Maybe this has been posted already, but here's the truth:
With the CA dev team, ideas almost always start as one dev's little dream or pet project. When the dev has some free time, he or she may try working on realizing that. Pretty soon, other CA devs get interested and start helping, and it matures to become one of CA's features. Now, these features, these services, this code, each of these is one of our little creations. they are our
babies! We don't code them to break wit other mods; we code them for CA because CA is the project we work on, and it's simply easier to hard-code our projects for CA.
Look, through our paradigm, at what you are doing each time you port a CA feature to other mods: you are taking our little pet projects and making the generic, all-mods-have-got-them features. Now, in the opinion of me and many other CA devs,
this is not a bad thing! We
like to see others using our projects and benefiting from them. That's the concept behind open source software! However, when a feature is ported, that's one less unique feature only CA has, one less incentive for players to go try CA. This is why CA chickens has gone unmaintained since TFC ported it to BA. Now, from what I understand, he ported it with our blessing, and we actually helped him convert it to a BA mutator, and we bear no ill will to the many enjoyable games of BA chicken defense going on even as I type this, but it makes me just a bit sad that all the new features and tweaks that TFC added to BA chicken defense haven't been backported to CA, and the feature originally created as a CA pet project (KDR and Rattle helped, though!) is now one of BA's most popular attractions, and one of CA's least played.
Now, keeping this in mind, think of how we feel when others accuse us of
deliberately coding content that will break with BA. That's saying that because we aren't actively working to improve the offerings of our competitors, we are breaking some unwritten code of conduct. Couple this with the fact that we are, in fact, actually doing
exactly what you claim we aren't doing, that is, working on porting our projects to other games,
in spite of the massive amount of flame we have received for doing it (TFC complained when Quantum gave him easy steps to make BA mission-compatible, here you guys are, yelling at us because we're trying to bring PlanetWars to BA), and your points are diluted beyond any reasonable meaning.
Thank you.
PS: As for the "CA advertisements cause flame wars" argument, look at
our "ad-lines" list. There is no reference at all to BA, and of the references to BA that previously existed in the list, none demeaned it. We don't say negative things about BA, we say positive things about CA. Whether you think so or not, this is saying a lot. Look at today's commercial advertisement world. It is perfectly legal to say that something is "better" than its competitors, as the term "better" is subjective. The previously cited adline ("better graphics, better gameplay. CA") didn't even mention BA. For all we know, it could be referring to Perimeter 2! Saying that adline is aggressive is like saying Papa John's Pizza's slogan ("Better ingredients. Better Pizza. Papa John's.") is evil and aggressive. Nevertheless, we removed that adline. As for our "rabid fanbase," many current CA players (me included) were long time BA players. CA didn't suddenly turn us into rabid animals! It's just that many BA players have never played anything else, and dislike CA out of mere ignorance. Our wish is only to expose these players to everything else that the Spring Engine can offer. This is why we defend CA so vehemently; when, as is so often the case, a troll bashes CA (which they do often because they know they'll get entertainment out of it), we
must respond, so as to stop impressionable newbies and longtime BA-and-only-BA players from becoming prejudiced. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
EDIT: Forb: Saktoth has called my models terrible pieces of shit on multiple occasions. As a result, my modeling has improved.
