IMO. It's a bit more compatible with all of our old levels that include the name "Maryo".

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

I think I misread Luiji. We would just need a place that starts with M to use that idea.

Does anyone have any ideas that we might consider?

Also, if old levels directly contain the name Maryo and if they're included with the game, they'd have to be renamed if we want to stop using the name Maryo.

ghost commented 10 years ago

Just throwing in my two cents here. Even though I'm being somewhat contradictory to the previous discussion, I believe that we should abandon the whole name and come up with something new. Whenever I see SMC in acronym form, I instantly think that it is something based off of Mario due to SMC's similarity to the acronym of SMW or other "Super Mario" games. However, if I just look at the name as Secret M___ Chronicles, I do not get this impression.

~penguin

Quintus commented 10 years ago

However, if I just look at the name as Secret M___ Chronicles, I do not get this impression.

Officially, the game is named "Secret Maryo Chronicles". However, people will abbreviate it, you can’t do anything about it. I don’t think the abbreviation "SMC" is too similar too "SMB" or so.

I think we should keep the abbreviation "SMC" and "Secret MXXXXXX Chronicles". The name is already too popular I think, we shouldn’t completely abandon it.

Vale, Quintus

Luiji commented 10 years ago

I think we should keep the abbreviation "SMC" and "Secret MXXXXXX Chronicles". The name is already too popular I think, we shouldn’t completely abandon it.

I have to agree. If we abandon the acronym we're almost abandoning the original game itself. We want to make sure that when people from 3 years ago come back that they don't feel like the game they knew is gone before they've even downloaded it.

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

Some real world M locations:

Some fictional M locations:

A couple of the locations above based on ancient places such as Mesopotamia might be interesting to consider given our discussions about ancient ruins/libraries. A historical theme (mixed with our fantasy world) might be an interesting plot idea.

Cities that start with M: http://www.wunderground.com/weather-by-city.asp?L=M

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

Another possibility other than the names I posted above is to just name it, "Secret M Chronicles". Dr. M could turn out to be the villain in the game - the evil librarian who built a monster factory and sent hordes of monsters to take over.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I personally like something slightly mysterious like this. We can just leave open what the "M" stands for... Although in the game we can give some hints so users who want to find it out can actually. Maybe the "M" stands for the librarian’s full name.

I would suggest this form:

Secret M. Chronicles

(note the period). Looks bad if the M stands there alone on the line. Or we could use a variation such as

Secret M’s Chronicles

or

Secret M.’s Chronicles.

What about changing order?

Chronicles of Secret M.

or

The Secret M’s Chronicles

Just playing around...

Also, on the librarian, where did he get his doctor title from and what did he study :-P

Valete, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago 
 Also, on the librarian, where did he get his doctor title from and what did he study :-P

If we go with the German name theme, maybe he got it from a German university? If the university name registers well with people in any part of the world, it would work really well. How about he studied Library Science? He just went a little too far when delving into the science of books...

I would go with:

 Secret M. Chronicles

The other names may confuse players because they have M in the possessive form, and not knowing it's a person, it may confuse them. An M followed by a dot is clearly an abbreviation, and it is a mystery to be unraveled in the game. It isn't until a little later they learn the villain goes by "M".

We can always back port an exact name for M later, especially if it's not contained in the title.

What does everyone else think for the game's title?

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I like “Secret M. Chronicles“ as the title. I think we can do that, but I don’t know if we should already rename ourselves for SMC 2.0.0? Or rather do that for a later version which will ship our shiny new story implemented (which is what I would suggest).

Valete, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

We don't even know the full name of Dr. M yet... :P

...so I think we should wait until another release.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

@datahead8888 so we have settled on something. This brings up another question. Do we want to keep the domain secretmaryo.org? If not, I can just register a new domain. For forwarding from the old domain to the new one, I would still have to contact FluXy, though (I’m in the process of investigating further, but as said my time is mainly used up by university currently).

so I think we should wait until another release.

OK.

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago 
 so we have settled on something

You and I are in agreement. We probably need to see to see what other people think, though. It's probably going to take a while to get their input, however.

 Do we want to keep the domain secretmaryo.org?
  1. If our goal is to get rid of Maryo in the name, this domain eventually has to stop being the main site (Several years from now).
  2. People are going to keep going to the old site. As you said we would need to convince FluXy to implement a forward to the new site and keep it running like this for several years. It would be good to avoid having two different versions of the site available that confuse people, even if we have the newer version number. Also, it will take a while to both teach people about the new site and to get its search engine page rankings up.

@Quintus - can you think up suggestions for: a) A 3+ syllable German name starting with M that's appropriate for a mad professor --Maximius, Melchior, and Matthias are candidates.

b) A German word with a meaning similar to "Eureka" that he could shout when he has a major discovery but that people around the world who speak any language might identify with (kind of like how Mario says "mamamia!" in Italian).

We still need a new name for the main character, though. It would be funny if we named him Michael, in a way showing that we are beyond our old frustrations about Michael Hardy. We're not naming it "Super" Michael Chronicles, after all. We can look at other names, though, and it might be good for his name to not start with "M" to avoid confusion.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

A 3+ syllable German name starting with M that's appropriate for a mad professor

I will have to think about that. I don’t have one handy right now, but I am sure I can find something.

A German word with a meaning similar to "Eureka"

German version of Archimedes’ shouting is Heureka!, which actually corresponds to the original Greek spelling, which should be ἑυρεκα (I found [it]) if I remember correctly (my ancient Greek lessions were a bit long ago). Note the aspirand on the first epsilon, which indicates the letter needs to be prepended with an h-like sound on pronouncing.

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

Since this is coming up in #164:

Quintus commented 10 years ago

It appears the Fedora guys have a quite rigid view on the copyright side of things with SMC, see our chatlogs, which point to this ML thread.

We are all in agreement that the naming is going to change, ideally already for the 2.0.0 release. I have asked my hosting provider if they are willing to grant us a small vServer for free, so that we can immediately start with our new web identity. If they don’t, I will rent a small server.

We should discuss over the "M" in the name still. I personally think "Secret M. Chronicles" as a name does not resemble "Super Mario (Brothers)" or make people think of that. To be extra-sure, we could change it though. Just see how the acronym SMC resembles the acronym SMB. I am sure FluXy intended that originally, so it would be best if we changed our acronym. Is there a word in English that has a meaning similar to "secret" that could be used in place of it? I can only come up with "hidden", but that is bad IMO. Alternatively, as suggested above, we might change word order to make the acronym look different. Or just officially promote "SeC" or so as the proper acronym.

Another possibility is to use a more lengthy and descriptive name, such as "The Secret Chronicles of the Mysterious Hidden M.", which could still be abbreviated to "secretchronicles" as we already do with our existing infrastructure (see the GitHub name, and the IRC channel name) I think I like this possibility most, though on the exact wording I would like to see suggestions by some of you. Super-short acronym could be "TSC".

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

We are all in agreement that the naming is going to change, ideally already for the 2.0.0 release. I have asked my hosting provider if they are willing to grant us a small vServer for free, so that we can immediately start with our new web identity. If they don’t, I will rent a small server.

Will we still pursue using Fluxy's web site? Have you heard back from him on the site or the name of the game?

so it would be best if we changed our acronym

We'll lose some name recognition with old players, but this may be inevitable if we really want a new identity for the game.

Is there a word in English that has a meaning similar to "secret" that could be used in place of it?

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/secret?s=t

Another possibility is to use a more lengthy and descriptive name, such as "The Secret Chronicles of the Mysterious Hidden M.",

This is a possibility, but I would remove the word "Mysterious" here. This would make it be "The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden M." This implies a storyline involving something hidden, so we should choose a little carefully.

A couple other points:

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

I found a couple old discussion threads on this. The question of the name of the game and whether to keep Maryo in it has been discussed before. This might provide a historical perspective:

http://www.secretmaryo.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1005

http://secretmaryo.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=57

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I have purchased the domain secretchronicles.de now, which is notably cheaper than secretchronicles.org, and we have a German touch anyway, plus I can have all stuff under German legislation. Nevertheless, if anyone of you is willing to pay for secretchronicles.org, you may then just point it to our shiny new server -- we get a small virtual server sponsored by First Root for free. I am currently setting it up.

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

Nevertheless, if anyone of you is willing to pay for secretchronicles.org , you may then just point it to our shiny new server

Do you know how much money is needed? We might be able to pool together from some people. Having both .org and .de is good to pull in people around the world, maybe.

secretchronicles is a pretty versatile domain name. Even if we have a bit longer abbreviation, I think no one will mind if the domain name is secretchronicles (ie we can still use secret M. chronicles or something like The Secret Chronicles of the Mysterious Hidden M").

I take it FluXy did not respond? I fully agree we need to start setting up our own website (and it's really great you found a company to partner with), but we might go ahead and outline what the choice is coming to in an email/PM to him so that he understands it clearly. We have to change the name of the game and need root forum/server access for a website.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

Do you know how much money is needed?

The .de domain costs 7,08€ per year, a .org domain costs 16,68€, at least with my domain reseller. We might also look into SSL certificates.

I take it FluXy did not respond?

Yes. I received no further reply from him.

but we might go ahead and outline what the choice is coming to in an email/PM to him so that he understands it clearly.

This is exactly what I emailed and PMed him after our contact a few weeks ago, so I think it is time to go forward and fork. He was very worried our plans would destroy SMC as a reference for his work (think for jobs), with a fork we will not interfer with this in any way, so both sides are happy I guess.

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

The .de domain costs 7,08€ per year, a .org domain costs 16,68€, at least with my domain reseller.

What are the payment methods (ie applications) that are possible here? We can discuss pooling money with everyone, but we'll need a way to share money for this.

The one other thought that occurred to me with a .de website is whether non German speakers might jump to conclusions and assume the entire website is in German before actually going to it (unless they see a Google summary or something). I don't have anything against German websites - it was just something I thought of; I'm guessing it's not that much of a risk. Also, with a .org redirect, will users who used the .org site see .de or see .org at the top of their screens?

with a fork we will not interfer with this in any way, so both sides are happy I guess.

This actually gives us another reason not to use SMC for a name; we need to emphasize our fork nature.

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

New Idea: "The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden Library"

This would imply that the goal of the game is to reach a hidden, ancient library. It is the lair of the evil librarian (Dr. M?) It also eliminates the letter M from the title completely, deemphasizing our prior connection with Mario.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

Also, with a .org redirect, will users who used the .org site see .de or see .org at the top of their screens?

Can be done either way possibly, with the exception of the mailer, which will have to choose one domain. Redirecting would be easier, but with some effort both domains could probably be maintained.

"The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden Library"

Very nice idea. Though "chronicles" of some library somehow sounds confusing; wouldn’t the chronicles rather come from the library, i.e. are residing in the library?

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

Very nice idea. Though "chronicles" of some library somehow sounds confusing; wouldn’t the chronicles rather come from the library, i.e. are residing in the library?

Chronicles here represents the recording (in a series of Chronicles, like a storybook) of the hero's efforts. His objective is to find the hidden library.

I was thinking the game could be cast as a sort of story telling, with a story that ultimately relates to a library.

If we used "the hidden M." in any form, we would need to determine what M stands for and integrate it into the story. We had talked about having the villain be Dr. M, but I can't see how he'd be hidden (he could be hidden in the library, but then it's the library that's hidden again).

Another type of option: "The Secret Chronicles of the Search for the Hidden Library"

With titles like this it can still be nicknamed as "Secret Chronicles" to avoid lots of typing in discussions...

Quintus commented 10 years ago

OK. I agree with you, "The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden Library" is good. We can use that.

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

You may have responded before I finished typing my edit, but in some ways I like the slightly shorter version of "The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden Library" (shorter is usually better unless you really need a longer description).

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

@Quintus - I was talking with jesusalva in chat (PM), and he said he thinks we really need to retain SMC for name recognition. I'm not saying we should continue to use SMC for an abbreviation -- I do want to share the discussion though. The last name we came up with is "Secret Malevolent Chronicles":

Quintus, I do think you have a point about getting rid of the SMC abbreviation. I just wanted to share this discussion with you.

[20:41] <datahead8888> As for the Shakespeare quote, Quintus and I have begun quoting Shakespeare back and forth it seems

[20:41] <jesusalva> :)

[20:41] <datahead8888> We're talking about integrating some Shakespeare elements into the plot of Secret Chronicles

[20:41] <datahead8888> Since the villain is tentatively planned as a librarian

[20:42] <datahead8888> We've been exploring new themes for the game in place of the old Mario themes

[20:42] <jesusalva> It would be a surprise if the librarian is the real mastermind behind everything.

[20:42] <datahead8888> Quintus was suggesting that it starts out with mysterious Shakespeare quotes that the hero finds

[20:43] <jesusalva> datahead8888: I've installed 2012 release of smc, but err, no idea of what happened, probably deleted it. :P

[20:43] <datahead8888> If you share it with us, we might be able to help you as a group

[20:43] <datahead8888> The error I mean

[20:43] <datahead8888> Also, you can post suggestions or questions at http://forum.secretchronicles.de/forums anytime

[20:44] <datahead8888> This forum will become more prominent with the new release and when we change the name of the game

[20:46] <datahead8888> I'm going to have to log off for a while

[20:46] <jesusalva> Well, problem is. Renaming the game may be bad if you already have some old customers, I heavly encourage you to keep SMC for a while.

[20:46] <datahead8888> I might be on a little more over the weekend - this has been a busy week for me

[20:46] <jesusalva> So 'SCHL (aka. SMC)'

[20:46] <datahead8888> jesusalva - some of the former team members brought up that very point about the name

[20:47] <datahead8888> We can't continue using Maryo because it sounds way too much like Mario

[20:47] <jesusalva> Yes.

[20:47] <datahead8888> Fedora packages raised a hey day on this, and almost everyone I've ever met says the same thing

[20:47] <datahead8888> ***packagers

[20:47] <datahead8888> We were looking for other words that start with M,

[20:48] <datahead8888> but Quintus expressed concern because SMC still sounds like SMB (Super Mario Brothers)

[20:48] <datahead8888> The idea is that by taking a hit with the name now during this big release, we will have gotten rid of Mario-name associations in the long term

[20:48] <jesusalva> Hmm...

[20:48] <datahead8888> The only other task is swapping out graphics/music and changing some mechanics

[20:48] <jesusalva> Is 'Maryo' the name of the player?

[20:48] <datahead8888> Which unfortunately will have to be done in subsequent releass

[20:49] <datahead8888> ***releases

[20:49] <datahead8888> Yes, in the last version of SMC, Maryo was the player

[20:49] <datahead8888> Secret Maryo Chronicles (SMC)

[20:49] <jesusalva> So we should rename the player.

[20:49] <jesusalva> Try to keep the initials with 'M'.

[20:49] <datahead8888> SCHL would instead stand for "The Secret Chronicles of the Hidden Library"

[20:49] <datahead8888> That still brings some slight associations with Mario

[20:49] <jesusalva> datahead8888: I dislike it...

[20:49] <datahead8888> I had suggested naming the villain "Dr. M" and naming the game after him

[20:50] <datahead8888> What did you dislike about the Hidden Library?

[20:50] <jesusalva> It will ruin the fun if the librarian is the evil mastermind.

[20:50] <datahead8888> We're currently leaning towards a library based plot

[20:50] <datahead8888> Who would you suggest as a mastermind then?

[20:51] <datahead8888> (This is our discussion post on this issue - https://github.com/Secretchronicles/SMC/issues/92)

[20:51] <jesusalva> The same. I only dislike the name. It kills some suspense.

[20:51] <datahead8888> Hmmm

[20:51] <datahead8888> We could also just call it "Secret Chronicles"

[20:52] <datahead8888> But that still is a name change that hurts name recognition

[20:52] <jesusalva> 'Secret Music Chronicles'.... NO.

[20:52] <jesusalva> 'Secret Mayan Chronicles'... NO.

[20:53] <datahead8888> Secret Museum Chronicles...no no no...

[20:53] <datahead8888> We could also do Secret Mesopotamia Chronicles

[20:53] <datahead8888> There was an ancient ruins theme that was planned to be parallel with the library theme

[20:53] <datahead8888> ...well it was discussed

[20:53] <jesusalva> Secret Metropolitan Chronicles - No, not in past.

[20:54] <datahead8888> It's a very difficult issue

[20:54] <jesusalva> Scret Magic Chrnocles. No...

[20:54] <datahead8888> Even for Dr. M, I still didn't know what M really stood for :)

[20:54] <datahead8888> But I do not think the hero's name should start with M

[20:55] <jesusalva> Magic Music Mayan Match Meh Much Misc Math - Gah!

[20:55] <datahead8888> Such mayhem...

[20:55] <jesusalva> Mecha Mega - 

[20:55] <datahead8888> M-ayhem

[20:55] <datahead8888> :P

[20:55] <jesusalva> :P

[20:55] <datahead8888> Secret Malevolent Chronicles :)

[20:56] <jesusalva> :)

[20:56] <datahead8888> "The evil story book from the other world"

[20:56] <datahead8888> It's...malevolent!

[20:56] <jesusalva> Mine Month Malevolent...

[20:56] <datahead8888> I could maybe see malevolent

[20:56] <datahead8888> But I'm not seeing yet how that would be tied into the story

[20:56] <datahead8888> Unless the librarian is seeking "The Malevolent Chronicles"

[20:56] <datahead8888> An ancient text of undiscussable power

[20:57] <jesusalva> ...I should probably get the git release. Can you give me the command to download it?

[20:57] <jesusalva> datahead8888: Makes sense!

[20:57] <datahead8888> https://github.com/Secretchronicles/SMC/blob/devel/INSTALL.md

[20:57] <datahead8888> Malevolent Chronicles could work if properly developed in the story

[20:57] <datahead8888> I just would have to think on it a while

[20:57] <jesusalva> And maybe he tasks you on that, and you find yourself working for good (find the evil DR. M) and for bad! (Find the book)

[20:58] <jesusalva> So on end you can choice to A- give the book to Dr M B- Use the book for yourself C- Destroy the book

[20:58] <jesusalva> A- Evil B- Egoist C- Good ?

[20:58] <datahead8888> Is it fine if I paste the latter half of this conversation in that ticket?

[20:59] <jesusalva> Yes

[20:59] <datahead8888> So that Quintus and the others can see the Malevolent idea?

[20:59] <datahead8888> ok
Bugsbane commented 10 years ago

Howdy guys,

As a contributor from waaaaay back (Helios, once upon a time on the SMC forums) I'm wondering if I can offer some thoughts? I'm actually in marketing with a degree of experience in dealing with copyright (although I'm not a lawyer etc.) Basically my understanding is that there's no problem with acronyms being similar as long as consumers aren't confusing the brands. Given that one third of the acronym is different and the other two thirds stand for different words, really there shouldn't be a problem. Obviously there is a problem with "Maryo" as given the history and what's being made, it's pretty clear, and potentially confusing that Maryo==Mario.

From a marketing perspective, if you're changing the name, I would suggest changing the word "chronicles", too. Words that are often misspelled make for bad branding. I guarantee there are and will be many people going to secretchronicals.org, secretcronicals.org etc. Personally, while it would break the acronym, I would suggest either Adventures, Saga, Tales etc. Adventures is my personal favourite.

I would also suggest that using the .org instead of the .de is pretty critical. Many English speaking people won't visit a .de as it's assumed it will be in German, which few people here speak. Search engine rankings are also likely to be lower, and while many people who don't know the domain name of an open source project will try .org, very, very few will ever be looking for a .de. If price is a concern, I can get it registered here for about 7 Euros instead of 12.

On a side note, I originally left SMC because of resistance to removing Nintendo copyrighted material from the game (eg music, Mario-like name etc.) I just couldn't justify putting effort into something that could get sued and taken down any day (which the big N is notorious for). While I don't have much time at all, if the Maryo left the name, and the recreations of SMB music were dropped, I'd be happy to contribute art again. (I did the original Furball / Freezeball, Krunch and Biteme designs/animation. I kind of wince at how my original Army design was redrawn and animated, but I wasn't around, so hey, I can't complain).

PS Personally, out of all of the German names, I love Maximus. Easy for an English speaker to pronounce, and it sounds like a superhero name similar to the word "Maximum".

PPS On the new website, I'd really appreciate it if my old email address wasn't public as it is now at the current one. :)

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

As a contributor from waaaaay back (Helios, once upon a time on the SMC forums)

Yes, I've seen some of your posts. Welcome back to the fold! :)

I would suggest changing the word "chronicles", too. Words that are often misspelled make for bad branding. I guarantee there are and will be many people going to secretchronicals.org, secretcronicals.org etc.

The idea here is to retain at least some sort of association with the original game name. Our library plot idea has also been derived from this word. The spelling point is valid, though, and worth discussion.

I would also suggest that using the .org instead of the .de is pretty critical. Many English speaking people won't visit a .de as it's assumed it will be in German, which few people here speak.

I agree that we need the .org domain. We could use both .org and .de (and try to get the respective one to show up in a browser's URL bar). I'm also willing to pay for it but haven't had time to research how to acquire it with demands in school. What domain repository tends to be good? If you buy it, we would need you to transfer the name to us as a group -- we've learned that all critical resources need to be under the control of multiple people for the project. Also, secretchronicles.com is taken, but secretchronicles.org is not, yet.

I just couldn't justify putting effort into something that could get sued and taken down any day (which the big N is notorious for).

The fact that people are hesitant to work on SMC just because of the Mario-like material is just as much of a concern as the Nintendo lawyers are. Fedora had refused to put the game in their repositories because of this, and a lot of people EVERYWHERE have been raising strong concerns about the game name and content.

While I don't have much time at all, if the Maryo left the name, and the recreations of SMB music were dropped, I'd be happy to contribute art again.

This is in our list of goals, so you shouldn't have a problem (We'll gladly take help in removing them sooner). As for time, just do whatever you can (testing/art/coding/music/anything) here and there. SMC is the sum of many parts :)

PS Personally, out of all of the German names, I love Maximus.

My thought is that the hero's name should not start with M, so as to eliminate the connection with Mario entirely. We had talked about having the villain's name start with M (and naming the game acronym after him), in which case his name could be Dr. Maximus or just Maximus.
See also: http://forum.secretchronicles.de/topics/87

This github issue is probably going to generate more discussion than our formatting conventions did, but that's probably a good thing.

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

I kind of wince at how my original Army design was redrawn and animated, but I wasn't around, so hey, I can't complain).

If you send us a link, we can still take a look at the work and discuss it. We ARE needing new Army art to replace the turtle boss (See #77). Currently only the Turtle (Koopa Troopa) has been replaced with Army.

Bugsbane commented 10 years ago

Well, I only ever did the initial character sketch (seen on the forum thread here) or below: Army

But I think you can see the difference between what's above, even just as a draft, unfinished sketch, and the current version below, especially in the arms, feet and shell: armadilla1

Anyway, I didn't make that comment to put anyone down. I wasn't around for the previously mentioned reasons, and someone else did the job. Good on them. The animation of the eyes peeking out of the curled up ball is a really nice touch I never even thought of. To be honest I'm just grateful that we finally got rid of that turtle whose design was ripped straight out of the Mario games.

If we were doing a new Turtle boss replacement design though, I don't think I would just take Army's design and scale the drawing larger as was done last time. I would actually create design that looked more "boss-like" in that it was meaner looking and had a level of detail that was higher than Army's as the Boss' image is larger onscreen. I'm talking about the kind of difference you see between Bowser and the Koopa's in SMB.

Anyway, not sure if this issue is the best one to discuss this.

Regarding wanting to keep "chronicles" in the title though, most misspellings are likely to be going to secretchronicals.org. That could always be registered, too, and forwarded to the main site. Then after a year, we can look at the analytics and see how many people are coming from there and decide if it's worth renewing the domain, or if it's very active, even looking at other misspellings that are bringing people to the site.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I agree with @datahead8888 that the name of the hero should not start with M, we should finally cut down our relationships with Mario.

On the acronym of "SMC". The acronym is basically a SMB++, i.e. the "B" was just swapped for the next letter in the alphabet. This is not really a legal problem I guess, it is about how hard we want to depart.

@Bugsbane welcome back. Yes, we have different goals than the original SMC project now, and one of them is to move away from our Marioeskness. Any input on how to complete that goal is highly apreciated (but please, do so in a separate issue ticket, this one is just about the game name).

Regarding wanting to keep "chronicles" in the title though, most misspellings are likely to be going to secretchronicals.org.

Nowadays most nontechnical people don’t even know the difference between an address bar[1] and a search bar. They will just perform a Google search (defeating the purpose of the decentralised Internet, sadly), and Google will figure out the typo. If on the other hand you know where you want to go and know what the address bar is, you will be typing it in either correctly or notice your mistake.

As for the .de domain: If one of you can spare the money, just register secretchronicles.org with your favourite domain registry. Just ensure that:

Personally, I don’t think a country domain is too bad. Check out this twitter client for example, which resides under a venezuelan domain.

PPS On the new website, I'd really appreciate it if my old email address wasn't public as it is now at the current one. :)

Of course, this is not a problem.

Valete, Quintus

[1]: Some time ago I read on HackerNews that Google wants to remove the display of URLs from Google Chrome. Oh Internet, where are you going?

Quintus commented 10 years ago

OK guys, this naming discussion is driving me nuts. We should come to a conclusion quickly, so that we can decide on the character’s name and create a logo and track. Currently, 2.0.0 loudly announces itself still as "Secret Maryo Chronicles".

I see jesusalva’s point of the title taking the surprise out of the game, because it reveals the fact there actually is a hidden library. It would be much cooler if the player wouldn’t know that from the beginning. Children can just play through the game (they will probably do not pay too much attention to the storyline anyway), but for older players it would be really cool if you can follow the plot in an active way, e.g. the way it is with classical detective stories, where you get hints here, and other hints there, and can do active thinking on who was the murderer, with the grand conclusion following at the end of the novel.

Still, this leaves us without a title apart from "Secret Chronicles", which I strongly advocate to keep for two reasons:

  1. All the infrastructure is named after that.
  2. A last reminiscene to our roots in "Secret Maryo Chronicles".

Vale, Quintus

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

I was trying to let jesusalva get involved and was concerned at the time if there might be more people who disagreed with us on Secret Chronicles and who wanted to use SMC.

I would vote for Secret Chronicles as the whole name but don't have a problem if people want to use SMC for the abbreviation as long as M is not the first letter of the character's name and as long as we make the M work with a story element.

We do need to get this resolved but probably should still use a little caution given how hard it is to change this later. We might see if we can get some new opinions from people who previously posted (we may need to @ them).

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

@tristanheaven @Luiji @brianvanderburg2 @carstene1ns @default0 @DarkAceZ @dlpenguinlover @Bugsbane @kirbyfan64 @FluXy @xet7 @giby - @Quintus is correct that we need to come to a decision on the name of the game soon in order to support release 2.0, so that we can prepare a logo and made auxiliary decisions. If any of you have different thoughts you want to share on the name of the game, please do so soon, or the name will probably be set to "Secret Chronicles".

ghost commented 10 years ago

I agree we should come up with a name before 2.0 since we want to establish our independence as a fork of the original project. I do like Secret Chronicles however, my mind has really been thinking about Secret M. Chronicles that I believe someone else came up with a while back. My reasoning is that the player will be wondering, who is this M. person? Is this a villain or someone or something you might discover? My idea, since we've been thinking a lot about a library theme, that the overall theme of the library could be centered around an M. The library is a secret, and as the player, you'll play through the main storyline, discovering historical clues pointing to this secret library. This way, Maryo's new name won't start with M, we'll keep our acronym that past players remember, and the name might tie in well if we are still going with the library theme. What do you think?

On Sep 23, 2014, at 10:33 PM, datahead8888 notifications@github.com wrote:

@tristanheaven @Luiji @brianvanderburg2 @carstene1ns @default0 @DarkAceZ @dlpenguinlover @Bugsbane @kirbyfan64 @FluXy @xet7 @giby - @Quintus is correct that we need to come to a decision on the name of the game soon in order to support release 2.0, so that we can prepare a logo and made auxiliary decisions. If any of you have different thoughts you want to share on the name of the game, please do so soon, or the name will probably be set to "Secret Chronicles".

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

DarkAceZ commented 10 years ago

I haven't really been keeping track with this discussion that much anymore, but I don't see why we couldn't just keep the character's name. "Maryo" isn't exactly a direct reference to "Mario". I even pronounce the two names differently. I'm fairly certain we don't need to worry about lawsuits from Nintendo with that name, either, even if we were profiting from this project. Nintendo's usually pretty cool.

Quintus commented 10 years ago

I haven't really been keeping track with this discussion that much anymore, but I don't see why we couldn't just keep the character's name. "Maryo" isn't exactly a direct reference to "Mario".

You are pretty lonely on that position. Basically everyone else I have talked to or who has been reported to me thinks that it’s a direct reference to Mario. And I also think so too. Fedora packagers don’t even let the game get into their repositories due to this (and other) issues. Keeping "Maryo" is not an option in any case.

I do like Secret Chronicles however, my mind has really been thinking about Secret M. Chronicles that I believe someone else came up with a while back.

It’s a hard decision. People who know Secet Maryo Chronicles will immediately recognize that as an abbreviation of the original game name. Is this a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I can’t really judge on that one. "Secret Chronicles" sounds a bit... empty. It misses something somehow, it sounds to general. We could change word order of "Secret M. Chronicles" to solve the recognition problem with "Secret Maryo Chronicles" (suggestions please). Anyhow, I doubt that "Secret M. Chronicles" will result in legal problems, as long as we make clear there is no "Maryo" involved anymore. We may also officially propagate an abbreviation different from "SMC" for shortening the name.

Vale, Quintus

Bugsbane commented 10 years ago

"Nintendo's usually pretty cool."

Ummm... Nintendo are infamous fgor being one of the most hardline companies in the industry when it comes to enforcing their IP.

From just a quick 2 minute search: Nintendo tries to shut down Mario fan game. The fangame Pokemon Evoas has been shut down by Nintendo (self.pokemon) Metroid Fan Film Kickstarter Taken Down Over IP Dispute With Nintendo Nintendo cracks down on fan-made videos (This is merely VIDEOS mind, you!)

Bugsbane commented 10 years ago

"Fedora packagers don’t even let the game get into their repositories due to this" I would point out that this isn't just the packagers opinion. I personally spoke with a couple of people from Redhat LEGAL (yes, actual lawyers) a few years back, who made it in no way unclear that we needed to avoid anything that could be interpreted as potentially confusing people or being a direct reference.

datahead8888 commented 10 years ago

My reasoning is that the player will be wondering, who is this M. person? Is this a villain or someone or something you might discover?

If we used Secret M. Chronicles, we could name the villain Maximus, based on Bugsbane's suggestion for the hero's name. Odds are, though, that if we use Secret M. Chronicles, many people who have played the game will just assume M. means Maryo. We could get around this by drawing the M on the title screen differently to draw emphasis to it. People who have not played the game before will make no such assumptions, meaning the problem decreases over time.

From Bugsbane's first article:

James Grimmelmann, a legal scholar at the University of Maryland, believes Nintendo would have a strong case in court. He says the graphics and music from the game are protected by copyright, and the levels and game mechanics likely are as well. "I could cite you case after case involving less literal copying than this," he says.

--James Grimmelmann has confirmed that our music, mechanics, some graphics, and name of the game (by the similarity concept) all pose problems for us.

I personally spoke with a couple of people from Redhat LEGAL (yes, actual lawyers) a few years back, who made it in no way unclear that we needed to avoid anything that could be interpreted as potentially confusing people or being a direct reference.

I did not know Redhat had a problem. Do you have a copy of the conversation still? I'd be curious to read it.

"Secret Chronicles" sounds a bit... empty.

It gets the point across (Chronicles that are secret and that ultimately turn out to involve a hidden library). A little longer name might be more descriptive, if we can find a good one. If we choose another name, it needs to work with the story, or we will handicap ourselves.

Here's another one - "The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M."

Bugsbane commented 10 years ago

"I did not know Redhat had a problem. Do you have a copy of the conversation still? I'd be curious to read it."

This was 2008 and about a million OS reinstalls later, so even if I still had them, my chances of finding them are very slim. I may have posted sections up on the old SMC forums somewhere.

From memory though, their main issues (at the time) were the ripped graphics, music and the Maryo name.