Re: Direction of Linux games...

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Erik wrote:

> If a feature is cool enough or if enough people
> mention it, those features usually get merged into projects (unless the project
> heads are real assholes, which explains the current states of my projects ;)
> When I get emails that say "hey, it'd be cool if **** had this feature..." I
> pay attention. I bet if steve got an email with a cool idea for tux or plib
> that he hadn't thought of, he'd give it serious thought.

Well, usually not.

(I guess that makes me one of those "real assholes")  :-(

When Tux_AQFH was released, I got *hundreds* of emails of the
form "It would be really great if there was a level in which
Tux did <something requiring 200 hours of programming effort>".

The problem with Tux has been the man-power to add features,
not a shortage of ideas for features.  I have been *extremely*
disappointed at the failure of the project to attract developers.
...that is the reason that I havn't added anything to Tux for
the last few months - with no other people helping out, it
doesn't really seem worth the effort to continue.

Talk is cheap.  Send me code or money!

I suppose that for PLIB, things are a little different, some
ideas that people suggest do make it into the library - but
even so, the majority of suggestions are either dumb, impossible
or useful to such a small number of application types that
I'm usually forced to say: "Interesting idea: Send me some
code and I'll be happy to include it in the next release."...
which generally shuts people up.

The whole point of OpenSource is that if you want something
new, you can - and should - write it yourself and contribute
it.  If you can't (or won't) do that, then making grandiose
suggestions is unlikely to do you much good unless it's a
VERY clever idea that doesn't take much work to implement.

We *often* see posts to this list of the form:  "I have this
really great idea for a game <six pages of description>, but
I have no programming skills - maybe someone should write this."

Did you *ever* see one of those make it into development?

Ideas are cheap too.

--
Steve Baker                (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
Raytheon Systems Inc.      (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: sjbaker@hti.com      http://www.hti.com
Home: sjbaker1@airmail.net http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1