Open source, official community-based updates?

[Narkro555]

I saw this exact phrase as a suggestion on a subreddit about Blockland. I am not knowledgable in the way of game development and don't fully understand it, so I figured I'd ask here instead of suggestions. Why don't we have updates the community makes? It sounds promising, although I also have the feeling there's a drawback somewhere. Could someone enlighten me?

[Ad Bot]

[Pecon]

This has been a promising ideal for a long while now since certain users like Trinick, Port, and a few others already make their own modifications to the engine to do things. However, all proposals to Badspot in the past to let them create real updates to the game have been ignored or rejected in some manner.

[Narkro555]

This has been a promising ideal for a long while now since certain users like Trinick, Port, and a few others already make their own modifications to the engine to do things. However, all proposals to Badspot in the past to let them create real updates to the game have been ignored or rejected in some manner.

Are there possible drawbacks to this that might be problematic to him? He must reject them for some reason.

[ZERØ]

This would be nice, like pecon stated, people like them would be of great help.
I see no reason why not to.

Though I'm sure each one would require Badspot, Rotondo, and Kompressor's approval, or maybe jus Badspot's Approval.

[Pecon]

Are there possible drawbacks to this that might be problematic to him?

Some likely problems are that if Badspot worked privately with the modders, he would likely have to hire them in some way since he's a private company. If he let them do the updates on a completely open source basis, he wouldn't have to hire them, but it would likely mean making the entire game wholly open source. Which would mean that anyone could take the code and fork it or sell it or make evil competitors to the official game.

There is a way to do it right that avoids both those problems, but it likely requires jumping through far more hoops than Badspot is willing to accommodate.

[Narkro555]

Some likely problems are that if Badspot worked privately with the modders, he would likely have to hire them in some way since he's a private company. If he let them do the updates on a completely open source basis, he wouldn't have to hire them, but it would likely mean making the entire game wholly open source. Which would mean that anyone could take the code and fork it or sell it or make evil competitors to the official game.

This does seem like a good but tricky proposition then, and a risky move for Badspot to make. I think I understand the situation better now.

[Dannu]

-snip-

Another problem with the open-source thing is that the version of game engine that predates Torque 3D, TGE, that Blockland runs on, is not public like the former is and can't be released.

[Crystalwarrior]

I think it'd be much better if Badspot did more updates similar to how he included setMaxForwardSpeed (forgot the name) as a default function.

As long as Badspot supports the modding community Blockland will be healthy, at least I belive so.

[Zeblote]

The easiest way is that he just releases more updates...

[Dannu]

The easiest way is that he just releases more updates...

You can't seriously expect that of him.

[Zeblote]

You can't seriously expect that of him.

I can.

[SgtDaemon]

You can't seriously expect that of him.

By more I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean massive content upgrades every week, but more like a few fixes or additional modding resources every once in a while.

Expecting for the latter to happen without 5-12 month gaps is completely realistic imo.

crap i really shouldn't restart this argument

[ZERØ]

Well when he released the update that basically re-wrote how ghosting was done, that had a huge backfire for some systems, he probably tests things intensely before releasing them to avoid things like those happen, then lets not forget he has to do the same on the Mac version.

Still waiting for that semi-confirmed linux version in that vague comment Rotondo made.

[TheBlackParrot]

Still waiting for that semi-confirmed linux version in that vague comment Rotondo made.

It runs fine in Wine for the time being, although it would be nice.

[Afraidanna]

I think Badspot should give his opinion on this in this thread