Soldat now and tomorrow

[Furai]

I'd go for 1st option. Form a decent dev team.

[CheeSeMan.]

a decent dev team should do the trick imo! And if not then try another option!

[STM1993]

Even if a temporary solution, get at least one person who's readily available and interested to develop Soldat now - the candidates are already stated by other posters in this topic. Players are dying for an update that has been delayed for too long. We don't want to wait another year before we get someone to take another few months to finish up the update. We can implement a long-term solution later.

But I'd say no to number 2.

[Ryde]

glad theres finally something happening     really was starting to think i would have to quit

I think choice 1 best option.

[CrayAB]

Option #2. We need money. There needs to be a good anti-cheat here, and nobody is willing to give up any money. Give it to a professional company with a lot of money and let them pay for it.

[Mighty]

you know, the thing is, it's not the company who'd have to pay for anti-cheat. It would be players. I've seen another project die immediately after selling it to a professional company. Just lost the spirit.

Dev team ofc, if it's not possible --> open source.


F12 for Shoozza.

[rapex]

2. Sell Soldat entirely for a sum of money that satisfies me and let a professional company further develop it.

good idea.

[Swompie]

Option #2. We need money.

We? You won't see anything from it.

Dev team ofc, if it's not possible --> open source.
F12 for Shoozza.

[Clawbug]

It's easier to just form a developer team and let them get things done, than also get them to release the source code, handle all the licensing stuff and whatnot.

I'd say that #1 is the way to go. Just have proper release cycle(+6 releases a month, at least every two months), have some anti-debugging and code obfuscating measures in place and you're good to go. I believe it would decrease the amount of hacks and hackers drastically. There's LOTS to do with the code to make it hard to go around, similar techniques are being used by software protection schemes, malware and anti-malware software. It's just matter of reverse engineering and trying to stop others from doing it.

Shoozza is completely other league than EnEsCe for example. What EnEsCe didn't fix with IDE + Delphi, Shoozza fixed with hex editor and machine code.

Selling the game to a company is the worst possible thing to happen to this community. For MM, it may be the best one financial-wise.

[X-Rayz]

Option #2. We need money.

We? You won't see anything from it.

Dev team ofc, if it's not possible --> open source.
F12 for Shoozza.

He meant the community of Soldat needs money to be going into Soldat to help with anti-hacking and such.

I vote 1), with more then one person developing. I think that would help with what happened with Enesce and MM becoming disinterested and speed up development.

[Dro]

There are three options and three problems.

1. If we ever were able to find a dedicated developer he/she would eventually face the same problems as MM and EnEsCe have. It's not easy to get motivation for a work you don't technically get paid at all. That's the real problem of free games. One day our possible prospective developer/developer team has more important things to do in their lives. Then MM is posting once again announcements how Soldat needs new developers.

2. Since when have professional companies done something just because they are kind and care about tiny lonely gamers? The ugly truth is that private companies want and need to make money in order to continue their work. If Soldat were sold for some kind of professional company, it's more than likely that Soldat would become a game with a price tag.

3. If Soldat goes open source, can we be sure that the development would go on by itself? Open Source projects such as Mozilla or Open Office have managed to survive because they develope softwares, which are actually needed. Since Soldat is a small game that nobody knows about, I wouldn't be surprised if it died out in a year or two after opening the source code.

On the other hand I would be positively surprised if giving soldat out to the world would sort out the issue by itself. As MM said, it would be cool. Unfortunately people tend to be lazy and too busy in this world. It's a damn bad combination...

[DorkeyDear]

If my say has any... say... I would attempt to go for #1 first, if possible. The reasons are mainly because of reasons not to do the other two. With option #2, it is a bit unpredictable, and we don't know if they will listen to the community, or what. With option #3, I want you to still make money off of Soldat, and you do too. This is mainly in addition to what others said, which I'm not going to bother repeating. I was always stingy on the whole idea of open sourcing a project, since it feels like you lose all control on the "main developer" or if it'll split off into multiple projects heading in different directions, becoming incapable with one-another, and possible splitting the community.

[FliesLikeABrick]

I agree with ramirez and zakath, Shoozza, Toumaz and Fryer are really capable of doing it however, I would also add to the team you two lads. So my suggestion for new dev team is: Shoozza, Toumaz, Fryer, zakath and ramirez.

I would choose something like this - not open sourcing it but not being super-selective on who can work on it.  There are a number of people in the community who are very capable developers.  I would say that community members who are known for being strong developers and trustworthy be given subversion access as long as they work together to accomplish the same goals.  That way then can then commit together.

I can't stress how important it would be for this group to work together to accomplish the same goals.  You can't risk having someone working on making protocol changes that would require a version release while nobody else knows.

I really don't get the feeling that the code base or roadmap for Soldat are in a position where handling it as a fully open project is a feasible idea. 

[PQ]

Option #2. We need money. There needs to be a good anti-cheat here, and nobody is willing to give up any money. Give it to a professional company with a lot of money and let them pay for it.

No one will do something for free. We will either have 10000 adds or we will have to pay money to play. (or he's just getting like 1000$)


I just keep wondering how someone can't be interested at all in his only source of income.

[Illuminatus]

b) I can't cut off the hand that is feeding me. Soldat is my only source of income and I deserve to get money from it and continue my work on other games. So I still want to sell registrations. This is not impossible with open source, it's a matter of making an appropriate license.

I don't think that open-sourcing Soldat NOW is the best idea but still I want to comment on this:
I don't know how many licenses you sell per month, but I don't think they're many. Like less than 10.
Maybe even less than 5. So with the old licence fee of ...ehm.. something about ~10$ I think you earn approximately 70$ a month. If you then add the fact that you gave discounts or free licenses when someone bought many (>3) licenses and now this "pay-what-you-want"-offer I would lower it to ~60$.

I for myself wouldn't have a problem to give you 2-5€ (EUR because I'm german ) every month if I know that Soldat is actively under development. If I know that a dedicated developer-team maintains it and while communicating with the community also adds new features. Also I think that we could get at least 15 people who would pay the same amount. By making it open-source also all the additional registration features would become standard features. So everyones the same, no kewl pro-gamers with a star (as if it ever meant something).

But still I think it would be better to choose the first option and now give the source-code to some trustworthy dedicated people (the ones already mentioned in this thread).
Why? FliesLikeABrick just got it right:
"I really don't get the feeling that the code base or roadmap for Soldat are in a position where handling it as a fully open project is a feasible idea."

So let the developer-team release 1.5.1 and let them make use of the update-feature more often. Let them maintain the game for about (half) a year. Then we would have
- a better, stable version
- some developers who know the code
- maybe even some new "registered-only"-features because of the bigger manpower (but I wouldn't recommend this one, because of the following)

Then you can go and make it open-source. Now we have developers who know the spaghetti-code, who could write manuals for the other new coders who would want to contribute and give advises. They also could have prepared the source-code before releasing it so the in-code-comments would help further development.
You would lose your income but then the above mentioned model (monthly donations) would step in. You could even bind these donations to the Portal service (which I hope will not be abandoned but just delayed after the important bugs are fixed) so that people who donate will get some advantages on this server-side Portal thingy.

I know it would be hard work and mainly depend on the new developers, how well and of course how fast they get the fixes done and make Soldat more stable. And also on the amount of money you afterwards receive of the donations. But imo it would be a great chance to bring Soldat to the next level.

So, MM and community, what do you think about this idea?

[L[0ne]R]

I would choose something like this - not open sourcing it but not being super-selective on who can work on it.

But still I think it would be better to choose the first option and now give the source-code to some trustworthy dedicated people (the ones already mentioned in this thread).
Why? FliesLikeABrick just got it right:
"I really don't get the feeling that the code base or roadmap for Soldat are in a position where handling it as a fully open project is a feasible idea."

So let the developer-team release 1.5.1 and let them make use of the update-feature more often. Let them maintain the game for about (half) a year. Then we would have
- a better, stable version
- some developers who know the code
- maybe even some new "registered-only"-features because of the bigger manpower (but I wouldn't recommend this one, because of the following)

Then you can go and make it open-source. Now we have developers who know the spaghetti-code, who could write manuals for the other new coders who would want to contribute and give advises. They also could have prepared the source-code before releasing it so the in-code-comments would help further development.
You would lose your income but then the above mentioned model (monthly donations) would step in. You could even bind these donations to the Portal service (which I hope will not be abandoned but just delayed after the important bugs are fixed) so that people who donate will get some advantages on this server-side Portal thingy.

I know it would be hard work and mainly depend on the new developers, how well and of course how fast they get the fixes done and make Soldat more stable. And also on the amount of money you afterwards receive of the donations. But imo it would be a great chance to bring Soldat to the next level.

So, MM and community, what do you think about this idea?

I really like that option. Separately options #1 and #3 have some major disadvantages, but what FLAB and Illuminatus just suggested is pretty much both of those options taking the best out of each other, allowing more control over the development and source code, but at the same time not completely cutting it off from the community.


And I would totally donate every now and then... if I had a job <_<

[FliesLikeABrick]

Yeah, I wouldn't lock it into being made open source at 6 months or so, but I suspect that any community developers like what Illuminatus and I said would want to make it open source once they could.  I would say "let it become open source when they think it is ready and MM is ok with it"

It isn't something we would want to rush at the risk of destroying Soldat forever.

[Dusty]

I really don't know how open sourcing works as a whole, so go easy on me.

IF Soldat becomes open source, would it be impossible to add little adverts into the game and give the revenue to MM? I wouldn't mind one or two ads in the menu, as long as they are neatly placed and not annoying. Then again, ads in-game are a big no for me.

[Illuminatus]

IF Soldat becomes open source, would it be impossible to add little adverts into the game and give the revenue to MM? I wouldn't mind one or two ads in the menu, as long as they are neatly placed and not annoying.

Think of it. If these ads are just small images which will be automatically downloaded (Question is, at what time? When does my Soldat-client connect to some server online? Afaik the first time when it connects to the lobby server. So if I don't load the lobby-server-list the ads wouldn't show up.) and then be placed into the menu, then it is quite easy to get ride of them since it's all on the client's side. But if it's all bound to Portal, so you need to login when you want to play online using the lobby, these ads could be downloaded directly from the server (at best from the same IP/domain on which the Portal-server resides, so that you can't block the ads and still connect to Portal) and then be shown in the menu it would be harder. Since they still lie somewhere on your harddrive (of course obfuscated and maybe integrated in some file which Soldat also uses for other purposes) manipulation is still possible.
Think of a website: Everything you see when you visit one is just the content (text, images, video, ...) your browser shows from the temp on your harddrive. So you can manipulate it afterwards. Or you can block the ad even before it is downloaded to your PC by blocking the specific adress/domain (like adblock plus does it). So it doesn't even show up. The only ads I see online are these incorporated in a specific file, like ads in swf-files. For example flash-games or stuff. Either I download the whole file or none. So I can't block only the ads.
Somehow like that it could be done with Soldat.

In addition you could send some signal every...10 sec..whatever and make sure the ads are shown in the menu. If you recognize someone is blocking them somehow you could (temporarily) ban his Portal account. So no online ads but also no online play.

Not that I'm recommending all/any of this (since it's not really "Indie"-like or would fit to Soldat and won't be worth the effort) I'm just talking about the possibilities afaik.

[demoniac93]

I'm all for getting a committed dev team, but the thought of communication and understanding failures could lead to severe issues.
If you want a dev team working on Soldat, you'll need a head dev, and quite frankly, I am yet to see anyone in the Soldat community with that kind of experience. (Leading a team of distanced dev's)