Omg... I walk away for a day and something like this happens. Good thing Kraven skyped me about this, I can't believe the mess that has been made here!
Let's just step back for a moment and think about what's been said and how it relates to what's going on. Perhaps come more information on the timeline of things will help clear some of this up.
Hockeykid did not "take" Project Blue. It was offered to him
by me when the only responsibility he had was to Fenix Mod. "Was hockeykid a wise choice?" Thus far, I'd say he has made a better replacement than any other modder on this board would have! Let me just make that clear:
I did not choose hockeykid without a good reason. I thought long and hard about how I was going to free up time for my other concerns in life, because I obviously needed to leave Project Blue for a while and I didn't want to leave the people who bought it hanging around with no more updates... but looking at how everyone is acting, perhaps I should have. Would you all have been happier if I had left you with V1.7 and a "promise" that I would eventually come back some time in the distant future? It was stable... it had great features... but from my past experience with this community, no one seems to be satisfied with something that is set in stone! Everyone wants updates, everyone wants new features, everyone wants
EVERYTHING without cost and without penalty to the framerate!! That seems to be the biggest issue with this community (stares at fallen one) you want it all and take no moment to even remotely conceive the amount of work it would take to get it, let alone the drawbacks that it would mean. Not every game out today uses everything that you're asking from the modders here! I've played PS3 games that had water WITHOUT reflections and WITHOUT refractions! I just recently played Halo ODST on a nice big plasma screen, hooked up with an HDMI cable... know what I noticed? Probably not... but you've been noticing it with FPSC since day one!! It had no anti-aliasing, no anisotropic filtering!! The edges were as jagged as a cerated steak knife!!! Does it matter to all the gamers out there playing it? No. They get along just fine without it. Why don't you???
Let me put this into perspective for everyone.
Let's compile the stock source code with a timer system installed and see how well it runs on my MONSTER computer...
285 fps
Add a bunch of script commands to let people script nice features into their games.
263 fps
Add dual wielding
253 fps
Let's optimize it a little bit...
268 fps
Let's put in some water ...
231 fps
... with reflections ...
205 fps
... and refractions ...
178 fps
Now bloom...
140 fps
... better bloom ...
125 fps
... and motion blur ...
108 fps
... better motion blur ...
98 fps
... Now, everyone hates the broken lighting system that effects entities through walls... gotta add in a raycast to fix that...
50 - 88 fps (Depending on how many entities and lights are in the level)
So.... what we've essentially done is add in all this crap that isn't even necessary for a game, only to bring down performance MASSIVELY.
Now people want even more features!! They want ragdoll! They want terrain! They want to have massive battles with 100 characters running around at once, each with it's own UNIQUE AI!
Do we stop to think about what the framerate will be like afterwards? Few do.
Are we going to do it ourselves? Heck no. We'll yell at Lee and the modders to get it done! Why should we waste OUR time learning how to mod FPSC when they already know?? Am I being condescending? Yes. Accurate? For the majority.
To get this straight, hockeykid did not take up Project Blue just to make money from it. He took it up because I asked him nicely to, because he was a better option than anyone else here. I'm going to be really mean right here, okay? If you don't want feelings to get hurt, skip over the following italicized text please. .............
Would I have picked Knxrb? No. I've seen his code. He refuses to properly indent, making it practically impossible to debug or even read what's going on. The last feature we received from him was so horribly written that I had to rewrite 80% of it myself anyway to optimize it and have it not breaking all of the time. What about Scene Commander? No. He may or may not be a good coder, and he has kept up his little modding database, but I don't personally know him. What I know about him is that he had a Mod and it's no longer being maintained. I can't give Project Blue to someone that isn't already renowned for their Mod, but I kept him on the list anyway just in case I couldn't think of anyone better. WizzKid? ApplieSlicer? SOMEONE from the WizMod team? Definitely not. The mod was going downhill from the start and against all of my warnings in their very own thread, they ignored it and allowed it to die, probably fighting amongst themselves. What about Lewis? I have no idea what Lewis is capable of, to be honest. He wrote some code for us that was alright, but that's all I ever saw/recall of his coding ability. I don't recall him making a Mod and maintaining one, so I wouldn't know if he's capable of such a thing.
So you ask "Was hockeykid the wisest choice?" Out of the selection given, I'd dare say he is.
What were the pros about him that made me choose him? He has a Mod. He works very hard on it. He
wants to mod FPSC, not for money, but for experience and for praise (we all like to be praised for our efforts, don't deny it
) hence why his Mod was and is FREE. On top of this, he had recently obtained Horror Mod (with a bit of help from myself) so he is now owner of two of the more well known Mods on the boards. The "UM" in PBUM stands for "Ultimate Mod"... well, to keep that notion alive, having him take over would mean Fenix and Horror Mod would then be integrated into PB in due time and it would continue to be the greatest Mod of this great community. He has good work ethic, has never taken any of my features without permission (even though he HAD my source and free access to it)
And now that he has an awesome opportunity to HELP Lee bring everyone an official release FASTER and actually GET the migration work done, the once peaceful PB users are starting to panic! WHY?! I told Lee he could use any of my additions to Project Blue, but do I honestly expect him to take EVERYTHING from PB? No. That's way too much testing that would need to be done to test everything here. I wanted him to put in the full screen shader system that I created, specifically for the purpose of fixing a bug that I myself could not fix. I told him to use it because I hope that he will be able to bring you guys something better than what I could. He would be able to get the bugs fixed that I could not. Why are you being so adamant about preventing this? PB is not going to die, it will not suddenly become free for everyone in the official version.
Cut hockeykid some slack. He has a great opportunity here and even though it's conflicting with PB, you guys are acting as though the world is coming to an end!
Do I think PB should be handed over to someone else to work on? Maybe. It may get things done in PB faster, but hockeykid already knows most of the ins and outs of the features in PB. Whoever picks it up next is going to have a massive list of additions to sift through and figure out. Handing it off may take even longer.
I still don't have enough time to dedicate to PB. My company is scheduled to launch this month if all goes well, and I need to give it all of my time to make sure it goes as well as it can. Perhaps much later, I will have some free time to pour back into PB, but it's not now.
Quote: "I'm stressing that instead of one person do all the work, having two or three people in charge of PB instead, as well as accepting additions and help from other modders that are prepared to work hard for nothing at all just to make PB a better tool to use for game developers"
More developers is not the answer. When S4 and myself were in charge, S4 rarely ever did any developing. I did 99% of it myself. Lemur failed because we had 4 people making code for this Mod and no one ever got around to merging it all together. Some people just weren't ready for a merge with their code, some people weren't keeping up to date, so for the most part, nothing was really getting done. There were 4 sources being created, so essentially 4 Mods. Know what they were? You guessed it; AirMod, Ply's Mod, S4Mod, and "Lemur" (which honestly didn't have much at all).
With DBP, there is no SourceSafe, there are no header files, no OOP to worry about... there is ONE file that needs editing and that's it. Hence why having one person coding is typically the better way to go.
Quote: "I am a bit frustrated with the rate at which features are being added. I have offered code for several and it has all been turned down at which i am very disappointed with. What does get me very annoyed is that now, Fenix (a free mod) is nearing the league of PB (which people have payed for)."
1) Whether or not your supplied code makes it into the Mod is up to the developer. To be perfectly honest, I had no clue Lewis' code made it into PB. S4 did that without telling me. I inspected the code and approved it after a bit of tweaking. He did the same for Knxrb's code... after inspecting it, I immediately wanted to just take it out altogether! S4 wanted to keep it in because there were a bunch of people wanting the feature... so I spent the next few hours rewriting it all. Would I do it again? No. If people want their code to make it into this Mod, I would expect it to be well written, well FORMATTED, and optimized. If you feel it is, go ahead and submit it.
I have no idea how hockeykid does it now, or if he's even accepting code donations. If he isn't, then that is his prerogative and we should accept it.
2) If Fenix were nearing the level of PB, hockeykid would have had no reason to accept working on PB. PB and Fenix Mod are two entirely different entities and boast vastly different feature lists. But let me point out one thing for you. While Fenix Mod has a long list of features, hockeykid also had listed out every single script command that he added. If I had done that for PB, no one would want to even look at the first post because it'd be so cluttered and long. So, I sum it up with "expansive FPI command additions". The manual for PB has been posted up someplace before, most likely in the previous PB thread, but you could just as easily go download that and view for yourself everything contained herein.
I'm going to stop typing now. Hopefully everyone gets the picture. Hockeykid took an opportunity that he felt was in his best interest, and just because of that don't start shouting "Witch!" readying your pitchforks and flaming cross simply because he's semi-officially (not sure if he is or not) on the TGC team.
The one and only,