Friday, October 31, 2014

Why I created The Amazing World of Mugen

Alright I will make this as clear as possible. Four years ago, I have started a hosting website through Ning.com. I wanted to make it easier for every M.U.G.E.N fans out there to go to one place where they can download files for both characters and stages. The name used to be Mugen1 at that time, since I did not had any good suggestions back then. Eventually, more thoughts came to me as I was uploading files of characters and stages to the site. It did become popular until the creators wanted members to buy premium packages in order to have limits and special offers. Ning was the only place where you could have unlimited storage data, but around 2010 with these rules you had to follow, I had no choice but to find another place where I can create and design.

It did not take me that long to look, I came across Webs.com. Of course, you had to read through the terms and conditions along with looking through their plan to see what is the best package to buy blah blah blah. I went with "free plan with very little data" just to get started and see how it will turn out. As I was designing, I came up with the next new name that will be easier to remember. The name was called World of Mugen. It was simple, there was no other names from different places, it was good and ready to roll. Moving onto the year of 2011, shortly after the creation, I started getting the basics sorted out with the forums, the characters, stages, and arcade games that they used to have. As my storage data was in the range of being full, I attempted to get Web Credits in order to get more space. The additional content I got from that only last for a full year, in which it did not help out solve the issue. I went with buying an Enhanced two year plan, that way I can have the opportunity to boost my website. Most of it did help attract more fans to visit the site and download what I had up before adding more. Before I went on ahead and added more, I done little amount of legal conditions. The downfall of it was that I could not find any accurate information about sharing content nor if it was the right thing to do. Many people I have talked to did not have an understanding about it nor did not really cared, there were other hosting websites that were doing the same thing. Unlike my website, they have more sharing files that they must of downloaded through others. Another idea that came to me was to show previews of the characters and stages, so fans will know what exactly they are getting before hesitating to download. It took me a few tries to find ways to create transparent animation until I got this software called Easy GIF Animator. In my opinion, it felt like I was adding more work on myself because it wasn't easy. I took a lot of screen shots on a character's stance while Mugen was running then edit the background behind the character. On the other hand of the work, my Youtube account "Codmaster50000" was a good place to get the website out there to help the fans. As of now, the links to the website are still out there; it wouldn't do you any good at the moment not with my account "frozen."

From beginning of 2011 to 2013, World of Mugen was up filled with three pages of characters, in addition to both bonus games and invincible, and a total of 63 stages. I stopped focusing on the site, due to major life depression I was dealing with in the past, World of Mugen was right where it needed to be. Very few members were disappointed about it, but what else could I even do. With depression in the way, financial and tuition problems, and non-profit organization, there was really no other choice I ever thought about. Eventually, I cancelled the Enhanced plan because with college I attended to, I felt like there would be more money situation within the year. Everything was left unattended with more people signing up, feedback, forums being taking control by some anonymous, bandwidth over filling, expired domain name, and files were out-of-date. Somehow in someway World of Mugen was still known to be popular.


Recently, as of October 2nd, 2014, I wanted get the website back up to where I want it to be. This time I was concerned with multiple policies and regulations that may interfere with my work. I had a lot of help and tried to find as much research as I could, but only to find posts from seven years ago. The posts I came across came from Mugen Fighter Guide, a lot of people claimed that others would download and share that particular file onto their hosting website. I did try to get in contact with people couple years ago about it, but never got any response from anyone. This also came up in my mind that since the site has been out there for three and a half years and nobody never had a problem about it so I figure might as well finish it. My buddies also tried to get in contact with Elecbyte, but they never responded back, in which that did not help. They did stumbled across this legal entity about sharing the Mugen game itself to any other hosting site. Elecbyte does not want anyone to share their freeware game on any other website; you can have a link on your site that will take people to their site in order to get the game. Another is you are forbidden to actually sell files to fans out there. That is pretty much all everybody found. I even tried to contact a lot of people, but it seems most of the creators are no longer are around the internet. It makes it more difficult, yet again though the site has been up for a long time. Just to be on the safe side like what everyone else did, I threw a message out there giving credit to all the original creators so people can thank them for creating these files, not to get in trouble or anything.

So after taking a small break from thinking about it, I set up another domain name since I could not get worldofmugen.com again. The new title is called... The Amazing World of Mugen!!!! (Didn't come up with anything better than World of Mugen) It seems funny how you hear that, you think of gumball, darwin, or whoever from The Amazing World of Gumball. Soon, there will be files on there, once after the other issues are completely solved. I also created a facebook page incase of logging in fails or if anyone is interested to see minor changes. Well.... That is all I have to talk about, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. Oh yes, I do have other blogs that is related to Boy Scouts of America. You can find these other blogs through here.

Before you do move onto some other web address, I am curious on other hosting websites. How do they get away with sharing files and contents over the internet and not get in trouble with illegal copyright? I don't see how they could got into contacting with creators to allow it to happen if I couldn't get in contact with them over the last 3 1/2 years. I am far beyond lost among the policies, limitations, and regulations. Do you have any idea how it works, can anybody really get in trouble with that, or does somebody get jealous over it and start submitting complaints? No matter where or how I look at it, it does not make any sense to me at all. The information I found, seems inaccurate and might be out-dated. This is really stressing me out and need solution to stop all this madness.

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