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Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2014 4:32 am
by Electro
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/191095869/reflex

Hey guys!
Here's a project I've poured a loooooot of my time into with a team of 3 of us. We're so keen to revive the fast paced FPS action from being addicted to quake like all you guys.
Would love if you guys could show your support, if not just financially, but also with spreading the word to make this a reality.

Cheers guys, love you all and proud to be part of the Quake community! <3

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:47 pm
by toneddu2000
wow man I wish you all the best! Sure 360.000 AUD in 26 days it's not a piece of cake but I hope you'll succed. It's good to see small teams developing good old school games.
Will you post in the future more news about your engine (in which language is writte, core and advanced features, editor embedded or art asset import pipeline, etc.)? Because I think it would be an interesting lecture!

Keep it up!

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:16 pm
by Julius
If it was an open-source game (with some commercial services) I would definitly pledge, but like this it seems like another Nexuiz (the commercial one).
Don't get me wrong... great project and high production values and all that... but the nieche of competitive shooters is though and you need to be in it for the long run to suceed. A commercial, closed source, game where support and continued balancing depends on sales and if that isn't satifactory gets dropped like a hot potato, is something most people will not buy into precisely because it is likely to fail. Self-fullfilling prophecy and all that, but there is no way around it except open-source community ownership.

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:51 am
by leileilol
Julius wrote:If it was an open-source game (with some commercial services) I would definitly pledge

there is no way around it except open-source community ownership.

Shut up


Good luck Electro!

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:37 am
by Julius
As if you could compare Quake3/live that has a more than a decade old fanbase and balancing to a new-comer... Even the people from Epic Games have realized that only something like community ownership can succeed in this nieche (see development model of the new Unreal Tournament), and they definitly also have a big fan-base already (albeight many moved on after the more or less failed UT3).
I mean seriously, how is this significantly different from Nexuiz (the commercial one)? And I don't mean gameplay, but the overall concept and prospects for future development.

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:32 pm
by frag.machine
So, suddenly you decided all FPS projects must be open source, therefore this one obviously is doomed because people expects to - gasp! - be paid by their work ?

I find your reasoning... amusing, to say the least.

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 3:43 pm
by leileilol
Julius wrote:I mean seriously, how is this significantly different from Nexuiz (the commercial one)?
Because something costs money (oh my god) and it's an arena game, you can't tell between an indie game that's kickstarting and an indie game that was published under a troubled publisher bleeding money until its demise in early 2013?

Quake Live has thousands of new players now since it arrived on Steam (one of its highest peaks ever, even including Q3's in 2000), clearly there's an interested market for the genre, despite the "ruined forever" update it had with the loadouts and the autobhop. With 2,592 players right now, I'd say that beats OpenArena's 55 and Xonotic's 14 (at the time of this writing). FOSS is totally the answer for the interest and justifies your FUD trolling crusade to "Free a new game", right

Spoiled zealots like you make me feel ashamed of doing a GPL project. Then again i'm dead to you anyway for not making the FTEQW-powered DAYZ killer zombie game you wanted, and that 'pointless game' too. Get a reality check out of your bubble, there's more to game development than religious COPYING file radicalism.

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:57 pm
by Spirit
Moderator comment: Please leave your personal grudges elsewhere and be nice.

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:43 pm
by Julius
leileilol wrote:
Julius wrote:I mean seriously, how is this significantly different from Nexuiz (the commercial one)?
Because something costs money (oh my god) and it's an arena game, you can't tell between an indie game that's kickstarting and an indie game that was published under a troubled publisher bleeding money until its demise in early 2013?

Quake Live has thousands of new players now since it arrived on Steam (one of its highest peaks ever, even including Q3's in 2000), clearly there's an interested market for the genre, despite the "ruined forever" update it had with the loadouts and the autobhop. With 2,592 players right now, I'd say that beats OpenArena's 55 and Xonotic's 14 (at the time of this writing). FOSS is totally the answer for the interest and justifies your FUD trolling crusade to "Free a new game", right
Where did I say it has to be free (as in no-cost)? Clearly I am fine with paying for it if I am willing to pledge for the kickstarter? I am also fine with paying for additional services in the open-source game etc. Besides, there are thousands of programmers getting paid every day working on *gasp* open-source projects (myself sort of included).
Both of you seem to have not understood what open-source is about, nor did you understand my argument at all.

I am not arguing btw. that there isn't a market for Arena Shooters (and you can't compare hobbiist projects like OA or Xonotic to commercial games), what I am saying is that the market is totally different from regular single-player games, and you need to have a different marketing and sales model to succeed in it. Last time I checked Quake-Live was Free 2 Play btw.

As a side note: especially if it is a kickstarter project it would make sense to open it up. Why should someone invest in a company/project if there is not a single bit of ownership transfer beyond that one would get from buying a product regularly? If you take the risk of investment via Kickstarter you also need some sort of realistic reward in return.

@ spirit: I am fine... never had a personal grudge against leileilol... in fact I find it somewhat amusing that he/she seems to hate me ;)

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:54 pm
by leileilol
Julius wrote:Both of you seem to have not understood what open-source is about, nor did you understand my argument at all.
I know what open source is; I just don't subscribe to the toxic notion of 'software freedom' by telling others they can't have the freedom of not having 'software freedom', because that isn't freedom.


(Actually on topic: Plugging it on the OA forums btw)

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 6:01 pm
by Julius
Fair enough, but I am not even talking about strict FOSS. What I am talking about is customer/user trust; that you can have that if you are id software or epic games or you can try to get it for example by open-sourcing the product (doesn't have to be copyleft at all, but it is probably wise to do so from a commercial point of view).

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 11:45 pm
by Dr. Shadowborg
Julius wrote:Fair enough, but I am not even talking about strict FOSS. What I am talking about is customer/user trust; that you can have that if you are id software or epic games or you can try to get it for example by open-sourcing the product (doesn't have to be copyleft at all, but it is probably wise to do so from a commercial point of view).
Soooo...What you are inferring is that you believe Electro is likely to rip people off?

Do you regularly make a habit of presuming to tell somebody how they should run their project?

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 1:47 am
by mankrip
Back on topic: Reflex is a staff pick on Kickstarter now. Good luck!

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 3:02 am
by Baker
Julius may take heat for his opinion, but what if happens to be a true opinion? Open source does matter. It is why is it possible to support Android and why I won't use use a closed-source web browser.

In an age of a million Arena games past and present, a fair number open source (Sauterbraten/Cube, classic Nexuiz, Xonotic, Open Arena, Alien Arena, yada, yada ...) it can be difficult to justify to whole-heartedly back a closed source one.

Open source can be something as simple as commitment to open source 2 behind release.

I avoid almost all closed-source tools and wouldn't want to use, as an example, a closed source Quake map editor.

Isn't Unreal effectively open-source even if strictly licensed? Isn't Unity 3D open source? (I don't know, I'm not too interested in those, but I think they are. And if it isn't important, then why are they open source? Well --- they LIKE WINNING. That's why.)

You can say my opinion doesn't matter, but let's say this Kickstarter fails narrowly (misses by 20-40%), would it have made a difference between success and failure? Seems like in a near-miss scenario it certainly would. Closed source is shortsighted and hard to morally support; Android might be a failure if it weren't open source. Open source, regardless of license, makes things easier to support (Java, MySQL, etc.)

The problem with closed source to me is that it means that the authors don't have sufficiently deep intellectual and environmental awareness. In something like business-to-business this is just normal and ecosystems built on that model (console platforms), but outside that box, it is an intellectual litmus test.

If you can't pass the intellectual litmus test, what other short-sightedness is there in your thinking? John Carmack sees the pattern in the dominos. Sergey Brin sees the pattern in dominos. This is why it is easy support, say, John Carmack.

/Controversial thoughts, so be it ... So sue me ... (And my comments aren't related to this project, but how I think about projects in general. And either way, I wish Electro luck on this project.)

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 4:16 am
by mankrip
Baker wrote:John Carmack sees the pattern in the dominos. [...] This is why it is easy support, say, John Carmack.
Id Software never launched open source games. The engine was always closed-source, and each engine source was only released when they already had a newer closed-source game in the market.