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I must be a retard or something.
I want to create my own game, using my own tech. But I have no way to let others work with me, because my engine still uses code from Quake. I can't prevent any partner from redistributing the engine to the masses while its code is still tainted by the GPL. The GPL kills any chance of the novelty factor of a new technology becoming a selling point, because the "release early, release often" approach of open source software development prevents any new software from becoming mature before reaching the masses. The GPL forces software to become widely available even when it still is a piece of crap, and by the time the software's potential finally gets fully realized, it's old news already and the excitement about its novelty has been over for a long while; there's no room for novelty factor under the GPL. The GPL is great for operating systems, business software and the like, but it's awful for the interactively dynamic artistic expressions of videogame technology, because they depend on timing and novelty. If new technology doesn't get people excited by the time it's complete and polished, there is no incentive for developers to keep pushing that technology forward. Try to imagine someone telling you an awfully boring joke over and over, slightly modifying it on each iteration. By the time the current version of the joke is finally good, you already know what the joke is. There is no surprise, no figuring out, no catch. No fun. E.B. White — 'Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.' Carmack is not stupid. He released his sources, but only when their tech was already old news. He didn't release his sources early because it would have been a waste of commercial momentum. But people using his GPL'd sources does not have this option; this is one of the reasons why they could never compete. This forces me to create everything alone because I can't redesign the tech without having proper assets to test it with. More often than not, testing the engine with proper assets reveals further algorithm redesigns that needs to be carried on. And creating proper assets takes a whole fucking lot of study and work. I don't know why I'm still motivated to work on this thing. It's a fucking chore, and it's making me feel I'm behaving like an egoistical cunt. It'll likely take forever to redesign and rewrite the whole engine, even if I replace parts of it with MIT/BSD licensed libraries. I'm not hopeful. I am a fucking retard. I could be doing something else with my life. I do feel proud of some algorithms, but as a whole what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is pathetic. Most successful projects require 20-200 friends, with at least 5 of them to be loyal diehards committed to an idea.
Most things born in this world are spawned by social groups anchored with a few talented people working together. The thing about doing things with a social group 1) They will reality check you. 2) They will emotionally support you when you are down. 3) They will get excited when you hit a checkpoint. Do you have a plan written on paper with each step laid out of what you plan to do and how you plan to achieve it and the time frame for each step and then laying out why and how to make money? If so, have you shown others to collect their thoughts? Winning is achieved by taking CHAOS and forcing it into ORDER against its will. Chaos always fights back. A plan represents the ability to internally conquer your own chaos and force it into order. /One opinion. Ultimately, legality/GPL doesn't really enter into it - are you really going to sue them if they release it? Do they expect that, or would they just redistribute it regardless?
Frankly, if someone wants to work with you to make something awesome then they're very likely to respect your wishes and not distribute to the world before its ready. Sure, they might distribute it if you disappear off the face of the planet, but that should be considered a good thing in the potential event of your death. Ultimately, you just have to trust them to respect your wishes. The only difference the GPL really makes is that they probably have your sourcecode too. Sure, they'd have a legal right to redistribute, but anyone who actually uses that right in this situation is basically a dick. also: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#InternalDistribution (I'm not entirely sure where it actually says that in the gplv2, but hey...) Alternatively, you can distribute your non-derivative changes as a gpl-incompatible library. They can use+compile it themselves but as they can't relicense your code, they can't distribute the result. Obviously there's nothing physically stopping them from doing so anyway, or just violating your gpl-incompatible license too. I'm guessing you'd have a legal basis to sue them (I'm not a lawyer, so that's JUST a guess), but it still won't get you anywhere. Frankly you're just going to have to trust them. Whether its gpl or proprietary doesn't really make any practical difference unless either you're rich+willing to sue(ie: you're a dick [for lack of a better word]), or they don't respect your wishes (they're dicks). I know its much easier said than done, but just don't work with dicks. :) The other option you have is to go with cross-engine standards like eg iqm. They can make the model work fine in some other engine, and you can then test that everything else works in your engine. Standards are great for not bothering to create your own content. :) Spike: Useful stuff, I didn't know about that FAQ.
I'm actually planning to convert the whole renderer into an external DLL once I manage to fully redesign and untangle it from the rest of the engine. Upgrading the license to GPL v3 allows that. This will also allow me to create a simplified version of the renderer which will work closer to vanilla WinQuake, but its code should be much easier to understand. This is also why I'm not replacing and removing Quake-specific features such as the QC virtual machine and the physics code yet. I want to see how far my code can go without breaking compatibility with vanilla Quake before branching it into a fully different engine. Baker: I'm my own chaos. My mind is only stable when my metabolic rate is high, which only happened five years ago. Before that, I got as far as searching for self-surgery methods to rip off the fat from my body before figuring out a semi-suicidal method which allowed me to lose 59Kg and stabilize my weight at 70Kg. Since then, financial difficulties and other factors forced me to stop going to the gym and I've regained 20Kg, which makes me hate myself because I fucking hate this disgusting mass of dead weight dragging me down and making everything more difficult. This year I've solved my financial situation and most of the other crap, and I'm pondering about going back to the semi-suicidal weight loss method if I don't manage to get results through safer ways. Usually I have to beat the shit out of my mind for it to do what should be done. There's some other smaller crap going on, but if I recover the energy I had in 2012 nothing will be able to stop me anymore. About the plans for the engine and the game, I don't write everything down because my failed experience with Patreon taught me that I'm terrible at expressing things in a way that people can understand. What surprised me the most in that experience was that a surprisingly significant amount of people were asking me about things which I had already informed as clearly as I could in the project description. This is another reason why I've been putting effort into creating everything alone; the only way to clearly communicate my vision is to produce an example of it, so I'm trying to create a proper demo. I don't write everything down because my failed experience with Patreon taught me that I'm terrible at expressing things
Sounds like you found what you need to do. Change that. Watch videos on persuasion and then practice it. Communications skills and the ability to market ones own ideas is more important than any other skill because it is what enables one to accumulate resources and instill confidence in other people that you are going to win. In the age of free communication, it sounds like your self-imposed limitation of poor communications skill makes free communication worthless. You did poorly with the Patreon because you told almost no one about, did not make it sound exciting and did not explain why you think it is great. You also gave up on the Patreon very quickly because it did poorly because you did a poor effort to promote it. Then you proceeded to judge your own project's worth based on the response to the very half-assed effort you made to promote the Patreon. Which do you fear more? 1) The thought of being embarrassed while you level up your communications skills. 2) Failure. Never getting what you want. A life of regret. Living with opportunities but knowing you were not brave enough to dare to put forward your best effort because you were too afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Humans are malleable and you can mold yourself as you so desire, if you have the courage to do so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM&t=40s /One perspective. I'm wrong a lot. I am not from the communication = persuasion school of thought. I know a lot of people that have good persuasion skills but I would still say they are poor communicators because getting what you want people to do is only part of the matter. An important part to be sure but without more it is not really sustainable.
I realise we are in the age of self learning with free access to everything but IMHO, with communication, any learning is only going to get you so far. You have to try it repeatedly, and be prepared to fail in order to learn what will work for you. Because you have to believe in the method you come up with, otherwise ultimately it is not really sustainable. ...The GPL forces software to become widely available even when it still is a piece of crap, and by the time the software's potential finally gets fully realized, it's old news already and the excitement about its novelty has been over for a long while...
Most indie teams have to work really hard to market themselves to get their game noticed by anybody. Your worry about doing no marketing and yet the early alpha of your engine going viral and everyone on the internet sees it, seems to go against reality for most indie teams. I have shame enough to hide my face when talking shit online. Shame the same can not be said for all. Woe unto the wise, the bane of us all
Join me mugwump. Realize you're an idiot with nothing worth saying and refrain from posting. Make some wooden spoons or something. Please.
You did poorly […] because you […], did not make it sound exciting and did not explain why you think it is great.
It did sound exciting to me, and I did say why I thought it's great. The fact that you and several other people could never recognize that just proves my point. Promoting things can be hard work.
But since you emailed 1000 people, posted on Reddit, contacted several gaming web sites, spread the word on social networks, knocked door to door in wealthy neighborhoods --- and did it all repeatedly for months on end -- I think you can take comfort that you showed up the battlefield. You gave it your all! That is the best anyone can do. /See metlslime post #264 above. That would only make sense if I was promoting a (nearly) finished product.
Spending most of my time doing PR work instead of coding would be essentially a scam. Anyway, I don't need money anymore. That is good to hear.
Someone working on a project should spend maybe 2% of time promoting it passively (blog? an occasional screenshot in random places) Someone in an active promotion mode, should spend 100% of time available to very vigorously promoting their work. Func_Msgboard examples are like when Sleepwalker was trying to get John Romero to say something about TrenchBroom (it worked!) or the kind of promotion Sock did with early Quake releases around the 2012 period, Sock hit a lot of different places -- including some very non-Quake places -- and was thinking "2 thumbs up, finally someone doing it right!". Self-promotion is not a crime. Especially if the cause is just. Someone afraid of seeming a bit like a spammer is guilty of the crime --- the crime of not being perceived as definitely a spammer. I hope you do succeed, you have always made interesting and unique contributions, particularly to things like the software renderer and lit water and such. I can remember years back digging through your engine for innovations. I still can remember trying your pixelated water technique in WinQuake way early in this decade WinQuake pixelated water and acquiring WinQuake skybox support, which I know probably was derived from ToChris but you did it better ;-) beefing with Breezeep for saying he didnt have enough time or inspiration for this jam but then ABSOLUTELY KILLING IT WITH HIS SCREENSHOT GAME.
1v1 me bro
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