Time to Move on?

CRxTRDude said:
Viper Snake said:
I'd really like to have sloped platforms and walls. It is strange that OpenBOR doesn't have something so simple already.
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Like in streets of rage, where the player would go down to one side? That would be nice as well.
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I think that should already be possible as you can have walls slanted on the z axis. I want it for x and y, it would help a lot for 2D platformers:

On topic though, I'd say move on if its going to fix bugs. I've been stuck on build 3738 because all newer versions cause my sound test "level" to crash, plus a few other minor but annoying issues.
 
I love how people who never released any mod are all for abandoning older mods compatibility, seriously , you shouldnt even respond in this topic. :)
24bit pngs with alpha channel as background or fg/bglayer would be nice, transition between bg and fg would be smoothed out and alpha channel looks nice on some effect like depth of field and blur on front panels.
Many engines support 24bit pngs for characters but if it would slowdown a lot then it not worth it, i think currently im only one person who would use 24bit png files for characters so they would blend with background , for pixel art its not really needed.
 
I'm thinking of naming it OpenBOR IV. Also, I agree with magggas on the v4. If not, then maybe OpenBOR +, OpenBOR ++, or OpenBOR X.

Viper Snake said:
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+1 Agreed with whatcha say on the platformer.
 
I say do it and keep the old guides and other versions around still.  If you make a new version then maybe other people can help you once you make a more stable version. 
 
Its not about food, its about people coming in sayin dump this and that even tho they never made their own dinner.
Id prefere to listen to someone who actually have some experience, not some newbies coming in excited about openbor4 or something.
Anyway currently i have the feeling that DC is not capable of fixing all the bugs himself so if thats the case then he should admit i cant do it because i didnt coded it and thats it, not changing engine like that so it wont play old mods at all.
I dont know whats the real reason to offer dropping backwards compatibility but i would like to hear it with detailed info.It is serious change if for example all my mods wont be playable in next version, im not happy about that, Damon didnt released many mods so for him it might be easy decision, for me its not even if it sounds rude, i started in 2004.
But if there are enough new features that deserve dropping compatibility then call the engine something else so its not openbor but something different so people will never confuse it, adding number to openbor wont cut it.Thats how i see it.
 
Hey obviously i wasnt aiming at you cause you have some mods in works  ;D but some people commenting here didnt released and put effort in creating their own mods yet they want engine to not support its current library, for me its weird, so how would they learn if older mods wouldnt work?
 
bWWd said:
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bWWd, it's really not that cut and dried. I'm pretty sure I HAVE admitted many times over that there are existing bugs well beyond my capability. Here's the problem - I'm not some flight by night script kiddie. I'm working toward a CS PHD and already make a excellent living coding. I'm not saying I'm the best, but I am good, and if I can't make heads or tails out of the legacy code, who is going to?

SX, uTunnels , Plombo, those guys are even better than me, and they couldn't get it done either. That analyst guy talked a big game, and tried to build his own OpenBOR on github when we wouldn't let him claim copyright on the engine, but he gave up pretty quick too and his version offered 0 console support.

The fact is once an application spends so long being added to, it just gets to a point it cannot be tweaked any more without an overhaul. Open source even more so, and community driven projects like OpenBOR more than that. The code is a mess, and that's not OK. From your earlier post you seem to think it's fine to have spaghetti code as long as it works. Well I'm sorry to tell you those things are not mutually exclusive. Spaghetti code = bugs. You can't separate the two. This mythical coder you think will show up and solve all our problems while leaving the legacy as is just doesn't exist.

I also don't get the thing about my not releasing many modules. It's true, I haven't released a completed module - but have a look around. One way or another my fingerprints are in every single module made since my arrival here, even yours. Besides, why does that matter at all? SX never so much as wrote a line of module text. Would you say his contributions don't count?

Your work is among the best - and as a respected member, we will listen you. But one of my other contributions was to rid the community of that "Vets" vs. "Noobs" crap. Everyone gets a voice, and you need to come up with something more concrete than "I've been here longer and I don't like it". What's the problem with using older engine versions to run old modules? Everyone is doing it anyway, all I want to do is drop the false pretense of backward compatibility, and by doing so enable us to make future module authoring a less painful process. I can't keep everyone satisfied all by myself the way things are now.

DC

 
bWWd said:
I love how people who never released any mod are all for abandoning older mods compatibility, seriously , you shouldnt even respond in this topic. :)
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I respond to everything I want to, as long I don't break the Rules of this Forum. >:(

I'm maybe not a modcreator right now, so I can't talk from viewpoint of one, but like all of us here I'm a Gamer, you know the guys you creators want to play your Mods in the end. :P

I see this things from my viewpoint, and if DC believes that he can improve the engine this way, why should I be against it?
 
The only thing I wanted to add to this conversation is to consider who your audience is.  The people who regularly post here are a small, tight knit community.  Most of the people who download and play OpenBOR mods for Wii, Dreamcast, Android etc never post here.
How many people play on PC vs other platforms?
What I wouldnt want to see is losing fans/core audience because they are confused their library of games wont work, or new games wont work with their only working version of OpenBOR that they installed and assume will run everything.

I do like the idea of having an easy way to download the old engines and mods so if someone wants to play a specific game that runs on an older build, they can grab them.
But this doesnt solve the issue of someone on Android (for example) who has OpenBOR and a big library of OpenBOR mods they enjoy and suddenly cant get new ones to work or vice versa. 
I guess what I'm saying is, be careful not to alienate the gamers who actually play this stuff.  As Illusionista said, MUGEN handles this issue well. 

From my perspective, if I've made a game, I just want people to be able to play it on every platform so it can reach as wide an audience as possible.  So I see bWWD's point.  If all of Pierwolf's mods wont work on the new engine, and Pierwolf isnt around (due to being busy) to go through and update them then what happens to all the games he made?  Either  A)  People keep their old versions of OpenBOR and their big libraries of games and dont get the new version.  B) The new version becomes the new standard and the old mods get left behind.
If someone is on OUYA, there's only really one version that works well with it right now.  I can't speak for Wii or Dreamcast because I never tried it on there.  But if the audience keeps getting splintered by things like this, then a niche hobby becomes even smaller, when what I'd like to see is more people installing OpenBOR and seeking it out, not less.

 
Speaking as a long time author who continues to work on several projects and experiments, I'm against dropping backwards compatibility.

The unspoken trend as a modder around here is to pick a version that works, and only update if it doesn't break everything else. As DC said in the opening post, that's a longstanding issue and admittedly causes frustration to many. So I can definitely see the arguments for dropping backwards compatibility.

But there's also a sense of comfort in knowing that the games we labor in making--the hours, days, weeks, and sometimes years spent in development--will be substantially playable as the engine continues to grow. And part of that is the fact that with every update, new tricks are added for new authors, while the old ones don't have to relearn their trade. It was a great relief knowing that I didn't have to go back and edit every single text file from all 40+ of my experiments... just to change "movea" into "movey," or substitute "dive" for a fitting "jumpframe." Entire gameplay mechanics could have been modified or simply cease to work, ruining the pace and thought process the author originally intended. And there's a dynamic involved in modding that extends far beyond merely setting up sprites and animating them.

As far as the user is concerned, Count Monte said everything I wanted to say. OpenBOR is already confusing for lurkers and those who stumble upon the engine. I've seen this first hand with people in my IT department that wanted to play my games and couldn't figure out how. Differentiating between OpenBOR 1.0 mods and OpenBOR 2.0 mods will only serve to confuse things.

I understand the difficulties this presents going forward. I also understand that, pending an original work that gets greenlit on Steam or sold on some other indie platform, OpenBOR will never be mainstream. But dropping backwards compatibility now would only serve to detract from the work of current mod authors. We'll still exist, but having to relearn an engine we've known for 7+ years could easily phase us out, and quick.
 
But look how many active modders are available, not many , if it would be up to me then i wouldnt let someone who never made mod to vote in this thread simply out of respect to those people who spent their time testing engine and making their games, they simply know better whats needed.
It is really different if you dont release your work and keep in on your HDD only and if you released it , you have to keep it compatible with newest builds because you are using them yourself, i dont like the idea to do back to all my mods and fix 2 lines just to make them compatible with new builds.
So, if you would like to start completely new engine and totally abandon support for all existing mods then go ahead but name should be changed so people wouldnt think its openbor.That is if you really think you can handle it and have time for this.
I might come out like some jerk who doesnt like newbies or somethin but this kind of decision is not up to newcomers especially if they think that currently openbor is too hard or somethin because its not hard at all, scripting might be but its not requirement to use scripts.
Well if you really think that you have time to branch out new engine then i cant prevent that but i would prefere to leave current build as is minus random bug which affects ai , so revert back a bit.
I also dont know from which build you would like to create new non backwards compatible version because almost all versions had some bugs, smaller or bigger ones.
Whats wrong with using old version for old mods... Well, if new versions will be named totally different then i guess nothing, but also i hope current build will be fixed someday , im afraid if new coders will come they will totally ignore current builds with its bugs stayin in there forever.
Besides whats the rush ? If you wouldnt be capable of coding they we wouldnt have a choice and would have to use current builds anyway.
I remember this analyst guy but he was only one person and he had attitude towards plombo about commenting out stuff  in engine, i know its always better not to have bugs and code things properly but its not always possible especially if many guys code the engine, different styles clash and sometimes its just better to write your own version from scratch than to fix someone elses code.
Its not that i think im great or whatever, its just experience or modders vs gamers, i think gamers should play and shouldnt have a vote how we create games.
I remember you said your time is limited , i think starting something like this is not a trivial task.

Would it be possible to place older openbor version inside of data folder and use it if there is some kinds of command in models.txt or something?
So engine would be actually a launcher and everything will be inside of pak file ? You know to use older versions even on newest builds unless modder takes care of it and place newest ersion in his data folder.Its only 2MB not a big deal but could solve some problems at least on pc and compuers where ram isnt a problem.


 
as long as you try to leave the backward compatibility where possible according to me!
It is worth to change when necessary.
There are many things to do and some of them are really necessary.
For example, you must complete the getanimationproperty() that is very important and also a better collision system (collisions events on platforms).
Give possibility to create diagonal platforms and walls in uphill and downhill.
Diagonal movements of bglayers for levels. Fix weapon scripts bugs.
Create the function to read the Integers from files (bor.hi) like getInt() and not just limited to strings as getfilestreamline().
Well... good job !!

Ps. I hope I can help you as a developer if I can! ;)
 
Now I want to shut up completely about this subject, whatever decision it is, it's DC's call. I was about to say a lot, but you guys actually bit the bucket on this thing. We don't have something solid that would lift this thing forward. I admit, I'm new and I don't know what the heck I was talking about and I'm talking to people who have been more from BOREvo, to LavaLit, to here and here I am like a kid not knowing his place.

Yeah, I apologize for that.

I actually sense that this will become a rebuke and for that I'll be at silence in this issue.

DC, it's your call. I support your decisions, I support everyone's opinions, I got mine, I'll leave it be. Just hoping though that more people would still go for this and do their thing. To tell you the truth, I've been going through a lot recently and I can't focus on one thing at a time.

I want to say something, since we're a community and we should do that, and I'm not really pissed at something that is not of my control or state, you guys are more older, more experienced and most of all, been the foundation of what OpenBOR it is today.

In conclusion, you're right bWWd, I'm not in the right place at all.

Not that I don't like the community, I just don't know my place. This is a community of respectable people not bitching around dudes like me, but I'm better speaking my thing out rather than shutting up anyway. I just want to join a respectable group rather than people who you don't understand. At such, I scar and I grow, I charge to experience my mistakes and move on, so yeah, it's nice that you guys actually had violent reactions to what I said, that's something I've not seen in a long time before (the other time was at DeviantArt, and man was I an idiot).

So, there. I rest my case, I preferred backwards compatibility to be somewhat lesser, if not shunned completely and fix more bugs for the benefit of the people at large. People still want to play games, so let it be done.
 
I think it might help if I do some test revisions with minor changes like what I'm talking about and see what people think. Maybe that would give you guys a better idea of what we're debating about - as it is everyone seems to have a different idea of what I'm up to.

I'm not against renaming a new version, if nothing else because the name OpenBOR is kind of silly. It doesn't say at all what the engine is or does, nor is it catchy in any way. Not only that, but OpenBOR is already far more than just a beat-em-up. That will always be the main focus, but it's also great for shumps, and is adaptable enough for platformers and RPGs.

DC
 
Yes lets not be like that, new comers or guys who just want to play mods can give their thoughts too.  Everyone has their own skill set's.  We can't all be all knowing and good at everything.

I might not of been around the whole time, but openbor was originally my baby.  And I've been using the engine for years despite not releasing anything.  I pitched the initial project to the community and started it with kirby2000 and our goal was an EASY to use engine that could be available to ANYONE at any skill level -  Without requiring any knowledge of programming.  The other objective was keeping all code updates into one source.  And over time I believe that was achieved by all those involved.  But now it is reaching state of complexity that really needs a clean up. 

I'm no programmer, just someone who was involved along the way.  Other people like Fightn_Words from in the community were greatly influential and involved in some way at it's conception - I'm pretty sure he never released a mod either.  But I would value his opinion greatly and always did at the time.  There is probably half a dozen people I can't remember the names of that were involved in creating openbor, none of them modders.

It's contribution based, that the whole point of the community project.  It was setup with the idea that it would one day have leading devs like SX, utunnels, DC, plombo etc.  It was setup to encourage people like these guys to take charge and expand the project.  DC has kept this running by himself the past couple of years so lets give him some credit. If he were to leave what then?  With him at the helm and the source being cleaned up - this can only encourage others to contribute to the source.

As someone who was absent for a long time it was difficult and confusing at first to catch up on all the changes to the engine.  With helping some people out recently that had no prior experience at all with BOR/OPENBOR before, seeing their confusion makes you realize how much it could and should be cleaned up.

I just hope that there is not just a focus on stuff for 'power users' - I think if the code is being cleaned there is room for a few command driven features for the average user.  It's awesome that openbor evolved to allow scripting.  But it's shame to see it becoming less accessible to some people.  It kind of sucks to say 'Yes you can, but with script' to every question/problem people have.

It's just a shame that it started as something accessible to anyone, now people have the impression 'unless you can script don't bother'

At least anything with numerical values I think should be available to change with simple commands.
eg. Flags to change menu settings, like how long till intro replays.  Simple number changes like this.

Anyhow just my thoughts, I can trust DC on this.  And I've had my mod broken several times from openbor changes in the past and I still haven't been able to fix it again.  But I support this change without complaint.  I'm not here to suck up to DC, I can't always agree, but he's the one running the show now.

@DC - I agree on this last post too, I could care less what it's called now.  OpenBOR is a stupid name, but it made sense at the time. It was just opensource BOR.  And even thou we had hindsight of it lasting this long.  I don't think anyone thought the name would actually stick this long.
 
BeasTie said:
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I just hope that there is not just a focus on stuff for 'power users' - I think if the code is being cleaned there is room for a few command driven features for the average user.  It's awesome that openbor evolved to allow scripting.  But it's shame to see it becoming less accessible to some people.  It kind of sucks to say 'Yes you can, but with script' to every question/problem people have.

It's just a shame that it started as something accessible to anyone, now people have the impression 'unless you can script don't bother'
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There's two sides to that though. The first is that we've never (and won't) made old stuff script only. It's only newer features and complex additions that have gone that way, and only because they require complex logic.

Yeah, nobody outside the programming world likes script, but what they don't realize is that much of what they ask for IS script. Once you get past anything more involved than if this is this do that, you're scripting. Adding an engine feature that simulates script behavior "without script" ... well, you see what I mean.

But the good news and my second point is...

At least anything with numerical values I think should be available to change with simple commands.
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I won't be adding logic based commands - that's the realm of script as explained above. But what I will be doing is making simple value changes more accessible. Here's one thought I have:

Code: 
frame dude/.../...
# Set velocity for downward motion, and 0% gravity so we fly straight with no arc.
     gravity 0 
     velocity X 3
     velocity Y -2     
frame dude/.../...
# Go to this frame when we land, and make us 100% affected by gravity again.
     here_on Land
     gravity 1.0
frame dude/.../...

That would get you a dive kick with landing. Nothing you can't achieve already, but see how simple and intuitive it is?

@DC - I agree on this last post too, I could care less what it's called now.  OpenBOR is a stupid name, but it made sense at the time. It was just opensource BOR.  And even thou we had hindsight of it lasting this long.  I don't think anyone thought the name would actually stick this long.
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Just FYI, I didn't mean to put the name down, just that yeah - it's out grown itself. Nobody knows that OpenBOR means Open Source Beats of Rage, they just hear "OpenBOR". A catchy or obviously descriptive name would help that I think.

DC
 
I don't mean turning scripts into commands for everything.  But we are hard coded to use certain things, like in the menu for example.  If the average user could have control over certain things it just makes sense to me.  I know it's possible with script, but in this case it's very complex script just to have a simple change in the menu.

Like the code to have music stop when you press pause.  I remember changing that in the code before, we could just have on/off switch for things like this, all I'm saying.


Just FYI, I didn't mean to put the name down, just that yeah - it's out grown itself. Nobody knows that OpenBOR means Open Source Beats of Rage, they just hear "OpenBOR". A catchy or obviously descriptive name would help that I think.
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NP, no offence taken. ;)

 
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