Then it would make sense for 5 AIs to maintain 5 whitelists than 50 mods to maintain 50 whitelists.
I totally disagree with that.
It is
very unlikely that a new AI that actually works well with our games will face a long wait before the game developer releases an update for the whitelist. You make it sound like there is this huge wait, when at most with most active projects, their turnaround times between updates are 90 days or so...
The very people who refused to cooperate with AI developers in the old days are now complaining because of it.
LOL, give me a break, AF.
You very well know that I spent a lot of time with AI developers in the past, trying to get them to build AIs that wouldn't crash with novel game designs. I wrote multiple configs for NTai and NanoBlobs, AAI, et al.
But with P.U.R.E., it started to go outside your collective comfort zone. I was no longer just using Spring's ruleset... and voila, suddenly there was absolutely no support for my game. Just modifying the basic economic ruleset made most AIs just sit there, because they couldn't handle "metal" maps.
For a long time, I kept myself in a straightjacket, game-design-wise, to keep AI support. I talked about it honestly and openly, in the hope that that might alert AI developers that there were serious problems. I reported bugs and problems to the AI maintainers, etc. What I got for my trouble... was even
fewer working AIs than when I started.
I pretty much gave up after KAIK suddenly quit working with P.U.R.E., RAI suddenly quit working with P.U.R.E., both maintainers were told and the problems weren't addressed. And NTai wasn't being maintained at that time, so what was I supposed to do?
Again, you act like I've been hostile to AI developers historically... the fact of the matter is, I've been one of the few game developers who even bothered talking to you guys and explaining my needs.
I'm talking to you guys again here to explain why I lost interest in dealing with you as a group, and why I generally have a very low opinion of your priorities and goals.
It's not my fault that most of the AI developers here can't be bothered to download and test with new games, and as a game developer, I think it's pretty insulting to imply that I should have to chase down the people who are supposedly building AI- if anything, they should be asking ME about my game's features, and trying out new games as they're released, which is hardly an onerous obligation, and if they like the game, figuring out how best to support them.
To top this off... when I watched you guys fail find the collective willpower to deal with Lua, etc., I pretty much expected things to rapidly become untenable, and they have.
So don't blame me for your collective failures to address the real problems in terms of the end-user's experience with anything outside the OTA box, or tell me I'm being "ignorant", when in fact I was the one who pushed AI developers to build broader solutions in the first place. I just quit pushing it when it became entirely clear that I was shoving back the tide, is all, and I am not in favor of giving AI developers even more ways to cause trouble, by allowing them in any way shape or form to tell me, the game developer, or players whether their product works with mine.