I thought this was a Sonic and Friends
free-zone? It's bad enough that stuff drifts over to sega-16, but here? -smh
tl;dr (nothing important)
greedostick: Actually, it
is illegal. You are not allowed to translate someone else's copyrighted work and redistribute it in another language (patch or no patch). The ONLY reason why the hacking and translation community hasn't come under fire, is because this is done for non-profit AND the target audience is small enough. That hasn't stopped some companies from producing a C&D though, once a hack got waaaay to much attention (ChronoTrigger comes to mind).
I do agree that everyone involved in a project gets veto power for their own work - period. SamIam and I are working on the translation of Spriggan, so I would definitely like it if permission was asked of both of us. I can't speak on behalf of Sam, and he can't for me.
No one said stated that any of these hacks were made with the idea that they were to be pressed on CDs. It's not the hackers or translators problem, if you don't like CD-Rs or PC emulators (or the up and comming SDcard CD emulator for PCE that the GDEMU guy is working on).
About the YsIV dub thing: just redub the damn thing. It's not that hard and anyone has the right to do it (there's no claim that you can't rehack or redub something just because someone else did it first). That would solve both issues for BL and NW.
To the new comers here, you're not entitled to something just because someone else released it for public use. It doesn't make it public property. You need to learn some damn respect: you can't always get what you want (I want a pressed copy of YsIV as much as
any of you, even before this dub was made). Trying to justify it 3 ways around be stating they didn't have permission for this and that, doesn't negate anything. I swear some people have little to no scruples. But go ahead and do it, and see what happens to the community that wants to actually continue this type of work.
I'm in no way
against community pressings, but getting permission is the right thing to do. I feel like a broken record...
As for Dracula X, there are like 5-6 people that worked on that (myself included). BL isn't the only one, but he made clear that he doesn't want this part used in a pressing. If you want to make your own version, you can use my tools (or rather, code) - I don't care what you do with it. But I didn't do everything in the game, and there are artists (like Fragmare) that did work too. You'd have to replace that as well. You got your work cut out for you; let's see what you're made of.