Taki tekst zamieścił dzisiaj Chadz, nie chce mi się tłumaczyć całości. Ogólnie chodzi o to, że nie starcza mu czasu i pieniędzy na kontynuowanie prac nad cRPG i Strategusie. Ma zamiar zamieśić cały projekt jako Open Source.
Alright, first let me state: Many people refer to cRPG as a one-man project, and even though I do nearly all of the coding myself, I have many helpers. So let me thank the guys doing the behind-the-scene work first:
- Shik, always trying to polish the game up with the little details and the weapon stats
- Varric, when he's not flaming, he's adding uber cool new weapons
- Urist, always trying to add cool ideas that are often stopped by the engine or my coding limits
- Fasader, always living up when he can nerf a whole class
- cmpxchg8b, my crying shoulder for the module system and server stuff
- Wookie, my 2nd crying shoulder when shit hits the fan
- Growl, our beloved Lock-A-Maniac, keeping the forum clean, so I don't have to read all the junk
- Vincenz0, I know no one that knows as much about Warband servers as he does
- The server admins for keeping the server somewhat pollution-free
- The donators - thanks for not letting me down.
- everyone else I forgot (oh my, what a lame sentence )
- and last but not least the whole community - I'm creating cRPG because I see that people have fun playing it, and I could never code a mod that I feel no one likes. So yes, the support and the cheering up of the community is probably the biggest motivational factor for me.
Without those, I'd probably gone amok already. I know jack shit about weapon stats, how they affect the game, etc, so without the guys above, cRPG wouldn't be where it is now - which is about 2500 unique active players per day.
However, here comes the problem: You can't just go and do a game with a fanbase as huge as this alone. Some of you might remember, some maybe don't: cRPG was never "planned". It just happened. It was just a little experiment I did in half a week to check out if it works. And it did work. Admittedly, a bit choppy - if you remember, in the beginning we had to reboot the servers to update equipment. More than one server was not possible. Or at least frigging complicated to do. You had to download a unique file and drop it into your mod folder. Oh boy, installation was horrible.
Well, we've gone a far way, but I am at a point where I cannot go on like this any more. Many people asked why I don't expand my team. Well, it was lazyness. Kind of. I have made quite a lot of experiences in my life, both on and offline, and one thing i've learned is: if one guy can do 100% alone, two guys will get to about 130%. Cooperation and Communication just makes everything.. complicated and slow. While this might not be true for a company, it is for a non-profit project where no one's getting payed. People just have different time to put in. And the more people join, the more work it is communicating any changes, any ideas, anything to the different members.
Therefore, I was always trying to do everything myself. I didn't owe anyone any deadlines, any progress, I could stop and start whenever I wanted. Of course, that came at a price - I had to do a tradeoff. The winner was features and gameplay, the loser was graphics and looks.
So what's my point?
My point is that uni is starting again, that I have to get some reallife work done to pay the bills, and that I cannot put as much time into the project as I'd love to. If I'd have all the time in the world, I'd love to get rid of the entire website and put both cRPG and strategus into the warband game itself. I have a pretty detailed plan on how to integrate strategus into the native warband campaign map, but alas, I don't have the time to do it. Other stuff will still be done, but it will take longer.
However, I think it is time to open cRPG. cRPG needs new people working on it, especially the website part, but of course also the mod part. I will try to go the open source direction, however, so far I'm unsure about how to do that properly.
The problem is that the website is a wreck. It was smashed together in a day, and then I started piling up code on top of that. Well, we all know the result
Another problem is security - lots of people tried to gain an unfair advantage by whatever means possible, and I am not willing to give up on the cheat-free environment we have right now. This means that the database itself will stay with me having the only access.
So, for now I'd like to hear your opinion on how it could work out, do you think that letting everyone work on it would make it better or worse, if it could actually work out, your experiences, etc.
ps: there was a thread about trying to put ads on the website, i'll give that a try, if it's annoying or not creating money I'll remove it again, but lets try it out for a week or so.