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Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 5:18 am
by Baker
mankrip wrote:
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.
Keep thinking .. it'll come! ... I have confidence in you. :D

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 6:06 am
by Julius
Dr. Shadowborg wrote: 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?
So much anger... are you on some meds for that?

But to make it clear, no I am not implying that this is a rip off at all. Just like the commercial Nexuiz wasn't a rip-off either.

The point is that people need trust in a game to commit significant time (and often money to set up servers etc.) in to it. Making a successful multiplayer arena shooter is just as much about community building as it is about making a good game. If you have a long history of making and supporting such games, like Epic or id, that's relatively easy to do, but even they are now looking for new ways to improve that (Unreal is now sort of open-source; Unity isn't AFAIK btw.).

But if you are an unkown company, which obviously little money (why else run a kickstarter?) and base your business model on selling closed-source copies (i.e. once the bulk of copies are sold there is little incentive for the company to truely continue supporting the game-community as much as they would wish otherwise), then you have to work really hard to gain the trust of a loyal following. Because only if you have a significant amount of players that set-up custom servers and populate them 24/7, such a game can succeed... and at best it should do so for many years down the road, constantly being improved on.
Open-sourcing it might be a good way do try and achive this goal, and it certainly fits well as a development model to a game that is in constant development with lots of community input for a really long time (easily a decade, as seen with Quake3 or other successful multiplayer games like Team Fortress etc.).

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:07 pm
by toneddu2000
I always wanted to open a thread about the word Open Source. It's a magical and mysterious word, imo. For example take UDK, engine is closed source (you have only binaries) but UnrealScript gamecode (and for gamecode I don't mean those 10 shitty files in id1qc, there's a complete Object Oriented Library) is distribuited to use it freely (not as free software but more like as "Epic doesn't charge you for using this code") and you can: a) sell a game with that code or any other modification and use in conjuction with any other closed source software, like SteamApps(difficult, but not impossible, through DLLbind) WITHOUT be forced to release your code modifications or b) share your game and code on EpicGames software (without defining any explicit license, because, technically that code "belongs" to Epic).

Same thing is impossible neither with Quake engines and all its derivates, due to orrible GPL license, nor with id1qc. You can make even a commercial game, sure. But forget abou keep your engine code/gamecode modifications for your own. And forget about merging with closed source apps (is GPL violation iirc).
Unity same story: closed source engine (only binaries), gives less game code bundled in C#/Js but has a huge wiki with tons of code free of use without posting any modications at public.
So what's open source, what's freedom? The liberty to make your own business with some limitations or the obligation to make your ideas free? :D

Just to derail this conversation a little on topic:
Why, Electro, don't you post some in-production shots? I don't know, a 3d app video of a game environment prop during modeling, a debug view of the game, some photos of you guys discussing game processes during brainstorming, stuff like that because people like that! I know it's a lot of extra work to do (and maybe you guys are already exhausted! :D )but, considering you're trying to collect a big amount of money, maybe this could add a little of "icing on the cake"! :D I tell you this just as a suggestion and because you have still a lot of time before kickstarter timer goes off.

Put beforehand that I think that work MUST be payed an complex intellectual work (any kind) MUST be payed MORE, DOT, another thing is if the sentence was put in this way:
"Hey Electro, cool stuff you're doing! I have an idea that maybe could help you guys to reach you kickstarter goal faster: why don't you put in the introduction, that, after (I dunno) 2 years of game shipping, engine source code will be released under a permissive open source license to thank all our fans that help us for our big work with a big gift for the community!".
Imho a sentence like this is another pair of shoes and maybe this endless conversation would have been focused on more Reflex game matter :D

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 1:37 pm
by leileilol
All Electro wanted to do is show to his like-minded longtime pals in what he once considered home. He didn't post this on a linux gaming mailing list.





Is common courtesy too much to ask for these days?

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 8:09 pm
by Dr. Shadowborg
Baker wrote:I avoid almost all closed-source tools and wouldn't want to use, as an example, a closed source Quake map editor.
...says the guy who created the QuakeAdapter, which *drumroll* just happens to use WorldCraft 3.3. :wink:
Julius wrote: The point is that people need trust in a game to commit significant time (and often money to set up servers etc.) in to it.
Trust? Don't you really mean devotion (and a whole lot of love)? (and if you do mean trust, it appears to me that Electro and his team have plenty of that, given how much time and effort they've put into it)
Julius wrote: Making a successful multiplayer arena shooter is just as much about community building as it is about making a good game. If you have a long history of making and supporting such games, like Epic or id, that's relatively easy to do, but even they are now looking for new ways to improve that (Unreal is now sort of open-source; Unity isn't AFAIK btw.).
And yet Epic and iD had to start from scratch themselves, so whats your point? I suspect that they would not have managed to build a community, or have accrued that long history if they hadn't made some great games. (The "If you build it, they will come" rule) Also, I dunno where iD is going nowadays given they are now owned by Bethesda (who incidentally is now in a legal pissing match with Carmack), etc.
Julius wrote:So much anger... are you on some meds for that?
Not anger, just annoyance. The doctor recommends that if annoyance persists, I ban one Julius and call him in the morning. Now, do I really need to follow that advice? :P
leileilol wrote:All Electro wanted to do is show to his like-minded longtime pals in what he once considered home. He didn't post this on a linux gaming mailing list.





Is common courtesy too much to ask for these days?
Thats pretty much what I got from his post. And then SOMEBODY comes in and poops all over his dream with something that basically amounts to "LOL NICE PROJECT DOOD, BUT YOU DONT GET ANY MONEY FROM ME BECAUSE ITS NOT OPENSOURCE AND I THINK YOU AND YOUR PROJECT WILL DIE AND SUX BECAUSE YOURE NOT OPENSOURCING IT! LOLOLOLOL SUX2BU!111!".

Seriously, just one smelly mass of negativity, and not one iota of "I don't agree with your model, but Good Luck to you and your project!".

I can't really blame leileilol for reacting in that manner with something like that.

EDIT: Just read toneddu2000's post. Now THAT is how you help encourage open source. :D

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 2:25 pm
by Baker
Dr. Shadowborg wrote:
Baker wrote:I avoid almost all closed-source tools and wouldn't want to use, as an example, a closed source Quake map editor.
...says the guy who created the QuakeAdapter, which *drumroll* just happens to use WorldCraft 3.3. :wink:
Dr. Shadowborg wrote:
Baker wrote:Thats pretty much what I got from his post. And then SOMEBODY comes in and poops all over his dream with something that basically amounts to "LOL NICE PROJECT DOOD, BUT YOU DONT GET ANY MONEY FROM ME BECAUSE ITS NOT OPENSOURCE AND I THINK YOU AND YOUR PROJECT WILL DIE AND SUX BECAUSE YOURE NOT OPENSOURCING IT! LOLOLOLOL SUX2BU!111!".
I'm not really concerned with possible misinterpretations of what I say or nitpicking about the 2006 Quake Adapter.

I have always had a strong and passionate interest in the "science of winning" (and as a side-effect evolution and biology, a really nice battlefield) and human culture and such. Btw, open source would make *some difference* as I stated (20%-40%) but isn't going to make 400% difference.

Good information is a point-of-view you believe to correct, because right or wrong it represents a true assessment from a speaker's point-of-view and their thought process. As an example, why does FireFox have 18%-24% browser-share when Google Chrome is pretty much superior on every front? People don't come out and say "Open source! Open source! Open source!", people don't actually usually explain or even talk about underlying themes in their decision process.

I value good information. As an example, there have been times where Spike or MH (or Tomaz!) ripped apart my ideas and pointed out flaws. I grew every time.

If I err, I like to err on the side of good information from my point-of-view. Because the intent to provide accurate information is, in my opinion, the right thing to do for anyone except little kids.

Science doesn't coddle, science doesn't get emotional. And we aren't little kids here. And I much prefer someone giving their true opinion about my projects, as an example, so that I can grow (or dismiss) their input. But good input = good output.

/+1 posts on the internets. Was it worth it? I can hope, but either way, it contains information. Good? Bad? Who knows!

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 11:15 pm
by hogsy
Image

I can't help but feel sorry for Electro right now on how badly this thread has been derailed :roll:

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 3:15 am
by ceriux
i shared the kickstarter with my friends who like arena shooters when the thread was made. ;) good luck electro you're doing what i wish i could! (i also remember you teaching me the first things i learned about modding quake thank you again!)

Re: Reflex kickstarter!

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:09 pm
by Shpuld
As someone who has spent a lot of time in the Reflex pre-alpha, I can safely say that what Electro and pals have been working on is a great base for a great competitive shooter.
Surprisingly enough the real-time+multiplayer map editor is one of the coolest things in it right now. I've been addicted to creating maps with it.

Even if the Kickstarter won't most likely succeed I have high hopes for Reflex' future and wish the best of luck for the developers.