Spring RTS Engine

I was paraphrasing

It seems to be that BA's naming policy is consistently enforced (Advanced BA, DSD special), and the GPL is consistently enforced (Notalobby). TA artwork is consistently not enforced, because I think we are all worried about what would happen if it was in the community's current state.

So as far as I can tell, the enforcement is not selective (in the sense that zerver is being singled out), but what should be expected from community's history.

As far as the double standard, then would it be preferable to disregard any respect for licenses and IP? Or to remove everything with TA content?

Floris wrote:At least he has put the mapedges support code in his sping version.
When can we finally expect this to be availible in regular spring?

http://springrts.com/phpbb/download/fil ... ew&id=8206

afaik that mapborder is by jK. It already is in spring test versions since some time and I guess will be in next spring version.

abma wrote:FYI: the source code of "gpl violation-Lobby" is missing too (which is a gpl-violation as well).

There is no source. gpl violation-lobby was created using a hex editor. If you don't believe me, just do a binary compare of springlobby and gpl violation.

And if you have executed the compiler, "compile_gpl violation", you have actually violated a license yourself. I don't mind really, but this license is just meant to cover my ass 100%.

I'm doing what I'm doing so that you, the spring player base, can get access to the fastest engine without having to go to some obscure spring underground sites and download 'banned' engines. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

knorke wrote:

Floris wrote:At least he has put the mapedges support code in his sping version.
When can we finally expect this to be availible in regular spring?

http://springrts.com/phpbb/download/fil ... ew&id=8206

afaik that mapborder is by jK. It already is in spring test versions since some time and I guess will be in next spring version.

This is truth. Map borders are jK's creation and already implemented. See this thread here: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ge#p536925

zerver wrote:I'm doing what I'm doing so that you, the spring player base, can get access to the fastest engine without having to go to some obscure spring underground sites and download 'banned' engines. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

maybe is it the drugs they have me on, don't ask I don't remember what they are, I hust don't follow this:

1) your code isn't merely a better spring engine it requires heavy restructuring. Ba may not be so bad but given our past coversations, I would say I recall it being very different.

2) from then on all new code also has to fit within the restrictions of your new code. Otherwise you will have to patch our code every time. That seem very counter productive.

It isn't simply plop their favorite game in your engine and it totally stomps spring. It is plop our code in your engine after we heavily alter ours and are extremely mindful of our code in the futred past that. Again maybe is it the drugs, I honestly am not sure I am writing superolivepineapple right now. Some of my past posts on medication I recall were pretty out there. Just seems like you are over simplifying your branch. If you had to modify and re-release ba. how will your engine be available to the players? that does not seem correct/

And if you have executed the compiler, "compile_gpl violation", you have actually violated a license yourself. I don't mind really, but this license is just meant to cover my ass 100%.

You do know that you are not allowed to just take a gpl project, create a derivative, and re-licence it? Your license doesn't cover any asses, just adds an extra infringement.

I'm doing what I'm doing so that you, the spring player base, can get access to the fastest engine without having to go to some obscure spring underground sites and download 'banned' engines. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

"Surely if i add a blackmailing campaign to my failing propaganda campaign by holding my sources hostage, it will finally work!".

You don't seem really good at politics.

Anarchid wrote:"Surely if i add a blackmailing campaign to my failing propaganda campaign by holding my sources hostage, it will finally work!".

You don't seem really good at politics.

Yeah :-D this move can cast a dark shadow on your reputation

smoth wrote:your code isn't merely a better spring engine it requires heavy restructuring. Ba may not be so bad but given our past coversations, I would say I recall it being very different.

2) from then on all new code also has to fit within the restrictions of your new code. Otherwise you will have to patch our code every time. That seem very counter productive.

You're right but this is a more general issue of parallelism in programming. What you have with Spring is an engine that doesn't require your lua code to care about threading in any way. The catch with this is that the engine really has no idea when it is safe to reorder or move code execution across thread boundaries with the result that Spring can't really multithread your gadgets or widgets in any way other than giving the two simulations (synced and unsynced) a single thread each. This puts a very real restriction on how many threads, and therefore CPU cores) can be utilised in total and how much total work each independant lua state can do. At risk of oversimplifying the issue what you have right now is:

1 thread for the sim and all lua gadgets and AI
1 thread for unsynced and all widgets
1 (or more?) thread for pathfinding
1 (or more?) threads for everything else

That's all well and good until you max your sim or unsynced threads at which point even if you have free processing time on other cores they won't help. It's fine for most purposes but if you have more than 4 cores and a large simulation (eg, a lot of unit scripts) your sim could still max out before your CPU does.

This limitation is becoming less theoretical all the time. The new i7 CPUs have 8 cores and with hyperthreading you can effectively run 16 threads simultaneously. That leaves your sim with a maximum of 1/16th of your overall processing power. Future CPUs are predicted to have up to 64 cores and beyond due to silicon technology having reached a physical speed limit around 4GHz.

The MT code/fork provides more threads to the sim BUT it can't really guess your games' data access patterns to optimise memory access and protect you from issues that come with any threaded application (like race conditions and bad cache locality). These MT "fixes" zerver keeps talking about are really changes in how and where your game uses data so the underlying system has enough information to spread your simulation safely and efficiently over many cores while still maintaining sync with other players.

The reason I bring this up is just to say there are good reasons why games need to be modified to use gpl violation; but they are only important if your game is maxing out the lua threads. If it isn't then maintaining an gpl violation fork of your game might be a low priority but if zerver seems prepared to handle that side of it and if you aren't doing weekly releases and zerver maintains his changes as a patch then maintaining both versions shouldn't be a great burden for anyone (in theory anyway).

I would think that at least for now any mod would run on gpl violation without changes. You'd still benefit from things like the multithreaded pathfinder since that doesn't care about your lua code. Hopefully zerver can jump in and correct me if my assumption is wrong but at least up until the fork that was the case (with the exception of some desync bugs which may have been fixed).

I am aware of much of that spliff but my issues with his earl y statement was it greatly oversimplified it

smoth wrote:

varikonniemi wrote:

zerver wrote:Unfortunately, due to what appears to be a current ban on hosting gpl violation on the Spring lobby server you may have to connect your lobby to <gpl violation link> to try it in multiplayer mode.

The drama reaches new levels! I think this is quite a hostile act.

how so? Why should they stop everything and develop support for another engine that has recently come out? Why should they support spring in the lobby and not GLEST? I mean if the spring lobby is to just go and support ALL open source projects in the lobby? I think it is fairly reasonable to hesitate on add support for another engine and an OBVIOUSLY COMPETING ENGINE? So how was this hostile? it is their lobby? why should the accept all the work of maintaining his server?

You didn't see him start a thread politely requesting the add support. The entirety of his statement that you posted has him in question because all we see is a person who came in with flying accusations and nothing to back them up. I don't think zerver would do that. There may have been a more private conversation but to accuse the engine devs of hostility? I am sorry but that isn't right, you have no evidence to that and honestly are out of line because you only have zerver's statement.

*Edit*
To be absolutely clear, this isn't saying zerver is in the wrong for saying that. He may have good reason to not post the logs. I am just saying I think vari is jumping to a wild conclusion.

From what i understood gpl violation should work as-is on spring rts servers, but it was explicitly banned from doing so. If this is not the case, then i was mistaken. If this is the case, then it must be obvious why it is a hostile move.

Can't we all just get along?

Petah wrote:Can't we all just get along?

No, of course not. That's why we have rules, agreements and such. When someone missteps they are at fault for breaching the social contract required to ensure some semblance of civility is maintained.

abma wrote:

SpliFF wrote:To be fair there is blame on all sides. Blacklisting zervers IP address, forum bans, etc are no way to encourage discussion as abma would like to believe. Given time i'm sure everyone will calm down enough to realise that forks are not evil and the lobby server is big enough for everyone (especially once the multi-version support is properly handled by the lobbies and servers).

better ideas are welcome, this isn't really constructive, too. i showed a possible solution, but zerver ignored it.

GPL violation isn't acceptable, ignoring (or better tying to troll) game devs branding/mutator policies isn't acceptable, too. this rule exists to limit frustration for players and game devs.

if you don't accept this rules, either discuss or ask ... imo thats the minimum respect which is needed to have a working community.

Varion this

I agree for the most part. Where i disagree is that by taking action against him you legitimize what he does.

The mature way would be to just ignore him.

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

TPTB (spring) just entered stage 3 in their fight against gpl violation

Awesome, so because there is one long-standing violation rooted so deeply in the community that even now it can't be removed, people think that all licensing is meaningless.

If the engine devs didn't care about the GPL, they wouldn't have licensed it GPL. The 'mature' thing to do is for all parties to respect each other's licensing of their work.

Two wrongs does not make one right.

This is just my opinion, but the true upper hand is held as long as you are able to just ignore someone. This is true for both face to face and over the net interaction. You know how they say it takes more courage to just walk away from a fight? That is ignoring the wrong and not answering it with another wrong.

That is ignoring the wrong and not answering it with another wrong.

It is so easy to provide examples in which your formula becomes self-evidently self-destructive.

Sometimes you just need to punch people in face, no excuses.

varikonniemi wrote:Two wrongs does not make one right.

This is just my opinion, but the true upper hand is held as long as you are able to just ignore someone. This is true for both face to face and over the net interaction. You know how they say it takes more courage to just walk away from a fight? That is ignoring the wrong and not answering it with another wrong.

1) You personally not getting what you want is not a wrong.

2) You are advocating for the abolishment of all law and justice systems.

luckywaldo7 wrote:Awesome, so because there is one long-standing violation rooted so deeply in the community that even now it can't be removed, people think that all licensing is meaningless.

If the engine devs didn't care about the GPL, they wouldn't have licensed it GPL. The 'mature' thing to do is for all parties to respect each other's licensing of their work.

I concur, the mature thing would be to respect the devs wishes with respect to the GPL. The correct thing would be to NOT expect the devs to go out of their way to support his project which has really just started. Not only that it has just started but it's demo projects clearly have no regard for the wishes of the developers of any content within this community. I see their stance fairly reasonable when dealing with an unreasonable vilification from someone who thread is here sowing discord because of the brash and careless method with which it was place within the same community which it's poster violated? No vario, I cannot agree with you.

Lucky isn't the BAR project going to help strip out that issue from at least 1 more project? ZK did it, bar is also.