Quick question for the engine devs. - Page 2

Quick question for the engine devs.

A place for offers of Bounties and discussion of funded proposals.
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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by PicassoCT »

I would donate - but broke. Sorry :(
Kloot
Spring Developer
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Kloot »

gajop wrote:Personally I would avoid bitcoin for anything but transactions as it doesn't give a clear idea how much is being donated to which feature, and what's being produced by the money.
It kinda feels like donating blindly.
In a bounty-based environment I don't think you'll find many developers (certainly not community outsiders who aren't long-time members) that are willing to do a ton of work on feature X and risk not getting the bounty set for it. This means donations have to be upfront no matter what system is chosen, so they are *all* blind in the "no clear idea what [is or will be] produced" sense. Aside from that, you can do the accounting by using the forum for request-coordination and bitref for balance checks.

Again, it comes down to simple trust: at some point you have to take a leap of faith and part with your money. If that element is missing (or you are just content with the current situation), this obviously isn't going to work.
cleanrock
Former Engine Dev
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by cleanrock »

Is giving money to the few who atm understand the complex open source spring code (jk and kloot) really the way to go ? I think not, it sound sick to me.
I think the engine have been good enough for a long time, perhaps it have even have been more broken than improved lately.
With some focus from game devs on building player base i think all will be fine, a big player base will give us more engine devs, my hope is in Zero-K.
To build player base i think game devs should prio single-player gaming with campaigns, tutorials to prepare new players for multi-player gaming and good default settings combined with easy setup.
Summary:
- focus on building player base with a spring engine of choice
- donated money should be used for infrastructure
- ignore greedy engine devs who may want to make them even more irreplaceable
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Silentwings
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Silentwings »

game devs should prio single-player gaming with campaigns, tutorials to prepare new players for multi-player gaming and good default settings combined with easy setup.
The engine does not currently support singleplayer campaigns or missions - the only way to make a feasible singleplayer setup is to write a wrapper for the engine (e.g. ZKLobby, koshi's mission system). Even with such things, every time you restart a mission you go via the desktop, which is just plain ugly. Without a wrapper there are the other issues discussed in http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ngleplayer; the only way to make a mission/singleplayer menu is to be actually ingame and hack it from there as a widget. Such a menu is not currently able to download content or manage multiple engine version, not to mention the long term unreliability of Spring.Restart.

So unfortunately what you suggest is not feasible, except in the rare cases where a project wants and is able to create very substiantial new infrastructure, on its own. Such cases (as I would currently regard ZK, and which BAR may one day become) may make excellent games in themselves and become great projects in their own right, but I see no argument to say that this is a reliable way to help Spring itself move forward.
- donated money should be used for infrastructure
- ignore greedy engine devs who may want to make them even more irreplaceable
I regard that as a unproductive and barbed comment, largely because abma has pointed out above that Spring currently does not need any money at all for infrastructure, despite the fact that it current has a huge surplus of cash. Everyone needs money to survive; time is precious (speaking as someone who has spent hours developing for Spring in the past but currently has no spare time) and if people are willing to do - perhaps, significantly - more work for money than for free, this is just the reality of life.

(I should add that coding is just a hobby for me, I code only for fun, and I personally am not interested in earning money from my hobbies, spare time or no spare time.)
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smoth
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by smoth »

I really wish spring did not have to exit to desktop to load a new level. it is one of the major show-stoppers for singleplayer.
Kloot
Spring Developer
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Kloot »

cleanrock wrote:Is giving money to the few who atm understand the complex open source spring code (jk and kloot) really the way to go ? I think not, it sound sick to me.

...

- ignore greedy engine devs who may want to make them even more irreplaceable
So, on the one hand I am "greedy" and want to make myself "even more irreplaceable", and on the other I am one of "the few who atm understand the complex open source spring code"?

If I really was the former, how would I possibly have become the latter? Where do you think this understanding even came from, thin air?

Maybe then you should reserve your robotic moral viewpoints until (by any reasonable standard of comparison) you know "the complex open source spring code" as well as the developer you are judging, because so far your own contributions amount to jack shit.

smoth wrote:I really wish spring did not have to exit to desktop to load a new level. it is one of the major show-stoppers for singleplayer.
Another possible donation goal.
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smoth
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by smoth »

I don't have bitcoins though. What would a goal like that cost?
gajop
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by gajop »

Kloot wrote:This means donations have to be upfront no matter what system is chosen, so they are *all* blind in the "no clear idea what [is or will be] produced" sense. Aside from that, you can do the accounting by using the forum for request-coordination and bitref for balance checks.
I'm arguing we should know how much is being donated to what cause. It is unlikely anyone can be funded by a single person, and we have to rely on crowd funding. That's why it's more appealing to donate to a cause if you know it has an inclination of coming to fruition.
Kickstarter is a good analogy of how I'd like funding to work (if you can imagine each kickstarter project as single spring issue).. we have a clear idea of what's being proposed and how much money is being donated, as well as what else could be done if more money was pushed in.
Kloot
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Kloot »

smoth wrote:I don't have bitcoins though. What would a goal like that cost?
The bare essentials of your request would involve adding support for

Code: Select all

Spring.LoadMap("DSD")
plus refactoring the pregame loading stages such that they could be called at any point within the simulation, as well as resetting dozens of global objects to a virgin state (cleaning up units, features, Lua, ...). Honestly, this represents at least two weeks of fulltime work, so I wouldn't want to commit to it for less than $500. Keep in mind that would substitute for a regular salary...

Maybe cleanrock (or someone else uncorrupted by "greed") will do it all for free though.
gajop wrote: Kickstarter is a good analogy of how I'd like funding to work (if you can imagine each kickstarter project as single spring issue).. we have a clear idea of what's being proposed and how much money is being donated, as well as what else could be done if more money was pushed in.
Using Kickstarter directly isn't possible because the platform is not open to EU creators. Kickstarter (and Amazon which provides the pledge collection service behind it) also both take big chunks of the money, which is very undesirable in a small community where pledges won't reach the million-dollar mark.

You also still have the whole "who gets the money" problem. IMO the Kickstarter model can not really work for multiple developers if they are not paid fixed amounts contractually. It has to be based on individual participation.
Super Mario
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Super Mario »

cleanrock wrote: I think the engine have been good enough for a long time,
"good enough"? I'm sorry, but "good enough"? On what planet are you from when you said that? There is always room for improvement, here is an example of why it could be better.
Spring is currently 32 bit, this automatically put a unnecessarily handicap on the amount of textures that artists and game developers can use.
Last edited by Super Mario on 09 Jan 2015, 21:34, edited 1 time in total.
Super Mario
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Super Mario »

Kloot wrote:
smoth wrote:I don't have bitcoins though. What would a goal like that cost?
The bare essentials of your request would involve adding support for

Code: Select all

Spring.LoadMap("DSD")
plus refactoring the pregame loading stages such that they could be called at any point within the simulation, as well as resetting dozens of global objects to a virgin state (cleaning up units, features, Lua, ...). Honestly, this represents at least two weeks of fulltime work, so I wouldn't want to commit to it for less than $500. Keep in mind that would substitute for a regular salary...

Maybe cleanrock (or someone else uncorrupted by "greed") will do it all for free though.
gajop wrote: Kickstarter is a good analogy of how I'd like funding to work (if you can imagine each kickstarter project as single spring issue).. we have a clear idea of what's being proposed and how much money is being donated, as well as what else could be done if more money was pushed in.
Using Kickstarter directly isn't possible because the platform is not open to EU creators. Kickstarter (and Amazon which provides the pledge collection service behind it) also both take big chunks of the money, which is very undesirable in a small community where pledges won't reach the million-dollar mark.

You also still have the whole "who gets the money" problem. IMO the Kickstarter model can not really work for multiple developers if they are not paid fixed amounts contractually. It has to be based on individual participation.
IRC indigogo takes around 3% of the funding for nonprofit projects, while kickstarter takes around 5%.
gajop
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by gajop »

Kloot wrote: Using Kickstarter directly isn't possible because the platform is not open to EU creators. Kickstarter (and Amazon which provides the pledge collection service behind it) also both take big chunks of the money, which is very undesirable in a small community where pledges won't reach the million-dollar mark.

You also still have the whole "who gets the money" problem. IMO the Kickstarter model can not really work for multiple developers if they are not paid fixed amounts contractually. It has to be based on individual participation.
I really just put Kickstarter as an analogy. The idea is that we should all know how much is being donated to a single feature, so we know how much more is needed for it to be done.
Take for example the Spring clean that's being mentioned here: It's unlikely that it would be financed by a single individual, but it should be doable if the community as a whole tried.
It should be visible how much $ is still needed to start work because it informs potential donators what they can send money for (whether it's for Spring.Clean, mesh deforms, better shadows, or whatever).
Kloot
Spring Developer
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Kloot »

gajop wrote:I really just put Kickstarter as an analogy. The idea is that we should all know how much is being donated to a single feature, so we know how much more is needed for it to be done.
Yeah, so I gathered. I see no reason why a separate forum section with strictly managed threads (for bitcoin donation pools or w/e) could not be used for that.
Last edited by Kloot on 09 Jan 2015, 21:50, edited 1 time in total.
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Anarchid
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Anarchid »

I think the engine have been good enough for a long time,
Some projects seem to think that spring has been "good enough" 8 versions back, and since then performance has decreased in a measurable and significant way.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Forboding Angel »

Recent history:

89 Good performance.

91 Well enough performance

94.1 Awful performance

96 Performance pretty darn good
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Tim Blokdijk
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Tim Blokdijk »

Kloot wrote:$500
I'm willing to match 50 cent for each dollar donated by others. Granted that the total pledges made reach the full 500 dollar. So effectively I'm pledging 166.67 dollar if others pledge for the other 333.33 dollar.
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Tim Blokdijk
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by Tim Blokdijk »

Kloot wrote:Yeah, so I gathered. I see no reason why a separate forum section with strictly managed threads (for bitcoin donation pools or w/e) could not be used for that.
Licho wrote the "jar" code for that purpose. http://zero-k.info/Contributions
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smoth
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by smoth »

Tim Blokdijk wrote:
Kloot wrote:$500
I'm willing to match 50 cent for each dollar donated by others. Granted that the total pledges made reach the full 500 dollar. So effectively I'm pledging 166.67 dollar if others pledge for the other 333.33 dollar.
Ok, I'll bite, I will pledge 250$. Who else wants to see this feature?
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PicassoCT
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by PicassoCT »

Is there a "refund" if it doesent work out option? Always remember that such stuff also has explosive value.
One feature not beeing done, but several people hating each other to bits, cause of it, is something dangerously. So check all conditions before you sign stuff.
gajop
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Re: Quick question for the engine devs.

Post by gajop »

PicassoCT wrote:Is there a "refund" if it doesent work out option?
No please. You can't refund the dev's time, can you?
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