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Hi,

Firstly, I don't want this to become a flame war about unfinished mod's but I was inspired by Bond1's comments in the why is Wizmod dead thread.

As Bond1 stated, most people can't have failed to notice the number of mod's that have disappeared in recent weeks and that's fine, it's for the developers to do as they see fit.

I do however recall a thread months ago attempting to create an open source mod which appeared to not get off the ground because most coders felt that there time was worth money. Now I can't and won't comment on overall individual profits but I doubt any mod made enough money to cover the time investment and it seems to me that charging for mods goes against everything that development forums stand for. (and I'm not including everyone in this, as there has in the past been some very nice little free mods.)

Everybody expects TGC to produce updates/the Migration for free but hardly anyone seems to be prepared to work together to produce something for the good of the community and the advancement of FPSC as a whole and I think that this has been the overall problem. I imagine profits have been low on mods and so the desire to continue slowly wains and this will always be the case when one is inspired by money.

I for one would be more than happy to donate code and even take a lead in helping to organise an open source mod. I've a strong background in both programming and project management and have thought long about how such a project could be managed.

I'm not talking about a list of ideas which never see the light of day, I'm talking about features which individuals offer to add and send the code in a format for easy integration. Offers would be taken on an individual basis to prevent duplication of work and would require a sample of working code to demonstrate level of skill. (No offense to anyone, but let's face it some people are a lot better coders than others and it's no point someone offering to add rag doll when they've only been programming a couple of months).

Is anyone at all interested?

(I should point out that I currently have a small problem with DBP and the FPSC source which I'm trying to solve now.. Well waiting for Lee to offer some more insight, but I'm confident that this issue will be resolved soon).

I just wanted to say, because that thread was locked...(wizmod), that it was forced to shut down because one team member left, and another wanted credit for EVERYTHING he added in the mod seperately. This caused bickering, and due to $$ splitting issues between us, we closed.

</rant>


Anyways, Apple Juice Mod is free for 1.15. I dont think that having an open source mod is a good idea simply because other people will/can take that code, and make their own special mod, and try to sell it...

So far, Apple Juice is the only free 1.15 mod. If anyone wants to donate code, they can, and i will add it, and give full credit for it.

I can imagine all the problems with creating mods with other members but don't want this thread to go down that route if it's okay. Enough's been said on other threads.

I really like the work you've done with your mod and am using it at the moment, however I don't agree that anyone could take the source and sell it. Firstly, like many open source projects it would be best handled with a this source cannot be modified and sold as a standalone engine license. Secondly, from a management point of view, I'd like to keep the full source "in house" and request that contributors submitted code as functions and subroutines. This would simply require a few calls from the relevant part of the code. Obviously this wouldn't work in all cases but would 99% of the time. Also, this would keep control of the source and ensure that all integrated changes worked "as one".



Sounds like we're talking about the same thing here, one person controls the source and all the extra code is added by a control team.

for the open source subject, i think that if you gave it away under individual requests it would be safe because you know who you're giving it to and you don't have to give it to everyone. i think that would work.

Yes, it would providing all recipients agreed not to use it to create a commercial engine and that any changes must be made available free of charge to the community.

this would also allow for the mod to stay alive for a longer time such as Airmod

I can't see any serious Mod without Airmod being integrated

Well,


Airmod doesnt want to be integrated into 1.15...it just wants to give errors


Ply* should get a Gold metal just for doing it.

I have tried and did get errors , but it's obviously possible, so I guess all I can do is try harder (LOL)

That's exactly why i quit the forums and let the idea of an open-source mod die. People here on the FPSC community forums simply don't care about FPSC, or the community as a whole. They just think about their own noses, and if they're going to get enough credit/money. And that's exactly why the community itself is so decadent: everyone just forgot what community means.

this little post here is like a good forum member detector

I wish you all the luck in the world in getting an open source mod working.


best s4real

I know you don't want this to turn into a flame war, so take this as lightly as possible, okay?


Referencing my own experience modding for the community, I started off wanting to give it away for free, but I wanted to be given credit for it. After giving it to a few people and seeing them release games using my Mod WITHOUT CREDIT GIVEN, it became painfully clear that I can't just trust people to obey a little license text doc that rarely ever gets seen to begin with. That's why I started slapping the watermarks onto the Mod, then people got pissed off about that!! I mean, I don't see what the big issue is with giving a little credit! So, to "appease" the watermark haters, I took it out of gameplay and added a splashscreen with a watermark that only appears on the title screen. This is what I call "ENSURED CREDIT" and, IMHO, every modder should get it. So what am I supposed to do with people who don't want my Mod's name plastered on their awesome commercial game? They pay me to take it down for them, of course! I mean, if I have received just funding for my efforts, I wouldn't mind NOT being given credit. (Not saying in the least that $20 is just funding for a project that took me over a year to complete.... and it's not even complete)

With all of that said, I would now like to start on you, if you do or don't mind.

What's this about wanting to start up a community wide project? Didn't that idea die out long ago already? Isn't it already clear that there aren't enough programmers USING FPSC to give a care about making a community effort into a Mod?

Let me lay this out for you as plainly as I can:
If people could program well enough to Mod the FPSC source code, there isn't a very high chance that they're going to do it, because they'd be fully capable of making their own game that blows FPSC out of the water! It's a plain and simple truth!
I know for a fact that there are HUNDREDS of people on these boards that are more capable than I AM at modding FPSC, but they don't because they'd rather make their own game, so they stick to the other boards here on Apollo.


Last time someone accused me of not being a "nice" guy was when I made the thread about the script board not being a request board and it was locked before I had a chance to say anything in defense about it. Lucky them, but hopefully this little shinanigan won't get locked before I'm done typing.


Look, you have no room to tell us what we should and should not charge for.

Here are some reasons why I shouldn't "care" about the community and charge for my work:
- These FPSC boards AREN'T a development community for programmers. This is a community for people being introduced into game development.
- There simply aren't enough people that care about what the modders do for them. I can't tell you how many times I've seen posts/emails from people saying something along the lines of "I've used your Mod for a while and I have a question about it now"... they didn't even have the common decency to COMMENT on the work I've done. They simply took it and used it without a word, and only even SPOKE to me when they have a problem or want something fixed. This is the kind of thing that irritates me to no end.
- Beta testing is a pain... it's true. People around here seem on the verge of being too lazy to come in and say "I found a problem". I don't care if it sounds like you're being annoying that way, you're not. I want to know RIGHT AWAY if there's something wrong, but that isn't the case. I don't know if people ASSUME that I know about it already or what, but they don't tell me, only to hear from them months later, "Oh yeah, I've had that problem since V1.05 of your mod".. What the heck?!? We're on v1.09 and you want to tell me NOW that you found it over a YEAR AGO?! Nothing's more degrading and disrespectful than that. If you're going to use someone's software, at least help them out with it by informing them of problems.
- Feature requests... I've said it before, this is beyond annoying. You want to talk about us not caring about the "good of the community"? Well the people who constantly come in and ask us to do more without even thinking twice are the ones who don't care about us. That is fact. They don't care about the Mod.. they don't care about our time or the effort we put in. All they care about is seeing the features that THEY want. (FYI, this is not targetted towards people who make an honest request for something reasonable)


Allow me to quote you to put all of this into perspective...

Couldn't be more correct there, buddy.


Couldn't be more incorrect there, buddy.

Given the above, how can you say that modders who charge money DON'T care about the community when they clearly are putting forth MUCH MORE effort than they're receiving money for?


Honestly... saying you don't want to turn this into a flamewar, but setting the bait with the "Holier than thou" attitude. What did you think you were going to get?


The one and only,

I think it's great that you want to donate your time and talent to the community, and that you see FPS Creator as something worthy of it.

Just an observation on your post: People expect free updates and the migration because they paid for the program. It's not like some are trying to make money off of an open source project. I'm sure, and the modders have also said, that mod updates would also be free.

I, like countless others here have given their time and work for free. This community, more than any other I've seen, has always been giving, and that seems to grow more each day. How many posts have you seen where someone says he wants to give back to the community that has given him so much? The likes of Plysire, s4real and Airslide have given freely to this community time and again.

When you do something that takes months or years to create, and can't get simple credit, you can't blame the creator. The community as a whole must take responsibility for itself. A little consideration goes a long way. Start by asking those who take to pay a little appreciation and consideration, not by asking those who make to give more.

Brian.


EDIT: Oh, about the question. I think the future of mods will simple, single-feature-focused and not community or group created. Though it is a warm and fuzzy thought.

WARNING:this is only my opinion and i mean no offence to anybody

not that i'm very skilled in some aspects of game development, but game designing in general is just plain fun for me so if i made a mod for fpsc which lacks many features, i'd give the mod away because:

A. i'ts fun
B. the people who can't make a mod to give them the features they need for a good game idea can now make their game
C. it's fun

i don't know how you can be designing a game without having fun doing it.

There's a difference between designing a game/mod and actually coding the game/mod. The game part is easy with FPSC, all the coding is basically done for us. But coding a mod or brand new game engine is very difficult, and best summarized by this phrase:



I personally have never coded anything, but I have respect for people who do and one day I hope to be one of them.

Hat's off to you Ply

An after-thought just occurred to me --

There is a "community made" Mod. It's called Project Blue UM. It brought together several Mods, each from a different community member. Lemur (Which Urlforce started), AirMod (Airslide), S4Mod (s4real), and my own Mod.

Looking at it now, the only reason it's successful is because it merged all of these Mods after the development stopped on them, ensuring that there won't be countless more merges.

It also seems to be the only successful Mod that has a team behind it: S4real and myself. While s4 does help out with bug fixing occassionaly and merged Ply's Mod v1.09 into Project Blue, he normally handles customer support and record management (Which I am direly grateful to him for, since I was never any good at that sorta stuff) while I do the programming. It's easier that way, and easier to handle.


Now, for your feedback on the idea (FYI, this is constructive criticism, not regular criticism)

What it sounds like you're trying to do is modularize the merges. You expect everyones' code to fit into little functions and make calls to them from the appropriate section of code. It'd be wonderful if it worked that way, but it doesn't.

Take AirMod's weapon system for example. When I finally merged Ply's Mod with AirMod, he had done some major additions to the weapon system, and so had I. This means that I had to change HIS code as well as MY code to mesh them together into a workable state. And not just workable, but also optimized. You can't do that in a modularized form. And let's face it, certain features require changes to MANY different places in the source. Sometimes it's huge blocks of code that needs to be added, sometimes it's a single line of code that needs to be added, and sometimes there's a whole section of code that needs to be altered. I can understand wanting to keept he large additions to the side for viewing purposes but nothing else. If it won't be used anywhere but in a single spot, it's not very clean to make a whole new function for it, it's just stupid to do that for a single line, and it's haphazard to do that for alterations to the code, which would mean ripping out the original code, altering it, then slapping it into a function.

One of the proven ways of making a Mod is just recoding the way it needs to be recoded, then analyzing and inserting new code (carefully) when a merge is necessary. I know it's not fun and it's a painstaking task, but any other way has much more downfalls.


My suggestion for you would be to hook up with Apple Slicer and help to expand one of the remaining free Mods. It'd give you your "community effort" while keeping it free. Heck, advertise to the community that you're working on a Mod and would accept other Mod features that people have made and would be willing to donate to the cause.


That said --

Making a thread like this is pointless. This is essentially a team request that does not meet the team request requirements. For a team request to be made, you must show viable effort to your project before making a thread asking for other people to join.

... Isn't that how it goes?


The one and only,

when i said game designing i meant the whole process

To be ohnest i dont care about the efford someone gives lets be proffesional..I mean i would buy a good mod at list 50 euros if it would be good so dont complain that the 10year old kids cant or dont want to spend money on something good they wont do anything usefull with it anyway

Dont wine about how people treat to you about your mod....i use airmod only cause it has some features that i need.i wanted to buy p.j um but i couldnt due ti the small amount of time they gave us and hell i like airmod it is very cool...

Dont expext much from this forums cause you can notice that everyone like to ask question but there are very few that help....So you can imagine that everyone that makes a game thinks that he is special and his game is the best but they dont know or dont anderstand that the games that they created is a result 0f many peoples effords...noone gave a credit for tgc forums or the creatos of fpsc and the models etc

I am willing to recognize someones work even if i would pay it cause i know that without it i would go far with my game....

Well, if you think it's so fun then next time you want a new mod feature, why not add it in yourself?



Dude, that's just about the most inconsiderate thing I've heard in a while. Plystire spent a few YEARS making his mod for people like you. It's cheap enough IMO, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't made a lot. With what I quoted above, you're saying that someone spent three years on a mod, sold you a copy, you're the only person who's bought it, then the mod maker complains, then you say 'Whoop de flippin' do, deal with it'.

Unbelievable.

I can see that there is a lot of emotion about this subject and I really didn't want to cause a problem.

Can a mod please lock this thread. Thanks

Locked at authors request.