If anyone has heard of "TA3D", you know that they are serious trouble for the TAS community.
I propose that we, not sabotage, but eliminate the competition. we may be better, but let's make sure we are the only 3D TA. I dont care if they were or weren't here first, i still say that we should take them out to prevent new Spring-ers from being persuaded to that side.
Felix the Cat wrote:Saying that TA3D is competition for Spring is like saying that a Geo Metro is competition for a Ferrari.
i dont know a word of what you said, i dont speak car.
Now think, if people find about TA3D, we may lose people. We lose people to them, they prosper; they prosper, we lose even more people. We need to nip this thing in the bud.
Look at Star Wars, the Empire didnt see the Rebels as a threat until it was too late.
Use the source Luke, cooperation is the key, both Spring and TA3D live by the open source mantra. You should not fear the unknown, it's destructive and draws you into the dark side.
It's not competition. Their objectives are different.
TA3D is about recreating OTA, faultlessly, in 3D. That's it. It's not a bad goal, by any means, but a lesser one. Most of the designers were unhappy how Spring kept deviating from the course they thought was best, so they started their own project. While I wish them no ill will, and I'm glad to see they're continuing to release more stuff, I am not very interested in what they're doing.
Spring, on the other hand, has become an Open Source RTS game engine. CE promises to advance this towards fruition, finally freeing us from the limitations of OTA's game design.
Who's been driving this? Mainly us game designers. When SJ originally wrote Spring, he just wanted a clean OTA engine port in 3D. Then all of us annoying, hyper-active people came along and said, "hey, we remember OTA mainly because it was fun to mod for a minute" and we started innovating. We started breaking things. We started writing patches (ok, small patches and a lot public griping in the Forums, but still, we occasionally write real code).
The developers for this project, and the way it's managed, are very special, and a huge part of why I'm here, and not somewhere else.
Instead of the typical, "we know what is best for everybody, we will enforce our vision on everybody" stuff that is so typical of projects like these, they've responded to game designers, producing a really useful partnership between engineering and imagineering. I've never worked in a place like this before- there's nothing else like it on the Internet that I know of, either. Most projects are somebody's dream-child, and that one person is where the project walks or falters. Not so with Spring. Here, everybody lifts everybody (yay, even despite our drama and personality conflicts). It's pretty cool.
TA3D is about some guys who think TA was the game. Spring is about many games. I don't even think about them, or the countless projects like them, when I think about where the future is, for Open Source gaming. I think that the model that people will be studying will be this one.
Which may sound like hyperbole or whatever, but I would disagree. Go to most supposedly "Open Source" projects, and you will find, after 5 minutes of studying their Forums and design documents, that the developers are right in people's faces, telling them what to make, telling people what the game's going to be like, etc. It's oppressive and elitist. Here, the game engine serves the designers, who are free to be weird, conventional, or anything in between. It's this basic division-of-labor between coders and designers that makes Spring so cool to be around. I mean, nobody would be happy if any one of us game designers ran this show. And we'd probably be equally unhappy if the coders ran it, either.
It's arguable that this dilution of effort means that the game engine is less "perfect" than it could possibly be. However, what I've seen is that, on the contrary, it's encouraged tighter code and much more discussion between content-developers and engineers about How Things Work than is typical in most game communities.
Most places, the coders say, "you can only design things like X", or "we want artists to make XYZ art asset for us". The visions of the artists are ignored. And the only real game design is at the engine level. Otherwise it's pointless forum flames and long-winded dissertations which lead nowhere.
Here... well... if you hate my design for NanoBlobs... it's GPL! Tear it up! Make Wolves into "Hawks" or "Ravens", because you hate the names! Rebal everything! Design new models! Or start your own game from scratch! It's... it's just awesome. Lots of work, but still, awesome.
Every time I get annoyed with the e-drama around here, I think about that.
Pshh. Have you even tried that TA3D? If you had you'd immediatly see how it is absolutly no match for Spring. TA3Ds public statement is to say they are different from Spring because they are truer from OTA. But if you try it, you immediatly notice half of the standard features of standard untis fails for no reason, there's not pathfinding, you'd be lucky if one COB animation plays, units refuse to get built for no reason, etc... So, if you test the actual stuff instead of merely reading dev declared intent, in the current states, Spring recreates OTA with far less fault than TA3D.
I mean, I respect the developper behind TA3D, they sure did tremendous job, and even in dream I wouldn't want to imagine all they have accomplished, but still, Spring is entirely another league. Spring works. Spring has dozen of online games going on at any time. Spring is thriving with modders, players, developpers, chatters (well, ok, dev are always lacking, but still, much less than for TA3D).
The one thing that I find interesting in TA3D is how it reads Total Annihilation maps. If we could steal, errr, I mean, share in all GPL fairness, the bit of code that does that, it'll be great.
And, hmm, in such area as fan made free project, competition is a good thing, and contrary to what you think, it brings more people for both project, because you get two sources that raise awereness, and anyway since they're free and all people aren't limited by having to choose on of the other.
And just like in business, having competition force each to outdo his best, while without competiting, it's easy to fall into lazyness.
You'll find yourself banned here if you expect to plan raids on any communication channel spring owned. This isn't ebaums world, go take your e-guerrilla wars elsewhere.
Ok then, im officially sorry. When i saw the website, i thought of how our verion of TA would turn out, with the fans and all. I guess i just overreacted.
We all have the same objective (Providing everone with free and high quality rts games and a easy way to play then against other people over the internet), so I dont think we should destroy each other.
The true enemy are the great game companys that will try to crush us with their expensive games! :)
