[misc] Spring applied for GSoC 2009

[Hoi]

So you make a point but don't want to prove it by simply giving a link? What the hell do you think? That it's "your" discovery?

If it's so great there then what are you doing here? Sure, people troll. Welcome to the internet, you should have learnt to deal with it after a few months.

[Argh]

I will be releasing links when I am done with what I'm doing.

I've (repeatedly) told people that where I came from before I came here, the Freelancer forums (lancersreactor.org is the current host), was one very nice place, with nothing like the issues we have here. Perhaps go look at their forums and read a few dozen posts, and read their rules (which are, in their current form, just about the same as always, and explicitly say, "no trolling, flaming, etc.".

A community where people aren't jerks on a regular basis isn't only possible, I've been there and was happy to be a part of them. This is the only major project I've ever been involved with, other than The Xenology Crisis, where I've had to deal with people who weren't nice on a regular basis.

[Argh]

Just for the record: the current Lancer's Reactor 'board is not the one I frequented. That said, they have the same rules, pretty much.

Back in the day, we always saw a few people whine about the Mods being "nazis", but the people who complained were the kinds of folks who invariably start trouble or wanted to pick fights or belittle people, and they were quickly gone.

To put it in perspective, my one and only warning there was because I wrote a critical piece about somebody's work. I got a "please don't do this again, it's disruptive" PM and a warning, got the message, and was very careful to play by their rules.

As for tradeoffs... whatever. I'll trade 10 talented assholes for 1 peaceful nice guy with skills, any day. There is no tradeoff. Nice people produce more stuff, share more knowledge, and are generally more fun to be around.

[bobthedinosaur]

Nice people =/= productive people.

[Argh]

Nice people =/= productive people.

I really haven't seen a lot of evidence to suggest that's true. In fact, I really don't believe that at all.

Look how few projects we have here, vs. anything that's commercial.

Yet Spring's probably seen, what, a couple of million downloads by now? It's not our "lack of documentation", either- the engine I'm playing with has much worse documentation of a lot of things.


Oh, and lastly, since we can't edit here (mod split to a new topic in General Discussion, maybe?)...

Meh.

I just don't know how else to put this, but trolling on most major game forums, in the modding sections, is really not allowed a lot. I'd honestly have to say that the burden of proof is on the opposite side of this- show me the huge, multi-page flame-wars on a major forum's modding section.

Go read the forums for Torque, Ogre, Source, Fallout 3's modding areas, just as a few examples. You will not see the kind of flaming we get here. The major engine developers recognize that it's disruptive, and they're often draconian.

[FLOZi]

Nice people produce more stuff, share more knowledge, and are generally more fun to be around.

Rubbish.

You, Smoth, Spiked, Zwzsg.

None of you are especially nice. But you're all productive and share many things.

Neither am I, but I don't do much anyway.

[Hoi]

Actually I work with a few dozen very nice people and it can be very unproductive sometimes :)

We don't allow trolling on our forums, and it doesn't happen. If it does then it won't happen again, alteast not by the same person. the community is nice and helpful to new players and people.

On this forum the community trolls sometimes, but people who have been around a while know that this happens. It's just something that happens here and most people know that, right? The only problem is that it's bad for the newcomers.

[Argh]

You, Smoth, Spiked, Zwzsg.

To be perfectly blunt, I wasn't much of an asshole until I came here. I've been a member of a lot of mod crews and stuff. This is the first place I've been where people are so hostile on a regular basis.

@Hoi: yar, but you guys are working on a first-class, hit of a FPS. You don't need to be in a hurry, you already have a big audience and it's more important to make the next release good.

BTW, is your engine finally going to see some shaders / normalmaps? After playing Modern Warfare 2 and the engine I'm on now, anything less looks so horrible, it's not even funny.

I have had to re-teach myself rigging and stuff lately, if you want to get into that stuff and haven't had time (I know you're modeling / skinning, but IDK whether you're animating other than vertex anims yet, I haven't looked at your forum in a couple of months), let me know, there are a lot of people in the community where I'm screwing around who can teach you a hell of a lot, and I will be back to semi-competence with rigging by the time I'm done screwing around.

[hoijui]

In 1984, everyone in the community was nice to everyone else.

I do not suggest us having to find a common enemy. What i want to say is, this is totally unnatural, and ... it is wrong in so many ways, i do not even know where to start, and i would not be able to end.
Even though we are all just icons, nicknames, and some text, we truly are also humans, somewhere behind that. The typical troll here is some 12-16 year old guy, knowing nothing better then to cause trouble. Being still accepted by the community, slowly transforms him into a possibly productive member later on.
What you want is something like Siddhartha's palace. It is not good for humans.

[Argh]

Show me ONE really successful (i.e., 50+ projects in process or released) engine where they have a forum full of flame-baiting and trolls. Prove it with a forum link, since I've already showed you folks one place (lancersreactor.org) where it's not like that, and they used to see well over 100 new mods released PER YEAR.

One. Find any evidence at all to support your argument.

You won't.

[hoijui]

Had you listened to the news in 1984, you had known that it was very productive as well! and you would have made it into a high rank at the ministry of love.

Your indicators for measuring the value of a community are crippled. The last thing this society (western culture) needs, is yet one more thing where only raw material productiveness counts.

[Argh]

Look, you've been offered a chance to demonstrate your argument is valid. Successful growth strategies for Internet communities isn't a new managerial science- go look at, for example, the strategies employed by major companies such as Blizzard, VaLVe, Crytek, etc.

And please quit trying to compare me to a character from Orwell, because you're substantially misrepresenting the text. 1984 was about a system where everything was a lie- hence "doublespeak" and the rest of the clever lampoon of Stalin and Mao's carnival of horrors. I don't favor a lie; I favor a functional community. In the real world, it's hard to have a functional village if a third of the people are drunken violent people; on the Internet, it's hard to have a functional Forum when people can hardly post without idiots turning it into an argument, or seeking to one-up each other, or otherwise being disruptive and rude.

By your stated standard, Youtube commentary is the epitome of a perfect community. By anybody with half a brain's standard, it's a disgusting cesspool, and it only functions because it doesn't have to actually behave like a community. If people engage in huge flame wars over a Youtube video capture of some 80's rock band, it has no effect on Youtube as a whole, largely because nobody reads their comments. Here, when people behave badly, it directly affects people, both the people working on things who are treated with disrespect and the countless lurkers who show up, see that we're not behaving nicely, and decide to spend their time and talents elsewhere. One of the things that's obvious to me, after having modded Fallout 3 and what I'm doing now- both engines which are substantially less rich than Spring in terms of real features and flexibility- is that there is a giant number of very skilled, very talented people who aren't doing anything here. If you would get out of your ivory tower for a bit, and go look at other major engine communities, you might have to re-evaluate your position.

For example, go read the Ogre Forum rules:

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35620

[Hoi]

BTW, is your engine finally going to see some shaders / normalmaps? After playing Modern Warfare 2 and the engine I'm on now, anything less looks so horrible, it's not even funny.

Yes, it's being worked on. There's a public test with some bumpmapping availible (auto generated for maps), but maps with human made bumpmaps are not released yet, except maybe a few 3rd party maps.

[Argh]

That's really excellent, the characters and weapons will look 100% better with more modern shaders applied. Glad to hear that, I really enjoy playing that game when I need a FPS fix.

[zwzsg]

For example, go read the Ogre Forum rules:

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35620

I stopped at the first rule, loling! It would be so much drama trying to applicate that one. Then I read the others rules, and was disappointed to see fairly common rules that are applied in more or less every forum. Maybe we could make stress more the two rules about topic subjects, but that's about it.

[AF]

Nice AF:



Productive AF:

[zwzsg]

Look how few projects we have here, vs. anything that's commercial.

Try asking random geeks if they know Fallout 3, and if they know Spring. You can't compare the popularity of a game that had massive advertising effort (I watch TV very seldom, yet saw the Fallout 3 commercial lots), with some virtually unknown project like Spring. And it's not only being unknown, it's also the image that an amateur project conveys compared to a high budget commercial title. If you encounter difficulties, you're more likely to hold on if you're working with a title you know is backed by a big industry with big money, whilst for Spring, you're more likely to blame the engine and not try any harder.

Yet Spring's probably seen, what, a couple of million downloads by now?

People download Spring, it crashes, they think it's crap and leave. What we propose in the download section is fundamentally unenticing, and I bet the majority of folks don't have the patience to learn about downlading AI, configuring AI, searching for mods, for maps, and vading through all the pitfalls awaiting the poor newbie trying Spring for the first time. Just look at the amount of topic in Help & Bugs from people who can't get Spring to run on first try, and remember it's only the tip of the iceberg (the few that decided to try to spend time to try to get working instead of moving on to another game.)

Thought It would be cool to get Spring download count and compare it with sales+pirating rate from commercial projects. But since most of our download are from the same person upgrading their Spring engine, it'd be very hard to get meaningful numbers.

[hoijui]

1984 is not about communistic dictatorship. It is about totalitarian regimes which control their communities too much.

[Argh]

1984 is not about communistic dictatorship.

Oh, fine, it's about a Socialist revolution that goes sour, giant difference there I was honestly surprised to see that Orwell honestly thought it was going to happen that way in England; I may have to find out what he thought / wrote after the horrors of Stalinism were more widely known in the West.

Thought It would be cool to get Spring download count and compare it with sales+pirating rate from commercial projects. But since most of our download are from the same person upgrading their Spring engine, it'd be very hard to get meaningful numbers.

Well, I know that P.U.R.E. has seen, at this point, about 70,000 downloads worldwide (the free versions and demo, not sales).

So the two-million figure is my wild-assed guess, based on what's known about 'site traffic.

We could probably expand Spring's audience 3 or 4 times if more projects could be released as complete packages and certain things weren't so completely disfunctional; Spring's major problem in this regard is that it's not a packaged system ready to use, a topic I'll be talking about more when I'm done with what I'm doing right now and try to get back to finishing P.U.R.E.

[AF]

*ahem* http://darkstars.co.uk/2008/content-maladies/ *cough*