Is the game still in development?

[Nomad Terror]

I'll try to stay objective here.

It is obvious that there are some bitter feelings on both sides here. What is misplaced and what isn't, I cannot say. However, I will make some small comments (considering I wasn't invited into this discussion in the first place and I'm really not invovled).

In the Wing Commander community, we're very protective of the quality of anything that receives the Wing Commander name. We hold the Wing Commander name in such high regard that any canon or fan project that attempts to use its name had better well be very worthy of it. This is why there are so many arguments about the movie... some feel that it soils the name of Wing Commander, others don't feel this way. It is in this way that we show we care about Wing Commander as a whole.

Now, WCU can do what they want with or without the support of the "at large" Wing Commander community (which the CIC may or may not represent), because it is their project. However, of the joys of creating a fan project, the only greater pride than having your work produced is having your work accepted and referenced by other works. Now, for example, the Standoff team worked hard to apply all known canon of the Wing Commander universe and applied artistic freedoms to fill in the blanks. They've come a long way, and, assuming no future canon Wing Commander addition contradicts anything they've done, I would feel no reservation against referencing events in Standoff in a future project I might create, if I were so inclined to do so.

The arguments presented against WCU are not reserved for WCU itself, but, rather, all Wing Commander fan projects. We welcome fan additions to the universe, but they have got to go through a trial by fire first to ensure that they hold up to the extreme quality the name Wing Commander holds.

 

[klauss]

And... until now... there was noone at WCU ensuring canon compliance. Really, that's a new development.
Well, at least I think so... I can only speak from the time I got involved until now.

 

[BradMick]

Well...that's what was going on here...until spirit tagged it as 'yelling' and ran off with all the other people who were pissy about us saying 'hey, uh...that doesn't jive'

 

[Master Wooky]

Ha, I never thought it was possiple to annoy people by posting a picture I did on the side
I'm sorry that I haven't noticed how important this stuff is to you guys and I never meant to offend you. But, it takes so much knowledge to fit into "your community". I can just guess how much time you guys are spending in this.
But I'm not willing to sacrifice my whole life just for a game and to catch up with you...
But for you guys out there, willing to do so, I never meant to play down your purpose in life by not flipping that vessel. I hope you can accept this

 

[BradMick]

For me, its not so much a matter of flip or not (though it should be flipped) its a matter of the overall lack of good looking craft. got this bland looking caernavon texture with ugly greebles parked next to the lexington with a horrid looking demon. its just a horrible collection of really awful visuals. there needs to be a continuity to the visual style. seriously, there needs to be a unified look on all the ships. Standoff did it to awesome effect. Everything looks like it belongs together. Saga has done it as well. Its a GOOD thing (though maybe not so popular with some). It's a really big sign screaming 'LACK OF QAULITY HERE!'.

 

[Blue_paladin42]

Hmm, yeah, I went too far there. I never meant to imply you weren't a good artist either. So to BradMick I apologise. It just seemed that you mostly were saying it was bad without saying why. Actually, I would like to see some of your work, in a friendly, non hostile manner.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

LOAF, you said once that "Any real Wing Commander fan looks at that title screen and laughs his ass off -- because right there, center screen is a Concordia-class carrier... and you forgot to flip it." I repeat, "Any real wing commander fan." What the hell does that mean? Just because we play WCU that we aren't wing commander fans? Suddenly anyone who doesn't agree with you isn't worthy of the title or something. Because we didn't say "You suck for not flipping the tower you retard! " If that isn't arrogance, what is? And BradMick, you aren't the only artist in the world, so there isn't any reason to take you seriously when you flame Master Wookies picture.

... and...

Ha, I never thought it was possiple to annoy people by posting a picture I did on the side
I'm sorry that I haven't noticed how important this stuff is to you guys and I never meant to offend you. But, it takes so much knowledge to fit into "your community". I can just guess how much time you guys are spending in this.
But I'm not willing to sacrifice my whole life just for a game and to catch up with you...
But for you guys out there, willing to do so, I never meant to play down your purpose in life by not flipping that vessel. I hope you can accept this

It's kind of amazing that you both managed to read through my long post about how your project shouldn't take things personally... and then sectioned out little bits to take personally.

Get over yourselves - I told you how to fix your picture, I didn't call your mother names.

 

[PopsiclePete]

But, it takes so much knowledge to fit into "your community". I can just guess how much time you guys are spending in this.
But I'm not willing to sacrifice my whole life just for a game and to catch up with you...
But for you guys out there, willing to do so, I never meant to play down your purpose in life by not flipping that vessel.

I think your sarcasm here is misplaced. I, for one, consider myself part of the community even though I can't tell if a Concordia tower is supposed to be placed left or right; but then if I had to model it I would ask someone who knows first... and I think that's the point of many people posting here. Even if I have a job, wife and kids and university classes to attend to, I can still manage to find a few minutes each week to code missions for Standoff, so quit it with your "get a life"-implied sarcasm.

The problem with WCU, wich leaded to the first arguments a few months ago, is simply because of that "let's throw everything we find cool in WCU !" attitude. Accept every submission from anyone, never accept criticism, never re-considering anything when lots of people found something stupid.

Really, I admit I sometime would have included stupid things into Standoff if Eder and Quarto didn't reason me out... why couldn't the WCU people do the same ? Simple. Because their leader wouldn't make strict calls. You can be thankfull towards Quarto for having kept Standoff straight, you can thank John Cordell for polishing Gemini Gold into a very nice game; if you guys want WCU to become something nice one day, you gotta find a rigourous coordinator/leader too. No offence to him; but although he seems to be a good programmer and all, I don't think spiritplumber is that man.

And... until now... there was noone at WCU ensuring canon compliance. Really, that's a new development.
Well, at least I think so... I can only speak from the time I got involved until now.

Then you must not have been involved long enough to have witnessed the fights here a few months ago... at the time, LOAF offered his services to do the canon-guard, offer wich spiritplumber didn't accept.

I think I'll regret having jumped into that argument...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I never said that. That's so untrue. Show me a quote of myself... I dare you. I'm not like that. I don't say those things. Now... you may have misinterpreted something, that's possible.

Again, it's not necessarily you, it's the party line you've opted to defend. Still, it is something you personally have suggested in this thread.

Here's the part where you talk about what the 'right' look for the frigate is: "you can't tell me the Caernaven (what's the correct spelling anyway?) is graphically perfect and shouldn't be changed... it's simplicity is due to the technical limitations of the time."

You may have been acting innocently and thinking this was a reasonable course of action. In fact, what you are suggesting here is something that has been thrice-damned -- suggesting that Origin would have liked to have done a particular ship 'your way'. There was a giant argument about it about the Saga mod, because they decided it was a good excuse to use for everything: different conning tower? Origin would have wanted it that way. Ships completely black? Origin would have wanted it that way. Etc. You touched upon something that you shouldn't have.

And here's the part where you call people who're talking about continuity fanatics: "A great part of all the criticism around here is either nonconstructive, bordering plain meanness, or just incorrectly (IMO) biased by fanatic adherence to canon. I don't mean that there isn't constructive criticism... only that the other kind is overly abundant."

LOAF, Halman didn't even give precisions. What was I supposed to assume?
That is what bothers me.

I know you're not personally responsible for any of this, but the kind of hypocrisy we've come to know when dealing with WCU goes a little like this:

{Statement of a fact}

"That's not true!"

{Cited proof of fact}

"You're referencing {Varible}!? You're just a loser who's obsessed with continuity!"

Halman is coming to the table here someone whose used to this specific debate with Spiritplumber et. al. over and over and over - and it's a lose, lose, lose proposition for everyone entering into it. It's noble that you're arguing their side, but you have to understand the preconcieved notions everyone else has about WCU... they're not good.

(On the other hand - who the hell is Halman? If you're WCUs PR person, you'll need a thicker skin... you can't be offended when some random internet person calls you arrogant. It's not even necessarily a bad thing - I'm certainly arrogant as hell. Halman doesn't matter. He's a nice guy, he's smart as a whip and I'll drink a creepy whiskey-beer with him any day of the week... but Halman doesn't run your life and you don't have to listen to him if you think he's insulting you. No one in the community is going to look down on you for not replying to Halman. Not listening to LOAF or Chris or Quarto or Psych? Yes, these guys are the experts, you need to have an intelligent argument behind your claim -- but Halman is just a random user. From a PR standpoint, deciding to pick on him just doesn't fly.

Also, there's people correcting canon inconsistencies within WCU wherever possible. We do give importance to canon. But, sometimes, canon itself is inconsistent or incomplete. Then, we get to make up things because canon does not give us a solution. If we ever get to making up things when canon gave us a clear solution, I'm sure we would take it... if anything, that's ignorance, not arrogance.
And I'm certainly quite ignorant of WC canon. I mean, I know most games, but not all, and so I have a very incomplete view of things. If I mess up, I expect people correcting me politely, for I have not insulted anyone, and I don't intend to.

That's a nice dream, it's a good goal.

Now, lets check with reality. Humility aside (and I did put it aside a long, long time ago), there's two experts you can check your facts with. Chris and I are pretty much the top in our field, as sad as that is (and it's very sad). We're always happy to answer questions about continuity - we'll do it in the middle of flamewar. Not a debate - a flamewar. I can be yelling at Rance about politics or religion for ten posts, and if he rejoinders with 'What class is the BWS Intrepid?', by golly I'm happy to sit down and figure that out for him. Hell, I'll go right out and say it: Wing Commander continuity is to Chris Reid and LOAF what pretending not to have male genetalia is to Spiritplumber.

So, what does the WCU team contact us to talk about? Well, I can check the CIC in-box. In fact, we've got a good fifty messages from your team lead still sitting around to be sorted -- unfortunately, they're all about telling us to go fuck ourselves and about how he's going to 'hack' our website (how's that going, by the by?).

And that's the whole of it. Continuity police are a good idea - but you're not really doing it. You're hiding away from anything that could be remotely considered negative criticism in your private cave. Case in point - you have a big thread discussing when Righteous Fire takes place at your forum. That issue was settled a million years ago -- and anyone here would be happy to explain it (or argue politely about it, if you want to insist on a particular side! Be warned, we'll be citing our sources.)


(And yes, dear readers, before we get someone slicing up and spitting back all the sexy bits alone - the mind blowing egotism and the cavalier attitude towards everything is a put on meant to make conversation less serious.)

 

[BusbyLogic]

LOAF follow your own policies and end this thread per rules of the forum. Anything more should be discussed in private through email or instant messanger.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It doesn't really seem fair for me to close a thread that I'm involved in the argument of - let Chris or Kris do it. "Here's my take, now nobody talk" doesn't work well. Besides, y'all had been chomping at the bit to talk about Spiritplumber...

 

[charlieg]

See, the problem here is that you're crazy. There's no "CIC agenda" - that's a kind of stupid conspiracy theory...

Agendas and conspiracy theories are different things. Completely different things. I don't think there's a conspiracy afoot. I just think you like what you like and don't like what you don't like and you use that as a basis for how you judge what material belongs here or not. Perhaps you should be less cynical if you want to understand what I'm saying. Perhaps you don't care.

You're only shooting yourself in the foot by developing incestously. Here's a fun example: someone posted a 'title screen' image to use with WCU to your forums. Everybody there responded with some attaboys. You're so great, you're so find, etc. But you know what? [Bitching]

Well, firstly he posted it as a sketch - y'know, something thrown together as a concept.

I agree that it needs a helluva lot of work to look decent, but it's a starting point. And, y'know what, being downright harsh about unfinished material is a great way to drive away people. Being constructive about things (e.g. "nice start but you need to at least flip the Concordia as well as polish up this and that etc") is going to get everybody a lot further than, "That's crap." Not everybody is as thickskinned as yourself.

 

[charlieg]

No, he's not. If dressing up as a woman is your creepy sex thing, more power to you... I'm sure we all have horrible, terrible creepy sex things... but Spirit uses it to take advantage of my community, not as some kind of free expression.

In the context of that awful livejournal, I can compare it only to how actual women pretend to be men on the internet because they *do* want to be treated equally. We have several cases of that here, I consider it the height of nobility... and Spirit is the point furthest from that. He wants to be special, he wants to use people - so he's a cute little girl online.

Whilst you are entitled to your opinion, this was a grossly unfair misrepresentation of who Spiritplumber presented himself as.

One of the first things he said to me at the time was that he was TG. For you to bullshit about how he pretended to be a girl as if he was some kinda perverted paedophile trying to lull kids into cars (sorry, but that's the tone you use in the above paragraphs) is saying more about your own persona than it does about his.

 

[charlieg]

For me, its not so much a matter of flip or not (though it should be flipped) its a matter of the overall lack of good looking craft. got this bland looking caernavon texture with ugly greebles parked next to the lexington with a horrid looking demon. its just a horrible collection of really awful visuals. there needs to be a continuity to the visual style. seriously, there needs to be a unified look on all the ships. Standoff did it to awesome effect. Everything looks like it belongs together. Saga has done it as well. Its a GOOD thing (though maybe not so popular with some). It's a really big sign screaming 'LACK OF QAULITY HERE!'.

The man's got a point.

I do think that it will, at some point in the WCU development cycle, boil down to really going over all the artistic and canon detail and making sure it's as correct as can be. A lot of stuff is way out at the moment. However, the game is only "0.2.3" so there's a long way to go before it's ready.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Agendas and conspiracy theories are different things. Completely different things. I don't think there's a conspiracy afoot. I just think you like what you like and don't like what you don't like and you use that as a basis for how you judge what material belongs here or not. Perhaps you should be less cynical if you want to understand what I'm saying. Perhaps you don't care.

Okay, cool - now explain how it works in any of this context. Clearly I'm happy to have a board for people to talk about WCU... I've already said I'll be happy to post an announcement to the front page... so, where's the beef? How am I using my supposed 'dislike' as a basis for what material belongs here?

I mean, you're following up a giant rant about how WCU people *should* post here because this is the best place to get information from Wing Commander experts. Your claim is a nice little generic diatribe, but it has nothing to do with the evidence at hand or even the topic being discussed.

I agree that it needs a helluva lot of work to look decent, but it's a starting point. And, y'know what, being downright harsh about unfinished material is a great way to drive away people. Being constructive about things (e.g. "nice start but you need to at least flip the Concordia as well as polish up this and that etc") is going to get everybody a lot further than, "That's crap." Not everybody is as thickskinned as yourself.

What I've done is use an error in it as an example for what's wrong with WCU's development process -- and everyone has somehow managed to prove my point better than my own limited abilities by reacting angrily that I'd dare criticize something instead of showing an inkling of understanding as to what I was saying.

I'm talking about what's wrong with your development, vis a vis relying only on chosen-to-be-disgruntled jerks and non-fans to pat everyone on the back about every decision. If you'd posted the image here, someone would have pointed out that the carrier was backwards and you would have fixed it. You're raging against the example and proving the point.

I don't really have anything against the image in particular - it's a bunch of screenshots from the game mixed together. I'm not an artist, it wouldn't be my job to know anything about fonts or shadows. I wouldn't pretend to. I am, however, the Wing Commander guy, and will happily or unhappily use that to try to help you. In terms of this specific situation, the issue is that the 3D models in the RealSpace games are stored as mirror images of themselves. When you extract a mesh from Wing Commander III/IV (or SC/PS/WoG, I suppose) it will be 'opposite'. For something like an Excalibur or an Arrow I suppose it doesn't really matter... but when the non-symmetrical ships come out, they have to be flipped back or else they're backwards. In this specific case, the conning tower of the carrier shows up on the wrong side - and what you're unconsciously telling every Wing Commander fan who looks at the image (or plays the game, I suppose) is that you've just extracted a model from Wing Commander IV and stuck it in your game without thinking about it.

Whilst you are entitled to your opinion, this was a grossly unfair misrepresentation of who Spiritplumber presented himself as.

One of the first things he said to me at the time was that he was TG. For you to bullshit about how he pretended to be a girl as if he was some kinda perverted paedophile trying to lull kids into cars (sorry, but that's the tone you use in the above paragraphs) is saying more about your own persona than it does about his.

I'd say that's a reasonable analogy - we've got an awful IRC log of Spiritplumber showing off 'her' picture and prodding everyone about whether or not 'she's' "cute". That now seems all the creepier in light of your analogy.

Throughout its early posts, Spiritplumber makes sure to let everyone know that he's a girl - you can look through the archive here. When he was banned for the first time, the response from everybody was, naturally, "how could you ban a poor girl?!". He certainly didn't say anything then.

Pretending to be a woman in a science fiction community - and making it as blatant as he did, especially - is to get attention and make people agree with you... not some grand form of expression.

(The first time someone disagrees with Spirit at the PrivRemake forum in the archive" -- Spirit's response: "I'm just the girl who fiddlef*cks with stuff around here ^^". That's right, universe -- 'don't ask me, I'm just a girl'. It'd be a disgusting sentiment even if he *was* a girl.)

 

[klauss]

Again, it's not necessarily you

Oh... now I understand...
...english is just a problematic language. How come you (singular) is the same word as [/i]you[/i] (plural)? We should all talk spanish... we wouldn't have had that problem.
Sorry... misunderstanding.

Here's the part where you talk about what the 'right' look for the frigate is: "you can't tell me the Caernaven (what's the correct spelling anyway?) is graphically perfect and shouldn't be changed... it's simplicity is due to the technical limitations of the time."

I wasn't implying that my way was the one... I was just saying that it was that simple-looking because they couldn't do better at the time the game was made. Surely, they had a more detailed look in mind... I couldn't find any concept art for the caenaven in the Document Archive at wcnews... I would really like to know where this archive of sketches is... we could put them to use.
Perhaps you're referring to chuck_starchaser's greebles... he does tend to say things like "without this radiator, the ship would melt in 0.000032 seconds". But he even doesn't mean it too seriously... if you propose an alternative, and good arguments, he's always ready to change his mind.

You may have been acting innocently and thinking this was a reasonable course of action.

Exactly... a reasonable course of action is all that it was claimed to be. Not the only one by far.

In fact, what you are suggesting here is something that has been thrice-damned -- suggesting that Origin would have liked to have done a particular ship 'your way'. There was a giant argument about it about the Saga mod, because they decided it was a good excuse to use for everything: different conning tower? Origin would have wanted it that way. Ships completely black? Origin would have wanted it that way. Etc. You touched upon something that you shouldn't have.

Didn't know it was such a sensitive issue. Sorry for poking.

And here's the part where you call people who're talking about continuity fanatics: "A great part of all the criticism around here is either nonconstructive, bordering plain meanness, or just incorrectly (IMO) biased by fanatic adherence to canon. I don't mean that there isn't constructive criticism... only that the other kind is overly abundant."

Ok... it was a mistake to use that word.
For me, it's much more restrictive than what you think. Not everyone that doesn't agree is a fanatic. Fanatic behavior is disagreeing without a reason. Saying: WC1 didn't have that much detail... and that's it. I mean, it's obvious why WC1 didn't have that much detail... unless the reference is to WC1's concept art, not ingame art. Saying that the ship is supposed to look as it did in WC1 is nonsense... almost never games can recreate the full detail of the concept behind ingame art, and all I was saying is that, if we don't have access to that concept art, we may very well create it ourselves - just keep the spirit of ingame art pieces.
Now... I do think the caernaven is ugly. But, unless you're a texturing wiz, not much can be done with such a poor model.

(On the other hand - who the hell is Halman? If you're WCUs PR person, you'll need a thicker skin... you can't be offended when some random internet person calls you arrogant. It's not even necessarily a bad thing - I'm certainly arrogant as hell. Halman doesn't matter. He's a nice guy, he's smart as a whip and I'll drink a creepy whiskey-beer with him any day of the week... but Halman doesn't run your life and you don't have to listen to him if you think he's insulting you. No one in the community is going to look down on you for not replying to Halman. Not listening to LOAF or Chris or Quarto or Psych? Yes, these guys are the experts, you need to have an intelligent argument behind your claim -- but Halman is just a random user. From a PR standpoint, deciding to pick on him just doesn't fly.

I did say I didn't get that offended... just that I'm sure Halman didn't just try to insult me/us... there is no point in coming to a board just to insult people. So, by making him defend his accusations, I was expecting to uncover the real meaning of what he said. Apparently, he has no intention of doing that. That's sad...

...So, what does the WCU team contact us to talk about? Well, I can check the CIC in-box. In fact, we've got a good fifty messages from your team lead still sitting around to be sorted -- unfortunately, they're all about telling us to go fuck ourselves and about how he's going to 'hack' our website (how's that going, by the by?).

Yes... forget about those mails. If that happens again, we really have to talk to spirit about that behavior. It's uncool. It's damaging to the project.
As you say, I need to develop a thicker skin. I hardly ever get angry about something... but I do tend to argue strongly about subjects, and it may seem as if I was angry.

And that's the whole of it. Continuity police are a good idea - but you're not really doing it. You're hiding away from anything that could be remotely considered negative criticism in your private cave. Case in point - you have a big thread discussing when Righteous Fire takes place at your forum. That issue was settled a million years ago -- and anyone here would be happy to explain it (or argue politely about it, if you want to insist on a particular side! Be warned, we'll be citing our sources.)

That's bad news to chuck... he's the one following that issue. And he's done a lot of work towards that end.
I'll see if I can convice him to check with you or Chris.

Oh... and about the models. Yes, we're trying to get them "unified", as in redone basically, with a unified look and quality standard. But we don't have people to do it. So... it's in the queue... models aren't supposed to remain as they are now.

 

[BradMick]

its amazing how you have so many people over there, and not a one of them can do decent art...well, exception being stranglet and that ethereal guy. not all hobbyists are that bad....

 

[charlieg]

What I've done is use an error in it as an example for what's wrong with WCU's development process -- and everyone has somehow managed to prove my point better than my own limited abilities by reacting angrily that I'd dare criticize something instead of showing an inkling of understanding as to what I was saying.

Well since you're just ignoring what I say, I'll rephrase my comments in a vein attempt to be heard.

I agree the image is currently below standard and deserves critique, but there is a distinction between harsh criticism and constructive criticism. Whilst you did put forth a tip (the flipping of the Concordia) it was buried in a tirade on how crap the image was whilst trying to show how crap you think the WCU development process is (the same process that spawned VegaStrike and PR which make up the bulk of PGG, just to give you some context). Perhaps if you were less intent on being so negative, people would not react angrily. After all, surely we all want the same thing, the continuation of WC in the best possible way, right? WCU may be far from perfect, but every iteration will bring it closer to WC and it's very early days yet. Patience and positive critique will get you a lot further than rants and distain.

There is a great irony amongst all this conflict. I feel WCU would benefit greatly from the amazing canon insight these boards carry. And that members of the board would relish the game WCU aspires to be. I hope one day that things blow over between the main personalties involved and everybody benefits from a game made by the community for the community, improved by the community.

 

[charlieg]

its amazing how you have so many people over there, and not a one of them can do decent art...well, exception being stranglet and that ethereal guy. not all hobbyists are that bad....

The thing is, not that many people really are working on WCU. This is the "great problem" that afflicts most OSS - there are few competent artists yet many competent programmers.

Again, that's why it's such a shame that the two communities, VS/WCU and Crius, do not get along. You guys seem to have abundant artistic talent and the drive to utilise it. VS/WCU has the developer talent and the drive to "reach for the stars". If somehow those two facets could be aligned, great things could happen. As it stands, there is just too much philosophical divide for effective cooperation. I mean, it took LOAF getting pissed off just to point out a fundamental problem with the concept title art. If it takes an argument just to communicate small things between the communities, well, it does not bode well.

 

[Master Wooky]

I think your sarcasm here is misplaced. I, for one, consider myself part of the community even though I can't tell if a Concordia tower is supposed to be placed left or right; but then if I had to model it I would ask someone who knows first... and I think that's the point of many people posting here.

Ok, now this makes me think that not half of you have seen the picture and not one of you has read the thread ( http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5725 ).

It's just a sketch

The picture you all saw was never meant to be in game in any way. It was just a preview, a sketch to ask the guys if this is the direction we wanna go. None of the layers you've seen will make it into the final version. The ships are cut out poorly and the shadows and lights are all wrong...

You say I should have asked someone who knows better... Well, I did!!!

and i'm open to any suggestion...

the funny thing is... you, complaining all the time that you wanted to help the WCU guys and they always rejected your help, had the chance to help, but you didn't. You took a sketch as finished product and made fun of it... and then you stand there and say stuff like.... hey, don't take it personal. we are just discussing the matter... NO, YOU DON'T! It seems you don't even know what's the matter.

Last thing: I never said I was a pro. Hey, I'm getting paid for writing articles. For me, a computer is a better typewriter where you can also play games... And it's really sorry, to use an amateurs work as proof for bad work or low quality in the WCU project. Because even if this first picture had been my final version, nobody of the guys who decide about it has said that they wanna take it...