New User Impressions and Suggestions
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Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
You know, while you guys are arguing you could be producing something.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
If you made a decent game, with few remaining development costs and only the marketing costs to consider, I imagine that you would have a reasonable chance of interesting investors, or even better going directly to distributors.Hobo Joe wrote:
First of all, there needs to be a LOT more development not only to Spring but to PURE as well. Then it has to be marketed, which goes back to the problem of getting money. Where would it come from? Who would invest in a project by a bunch of unheard of developers working on an indie game? If there were to be a 'foundation', where would it get its money?
There's a lot of problems that need to be worked out long before anything related to Spring can sell.
I used PURE as an example because, currently, it strikes me as the most saleable project. I know that it isn't complete but it is at a stage where it could be shown to investors etc.
I am sure that more projects with similar exploitation potential will come to fruition (S44, for instance).
It's more like someone making a model in Blender and selling it. Spring would remain open source, only the game itself would be sold. Is this a bad thing in your opinion? I can't see a problem with it...Hobo Joe wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Spring developers make money like the developers for things like Blender (and Linux?), but I'm also against selling the games. It saddens me to see a good Open Source project go retail. That'd be like Blender starting to charge and limiting licenses. It just breaks the whole open source ideal.
I cannot personally envisage a viable way to establish a Spring foundation.Hobo Joe wrote:
As of right now I really don't think there's a realistic answer. I'd love to see something like the Blender foundation for Spring, but as mentioned there's nothing for it to sell except downloadable content which goes against what I just said. It's a vicious circle.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
Hurm.
Well, I restricted my efforts to the realm of realism. As such I operate in entirely different circles from the suggestions you made after my last two points. I did not look into funds appropriations from groups expecting profit because there is no commercial market for an off-brand real time strategy game, let alone an open source one. The genre is about to be pruned and diminished once more by an overwhelming Blizzard release. As a result, your legal issues aren't issues under my model - funding is academic, not exchange based.
A console is a closed-hardware platform with inferior capabilities and a limited audience. Real time strategy and real time tactics, the only effective uses for the engine, are minor genres in terms of sales, making around eight percent of game sales in the United States during a good year. The corresponding percentage is much lower among consoles due to the fixed power footprint, tendency toward limited input devices, and limited content expansion potential. With a simplification of the engine and remapping of play structure I could see Kernel Panic achieving success on the Wii platform, but no other game currently in production and no game of greater complexity. However, there is no compelling evidence to support the belief that the investment of time and effort to port and handicap the engine for a console would be repaid even with a successful title. There is no market there for the genre addressed by the engine, and there is insufficient power on the platform for the features which set the engine apart from competitors.
Of your sale suggestions, only C and D are within reason. Great features have great resource loads - the architecture of Spring may not be perfectly optimized, but no amount of work will get the features into a small enough footprint for a portable device at this point. Deformable terrain, full three-dimensional with controllable camera, dynamic shadows, dynamic lighting, the pathing, environmental physics. Starcraft can work on a Nintendo 64 because it uses sprites, a two dimensional static field with fixed camera, extremely basic pathing, fixed lighting, and has an extremely limited capacity for customization.
Well, I restricted my efforts to the realm of realism. As such I operate in entirely different circles from the suggestions you made after my last two points. I did not look into funds appropriations from groups expecting profit because there is no commercial market for an off-brand real time strategy game, let alone an open source one. The genre is about to be pruned and diminished once more by an overwhelming Blizzard release. As a result, your legal issues aren't issues under my model - funding is academic, not exchange based.
A console is a closed-hardware platform with inferior capabilities and a limited audience. Real time strategy and real time tactics, the only effective uses for the engine, are minor genres in terms of sales, making around eight percent of game sales in the United States during a good year. The corresponding percentage is much lower among consoles due to the fixed power footprint, tendency toward limited input devices, and limited content expansion potential. With a simplification of the engine and remapping of play structure I could see Kernel Panic achieving success on the Wii platform, but no other game currently in production and no game of greater complexity. However, there is no compelling evidence to support the belief that the investment of time and effort to port and handicap the engine for a console would be repaid even with a successful title. There is no market there for the genre addressed by the engine, and there is insufficient power on the platform for the features which set the engine apart from competitors.
Of your sale suggestions, only C and D are within reason. Great features have great resource loads - the architecture of Spring may not be perfectly optimized, but no amount of work will get the features into a small enough footprint for a portable device at this point. Deformable terrain, full three-dimensional with controllable camera, dynamic shadows, dynamic lighting, the pathing, environmental physics. Starcraft can work on a Nintendo 64 because it uses sprites, a two dimensional static field with fixed camera, extremely basic pathing, fixed lighting, and has an extremely limited capacity for customization.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
I have to say i disagree with the whole basis of these suggestions. To try market Spring in the way you would market a game is nothing short of crazy.
The bottom line is that spring is an engine not a game. The mods themselves are "games" as such each should be marketed accordingly. In the long run the spring website, whilst obviously maintaining the exposure of the most used mods should be designed to heavily promote the features of the engine itself. Its purpose isn't to "sell" the mods but to encourage mod creators to use the engine and create "games" which are marketed elsewhere.
When a mod gets to a decent size it should have its own site, this is where you 'll see the dedicated tutorials and instructions which make the game easy to play and house the games community. This is what has already started to happen with the star wars and BA/CA mods and that is the logical way forward. This is progressing naturally at the moment and i see no reason to try persuade the people who do this for a hobby or to gain exposure for their talents to all lump together. Variety is healthy for the engine as a whole and increases the possibility of a really high quality project appearing -see the success of Pure recently or the exposure of SWTA in the press recently. Making people contribute to an overall project is really not a viable option in open source, a project will come along that will inspire people to join or it won't; you can't just say "here's an uber mod everyone drop your labour of love and work on this cos it'll be better".
From a commercial side I can't say I understand the point of a "spring foundation". Development of the engine will take place by the current community just fine servicing the small mods we have now. That will either continue as it is with no commercial involvement and the steady progression OR (and this is probably unlikely) a commercial "mod" or "game" will be created using the spring engine that is successful. At that point the commercial product may contribute to the development of the spring engine. Either financially or through developer time investment. I really hope that happens but who knows.
For now I think instead of arguing it might be better to take stock of the progress that has been made over the last few years. The mod builders and the developers should all be congratulated.
The bottom line is that spring is an engine not a game. The mods themselves are "games" as such each should be marketed accordingly. In the long run the spring website, whilst obviously maintaining the exposure of the most used mods should be designed to heavily promote the features of the engine itself. Its purpose isn't to "sell" the mods but to encourage mod creators to use the engine and create "games" which are marketed elsewhere.
When a mod gets to a decent size it should have its own site, this is where you 'll see the dedicated tutorials and instructions which make the game easy to play and house the games community. This is what has already started to happen with the star wars and BA/CA mods and that is the logical way forward. This is progressing naturally at the moment and i see no reason to try persuade the people who do this for a hobby or to gain exposure for their talents to all lump together. Variety is healthy for the engine as a whole and increases the possibility of a really high quality project appearing -see the success of Pure recently or the exposure of SWTA in the press recently. Making people contribute to an overall project is really not a viable option in open source, a project will come along that will inspire people to join or it won't; you can't just say "here's an uber mod everyone drop your labour of love and work on this cos it'll be better".
From a commercial side I can't say I understand the point of a "spring foundation". Development of the engine will take place by the current community just fine servicing the small mods we have now. That will either continue as it is with no commercial involvement and the steady progression OR (and this is probably unlikely) a commercial "mod" or "game" will be created using the spring engine that is successful. At that point the commercial product may contribute to the development of the spring engine. Either financially or through developer time investment. I really hope that happens but who knows.
For now I think instead of arguing it might be better to take stock of the progress that has been made over the last few years. The mod builders and the developers should all be congratulated.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
Below is an a short article that I hope helps to explain where money for a Spring Foundation would come from and how it would be used. Keep in mind this in NON-PROFIT grant money and is only one example of one organization.
How many people on this board can say they'd rather see researchers waste money on UE instead of bringing home the bacon in support of Spring?
(This is a cut-n-past from:
http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2007/ ... ne-so-far/)
Article
--------------------------------------------------
Where the MacArthur Foundation Grant Money has Gone, So Far
Education Week has a nice article (registration required) on the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation├óÔé¼Ôäós $50 million initiative funding digital media and learning (including educational gaming research). A little less than half, about $23 million, has been funded so far to 36 grantees. Article author Andrew Trotter breaks down the expenditures:
├óÔé¼┬ó Examining how young people are changing as a result of digital media AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $6.2 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Exploring the development of new learning environments AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $8 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Studying how social and civic institutions could change in the future AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $4.8 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Helping build the field of research and development in youth and digital media AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $4 million
Constance Yowell, director of education for the MacArthur Foundation, is quoted extensively. Other prominent mentions include Sasha Barab over at Indiana (Quest Atlantis); Nichole Pinkard, director of technology, Center for Urban School Improvement, University of Chicago (Chicago charter schools and Remix World); Barry Joseph, director of the non-profit after school organization Global Kids (efforts in Teen Second Life); Katie Salen, director of the Institute of Play (New York City Game School); and Mizuko ├óÔé¼┼ôMimi├óÔé¼┬Ø Ito, over at USC (ethnographic studies of digital media consumers).
Trotter mentions another project Salen is involved in:
Katie A. Salen, the director of the Institute of Play, in New York City, is a partner in two projects supported by MacArthur grants. One, led by game researcher Jim Ghee and involving a commercial game company, is creating an online, narrative game in which teenagers are game mechanics who learn to fix and modify broken games in a game-driven world.
I├óÔé¼Ôäóm wondering if ├óÔé¼┼ôJim Ghee├óÔé¼┬Ø is a reference to James Paul Gee?
Regardless, it├óÔé¼Ôäós a good article and well worth the read. The $50 million in grant funding from the MacArthur Foundation will no doubt continue to yield important findings on educational videogames and other components of digital media for years to come.
References:
Trotter, A. (2007, December 5). Projects probe new media├óÔé¼Ôäós role in changing the face of learning. Education Week, (27)14. 10.
How many people on this board can say they'd rather see researchers waste money on UE instead of bringing home the bacon in support of Spring?
(This is a cut-n-past from:
http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2007/ ... ne-so-far/)
Article
--------------------------------------------------
Where the MacArthur Foundation Grant Money has Gone, So Far
Education Week has a nice article (registration required) on the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation├óÔé¼Ôäós $50 million initiative funding digital media and learning (including educational gaming research). A little less than half, about $23 million, has been funded so far to 36 grantees. Article author Andrew Trotter breaks down the expenditures:
├óÔé¼┬ó Examining how young people are changing as a result of digital media AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $6.2 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Exploring the development of new learning environments AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $8 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Studying how social and civic institutions could change in the future AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $4.8 million
├óÔé¼┬ó Helping build the field of research and development in youth and digital media AMOUNTS AWARDED TO DATE: $4 million
Constance Yowell, director of education for the MacArthur Foundation, is quoted extensively. Other prominent mentions include Sasha Barab over at Indiana (Quest Atlantis); Nichole Pinkard, director of technology, Center for Urban School Improvement, University of Chicago (Chicago charter schools and Remix World); Barry Joseph, director of the non-profit after school organization Global Kids (efforts in Teen Second Life); Katie Salen, director of the Institute of Play (New York City Game School); and Mizuko ├óÔé¼┼ôMimi├óÔé¼┬Ø Ito, over at USC (ethnographic studies of digital media consumers).
Trotter mentions another project Salen is involved in:
Katie A. Salen, the director of the Institute of Play, in New York City, is a partner in two projects supported by MacArthur grants. One, led by game researcher Jim Ghee and involving a commercial game company, is creating an online, narrative game in which teenagers are game mechanics who learn to fix and modify broken games in a game-driven world.
I├óÔé¼Ôäóm wondering if ├óÔé¼┼ôJim Ghee├óÔé¼┬Ø is a reference to James Paul Gee?
Regardless, it├óÔé¼Ôäós a good article and well worth the read. The $50 million in grant funding from the MacArthur Foundation will no doubt continue to yield important findings on educational videogames and other components of digital media for years to come.
References:
Trotter, A. (2007, December 5). Projects probe new media├óÔé¼Ôäós role in changing the face of learning. Education Week, (27)14. 10.
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daan 79
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
so by reading all this you come to the community be soul reason only to make our project world wide known.
i am impressed of the way you can motivate yourself. or you have other reasons why you want all this.
i am impressed of the way you can motivate yourself. or you have other reasons why you want all this.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
I was wondering when someone was going to ask that. I do not currently have any goals concerning Spring other than to seeing it successful and competitive because I think that's good for everyone in the long run.daan 79 wrote:so by reading all this you come to the community be soul reason only to make our project world wide known.
i am impressed of the way you can motivate yourself. or you have other reasons why you want all this.
I want to make it very clear that if I wanted to use Spring in some way to push an agenda or make money, I would, regardless of the what the community thought. In fact, because Spring is open source, it would really be as easy as pulling down the source code and starting the "nXain Spring" foundation or "Studio nXain". I might even recruit certain community members who I thought had potential and actually wanted to make money (but wouldn't need to as I already know plenty of professional developers). I would certainly not be wasting time on the forums trying to get you guys to think bigger thoughts than getting another cool unit into one of the mods.
I'm not planning on doing that, but I won't promise not to do it sometime in the future
More importantly, as a community you should expect to generate your own competition and lose core talent (that's not necessary bad, it just comes with success.)- nXain
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
why is it that i'm not in the least bit concerned?but I won't promise not to do it sometime in the future
Do you actually know anything at all about what bidding for those grants entails?
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
As a matter of fact I do and I've used quite a bit of grant money on projects in the past for various government agencies and a few foundations. It's not easy to get and is another reason why you need a Spring Foundation as well as connections to academia to write the proposals for you for things that they want to accomplish, but which feed back into better tools and improvements for Spring. Personally, I would start with unsolicited proposals directed at corporate grants while building relationships with a few university computer science departments.DJ wrote:why is it that i'm not in the least bit concerned?but I won't promise not to do it sometime in the future
Do you actually know anything at all about what bidding for those grants entails?
- nXain
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
A few notes about my motivations. I believe games are THE media of the 21st century, but the medium is still in it's infancy and largely driven by the retail shelf. Games are also incredibly hard to make (as you know). Games are also probably the best tool for education ever created and the potential hasn't even been started to be tapped yet.
I would love to see game creation tools come on every low end laptop being made for underprivileged kids as well as be a major tool for first rate education (think "Spring on OLPC") I also believe that games will eventually sideline television and movies as well as be integral to the coming singularity.
Spring has a huge long term potential. If I do nothing else than plant the seeds for a few people on this board who love to make games to take it farther than just being a hobby, then I've succeeded in pushing my agenda a little bit.
- nXain
I would love to see game creation tools come on every low end laptop being made for underprivileged kids as well as be a major tool for first rate education (think "Spring on OLPC") I also believe that games will eventually sideline television and movies as well as be integral to the coming singularity.
Spring has a huge long term potential. If I do nothing else than plant the seeds for a few people on this board who love to make games to take it farther than just being a hobby, then I've succeeded in pushing my agenda a little bit.
- nXain
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daan 79
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
I think you will have see this come aswell. you want spring to be all that competitive and succesfull.
what pleasure besides the fact your "new" ideas will come to an realisation is ther in it for u?
what pleasure besides the fact your "new" ideas will come to an realisation is ther in it for u?
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
No reason to be concerned - the license is such that every change to the engine had to be open source, too, which could then be pulled back into the core spring - if only the two trees wouldn't diverge too much between initial fork and first release.DJ wrote:why is it that i'm not in the least bit concerned?but I won't promise not to do it sometime in the future
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
Nothing. I'm not sure what more I can say about that. I've already told you what I would do if I had a different agenda. Besides, I'm already in the industry, making money and have good technology. Spring doesn't have anything to offer me or my company other than maybe recruiting some new talent.daan 79 wrote:I think you will have see this come aswell. you want spring to be all that competitive and succesfull.
what pleasure besides the fact your "new" ideas will come to an realisation is ther in it for u?
- nXain
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
I wouldn't be too reliant on license enforcement. Who's going to hire lawyers to take it to court? No money, no lawyers, no justice. Right now, the Spring community couldn't enforce anything. This is something to keep in back of your minds as you move forward and another excellent reason to form a Spring Foundation!imbaczek wrote:No reason to be concerned - the license is such that every change to the engine had to be open source, too, which could then be pulled back into the core spring - if only the two trees wouldn't diverge too much between initial fork and first release.DJ wrote:why is it that i'm not in the least bit concerned?but I won't promise not to do it sometime in the future
- nXain
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BrainDamage
- Lobby Developer
- Posts: 1164
- Joined: 25 Sep 2006, 13:56
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
You're surely misinformed to be a business professional, such cases are handled by the Free Software Fundation, and currently all open source projects rely on it for legal cases regardless they have a project society or not.nxain wrote:I wouldn't be too reliant on license enforcement. Who's going to hire lawyers to take it to court? No money, no lawyers, no justice. Right now, the Spring community couldn't enforce anything. This is something to keep in back of your minds as you move forward and another excellent reason to form a Spring Foundation!
Not to mention if you want to be listened, the last thing you should do is threatening the project developers about creating an illegal closed-source fork, but you should know better ...
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
You're forgiven, since this is latest news: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/a ... Source.htmnxain wrote:I wouldn't be too reliant on license enforcement.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
I'm not making any threats. I'm talking about the reality of the business world and what's in store as Spring becomes more successful. So, what happens when Mr. Chinese developer takes Spring wholesale, modifies it a little, makes it online-only and makes a few million in China with your work? Exactly how many cases has the FSF won outside of the U.S and Europe? How many have they won inside? You think you have protection because of a GNU license, but it's very thin.Brain Damage wrote: You're surely misinformed to be a business professional, such cases are handled by the Free Software Fundation, and currently all open source projects rely on it for legal cases regardless they have a project society or not.
Not to mention if you want to be listened, the last thing you should do is threatening the project developers about creating an illegal closed-source fork, but you should know better ...
Because I'm the messenger, you seem to think it's about me. It's not. The reality is that it's going to be very difficult to protect your IP regardless of licensing and there is very little you can do about it. My point earlier that you interpreted as a threat was simply a reality check in case some fool thought I saw dollar signs in Spring.
- nXain
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
- Posts: 14673
- Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
DJ you might wanna read page ten. You've come fairly close to putting your foot in your mouth (not that your points aren't valid).
nXain, I've been wondering about your motives for several days now, because in terms of time=money, you've spent a considerable amount (and I don't think it has been fruitless in the least).
One thing that is common among OS communities is a lack of vision, this includes the OS Operating Systems as well. As a quick example, I recently tried out ubuntu and loved it, but it is completely unusable for joe blow computer users and is a reason why in it's current state will never achieve appreciable success.
The same problem exists here. Many of the people here (and even some of the engine developers here, not to mention at least 50% of the content devs) have absolutely no vision for the future. Many of us have tried to buck the trend, and argh is dangerously close to succeeding with PURE. The few of us that do want to buck the trend generally do not have all the skills needed to succeed. Thankfully, argh has done a wonderful job and is, in many ways, paving the highway for the rest of us.
I myself do have a vision for what I want to see in the next year, but I cannot do it by myself because I simply do not have all the skills necessary to make it happen. Evolution RTS has received an overwhelmingly positive response from people outside of this community (and even to some degree, inside this community). Thankfully to some extent, I can ride on the coattails of others to get what I want done, but in many cases it isn't enough, and tbh I don't really know anymore what to do about it.
nXain, I've been wondering about your motives for several days now, because in terms of time=money, you've spent a considerable amount (and I don't think it has been fruitless in the least).
One thing that is common among OS communities is a lack of vision, this includes the OS Operating Systems as well. As a quick example, I recently tried out ubuntu and loved it, but it is completely unusable for joe blow computer users and is a reason why in it's current state will never achieve appreciable success.
The same problem exists here. Many of the people here (and even some of the engine developers here, not to mention at least 50% of the content devs) have absolutely no vision for the future. Many of us have tried to buck the trend, and argh is dangerously close to succeeding with PURE. The few of us that do want to buck the trend generally do not have all the skills needed to succeed. Thankfully, argh has done a wonderful job and is, in many ways, paving the highway for the rest of us.
I myself do have a vision for what I want to see in the next year, but I cannot do it by myself because I simply do not have all the skills necessary to make it happen. Evolution RTS has received an overwhelmingly positive response from people outside of this community (and even to some degree, inside this community). Thankfully to some extent, I can ride on the coattails of others to get what I want done, but in many cases it isn't enough, and tbh I don't really know anymore what to do about it.
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
- Posts: 14673
- Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
HA! The FSF Defend us?!
Are you out of your mind? They would end up suing spring as well as fighting the other company. Spring has very shaky legal legs.
Are you out of your mind? They would end up suing spring as well as fighting the other company. Spring has very shaky legal legs.
Re: New User Impressions and Suggestions
That's pretty much on target - I'm actually nearly out of time to mess with the Spring community (sometimes you find yourself with unforeseen downtime with BIG technology changes).Forboding Angel wrote: nXain, I've been wondering about your motives for several days now, because in terms of time=money, you've spent a considerable amount (and I don't think it has been fruitless in the least).
- nXain