TDM after D3 Source code release

[nbohr1more]

The biggest resource that TDM has over Hexen is actual mappers. Any valuable trade between the mods might necessarily require involvement from the mappers. I think that Sonsuke already contributed some work over there, anyone else interested?

[Springheel]

It seems from their thread that we use more D3 assets, though, so we'd still have a lot of work to do even with their work, but at least they're going to shorten the distance to the finish line if they go ahead.

 

Yes, we use a great deal more, if this statement is true: "Luckily as far as textures/models went we pretty much were already all of our own stuff. "

 

Just off the top of my head I can think of several sets of skeleton/animations (zombies x2, werebeast), half a dozen character heads, and at least two AI models that use D3 assets that would be quite time-consuming to replace.

 

I certainly agree that it would be great to have a standalone TDM, much like it would be great to switch to a modern physics engine. But in both cases the chances of motivating the necessary people to do the necessary work is slim.

[deadite4]

I'm all for working together to help each other out. We lucked out in hexen in that I believe all of our animations were made in house. Off the top of my head the only model/animation in the build with any relation to Doom 3 is our player model which is still the Doom 3 marine. We have the talent to take care of that in house though fortunately.

 

All of our level textures are in house. As for particles, we might use a few D3 ones, but mostly we have in house particles. Unfortunately though maybe about 50% of our in house particles use D3 textures as their material source. I'm already going to start going through our particles and prepping a list for our texture guy.

 

We are also hoping they release all the base entity defs and scripts with the source release. It may be a long off hope, but it would make the code portion of the move much easier. Otherwise we'll just be duplicating a bunch of code for the sake of duplicating it which is just time consuming and annoying, but oh well.

 

Our sounds are probably about 85% in house. There have been a few D3 ones that made it in for place holders a long time back, but it's nothing monumental to replace for us.

 

I'm for sharing whatever we can share between our 2 projects. While we'd love some mapping help, it doesn't have to be a requirement. It will all come down to what each side really could use, and what kind of availability we all have for helping outside our own project. I, for example, wouldn't mind throwing some sounds your way if you needed them once I replace the hexen ones. I simply would just love to see as many projects as possible utilize this opportunity being given to us to release our hard work as standalone and free.

[Melan]

Obviously such an incomplete and aesthetically broken package isn't representative of TDM as a final product but that's what separate builds are for. Misconceptions should be easy to avoid. You can incorporate the phrase "experimental build" into every placeholder asset and the official build can remain a mod that requires Doom 3 until you feel merging is appropriate.

There are enough misconceptions floating around about TDM already. Things which should be totally obvious to anyone taking even a short look, but persist because people can't be assed to do even that. If I had ten dollars for every conversation which involved "but it is Doom3! it is like plastic, can't do open areas plus flashlight lol amirite?", "why would I want to play a stupid FPS instead of glorious, glorious Thief?" or some variant of "I didn't follow the setup instructions and my game doesn't work. It is full of bugs!", it would pay for my next hardware upgrade and then some.

 

Also, to add more negativity to the fire, I bet there will be a lot of people saying "sure, a few assets, they should be easy to replace, when can I expect my FREE STANDALONE?" and very, very few actually putting up their hands and saying "Hi guys, I do game music/animations/whatever and I am happy to help you."

 

Granted, the Doom3 community will do a lot of it, so things will go forward, if not rapidly.

[ungoliant]

If I had ten dollars for every conversation which involved.....

 

maybe you can. ever thought about setting up a donation procedure for the team/mappers? its not like the TDM team is asking for a lot (or anything at all) already. maybe some monetary incentive would help to get things progressing? when d3 open source is released, there will certainly be a lot of things to progress on.

 

edit: i just paid ~$20 for minecraft a few days ago. i wonder how much i'd give for TDM???

Edited November 4, 2011 by ungoliant

[Serpentine]

It doesn't really work in application, any team distributed around the place or larger than 2-3 people will run into issues when money comes into play. The community is also let down in a lot of ways when that happens, as there's a sort of expectation. At the moment the hosting is taken care of internally and that's about all the expenses.

 

If anything, people are free to use bounties should they want, but it's a bit tricky on engine work, especially without any groundwork done to give a better estimation.

[Tels]

maybe you can. ever thought about setting up a donation procedure for the team/mappers? its not like the TDM team is asking for a lot (or anything at all) already. maybe some monetary incentive would help to get things progressing? when d3 open source is released, there will certainly be a lot of things to progress on.

 

edit: i just paid ~$20 for minecraft a few days ago. i wonder how much i'd give for TDM???

 

The problem with "asking for money" is that it turns up a lot of issues:

 

* like distribution: how do you physicall/virtually distribute the money to the various people around the globe? The bank/transfer costs will eat a lot of the money, you don't even have the bank details from everyone etc.

* distribution in the "who gets how much" sense. There are easily over 50 people listed as AUTHORS, do they all get the same share? (I think some of the main contributors would think this is insane)

* how do you contact 50+ people and what happens if they do not respond?

* if TDM is suddenly a commercial game, that changes the legal status (you might need ratings, approval from boards etc)

 

Etc etc.

 

 

Now, the "bounty" idea sounds better. Just define what the work should encompass, when it is considered done etc. Then ask who wants to do it for how much, set up a fund (ok, thiat might be tricky) and when the person is done, the money is transfered, and the work is donated back to TDM.

 

However, you first need to find a third-party that can deal with the money-exchange etc.

[greebo]

Since we're speaking about expenses: the team is using their own server since the beginning of this year and it is team-funded at the moment. It's costing EUR 29,- per month, which is EUR 348,- per year. About half a dozen team members donated about EUR 60,- for 2011, I myself am paying a tiny tad more since I'm also using it for angua's domain. I'd thought I'd share those numbers because it shows how much the team is caring about the mod, it's definitely not a matter of course that folks give out actual Euros for something they also have to spend their freetime on.

 

We use the server for SVN, website, e-mail, automated release packaging and testing. We haven't started the 2012 server financing drive yet, but I guess if any non-team people want to chip a few bucks I doubt that the team would object.

[deadite4]

So long as you stay as a mod for Doom 3, EULA prevents any financial acceptance from end-users.

[greebo]

I'm not so sure about that. I've read the EULA as shipped with the SDK, but maybe I missed something. Please point out the section that is preventing us from receiving donations.

[_Atti_]

It's not for the mod, it's for server expenses..i dont think it matters what it hosts. You just support the run of the servers.

[7upMan]

maybe you can. ever thought about setting up a donation procedure for the team/mappers?

 

IMHO, the best incentive for producing good FMs would be donating prices the best mapper can win. Bikerdude took the sixpack of beer I sent him as his price for winning the last contest. I am sure that similar approaches are possible. Say, using Amazon (US, UK or DE) for delivery saves the gifter time, money and effort. I can fully imagine to donate another sixpack of beer or a bottle of wine for the next contest. Belgian chocolate would be another possibility. It doesn't have to involve actual money. Regarding donations for the team's server expenses, a PayPal account could be created that is used solely for this purpose. Any thoughts about that?

[Tels]

Since we're speaking about expenses: the team is using their own server since the beginning of this year and it is team-funded at the moment. It's costing EUR 29,- per month, which is EUR 348,- per year. About half a dozen team members donated about EUR 60,- for 2011, I myself am paying a tiny tad more since I'm also using it for angua's domain. I'd thought I'd share those numbers because it shows how much the team is caring about the mod, it's definitely not a matter of course that folks give out actual Euros for something they also have to spend their freetime on.

 

We use the server for SVN, website, e-mail, automated release packaging and testing. We haven't started the 2012 server financing drive yet, but I guess if any non-team people want to chip a few bucks I doubt that the team would object.

 

Can only underwrite that.

 

 

Adding to that, I also pay US$ 20 per month for the bloodgate account, which is nowadays mainly a TDM mirror (and my personal web/email server - but that is just a tiny amount).

 

Do not want donations etc. for this, I am (and have the past years) paid that from my own pocket. But it goes definitely in the "we actually pay to give you TDM for free" direction as well.

[ungoliant]

what about setting up a master TDM paypal account (or something) through somebody trustworthy to hold a stash of donated funds to be doled out for bounties on bugtracker entries. Theres a few bugtracker entries i'd chip in money to see implemented. Individual coders/mappers/contributors could have their own accounts credited through this master account upon completion of work. If the word gets out about that kind of system, it might even encourage people outside the TDM community to just browse the bugtracker and look for things with large bounties on them, do the work, and collect the cash. would also allow the TDM community to have a direct hand in getting the things done that they want to see in TDM via incentive.

[Springheel]

I think bounties are a bad idea. Any time money gets involved in a freelance project, it's bound to complicate things. Would payed tasks take priority over other requests? What if someone accepts a bounty and then needs help with the task? What if the person fronting the money isn't happy with the result? Etc.

 

Donating money to cover the costs of things we have to pay for, like the server, is a different issue.

[grayman]

I agree. No bounties. Complicates matters and relationships.

[deadite4]

I'm not so sure about that. I've read the EULA as shipped with the SDK, but maybe I missed something. Please point out the section that is preventing us from receiving donations.

 

 

You shall not rent, sell, lease, lend, offer on a pay-per-play basis, or otherwise commercially exploit or commercially distribute the New Creations. You are permitted to distribute, without any cost or charge, the New Creations only to other end-users so long as such distribution is not infringing against any third-party right and otherwise is not illegal or unlawful.

 

You could argue that it's for server expenses, but good luck dealing with that headache(especially because the reason you have server expenses is directly related to the mod). Unless of course you enjoy wasting your time replying to lawyers all day long. Even if you were able to loophole it and get away with it.........I'd rather go work a payed job for a few hours and pay my expenses than deal with legal talk for days/weeks on end.

Edited November 5, 2011 by deadite4

[greebo]

You could argue that it's for server expenses, but good luck dealing with that headache (especially because the reason you have server expenses is directly related to the mod).

I thought you were referring to that section of the EULA, I've read it too. While I'm not a lawyer myself of course, we're certainly not renting, selling, leasing nor offering it on a pay-per-play basis. We're not commercially distributing it either, the only thing that would maybe apply is "commercially exploiting" - but I personally think labelling the receipt of 100% voluntary donations to cover server expenses as "commercial exploitation" is a far call. One might see that differently of course. I'd be interested to see a lawyer's view on that matter (demagogue?).

 

Hypothetically asked, if I were hosting a forum related to The Dark Mod and would be asking for donations to keep the service running, would that be considered commercially exploiting the derivative work ("New Creation") of The Dark Mod team?

 

With a bit of luck that question is meaningless in a few weeks anyway, so let's hope Carmack can push it through the legal department.

[Bikerdude]

We haven't started the 2012 server financing drive yet, but I guess if any non-team people want to chip a few bucks I doubt that the team would object.

happy to donate some £££

[deadite4]

but I personally think labelling the receipt of 100% voluntary donations to cover server expenses as "commercial exploitation" is a far call.

 

Sure, it very well could be a far call and you could be completely fine on doing it. My stance is "me personally" it's more worthwhile of my time and interest to just pay any expenses and avoid any potential back and forth with lawyers in general. Hexen doesn't cost the team anything more than a few hundred dollars a year at tops. With such a relatively small expense it simply just isn't a bother to replace that with talking to lawyers even if in the end you can get away with it.

 

Plus with donations through payal(assuming that is what is used) if the end user isn't receiving anything for their money than Paypal has the right to freeze all accounts involved. It's happened to quite a few bigger name indy projects where people are 'donating' for access to beta versions of any indy game with no guarantee of a finished product(this happened to minecraft, project zomboid, etc).

 

Again it's all just preference. My free time and some potential headaches isn't worth a few hundred dollars a year split between a few people on the team even if in the end I'd be fine with what I was doing. It's all relative to the team no doubt.

[New Horizon]

I agree. No bounties. Complicates matters and relationships.

 

I also agree. No bounties.

[demagogue]

I personally think labelling the receipt of 100% voluntary donations to cover server expenses as "commercial exploitation" is a far call. One might see that differently of course. I'd be interested to see a lawyer's view on that matter (demagogue?).

 

I studied copyright and licensing stuff generally, but a question this specific I wouldn't want to answer definitively without reading the case law and doing research on it. There may be cases on donation-ran enterprises under this kind of license. It doesn't *sound* like commercial exploitation to me either, but even with only donations there may be stuff to look out for. I really don't know off the top of my head.

 

We're on better ground with the domain, since that's an established thing & separate from the game.

 

My feeling is if people really want to show their appreciation, the best thing they could do is literally contribute something to the mod, an FM, a model, a texture, a sound effect, or if nothing else (if I person feels they have no technical ability) fanfics & fan art. It shouldn't be underestimated how useful more background fiction would be for the mod, and a good fanfic is one way to contribute that. (They should just read the "Fiction" section of the wiki first so it's informed & consistent with the world.)

[jaxa]

I can't wait to see what changes TDM could make almost immediately. Which brings me to a question: are there plans to roll in a bunch of pending small tweaks and fixes in with 1.07 or a rapid release 1.08? Stuff that ends up being a one line change that adds 5 FPS (lol)? First thing that came to my mind was the lightgem code.

 

An answer on 1.08 release, anybody? If the source was released tomorrow, would you unfreeze 1.07 instead?

[grayman]

An answer on 1.08 release, anybody? If the source was released tomorrow, would you unfreeze 1.07 instead?

 

It's too soon to make any projections.

 

1.07 is frozen, which means frozen.

[greebo]

Whenever the sources are released (we don't know when or even if it's 100% certain) we can't say now what we actually get or in which condition the code is, nor how many changes would need to be done to TDM's game code. Whatever happens don't expect a quickshot release or anything like that, we don't have the manhours per day necessary to achieve anything within a short timeframe.