Announcing Sharx & The Return of IL-2skins!!!!!

[Luckyboy1]

Again to clarify the "minions" phrase... I was trying to say that I'm not, can't and won't try and be King of the site and look down on anyone. The truth is, this game is so much bigger than all of us that there is no way I could ever do it alone, much less well without lots of help from people that I would view at least as my equal and if not that, view then as being better at this than me.

I'd like to have like 5 or 7 guys who actually know skinning... and that ain't me!... I love skins and admire the work, but am in no position to call myself a judge of what's worthy of getting the skinner into the site for free and what does not. Who would these 5-7 guys be? Who knows! God willing, maybe even people who don't like me. I'd hate to end up with some clique of unfair types deciding the deal. I just want to try and reward the skinners both new and old by giving them a free pass into the site. I'd want the 5-7 guys to be from varied groups and have the members rotated in and out and then back in again, so that no one small group can get petty with anyone else.

I'm sure some of the negative thinkers will try to spin this one as a...

Hey, if it's decided by a small committee, it's by definition a clique!

Well, maybe so, but if you are rotating the duties of the people who run the site and accept as wide and diverse a group as possible, I'd say that sort of problem would be remote at best. In fact, this guy who's passionately put forth his point of view that is at odds with me in my opiniopn would be an excellent choice if he was willing.

Until off the ground, like the first three months or so, I guess by default, I'd have to be that King of the pile that I so detest. After that, I'd say it would be up to contributing skinners and paying member to decide who holds the lease on the site. I'll gladly let someone elses credit card be on the line for the server payments and all the rest that goes with it. Maybe by then I'll be so sick of it as to not even ask to be elected to any sort of position on the site. Maybe I'll cry in my beer if not elected, but I swear before God that I will let it go and let the majority rule!

All I want is to try and get this thing going. As far as who runs it, that simply doesn't matter as much to me as us coming together as a community and getting something good done for a change in pace.

I love skins! I respect skin artists. I want a site worthy of their efforts. I don't need to be king of any pile.

[CrazySchmidt]

Ok fellas, I've been following this topic firstly because it is genuinely an interesting topic and secondly because this is the type of subject that can turn bad.

I can see some small stones getting thrown here, please keep it adult and civil. If these stones become rocks the topic gets locked.

Thanks guys,
CrazySchmidt.

[Hunhunter]

Jeez....and you say i'm hysterical Well, I have made my points and asked the questions so I shall now retire from this discussion.

Luckyboy, I really hope you do succeed with this project and wish you the best of luck with it, and I genuinely mean that. I will watch with great interest.

[Luckyboy1]

Hey Hun, I'm not looking for an aurgument! I'm looking for people believe it or not like you! People who actually are willing to speak up with a different opinion. So we don't agree on stuff, so what?! The bottom line is I want a skin site that runs well and so do you. You willing to help decide what makes someonhe worthy to get to have access for their skin work? If so, you aren't just wanted, you are needed!

What's in it for you? The same thankless job, at least from the fan base as you had at the old site! I know, I know, there is the reward of knowing you are participating in a good thing. that's what motivates most of the mods. See, this way, if I'm right, it'll cost $10.00 a year for most. If you are right, you will have full access to the books to make sure we do the right thing with any extra funds and besides maybe setting a bit aside for maybe a skin contest, I'd wanna give all the extra right back to the people willing to put more on the line than their mouth and yes, I include you in that group because of your past and present support of skinning! You do more than talk. hey, if it's a Luckyboy problem, somedoby else do it! I'm easy! I just wanht the site and could care less who is king of that pile!

One more point and I hope I'm done... (uh, Luckyboy, don't you know you've been done for quite a while now?!) someone wants to know why they can't upload to their hearts content without either being classed a skinner or paying the fee. Well, it eats up bandwidth and that costs money!

When you guys gonna get it? The fee is NOT for skins!!! It is to pay for the server that grunts to put it out both up and down and the IP connection that is needed to handle the volume of traffic.

Also, what are you uploading to your hearts content? Is it your own work? Do you have permission from the skinner to post it? I don't know how many times I gotta say this, but I DO respect the skinners and won't go for it on that basis either. that's why I'm gonna need a few more people, believe it or not like HunDude who are willing to speak up with a different opinion, but won't just bow out and will be part of the solution. I'm not saying he is part of the problem by not participating in what I want him to do, but if he did, he'd be part of the solution and assure some who maybe aren't (just maybe Luckyboy?!) too thrilled with me being involved. If the major stumbling block is me, then somebody else get out their credit card and pay for the code to be punched and sign the year's contract for the server and bandwidth and I'll PayPal you $50.00 a year as a member with full download rights (except squad skins of course).

Anyone?

[Hunhunter]

Thank you for your generous offer Luckyboy. I am truely flattered but I feel that its time for someone else to have a go at that job. Besides, I am also heavily (and happily) involved in another skinning related site and that is where my loyalty is now.

Like I said, I genuinely wish you the best of luck with your project and hope you get it off the ground

Cheers
HH

[Freelancer1]

Hi Luckyboy.

Well, it's been a week now. I'm curious to hear the verdict as to wether you are going to continue with this project or not.

I, for one, hope that you will.

I really think you should make the trip to the library and logon over at Ubi to see the can of worms you've opened. It'll make you laugh and make you cry. 12 pages of ego, arrogance, good will, bans, reinstatments, threats, etc.

Just another day at the UbiZoo.

Cheers,

Freelancer

[Luckyboy1]

On one level, I guess I'd feel vindicated I guess if what you say is true and I have absolutely no reason to believe you are speaking anything other than the gospel here on that subject.

Then reality sets in and here's what's real...

1) I hurt my friends. Hurt them to the point where it can never be repaired. I managed to get Dubbo to respond to me a few times, but now, he won't respond at all to my e-mails and Sunflower will respond to me only if I make an absolute pest of myself and he says very little and gets away from me like I'm carrying the plauge. The head honcho of the HH wrote me an e-mail giving me his support for the skins site, but that's the first and I fear last I will ever hear from him. Then the two guys I loved the most over in the HH, I hurt them the most. Two guys who have spent time hooking high steel as I have. Two guys who have suffered severe injury, both physical and all the emotional that comes of it. What? I wanted a game that was trouble free enough so I could go try and use it to repair a relationship with my Father that was hopelessly broken in the first place? Man, this is a game, not the Oprah show! What did I do that was so bad to them? Well, yes, I told them I thought all the whining had gotten out of hand and that all the garbage that would be added to the game would kill any more people coming to the game in a paying way and that's the only way that counts. But no, I didn't stop there. No, no, no, I had to tell not only them where to go. I told their entire heritage, past, present and future that I actually prayed for them to go to the same place! I invite those that got an e-mail like that if they haven't had the sense to delete it to post it here. Then maybe you'd understand that it doesn't matter how much you do for the community if you hurt people like that!

2) We are so fractured and cliquish, that we can't seem to come together on anything, much less something as simple as this. It reminds me that the community as a whole, you know, those 1,950,000 of 'em who don't pay for the game?... yes, they are an ungratefull lot. They are a noisy lot as well. What UBI is doing even letting them log on to post is beyond me. UBI wants you to register the game... ok, why? Market research is fine as far as it goes, but then they ignore it for this game. They could at least put something by the paying customer's screen name that mentions they are a confirmed payer of the game. Do they?! Absolutely not. You would think they could do at least that much! Wanna know why? Just go to UBI's main site and click on investor stuff. Try to even find mention of this game much less flight sims or sims of any kind. Wake up ans smell the coffee! UBI doesn't mind because we don't matter! Think UBI is some giant company? Well, EA Games is eating up their stock at this time. Just keep it up and even something as as sad as UBI as far as supporting flight sims will be gone and then what? You have another marketing company to replace them with? Like bandwidth, programming costs and server load, money talks and the rest walks! It's mind over matter here and UBI don't mind because as a community, from a marketing standpoint, we don't matter beyond a bug solving platform!

Am I in some power grab to try and take away the few skins free sites sponsor? Of course not and I had planned not only to link those sites, but spend alot of time making you sick of hearing about supporting them too! Still, I would guess, but really have no proof, because even though I don't get along with steve v and never have or never will I guess, at least I can respect him for laying more on the line than his mouth for this game! He wrote me a quick e-mail telling me he locked the thread over at UBI concerning this project. DON'T bust him for doing so, but look in the mirror for who's to blame! Have I asked to keep control of this site? Read the thread for your answer! Of course not! But power, or the illusion of it is more powerful than anything else here!

3) Pops is dead! The grey Ghost as we used to call him or Alginquin Bob finally died from asbestosis. He drowned in his own fluids truly beliving there was no God! Why? Well, he was in the second Jeep that came throught the gates of a concentration camp in WWII. It was at that point that he gave up all faith. So, you see, indirectly at least, maybe I could show him Oleg Maddox's vision of a greater perspective on the whole thing and maybe... yes, it's just my opinion; save his immortal soul! I'm not here to talk religion, but to explain my poor motives for doing as I did. So now, that issue is gone and I've decided what the game means to me, for me. What it means to you is no less valid... as long as you didn't pirate it in the first place.




This game, to me, is an aviation game to me and not a computer game. As a result, I see it as a split between the aviation crowd and the gamer crowd. I care about accurate modeling and bomb loadouts being correct and complete. I could care less about prefect water or trees! All I wanted was a good skin site and no, we don't have one even 100th as close as Il-2skins now or ever will I guess.

I've got about 100 yes answers, 4 no ways and a couple of bounce twice type answers to my callingelvis911@yahoo.com address. I've been encouraged to give it another week, so ok, for all the good it will do, I'll give it another week and if I don't get the support, well, better luck to somebody else.

Geeze, just a skin site and next thing you know, there's incidents, accidents, hints and alligations all around! That was never the intent here! I just UBI would figure out it is the old men who pay for the game. The aviation fans, not the "gamers" so to speak. Maybe they are afraid of angering the "gamers" who they think might buy their other games? Hey UBI, if they stole Pacific Fighters, what makes you think they aren't stealing everything else that isn't welded to the base plate?

[Luckyboy1]

It's really too bad because of the responses I've gotten, 99% of them are very enthusiastic about the deal. Problem is that is way too little support.

I've thought about the issues involved and the chances of getting real support in the next week. I've weighed that very, very small chance of getting 4 times more responses in the next week than I did in the first week against the apparent chaos and near civil war this is reportedly causing over at UBI forums. What's actually happening over there?...

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and no, it isn't worth a trip to the library to see nothing but hurt and nonproductive statements.

So, I've e-mailed Sharx and told him the issue is dead for this year at least.

If I were a rich man, I'd pay for the entire cost myself, but I'm not. I'm a working fool like the rest of us.

My thanks to the hundred or so who responded. While over 90% were like You bet, get it going!, Oddly enough, I even respect the no's and even the couple of "bounce twice" type e-mail. Those folks cared enough to take like 2 minutes to e-mail me.

[wayno77]

Bummer....

[MaXMhZ]

Great initiative LB! I already sent you an e-mail (too late I'm afraid). I'll be signing up for membership. Ya can count on that. About bandwidth costs... There are a lot of bots and spiders roaming the web and collecting graphics files (= bandwidth gone to waste but still costing...)

I have an IP blocker/firewall / popupstopper (it does more even)called net-peeker that can read blocklists from Bluetack.co.uk. They have very good lists for spiders, bots ads, malware etc.I download these using their Blocklist Manager and read them into net-peeker which then blocks them from accessing my computer - VERY low overhead (nothing like Norton/mcAfee security suite (I run mcafee 8.0 too) which brought my old WinMe system to a stand-still

net-peeker and Blocklist Manager are wellworth investigating.
NP is $25 while BLM is even free...

I do hope you get it going ( no matter when). you can count on my support. yup I'll pay too upfront $10 for a year is a bit (read: far-tOo) low IMHO. Ifear there won't be more than a couple of hundred members, which would make the server idea allmost unreachable. Anyway - the support is there from me if you want it.
Highest regards,
Henny Hofte aka MaXMhZ.



Oops, just read your previous post. So I guess maybe next year more luck then ? (I hope). However you look at it, it's gonne cost a lot of money, and I wouldn't expect hundreds of people signing on... wich is a shame realy. But reality too I fear. People want everything for free these days it seems. Maybe it's time to put some kind of p2p technology to legit use here (like x-plane does, and even 3DGamers when they have a new patch etc that's big and in high-demand they put up a "world" link wich uses bittorrent technology - the more demand, the better it works. And it doesn't cost any bandwidth. All that would be needed is a tracker, some dedicated seeders with decent upload speed , and some sort of picture / description index then. I bet most already use bittorrents