Spring RTS Engine

Small installer is a failure.

Maybe we should just stop releasing installers except from a password protected area to which only game developers have the password.

Then problem is solved, everyone will be forced to download the complete Kernel Panic or S44 installer including a game and a set of maps.

(Major issue of course is upgrades, and the way some installers may install a broken Spring installation.)

We might just need a mixture of steam and e.g. the system Supreme Commander uses combined with a lobby (or at least an option to start the lobby from there) - so the idea of taking SpringDownloader one step ahead isn't so bad...

I imagine something like a browser (and so what TASClient included might not be so far away from it) which starts at a welcome site where you'll have some main "blabla" (like when there is a new Spring version you'll see a news covering that). From there you sort of can browse through all the mods you are able to pick - just like the Wiki entries but more pretty and with some pics showing the mods off. If you like what you see you immeditaley can download that mod / game in a Steam like manner and then fire up your lobby to get a game running...

So in other words combining TASClient latest achievements with the Springdownloader would be a pretty damn nice thing to have sort of a "GUI" for advertising / picking mods without the hassle of diving through various download sites or even news sites to get to know of a mod / game at all...

How about we start callign the developer installer, the actual developer installer. I'll modify the installer artwork and we change the installer name and text internally to make it clear its not intended for the end user.

All this business about springdownloader, it doesn't really seem the best idea, maybe for an online installer but even then its not the most efficient means of doing it. Download speeds are already slow as it is, adding more leechers to the system with no seeding in the new people is not a peachy idea

AF wrote:Download speeds are already slow as it is, adding more leechers to the system with no seeding in the new people is not a peachy idea

I thought it now was developed to grab its stuff from sites like Jobjol too - download speeds wouldn't be that much of an issue then anymore...

EDIT:
Another newbie trap that should be get rid of is the naming of the Spring.exe. I always have the feeling that every 2nd newbie tries to launch Spring this way instead of using the lobby which is quite understandable...

t would eb far more efficient and faster to package all the maps up into the isntaller and put the installer on a good http mirror. Different use cases require different solutions.

A wheel may help getting you from A to B but it wont be as apt in space.

So... on the one hand, we have Tobi half-joking about making sure that the only official distro is GPL-compliant.

And on the other hand, we have people suggesting that we make everything go on the SpringDownloader system.

I'd be willing to participate in such a system and support it, but the problems of IP piracy need to be dealt with first. Letting anybody seed is just asking for trouble here. Very serious trouble.

You can't have this both ways, guys. This ideal, where pirated stuff gets equal airtime with stuff that's legal to redistribute, on some miracle share-for-all system... is a very dangerous pipe dream.

I can't support that, and I won't help cover anybody's ass if Infogrames takes an interest, which they probably will, should the "popularization" work out.

Which I don't think will be addressed by this anyhow. You'll have seeds for dozens of pirate-IP titles, putting the entire thing into legal-nightmare land... and everybody will still just play BA, which, as much as I like TFC, is still not legal to redistribute. If you ignore me and build it anyhow, it's your funeral. Just please make sure the Devs asses are covered so we don't lose the entire project, k?

Argh wrote:and everybody will still just play BA, which, as much as I like TFC, is still not legal to redistribute. If you ignore me and build it anyhow, it's your funeral. Just please make sure the Devs asses are covered so we don't lose the entire project, k?

If anything it would be publicity for the Spring engine, I have no idea why you even begin to think the project would be lost (although I do have an idea - trying to scare the devs can only benefit your cause..)

Also making an installer is no worse than distributing the mod on its own, also they don't care cause BA is neither making anyone money nor costing them money so the worse that would likely ever happen is a cease and desist for all references to TA and if we're unlucky the distribution of the mod itsself.

Using springdownloader does not mean it has to use torrents to download stuff...

And yes even for ordinary stuff like maps, its using websites where available. All except for jobjol - jobjol is off limits for downloader by JJ's own request.

Argh wrote:Um, such a proposed redistribution of the Spring engine with non-GPL source code would be a direct violation of the GPL

Violation because of a couple non-free cob scripts? Who is going to care?

Argh wrote:So... on the one hand, we have Tobi half-joking about making sure that the only official distro is GPL-compliant.

Looks more to me like he's just naming the games that happen to have installers.

AF wrote:How about we start callign the developer installer, the actual developer installer.

Because if you install it, go online, click on a game, everything needed for that game is grabbed automatically. The only thing you can't do with ease is single player; I would call it a multiplayer installer.

Violation because of a couple non-free cob scripts? Who is going to care?

It's not "a couple". It's "practically all of them".

Moreover... it's the content redistribution. Other than a few giant, non-TACC installs back in the day, which weren't entire enough to be entire games in and of themselves, there haven't been large redistributions of the entirety of OTA's content like what you're proposing. It's pretty much an in-your-face challenge to the holder's of TA's IP.

Meh. I guess hoping for internal consistency of our various ways of looking at these issues is always hopelessly muddled. I don't want BA squished, I'm just worrying about the consequences.

It's not personal or whatever- I like TFC, and have respect for the BA playerbase. I'm just concerned, is all. This goes back to installer + XTA days, and if the "make it popular" works... that could indeed lead to C&D and other obnoxiousness. Putting it in less-stark terms doesn't seem to get people's attention, so yes, I'm being alarmist.

I'm worried about anything where we're seen as breaking the GPL- that's a major black eye for GSOC and other GPL sponsors. But the piracy issue's an even bigger thing, to practically any of the organizations that give out grants, etc. None of them want to be seen standing side-by-side with cheeky software pirates, no matter how well-intentioned.

Argh wrote:

Violation because of a couple non-free cob scripts? Who is going to care?

It's not "a couple". It's "practically all of them".

I was using poor wording when really trying to characterize the amount of real code, those scripts don't have a whole lot of it individually, and repeat each other a lot.

Argh wrote:I'm worried about anything where we're seen as breaking the GPL- that's a major black eye for GSOC and other GPL sponsors. But the piracy issue's an even bigger thing, to practically any of the organizations that give out grants, etc. None of them want to be seen standing side-by-side with cheeky software pirates, no matter how well-intentioned.

Breaking our own GPL as a group? Does that even make sense? Besides, scripts that run on OTA, especially ones from OTA, don't have to be GPL because they're not derivative of spring.

This is lol.
If you want to get grant and $ than get a different sever and host your game there..
Separate all the non *A from the free projects and that's it..
Do your own thing.
Let's be honest shell we,What you want is to remove all OTA Mods since you know well that there is no chance of replacing everything any time soon.
If you accomplish this you can hope that This community might start playing other non TA games on the engine,like pure...

Again,if you say you want grants and $ and *A prevents "us" from getting it,go and do your own thing,you have an installer,get a server and go at it..
But,wait,nobody wants to play your game...
You can't have both the community and get rid of TA,
unless you are capable of making an excellent game on your own,but since pure doesnt have more players than TA mods i guess this means you can't.
Good games/mods get played and i don't want to hear any of the "everybody go to BA cause it already has players".

The current official Spring server does not in any way distribute (or helps to distribute) illegal content. No illegal data is relayed by the server either.

A c&d would at most cause file hosting sites to filter TA content. *A community would just move on to other means of sharing it. They would have to chase down every user that hosts the copy, which simply is not viable.

There is nothing to be worried about.

This has been established ages ago..

A c&d would at most cause file hosting sites to filter TA content. *A community would just move on to other means of sharing it. They would have to chase down every user that hosts the copy, which simply is not viable.

1. A complete-game installer's a different animal. Then it's one complete product- not a separable bit of content, and an executable which is theoretically being used outside the terms of the License.

2. A torrent tracker that was being used for piracy would be target no. 1 for C&D. They won't go after individuals.


Gota... meh. I'm already doing everything on your list. Some of it's more half-baked than others.

Friday, our server's officially live.

On grant proposals, etc. the details are foggy and I certainly haven't decided on a strategy for it, and won't until I have enough time to talk to the dev core around here, see what good can be done if I put my time where my mouth is. We're selling well enough to be credible, so long as I can continue to meet our sales targets. I think we can make a good case to various grantors.

I don't really expect most of you to understand this... but my perspective's a lot different at this point. There are serious opportunities available, if the project's collective nose is clean.

Maybe not opportunities that a Lurker cares about- I certainly don't see me coming up with fuck-you funding and putting the devs on contract or anything amazing like that. Most of them have decent jobs anyhow.

But a few thousand dollars here and there... might have an impact, spent wisely. Hell, if everything goes even remotely according to plan, I should have the first few dribbles in about a month and a half. Enough to get jK another video card to test with, that kind of stuff. I've been serious about this- it wasn't some bullshit I was selling during the runup to release to Stardock... I've tried to make no promises I can't keep here.

At any rate... a BA installer doesn't effect Spring itself, other than the GPL violations, which as Lurker pointed out, nobody will try to enforce.

The proposed torrent system, if it doesn't have reasonable safeguards to exclude pirated IP... is another matter. It's a system, people.

Saying, "well, it's just Coder A's pet project" is no excuse. To the outside world... all this is one thing- a thing called Spring. Grantors won't give a hoot about the legal hairsplitting we do around here to CYA.

Argh wrote:1. A complete-game installer's a different animal. Then it's one complete product- not a separable bit of content, and an executable which is theoretically being used outside the terms of the License.

2. A torrent tracker that was being used for piracy would be target no. 1 for C&D. They won't go after individuals.

1. Maybe in your mind.

2. There are countless trackers available on the internet.

So...
Can i make money out of Supreme Annihilation?

$$$

Capitalism is here baby.

So...
Can i make money out of Supreme Annihilation?

No, you can't... because the License of the engine does not allow you to.

@Regret: Sure, there are countless trackers, and they're constantly getting C&D or sued or the owners are getting put in jail. Like those supposedly-invulnerable guys at Pirate's Bay.

Do we want whoever maintains the tracker, probably some dev here working on it in their spare time, to ever have to face that, just so that you guys can have free copies of a game you have no right to redistribute? Seriously... do you not get that there are possible consequences for that, which go beyond C&D? That gets into piracy. Redistribution of a whole product as opposed to a "mod" is crossing a pretty definite line. That's why I'm describing the distinction here.

Creating a system that effectively combines redistributed IP with a program to make a complete game is another mess, legally, than just redistributing a bunch of files that don't do anything useful in and of themselves.



Meh. Do whatever you want, folks. I'm just saying... if I get to that stage, and the main project's toxic, that's a problem. But I guess that's a problem I'll deal with when I get there. Good luck either way, I wish everybody involved no ill, no matter what is done.

Argh wrote:

So...
Can i make money out of Supreme Annihilation?

No, you can't... because the License of the engine does not allow you to.

I haven't the slightest idea what you mean here.

And I'm not convinced BA has gpl violations. Can you name any code that's derivative of spring?