Petition to MM: Make Soldat Open Source

[helloer]

Hello,

After 15 years it's time to move on. Our proposal is to make soldat open source. This is necessary thing to do to keep this game alive for years to come.

Please read and sign the petition to Michał Marcinkowski: https://www.change.org/p/micha%C5%82-marcinkowski-make-soldat-open-source

[Nedi]

I totally agree with the idea and I hope it will succeed. Let's revive this game together.

[urraka]

I hope everyone joins this wagon. No good reason to keep it closed source and we've waited long enough for it.

[Savage]

Also agree.

[Irlandec]

I also agree with this decision. Let's make our game great again.

[Michal Marcinkowski]

Hello
This has been discussed many times over the years. I was never against open sourcing. The problem is that it would be ILLEGAL.
Soldat uses certain libraries that can't be used in open source software. To address this we decided years ago (with Shoozza) to rewrite those libraries or replace them with open source alternatives. Unfortunately, this was a too big of an effort. If anyone feels like they can do this they are more than welcome on the dev team.
As for now we want to focus on releasing the game on Steam, so we can give it a breath of new air. We need more players. We need to make it alive again. Make it FUN again.

Official announcement: https://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=44966.new#new

[Irlandec]

Guys, if MM himself replied to this post it doesn't mean we should stop thinking about our game's future.
At the moment, we have reached 56 supporters of this idea already. Amazing job for a "dead" game, isn't it?
Let's make it to 100 and let MM see that we want a better future for us!

[jrgp]

Another point to consider: many times people will request something to be made open source, or will open source something they made which was closed for a while.

Sprinkling the "open source" fairy dust on a codebase does not guarantee progress or that meaningful contributions will come externally.

[homerofgods]

After a little chat with Helloer I am intrigued to ask what exactly is illegal in soldats repository? What actually is hindering us from at least having the possibility to make it open source?
Since MM is not against open sourcing, and Shoozza is a man of reason, let's find reasons why we should prioritize open sourcing!

It is easier to contribute to an open source project. Right now you need to sign a CLA and be a member of a team, which means commitment. With open source you can just download the source, fix something and send back as pull request that needs to be accepted by maintainer. A lot of developers would object to be working on a closed source commercial project for free. Look at https://github.com/ioquake/ioq3/graphs/contributors  All of those 1 commiters would not join the devteam only to commit one change.

Shoozza must have his reasons to object to open sourcing, and I would like to hear them as well. I understand if you can't go into detail on the code but could you please explain your thoughts to the community in as much detail as you are allowed to Shoozza?

I myself is concerned that it will lead to a divided community, any thoughts on that?

[Shoozza]

0) easier for cheater developers to create and update their cheats (olivers anti cheat would help here)
1) like jrgp said, it doesn't exactly mean we will get a lot of activity, most of soldats open sourced projects are inactive and don't get pull requests or commits (also only a hand full of people work on them), you cannot compare it with very popular open source projects, you might win the lottery but considering that is isn't everyone's favorite programming language we are already on a disadvantage
2) divided community due to forks, is a risk atm, there was a lot of drama the past 2 years in the dev team so it isn't unlikely to occur (i'd like to avoid more drama as it slows development down and can kill motivation), after x forks then in the end everyone looses motivation, you have x different soldat's and nobody knows where to pick up and so it dies
3) you have to take other people into account and if they would still help, monsteri has other plans and open sourcing would mean we 100% don't get his graphics revamp
4) we can open source at any time in the future some time after the graphics revamp maybe
5) the game needs a someone who merges the requests and moves it forward that isn't different from the current situation and
6) I just got soldat after nothing happened for a long time, i'd like to actually do something to restore the trust of the community in the dev team even if it is only me

In the past we had an autoupdater which was integrated into soldat and neccessary to compile which would prevent soldat from going open source, i removed it some time ago.
I think there might be one more library which could be a problem but im not sure (have to look) but i think it might not be a problem.

That said I'd like to make sure we don't close doors behind us which we cannot unlock anymore. That said I have a few open source projects on github so I'm not against it in general.

The most important thing is the game and that we move it forward - to get more players for the community so people can keep enjoy it, because it is damn fun and has always been that way.

[soldat-game]

Too much, you spoiled this game with updates to update fewer and fewer players. After the last mod weapons broke me completely lost interest to play.
You destroyed the barrett and the way you move around the map, you adjusted a lot of things FOR OWN SERVERS!

Exhunter - kill move about
Shoozza - add new system movement and kill barrett
DarDar - kill weapons mod
falcon - development of their servers
Someone - create lags if there are many shots on the map

and .. Shoozza is old hacker :_)  (wEeEeDy :*)

[Moroes]

Exhunter - kill move about

According to google translator you wanted to write "He killed himself" or maybe "Kill yourself"? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
English, please, you lil piece of translator shite. I've got no idea what you're talking about. Wasn't it Ex who was the last person in dev team who cared about movement (I guess Falcon did too but I got it all mingled, it has been some time)? I kinda feel that without him we would end up with those broken backflips which were part of beta(maybe rc) versions. He did some cool SC3 stuff too and hosted pretty good running servers. He has unfortunately dissapeared 

Shoozza - add new system movement and kill barrett

Dunno bout this, I guess you're just bitching like always.

DarDar - kill weapons mod

Heard that before. You might be right with this one. WM isn't top priority anyway.

falcon - development of their servers

That's what people do. They develop stuff. Oh wait, do you mean beta binaries of soldat servers? Yes, there are/were few of them but any decent and active scripter could get his hands on them. Which is not your case ofc. Afaik you might have them(no idea why). So what is this about? Poor english and lack of brain I'd say.
Btw: Falcon is the guy who created SC3. Don't forget that.

Someone - create lags if there are many shots on the map

I'd beat the shit out of that Someone guy. Someone gimme his address. Oh wait. What?

and .. Shoozza is old hacker :_)  (wEeEeDy :*)

Who's not? Many scripters/devs did shady stuff. I guess it was even profitable back in the day unlike being a dev. Don't act like a good guy, Dominik.

[daaw]

I still dont understand ..
..can someone explain to me like to a normal human being..
why exactly you can't open source it ..if you are not against it?

[Slasher]

Yo, Shoozza.
   The game is slowly dying and we do not have much time, hoping to improve the graphics will take a lot of time, in my opinion, the graphics are not bad.
   A good team needs a climate and all the members understand each other, so I see that the situation is not very good, try recruiting new members to help. Because until now you have not sought other people to help you?
   The time is passing and the soldat is late!       
                     

[Slasher]

Too much, you spoiled this game with updates to update fewer and fewer players. After the last mod weapons broke me completely lost interest to play.
You destroyed the barrett and the way you move around the map, you adjusted a lot of things FOR OWN SERVERS!

Exhunter - kill move about
Shoozza - add new system movement and kill barrett
DarDar - kill weapons mod
falcon - development of their servers
Someone - create lags if there are many shots on the map

and .. Shoozza is old hacker :_)  (wEeEeDy :*)

Do not talk nonsense and try to help in some way,idiot

[Akinaro]

Do not talk nonsense and try to help in some way,idiot

Its funny that for all those years, Dominik is only person who actually tried to make something, he made, and most important, update, lots of scripts in this forum.
For all those years of making fun of him, he still here, updating his work, suggesting ideas... and people still would rather make fun of his English instead of looking at it in wider perspective. Picking just one or two post and focusing on them.

For example. What you did Slasher? Really?
What most of people did?

More than half of people here did something long time ago, and beside that nothing, rest of it, is never ending stream of useless talking. They have on this forum respect not for what they did overall, but because of time they spend here, others know them, and that is only thing that give them better place in ranking "who is right".
All people who had ideas, knowledge, and examples of all that where buried under all that discussion of forum veterans that never stop talking.... they talk, and talk, and talk, and nothing is made. And when someone show up with something real, already made or ideas that could be implemented where mocked and annoyed...


So yeah, before you open your mouth Slasher its good to look at something in wider perspective, because you can realize that some people and some things, are not like you though.

[L[0ne]R]

Helloer makes a lot of good points. Especially his response to #0 - the "easier to develop cheats" argument just doesn't matter much at this point.

Instead of making Soldat 100% free I think "premium" version should remain too (or re-implemented in the future). King Arthur's Gold used a similar system which seemed to work well against cheaters and griefers - there was a free-to-play version of the game, and a paid version with an account system. From what I remember, server owners could set their servers to "unprotected" (which would allow anyone in), to "protected" (which would only allow players with no bans), to "gold" servers (which would only allow premium players). Something similar might work with Soldat, especially with more account-bound and/or paid features being added (like frequently requested stat-tracking, achievements, unlockable cosmetics, etc.) to discourage players from getting their account banned, and giving server owners protection against fresh "expendable" accounts.

I think as a long-term goal this might work better than maintaining an anti-cheat that adds no extra features for honest players.

Release what we have right now for free as the "lite" version, while the extra goodies implemented in the future could be made part of the new "premium".

[Mokkun]

Helloer makes a lot of good points. Especially his response to #0 - the "easier to develop cheats" argument just doesn't matter much at this point.

Instead of making Soldat 100% free I think "premium" version should remain too (or re-implemented in the future). King Arthur's Gold used a similar system which seemed to work well against cheaters and griefers - there was a free-to-play version of the game, and a paid version with an account system. From what I remember, server owners could set their servers to "unprotected" (which would allow anyone in), to "protected" (which would only allow players with no bans), to "gold" servers (which would only allow premium players). Something similar might work with Soldat, especially with more account-bound and/or paid features being added (like frequently requested stat-tracking, achievements, unlockable cosmetics, etc.) to discourage players from getting their account banned, and giving server owners protection against fresh "expendable" accounts.

I think as a long-term goal this might work better than maintaining an anti-cheat that adds no extra features for honest players.

Release what we have right now for free as the "lite" version, while the extra goodies implemented in the future could be made part of the new "premium".

We could use VAC for people that are on steam but the problem would be for people that don't use steam, but yeah I agree, if we want to prevent cheating, some account system would make it easier

[%%%%%%%]

Make it open source, and still release it to Steam

Maybe rethink the release date if there's flexibility in that regard

Most importantly, though: make it open source

Anything short of open source at this point is, frankly, asinine

[Slasher]

Do not talk nonsense and try to help in some way,idiot

Its funny that for all those years, Dominik is only person who actually tried to make something, he made, and most important, update, lots of scripts in this forum.
For all those years of making fun of him, he still here, updating his work, suggesting ideas... and people still would rather make fun of his English instead of looking at it in wider perspective. Picking just one or two post and focusing on them.

For example. What you did Slasher? Really?
What most of people did?

More than half of people here did something long time ago, and beside that nothing, rest of it, is never ending stream of useless talking. They have on this forum respect not for what they did overall, but because of time they spend here, others know them, and that is only thing that give them better place in ranking "who is right".
All people who had ideas, knowledge, and examples of all that where buried under all that discussion of forum veterans that never stop talking.... they talk, and talk, and talk, and nothing is made. And when someone show up with something real, already made or ideas that could be implemented where mocked and annoyed...


So yeah, before you open your mouth Slasher its good to look at something in wider perspective, because you can realize that some people and some things, are not like you though.

You're right, but
Everyone knows what he did, not taking away his impotence, because no one can criticize him? He criticized 5 people and I can not criticize him? If he's criticizing, why does not he do better? rly

[Irlandec]

At the moment, we have reached 305 people amount who have signed the petition. Woah! 

[Michal Marcinkowski]

Hey everyone here's my decision.
I wholeheartedly consider this petition and the need for open sourcing Soldat. I've spoken with Shoozza, Helloer and other people outside of the community for input.
I've decided to open source Soldat *after* the Steam release.

The main arguments for not doing this now are:
1. The first priority is to get people back to playing the game. This is what the game is for and we need to revive a regular playerbase. This is why we are releasing the game for free on Steam. Anything that might hurt this launch will have to wait.
2. Sadly open source might hurt the game. Simply open sourcing the game DOES NOT guarantee that new developers will come and build something (and we need them when new cheats arrive). The only way to get a higher chance of people getting involved in maintaining Soldat, building official branch/forks and anti-cheat protection systems is... getting more players and more attention. Hence Steam release is priority.
After that open source.
I hope we can all understand my decision and why I am very careful here. Still, anyone is welcome on the dev team and can contribute to the game before the source is open.

[Guil TheDamned]

I register back to forums just to say 1 thing.

Ty MM!

This is your intellectual property and you are not forced to go open source at all, but my opinion is that it will help the game or get a better clone of.

Finally, we will have a chance to see someone to create better AI. Before people can go online and feel confident, they should have decent AI to practice with and honestly (no offense), Soldat AI has always been bad and the "bot management" in map editor is almost non-existent.


As soon it will go open source, I will have a look for sure. I am not the best at all for coding but I'll give a try. Main interest for me atm is better AI and new polygons type (such as underwater).


I stopped playing soldat for a long time (started at first public version and stopped at 1.5'ish) because of lack of visual/technical improvements (due to the 20mb file limit you were imposing yourself and for people with slow internet). Version 1.7 gave me some hope back to this game with new visual update and performance update.  Let see what will happen from open source release, pretty excited here.

[daaw]

While open source doesn't guarantee that someone will work more, keeping as it as is also doesn't not guratees anything.

If Soldat doesn't generate income for its developers ....what gives.. game like Ace of space while opensource for years didn't die from cheaters.

You still can do official releases to steam while open source...right..

If you want that something changes you need to fuck shit up! Live like you die!

No cost is too great!

[Mokkun]

While open source doesn't guarantee that someone will work more, keeping as it as is also doesn't not guratees anything.

If Soldat doesn't generate income for its developers ....what gives.. game like Ace of space while opensource for years didn't die from cheaters.

You still can do official releases to steam while open source...right..

If you want that something changes you need to fuck shit up! Live like you die!

No cost is too great!

I think you're mixing up things here, the game you're talking about is Ace of Spades, which was never open source. An open source client was made named "Open Spades" which is compatible with Ace of Spades 0.75, and this is just a client. The server side is still closed source so what you're saying is half true.

The cheating part doesn't always depends on if the game is open sourced or not, it depends a lot on how the game was programmed, Soldat has always struggled with cheaters, Ace of Spades not so much.

It is true that having the source code of a game makes cheats easier because instead of trying to make a cheat with trial and error, you just look at flaws inside the code of the game.

My concern about open source is more about a community split and people that don't agree with each other making their own fork.

[daaw]

Every word I say is true.
Yes, doesn't matter is or isn't Open source for cheats.

Because when we see developers doesn't agree with each other that's not concern us at all.. ....

[Michal Marcinkowski]

Just one more thing. I wrote that we are aiming at the first quarter of 2018. But please take this date very roughly. This isn't so easy and we have to be sure we do this right. So we'll do it when we're confident as soon as possible.

[soldat-game]

I would like to look into the soldat code and add more features  tactiveplayer read/write. And new functions example on playershoot a more more

[soldat-game]

You need to restore the weapon movement system from 1.5 Then the concentration in the air was not effective and barrett dont be op...
And restore move player system from 1.5 plese play on 1.5 version and play now move player system is very different and bad... exhunter create this for fucking climb server...
Restore weaponmod from 1.5, why? Ak is good barrett is good aug dont be op soccom be good hk be good.

The values given above are approximate values. Measured in the time of day, hours 3-10 european time.

[soldat-game]

will be Soldat-Zombie Soucre (Falcon), Soldat-Trenchwar Soucre(dominik), Soldat-DayzMod (I tried to do the script but without the graphics it would be hopeless), Soldat-Creators Soucre(all creators they will try to make these games more modular)