Gotcha, thanks for letting me know. I have removed the photos and just kept an off site link to my twitter post if people want to check it out.
I am interested to know why save editing isn't allowed however, it seems like a strange arbitrary decision to make. In a competitive environment in which our items were scored and evaluated I could understand, but in a forum such as this which is more casual and personal I wonder why that decision was made.
Anyone know?
I definitely think it's a rule we could stand to reexamine as a community. I know Pocky-Yoshi
seems pretty serious about enforcing it, but I don't know if it is a rule he believes in, in principle, or just one which he inherited from the the previous CaS mods and has adhered to because he feels the community wants it to stay that way. For my part, I think it makes no real sense: the primary point of this subforum is to share our CaS as a form of art, and arbitrarily restricting the tools which can go into said art is pretty self-defeating and silly. The only possible rational argument I can see for the practice is the concern that it may confuse some earnest creators looking to replicate a certain look or trick, who might waste their time attempting to backwards engineer a certain methodology, not realizing it was impossible. But that strikes me as a pretty niche concern. For that matter, people could (and for all we know, probably do, at least on occasion) use mods in very subtle ways that would go unnoticeable to even the most experienced of CaSers.
Regardless, it would probably make a lot more sense to have a rule that designs employing mod techniques be clearly flagged as such. At a minimum, we should at least have a thread where such designs are allowed: having a rule that says you can post your modded CaS anywhere in the 8WR forums...except the CaS forum is just downright odd--this is not only the space where such designs would be most appreciated, mods or no, but maybe the only place on the site where anybody would care to discuss the technical details of how the effects were achieved. I just can't think of a reason, that is not silly or childish, for restricting content to that which can be generated in the native editor. And I say this as someone who (out of a combination of laziness and love of the challenge of working within the limitations) does in fact generate all of their content solely by using that native editor, without mods, typically in a console release.
I guess it’s for a more even playing field, so everyone has the same options, as it’s far easier to mod or save edit on PC, for example, so console players would be disadvantaged.
"Disadvantaged" in what way? As HC already observed when he speculated this was a possible rationale, this is not an environment defined by a formal competition that would require us to "keep everyone on a level playing field". That's a pretty myopic train of thought if you ask me. It would be like going on to a forum for photography and bitching that everyone else has a better camera than you do. Or registering an account on CGSociety.com and then moaning that other people clearly have better software than you and/or more training and experience in how to use it. I mean, what?? What someone accomplishes with the tools at their disposal in no way lessens or enhances what you are able to accomplish with yours, and I honesty can't think of a single other space that I've ever been to online regarding the production and sharing of art where such a rule is enforced--unless of course it is specifically a space involving a contest or challenge to produce a work with specific tools. And even then, those are always little sub-areas of a much larger sharing space.
I just don't think this rule is doing anything practical or helpful for anybody, and it's certainly, without question, keeping some of our more technically adventurous members from sharing what would undoubtedly be some very cool stuff with the rest of us. By all means, mark or sequester the content if that is felt necesarry--but banning it altogether just seems so...well, HC said it already: arbitrary. But if the reason really is that some people would feel it is "unfair", it's also coming from a very small-minded and silly place. And again, I say this as someone whose designs are all mod free, but who is also adult enough to not feel personally injured (for....reasons?) or threatened if someone else embraces more powerful tools. I mean, maybe there is some pragmatic reason for this rule that I am just not seeing due to a lack of imagination, but I've contemplated this a number of times and I've not been able to come up with one. Nor has a concerted search of the forum backlogs revealed the rationale to me--though I suspect it is in there somewhere way back in the history.
