[Hamneggs]

LOst has now stated very clearly that he simply does not care about the community. He actively takes actions to ignore it and avoids explaining how his decisions would benefit the project at all. The reason is most likely that they don't benefit the project whatsoever. At the same time, he expects the community to do the exact opposite of what he is doing, I.e. following the "Contribution Rules & Guidelines" stating that source files shall be submitted.

To put it short, it's a disgrace that someone in charge of a community project dares to stick to the hypocrisy that he is doing. It's totally unacceptable.

Hell, I wouldn't mind if it were like a group of four people being as secretive as LOst, as still way more would get done, but sense he has nobody he likely will become the bottleneck of the project in terms of progress. I mean, there's a kazillion artists, a snauzillion musicians, and one, ONE guy to put it all together.

For Christ's sake, just move a few more coders into the staff, and that way we can have the assurance of multiple debuggers and testers, even if it means that it won't directly be us, the standard followers of S2HD. That way even LOst can appease his needs and keep on being xenophobic.

[Kirinja]

LOst has now stated very clearly that he simply does not care about the community. He actively takes actions to ignore it and avoids explaining how his decisions would benefit the project at all. The reason is most likely that they don't benefit the project whatsoever. At the same time, he expects the community to do the exact opposite of what he is doing, I.e. following the "Contribution Rules & Guidelines" stating that source files shall be submitted.

To put it short, it's a disgrace that someone in charge of a community project dares to stick to the hypocrisy that he is doing. It's totally unacceptable.

Hell, I wouldn't mind if it were like a group of four people being as secretive as LOst, as still way more would get done, but sense he has nobody he likely will become the bottleneck of the project in terms of progress. I mean, there's a kazillion artists, a snauzillion musicians, and one, ONE guy to put it all together.

For Christ's sake, just move a few more coders into the staff, and that way we can have the assurance of multiple debuggers and testers, even if it means that it won't directly be us, the standard followers of S2HD. That way even LOst can appease his needs and keep on being xenophobic.

People don't want to be in the staff, they want the code to be open so they can look over it whenever they feel like it. No obligations, you know.
Personally I'm tired of all this source code bullshit. Yes it might be buggy, yes it might be unoptimized, but you can't tell until there is a proper release. They said no, they won't make it open source, so why are we still discussing this?

[ICEknight]

Perhaps somebody could try to make an alternate "community-powered" engine to match LOst's, and make it public?

[FinalBeyond]

I do find the 'people could steal the code and make their own games' argument rather amusing. It's taken how many years even to get to this point, with a raft of talented people creating assets? The chances of some new person taking the code and stealing our thunder with their own HD Sonic game is somewhat unrealistic, surely? :p

[steveswede]

Perhaps somebody could try to make an alternate "community-powered" engine to match LOst's, and make it public?

I would doubt that would happen.

1. Because no one so far has managed to get one even close the original physics.
2. And even if someone else did, does anyone think that they would release the code regardless of doing it for the community.

So in theory it would only be a community engine if a load of the tech members started working together on a Sonic game engine. But have any of them even decided to even do anything like that, together?

[Mad Echidna]

Perhaps somebody could try to make an alternate "community-powered" engine to match LOst's, and make it public?

Don't see how that's possible without access to the finished tiles.

[Tweaker]

Okay, now this is where we all stop.

I'm not going to speak for the arrogance of the people who have told you to shut your mouths, but I will tell you this—SHUT YOUR GODDAMNED MOUTHS. We have spent several hours debating and talking over a very reasonable direction to take the project in given the very sensitive nature and concerns of all of you, and damned if we didn't lose sleep over it. I have brought up the engine concerns regarding the full or limited sharing of code and we are still trying to find a reasonable way for experienced programmers to contribute towards the programming side of the project without being unreasonable to LOst, but still fair enough to people who can and are willing to help make the engine the best it can be. In the meantime, Vincent has told you somewhere you can help—the Special Stage system is still very much on the drawing board, and you can absolutely help by making a solid system for it that works and blends in with the style of everything else in the project. If you're up for helping, that's a good place to start.

As for everything else, we absolutely plan on setting up the new contribution hierarchy as quickly as possible, and I am positive you will all be very pleased with it. At this point I have pledged my support to help things go much more smoothly, and the time for complaining is done now that the admins are taking a more active role in making sure everything for this project goes over smoothly without a hitch. So I'm gonna ask you guys to hold your tongues and be a lot more constructive from this point on so you don't make our job any harder. Things can only get better from this point on.

With that said, I'd like to propose people try and focus solely on contributions until we revamp the forum and whatnot. I'll be locking this topic in the meantime. Discussion will continue once the new topic pops up. Try and work with me here, guys; this shit ain't easy.