You would like to give feedback on the tiles and sprites? All the tiles and sprites are freely accessible to everyone already, on our database. As jman has already explained, it would only be worthwhile making the source code available to those that have the experience and expertise to critique it. S2HD is all about collaboration. It would be a very bad decision for us to make the source code freely available at this time. It would lead to "project dissemination", where different individuals and groups take all the work we have produced and say, "we can do better than you!". Instead of collaborating, these different groups would then produce many different builds, often replicating one another's efforts rather than working together with us.
That's a typo in that previous post, sorry. I meant to say "It", not "I". I was saying how hard it would be for the community to give feedback and comment on the tiles/sprites if they weren't freely available... Just like the code isn't available. Those who can't "critique" it obviously won't comment about it, just like with the artwork. Indeed it is all about collaboration. And so far, everything to do with the engine and programming has been kept under wraps. As for project project dissemination, I can't see many people/groups doing that, as very little interest has been shown in the programming forum. Unless these people who would go and steal it and then not collaborate have been secretly viewing the forum and not posting. Fair enough I suppose though. :\ Although these people who wouldn't contribute to the project wouldn't be contributing in the first place, so there is nothing the project would lose. Only if they released a whole Sonic2HD before this communities release. Highly unlikely me thinks Cheers
I don't know if you've been following this project from the beginning Pincus, but we've had three programmers so far (established members of the community) who have expressed an interest in working on the engine. But in all three cases, they opted out: so we are now extremely cautious who we place our faith in when it comes to programming. It would be silly for us to throw the code out there to everyone and hope for something constructive. The code has to be analyzed in collaboration with our programmer. In part, Sanik has helped with this - and because he understands the context of the engine somewhat, he has been able to provide invaluable feedback to our programmer, which has aided development. For those that have the skill, time and a sincere interest in contributing to the programming side of the project, this will be discussed only after the first release candidate has been made available.
Yeah, I see no reason why anyone should be forced to open source or otherwise preliminarily release this engine. It's the property and work of whoever their engine programmer is (even if it's being used with a community project), and as such he's not obligated to share it with anyone. You should be happy that he's even deciding to share it with the project! Too many people think they're entitled to others' work because of the whole "open source" movement. It's pretty shocking, and extremely disrespectful towards programmers who choose to keep their hard, unpaid work to themselves.
Pincus has a point. Other people changing the source code would be like modifying and pointing out the flaws in the graphics people post in here... Which is what has been done since the beginning of the project. Some changes would be taken into account by the programmer for the next build, some wouldn't.
And I'm telling you that the analogy is flawed from the beginning. You CANNOT develop games via committee, that's not how things work. The idea of the community project is to allow anyone with skill contribute to the project and to allow a platform for publicity and critique. It does NOT imply that the community as a whole works directly in the development process. That's how stuff like Sonic 4 happens.
If I comment that X's sprite has 1 pixel off, and I explain why I feel that way, X has the choice to be able to take my suggestion, and if he feels that it is an appropriate and necessary change for the better, he can implement it. If he feels that I'm just being an originalpixelfag, then he is more than welcome to ignore it, (and if he's kind enough, explain why he feels that it should be ignored). He is under no obligation to change anything. But, at least it is on the record for posterity for those who see my suggestion, and then may think to oneself "you know, that 1 pixel does look off." And maybe they might have better explanations for why it is off and why it should be changed. The only requirement for this ecosystem is that X had to post a snapshot of the sprite he was working on. One might say "not everyone is experienced enough in graphic art to be able to find something wrong." And you'd be right. But I'd also like to suggest that those of us who have taken the time to go through the process of becoming a member (which requires thoughtful posts in the first place) are probably people who sincerely want the best for this project, and are thus entitled to a voice of opinion. I would ask all members to think before you comment on anyone's work, and to ask oneself if the comment they are making is just their personal axe to grind, or if their comment constitutes a genuine effort to improve the quality of this project. If a member makes a comment under that pretense, then I believe it deserves to be allowed. I understand that not everyone is a programmer, but I believe that those who post in the programming thread on posts that concern programming (not just "when's it going to be done?!!" posts), are people who could have valuable insight or ideas on how to do things. Pincus brought up a good point that the current situation with the engine is akin to saying "oh yea, we've been working on all of the sprites for the game, oh, but we won't show you what it looks like until a certain date when we're going to have a tech demo ready." In the art threads that someone will post their WIP of initial sketches and outlines, then someone comes along and says "oh, his nose is too curvy, see? here's why." And that kind of refinement helped the project along. But that requires for that artist to have posted his initial sketches. I'm not demanding that the engine source be posted right now in this thread for everyone to see, because honestly, not everyone can read code whereas everyone can see a picture, and so I understand the angle that you are coming from. However, I do feel that there needs to be some way to "sign up" to have permission to access the code (commit privileges can be something that requires additional permissions) and if you have to go the route of agreeing not to disseminate the code outside of the project, then that's fine with me. It's just that a tech demo is too much of a vertical slice that requires too many decisions and technical commitments going on in the dark for those outside of the cathedral, and there's no doors to even knock on. The response to that may be "well, of course there is! Sign up as a programmer", and while I would love to do that, I would rather not commit and bail like the others, but would rather look at the engine, see if there's any places where I can contribute, and help the project in that manner. If any of you have made it this far in my post, congratulations. Have some cake. :v:
I think you should wait for the sermon to actually start before knocking on the doors of the proverbial cathedral :v:
I read over 70 pages of the main S2HD thread before I signed up. IMO 3 = very little interest. BTW I have no plans on running away with the source and releasing a S2HD and crediting myself. No doubt, but it makes things a bit stale when it is close to impossible to contribute, or even give feedback about the engine/code when you not only don't have access to the source, but you can't even talk to the programmer, because he wants to remain anonymous. You feel me? It wouldn't hurt to be able to contribute and review the code, just like with the art. Right now, this just isn't possible... I don't understand how it would be extremely disrespectful towards programmers if somebody wanted to modify their program to fit their needs, or contribute and continue developing the program. If anything, the original developer should be happy and impressed that somebody has used their program, and wants to contribute. Though I can see how it would be disrespectful if somebody is trying to push for the source code for a closed source program. I suppose it depends on your ideology, too. I would never keep the original source to myself if somebody wanted to modify or contribute to a program. I disagree. Of course the whole community wouldn't work directly in the development process. There doesn't seem to be even half a dozen people interested in the coding part. It's not like so many people would be contributing that it would be impossible to keep track of all the changes. It's as if you're saying a game has never been developed (engine/coding) by more than one developer before ... :S BTW I brought this up because I found it extremely odd that everything to do with the engine was kept a secret, not because I think it's a good idea to have lots of people contributing, not just to argue for the sake of it :D Thanks!
If you have read the entire S2HD thread history, you'd know how much squabbling we've got into about single pixels, sound effects, level art, characters, etc. Now imagine that with hundreds of lines of code. :|
We've already said that the secrecy of the engine and our programmer is temporary, until the release of the tech demo. Just be patient please. No, it's not as simple as that. It's only natural that so few programmers would express an interest when we haven't yet shown the engine publically (actually, we didn't even have an engine at the time they expressed an interest). After the tech demo is released however, the popularity of S2HD will probably soar and programmers may start demanding access to all of our code. The three programmers I mentioned are members of just the Sonic Retro community. There are lots of other fan gaming communities who would probably love to develop their own Sonic game using our code. That would destroy collaboration, because they would then be working on their own little projects. You seem to be sceptical that this would happen, but it is something that any professional team worth their salt should prepare for. You only have to look at all the people expressing an interest in Saxman's "ProSonic", because they all want to make their own little fan game. If they had the resources to do the same with S2HD, then of course they would use that instead. And as I've already said, that's when collaboration flies out of the window. It will probably remain closed source for a long time, but this needs to be discussed further among our staff. If you want to contribute to the code Pincus: 1) Please showcase your programming skills so that we can consider you. 2) Wait until the release of the tech demo.
That's not what I'm implying. Game Development works best in a team setting, but that does NOT mean development by committee. Why do you think every game project in the world has a "head designer" or a "director." Because, like any team project, clear and concise direction is needed. People have their own duties and make more specific decisions related to their expertise, but these decisions are almost always put into effect by exactly one person. Megamix worked because we had a team leader (Tweaker) who told us everything we needed to do. He took suggestions from the rest of the team, but everything was ultimately his decision. As far as coding in this project goes, community input without the proper context has very little value. Said proper context is access to the code. This project is not going to give everyone access to the code any time soon. Therefore it would make no sense to have the community comment on it!
Except how many people can actually parse lines of code to a point where they can offer alternatives?
So where's the team? We have an army of one + sanik? True. Those, and design documents that are developed before any coding begins. But I think really, what's frustrating people more than access to the code, is access to the development process. Like I mentioned early, an engine is being built, and we've had no public discussion on certain technical aspects of the engine. For instance, What is the file format for a level? Is it a binary blob? Strictly a level map tileset? Tileset + items? How are various data members such as sonic's starting position, badnik locations, item placements expressed? How are we dealing with layering of tiles? Does every tile live in a certain layer 1-6, or can any tile request an arbitrary Z position? What ever happened to the speed shoes music issue? Was that solved? Anyone have any good suggestions for it? Are fonts going to be simply bitmapped, or are we going to use the modern graphics engine's abilitity to render fonts from a TTF font? So is the engine implementing a Lua/whatever scripting mini-engine, or will all code need to be engine code? What language did you ever decide upon? Some of these questions might be easily answered, and some are unncessary at this point, but the fact that little to no discussion has actually taken place on these issues worries me slightly. It seems that the process for the programming of this project has been: 1. Ok, let's outline what we need to do. *crickets chirping* 2. So...who wants to program? 3. Yay, we found a programmer, all programming discussion must cease and desist until we've made a tech demo ready in a few months. At least, that's the vibe I got, I'm probably wrong, and I'm sure it will all change once the tech demo is released, and all will be well, but until then, it is kind of strange. If you're really concerned about code being stolen, then shouldn't you also be worried about the art and music being stolen? If it comes down to it, I'll sign some kind of NDA if it will make you sleep better at night.
The art being stolen isn't that big of a problem - in fact, we expect it to be stolen. It's all useless to someone though without an engine. The most it will ever be used for is some random flash animation or just another soon to be forgotten fangame without a proper game engine. These won't damage the collaborative endeavours of Sonic 2 HD at all. Yup, that's pretty much how it's been. And it's a good thing too, because it means something actually gets done. I don't understand why you can't just wait for the tech demo to be released? Discuss it then. Our programmer has been working constantly and wants to continue to do so without having to drain precious time into community discussions.
I'm going to have to agree with this then. Being a programmer myself, I've already been looking forward for what's to come. Though with the way chatter has gone without actually seeing anything, the amount of comments/concerns that arise once everyone gets their hands on something physical, well. I know I'll have fun sifting through them all. Which brings me to this question: Is there going to be any system to log/monitor the feedback you get, or is it going to be handled in the good-ole 'in-this-thread' fashion?
I would think there's some sort of debug printout that is generated that we can submit for bugs/crashes etc. It seems standard practice.
about the programmers, how many there are? who are writing the engine? sorry if I'm asking answered question but I don't have time to read every post, sorry
