Any Lurkers interested in a "conventional" Libre Game ?

[Das Bruce]

Did you have somewhere in mind?

[smoth]

well all free content does is give people a cheap thing they can use to build a basic mod and probably they will make their own shit later. I hope these scripts won't take me too much longer. It will be at least another 2-3 months before I release my next set of content.

[Forboding Angel]

The problem I see is that mod developers tend to develop huge egos and lash out at people way too quickly, forming paranoid delusions that everybody's turning their mod into BA just because they complain that some gameplay element isn't working out.

The first half of the first sentence is the important part here I think.

Yes, moddevs tend to develop large ego's because most of us made what we have from scratch. That doesn't make it right or a good thing by any means.

Let me use TRADEMARK as an example. Lately I have made a lot of additions and improvements to EvoRTS and I think it's really going well. But the opther day I had a test going and trademark join, from the get go all he did was complain about problems that didn't exist, and just nonsensical stuff trying to make me get upset. I handled it pretty well, but it did upset me even though I didn't show it. This is something that many of us have to deal with on a regular basis.

At some point Thick Skin is a silly argument, because if you pour your heart and soul into something, of course it's going to sting if someone intentionally tries to make your work look like it's nothing or just poke and prod in all the wrong spots. Fang has issues, I can't deny that, but he is a good guy, and he was a good friend, and a lot of us cared about him which is why you have the EESF movement, because we were there to take the crap and dish it out acting as a buffer.

I can only speak for myself, but if EvoRTS were to follow a trend of BA I wouldn't be too happy with it, however I would be perfectly happy with a mutator that did exactly that. The content is there to be used. It may not be the best in the world but I offer it with absolutely no strings attached. I have yet to have one person ask me if the models/textures/scripts could be used in other things. THe explosions... now I have gotten a lot of request for that and tbh my answer remains the same. It's there to be dissected, take it, do what you want to it, have fun. THe models source files are also freely for dl on the site as well.

See the above is us thinking that we have done something really nice. It took me a year to get all that stuff done, and it was only me doing it (with a lot of help and guidance from smoth I should mention - I"m jsut not good enough to utilize everything he could teach me). But we get hammered for it, and when we defend ourselves we come off as looking like unworkable pricks when the exact opposite is many times the case.

I wish I had kept the infolog from that game, but suffice it to say that the other day I had a test game for rev96.3 and Decimator, and one other guy in particular inundated me with requests but no solid reason backing them, and were pretty heated and adamant about them. It was really frustrating to me because I could not see their point of view with no reasoning behind it except that they hate this particular thing. Google_Frog also had a qualm but gave solid reasoning that I could not refute, and as a result, what he asked for is what happened (and I have yet to see how well it really works). Look, deci really is a great guy, and I like him a lot. It really pains me to have to tell him to essentially come back when you have a reason that makes any sort of sense, but we moddevs end up doing this all the time. Look rarely is anything that we do ever perfect, but we do try.

Reminds me of you, KDR, in a test game for one of the revisions, we had estabilished that my balancing for a few new types of units to the game had gone awry and I must have fallen off of a very tall building before balancing them. In the next test game, KDR proceeds to build nothing but the extremely unbalanced unit. It was distressing to me, because I already knew that they are buggered, the point of playing these games over and over is to find the stuff that needs to be addressed, not to over and over rehash what we have already found.

Once again, I think KDR is actually a really great guy, but I think he has his moments just like the rest of us. I'm not sure what point he was trying to make, but I let it roll off my back fairly well, but I must sad I was kinda upset about it, however, water under the bridge.

tl;dr: The point is that having the "Massive Ego" is on of the few ways to shield yourself from being overrun by detractors and just plain assholes. THat doesn't make it the right thing to do, but many people (including myself at times in the past) have resorted to it as a last line of defense. Most of us non-*A modding people are actually really nice guys that just kinda are wary because we have been treated pretty crappily in the past by forum/lobby users.

I suppose I should sum up be saying that I hold nothing against anyone here. My philosophy is to live and let live, but please guys, allow us to have mistakes in our games. It's bound to happen and we work pretty hard to fix them generally.

[SpikedHelmet]

I tend to consider myself a very nice person, and all of the good friends I've developed in the Spring community over the years can attest to that.

[zwzsg]

Says the one who was banned from TAU.

so that means all you would have to do is the transformation anims and the models of the macross units

I may have one! The model is not mine, but the animations is. Today is: I feel like posting the same animated gif as 4 years ago day.

[Argh]

I just counted, and counting Forb's stuff and Peet's... hmm...

KDR- something like 20 models, give or take, some uvmapped, some skinned. Lolimod's little gals could be made into all sorts of things- robots, men, women, children- without a lot of real modeling expertise or even a lot of non-trivial work.

Lots of great code too, never forget that.

Me- something like 30 models, give or take, uvmapped and skinned. Everything from NanoBlobs, random crap I gave away, etc. CEG code galore, bitmaps, sounds... you know, that other stuff you need, before you have a game that doesn't suck ass and is really PD compliant.

Smoth- something like 20 models, give or take, uvmapped and skinned. Mainly props, but not all.

Forb- IDK, forgot how many units there are in his game. Enough, though. Some of them would be pretty cool, with decent skins, and I haven't even seen what he's done with the current versions, I'm sure it's prettier than last time (and it was better than every other modeling newbie project last time I looked). Lots of code (CEG especially) and sounds, too.

Peet- about 20 or so. Uvmapped and skinned. The looks are 'orrible, but it's nothing that couldn't be sorted, with decent skins, on most of 'em. Dunno how bad the uvmaps are, but whatever, they're available and animated.

So... at least what? 100-140 units or thereabouts? Most animated and non-buggy?

If you can't build a game with that much stuff... you're too lazy to do anything. You don't need any new content, you just need to make TDFs and FBIs and stuff. Easy. You don't need actual skills, and while my CEGs in NB are really dated-looking, Forb's are decent, and between both games, you'd have plenty of sounds. No excuses, tbh.

I thought about wasting some time tonight doing concept sketches of one of the many ideas I have sitting and gathering dust in my skull and giving it away, then I was like... "whoa, there's plenty of stuff, wtf, they're just clueless".

[Forboding Angel]

IIRC there are somewhere around 105 or so in evorts.

[Argh]

Really? Gee, I guess they don't really have any excuses then <cracks whip>

[Pressure Line]

Everyone forgets about me

(although looking back at those uvmaps... its enough to make me squirm)

[Argh]

Meh, I probably forgot about 20 people, dammit, I was just hitting the stuff that came to mind when I actually started tabulating this.

I mean... Hoi's released a few things, SpikedHelmet, LathanStanley, Zpock... wtf, there's a ton of stuff out there.

We need to get it all in one place, it's a shame that guys like Sean don't know where it is.

Tell you what... content guys... let's start a thread in Art, where we can start putting this stuff. The Features thing in Maps isn't cutting it, it's too specific anyhow.

[lurker]

Peet- about 20 or so. Uvmapped and skinned. The looks are 'orrible, but it's nothing that couldn't be sorted, with decent skins, on most of 'em. Dunno how bad the uvmaps are, but whatever, they're available and animated.

Those aren't skins, those are uvmap guides... Except a couple which do actually have textures.

[Argh]

Well, they're "skins"... technically. Meh, you know what I mean. They're just waiting for paint, basically.

[lurker]

So when you said 'uvmapped and skinned' you just meant 'uvmapped'? I thought you meant textured by skinned.

[smoth]

argh I have also released script bits, and cegs.

[Forboding Angel]

Really? Gee, I guess they don't really have any excuses then <cracks whip>

Plenty of excuses actually. Mine are nowhere as nice as yours or smoths, etc etc etc, course you would think it wouldn't matter cause graphics don't matter right? ./rolleyes

[smoth]

I kinda wonder why you guys are so reluctant to post here been stickied for some time.

[SwiftSpear]

"The content isn't out there" isn't really the reason why this needs to happen. There's alot of good content out there, I'm not sure how much is immediately usable for what we want, but we'll definitely take a look.

The issue is, for everyone's best efforts, there is nothing out there that can contend with TA in terms of what TA is for spring, and why we are so addicted to it. There are some great game projects out there that compete with the quality of the TA universe... Certainly Gundam, probably SWIW and 1942 as well (I've played gundam, I haven't the others), CA, PURE, Soforth. There are some great showcases that are completely free of restrictive content, KP, Evo, some other KDR titles, and I'm probably missing a bunch of stuff as well. But there really isn't now, a great example of a title that is both. There are titles that have tried and failed, EVO, (was pure ever libre?), but for whatever reason (usually weak initial design combined with more a desire to create an experimental gameplay condition vs something to fill a more standard RTS role) they don't reach the point they need to to fill the spot.

If we look at the rise of modders and content devs in the TA community, you reach the inescapable conclusion that the power of the community was the simple fact that when I wanted to make a mod for TA, I didn't make a new mod entirely from scratch, I made maby 1 or 2 units, put them into the game wherever I wanted them, usually slaughtered the intended gameplay, but still, I ultimately learned some solid grounded modding techniques that I could then apply to bigger projects later. When I look at spring projects that create the same environment for new players/modders, I see, TA, kinda sorta CA with some fighting and copyright disputes, and EVO (which is rife with fundamental problems that make it a not entirely too attractive prospect in the first place). The big IP projects don't really fit the bill, many of them are closed source, and endless drama will be created over custom content as to weather it maintains cannon or not. It's not that they aren't valuable projects, they just don't do what TA does.

Not only that, but what I really want is a project I can throw into a Linux release and say "go nuts" that doesn't have people going "oh, another lackluster indie title". You need to do something spectacular to compete in this genre. There's a very small handful of projects that we could even include in an Linux release, let alone ones that will amaze new players and new content devs. This engine project as a whole already has enough weaknesses in that it doesn't really have any great single player content free of TA IP, we're not doing ourselfs any service showing the OS community that we can't even make a good multiplayer game, not counting those which they can't actually use to dev new content if they want.

We need a showcase, something that can finally break our addiction to TA as a project, because it's just as deep a game, and just as accessible in content for modders. That's what I want to see built, weather I'm involved or not. If someone else doesn't want to do it, then I guess I'll throw my hat in with Sean

[Forboding Angel]

(which is rife with fundamental problems that make it a not entirely too attractive prospect in the first place)

http://evolutionrts.info/evolutionpatch ... taller.exe

http://evolutionrts.info/evolutionpatch ... ractor.exe

Would be nice if you would doublecheck yourself before posting. You are referring to 7 months ago. Much has changed. (Not that you intended to, but at least checking version numbers would have been nice)

THe last version you would have seen would have been .75, it's completely different now for a lot of very good reasons and more accurately reflects what you prolly would have preferred to see int he first place.

^^ see perfect example

We are always changing our stuff to more please what the populace wants, but due to maybe 2 people playing the game at any given time, fall through the cracks as soon as we surface.

@SS essentially what you are looking for is TA2, because indirectly that's what you just described. Look we are one man teams, even when looking for team members we can rarely get them, and those team members even more rarely actually do anything. DOn't blame us. Look spring will never compete on a commercial scale.

Let me repeat that in big ass text.

Spring will never compete with a commercial market

Sorry to kinda bring you down a bit, but it's true. PURE and gundam are the closest things to what you want, yet you don't even give them a fair shake, and everything else is beneath you except (oddly...) 10 year old crap content that looks like poo (Compared to now) and plays worse, but was awesome in 97.

You are adding 1+1 and getting 5, and I do not follow you. YOu want commercial quality, yet hang your standards on BA? How does that make sense?

.. fuck.. I really didn't intend to get involved in this conversation. No more replies from me.

[SwiftSpear]

Gameplay depth is the deciding factor. BA has enough of that. There are spring projects that are already basically there, they just either aren't libre or contain non PD IP.

I was one of the players/specs who used to follow evo right up until you stopped working on it. I know how it played in it's most recent versions. I'm not sure it's even that great an idea to try to make evo into what I'm talking about. It's a heavily strategically based RTS with very fixed components. It's similar to supcom in that regard... it just doesn't really play like popular RTS, micro is discouraged as much as possible and there's very little proxy or migration play. It's still pretty much explody blob wars. It's fun, but the gameplay is very niche market.

[edit] God forb, you don't even know how good gundam is. It's so fucking good. The only thing is the fact that simply because of animu IP it will polarize any playerbase it ever gets.

[Hoi]

The only problem with all the free stuff is that it doesn't fit together, making evo and nanoblobs into a big mod would look very strange, I think it's time for someone to step up, someone who can do stuff himself, and won't quit, that person should just start a thread with a whole game planned, and start working on it, in a way that everyone can help.