I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

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Magicono43
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I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

Post by Magicono43 »

So I just wanted to do a semi-rant about a feeling I had today after a realization I had. While the matter is mostly unrelated to DFU, the feeling was mainly brought upon by the DFU project and how much it has apparently raised my standards above what most people and other projects are able to deliver it seems, in other words the DFU project and how it has been ran has spoiled me.

For the past 2-weeks or so I have been playing on a World of Warcraft private server named "TurtleWoW" and the main thing that drew me to this particular server was this mode they recently added called "Hardcore" mode, which essentially meant if that character died in anyway, they would be unable to leave their ghost form and would for all intents and purposes be actually dead and unrecoverable. This concept had always been interested to me, and to have it implemented/enforced onto a WoW server as an option seemed really cool to me, and it was and has been so far, been having fun playing a Hardcore hunter with some self-imposed challenges added on to spice things up and add more unique aspects to me character and such, been a good time in that regard.

Where my problem arose is that the server also has various other custom content added with the idea of having the server be not just an emulation of vanilla WoW like so many, but instead a vanilla+ experience, which also drew me toward it, as I think this is the direction Blizzard SHOULD have went so many years ago, instead of expansions that further invalidated the old parts of the world, instead they should have added upon those and expanded them instead of just leaving them to the way-side essentially leaving so much potential behind as they went.

So with this in mind, I was also hoping to be able to contribute to this project and add to the whole vanilla+ thing, adding new crafting recipes, adding more depth to the crafting system/economy in general, adding new quests, new professions that were added in later expansions and such, the whole deal and I was pretty excited thinking of cool things to add. But here is where my issues with the server and the point of this post started to form. I was asking around the forums and looking around trying to find out how to contribute in these ways to the server, but all my questions were answered with "use these provided tools and make a forum post with your result and somebody else will deal with the rest." I found this sort of strange, as I figured why would these devs spend all their time doing this extra work of the actual implementation of quest ideas, when they could just have the quest creators deal with that part, put through a pull-request on their side and merge it in an update if it was up to standards and such? Well, after some more searching over a few days and asking around I finally came to the realization that the "project" itself was "private/closed source" (which is kind of interesting considering the main core that the server runs on is an open source project for vanilla wow emulation called Vmangos).

Well, after realizing this I basically gave up all desire to contribute to this project, as I don't like writing quests, making items, doing all that work but then just handing over the rest of that off to somebody else to do the details and other implementation part, which is a part that I like to do a lot myself as that is where you can put the many personal touches and details to make something you can be proud of and make great, not just somebody else' interpretation of it. Basically learning about this soured my whole view of their project and server in general, especially for how it felt like they were trying to almost hide the fact their source is private/closed and acting like community contribution is such a big part of their server, after you go through the "old boys club" first of course. While I like the players a lot and the hardcore guild a lot, still a fun server to play on, I now have zero desire to help with the server/project itself or add anything with the mentality the devs have.

After that long wall of context/rant, I finally get to the point from the start. Daggerfall Unity is exactly the standard I look for now when I look at other projects out there, and it has spoiled me as such. Open source, you can make commits and often if they are up to standard and make sense those contributions will get merged into the source. You can fork DFU and do whatever you want with it, play, create, whatever.

So I guess I just want to say thanks Interkarma and all those involved with DFU for keeping it the only open source project involving a game that I have personally seen as the top standard of integrity to the whole open source idea and philosophy, it warms my heart, but also saddens me to see how other project owners don't have this same mentality that allows for actually open contribution and personal learning and growth for those who wish to use it as playground/example for their own personal education into the field of programming and game creation in general.

That's it I guess, thanks for reading my rant.

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Interkarma
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Re: I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

Post by Interkarma »

It is incredibly heartening to read feedback like this. I've really tried to keep DFU as open as possible while still being a good steward and maintain a certain quality bar up to the best of my abilities. This has led to some problems occasionally but overall many, many more positive outcomes than negative.

I also wanted DFU to survive me and not need my stewardship forever. The only way to do that is trust the community and let everyone have some ownership. Just let people experiment and have fun and see where it goes rather than hold white-knuckled onto something that was never mine to start with.

I'm really proud of the outcome and how we were all able to build this thing together. It says a lot about how beloved Daggerfall is, despite all those quirks, that it still enjoys this kind of community energy 25+ years after release.

I needed a lift this morning, so thank you for the rant. :)

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Magicono43
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Re: I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

Post by Magicono43 »

I'm glad it lifted your spirits IK, and endless respect for being one of the few I have found that has shown actual integrity for the whole open source idea since I started getting into the whole game emulation/recreation scene. That's not to say there are not others out there like this, but this happens to be my personal best example I have been apart of so far and had personal interest in.

I guess if I want to see any WoW servers that live up to my fairly high standards of integrity to this whole idea I'll likely have to just pull a "I'll make my own custom server, and with blackjack and hookers!"

Maybe eventually, but I'll probably just start actually making some progress again on my project I started on my DFU fork, I have been procrastinating on that for too long honestly, lol. Motivation can be quite the roller coaster ride...

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Jay_H
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Re: I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

Post by Jay_H »

Jeff Vogel said, "Owning your work is one of the greatest things in the world." You know what would happen if the doomsday case happened and Bethesda/Zenimax/Microsoft sent a C&D to Daggerfall Unity? People like me would Freedoom it, turning Quest Pack 1 into the new base for the new guilds we're going to create in an entirely new world without Bethesda's IP. That's because we own the products we've made! I own QP1 forever and nobody can take it from me, and I can use it for whatever project I want. It's a wonderful thing! I don't attribute any shenanigans to the folks over on your WoW server, but it is frightening to deliver work to other people so they make the final product. I do that with the Archaeologist quests because I know Hazelnut's trustworthy, but not everyone is.

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Magicono43
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Re: I Have Been Spoiled By This Project

Post by Magicono43 »

Jay_H wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:36 am Jeff Vogel said, "Owning your work is one of the greatest things in the world." You know what would happen if the doomsday case happened and Bethesda/Zenimax/Microsoft sent a C&D to Daggerfall Unity? People like me would Freedoom it, turning Quest Pack 1 into the new base for the new guilds we're going to create in an entirely new world without Bethesda's IP. That's because we own the products we've made! I own QP1 forever and nobody can take it from me, and I can use it for whatever project I want. It's a wonderful thing! I don't attribute any shenanigans to the folks over on your WoW server, but it is frightening to deliver work to other people so they make the final product. I do that with the Archaeologist quests because I know Hazelnut's trustworthy, but not everyone is.
Yeah, it's a very hard thing to explain, like I personally am not someone who cares about people knowing that I made/did something, I could give less of a crap about that at the end of the day due to various personal philosophies of my own. But I do feel a very instinctual distrust of an offer of "make this thing for us, and send it to us when you are done, then we will go into our private area that you can't see or access and add it in ourselves, does that sound good to you?" well no, it does not sound good to me at all actually.

Perhaps I am a control freak to some degree, I have stated many times that I realize I don't work very well in teams, like I know for certain for this reason I would be a terrible candidate to work as a part of a team making some stand alone game, when I work on something I like to have full transparency at almost every step possible and not arbitrarily bar others from being able to see how something is working and what is happening behind the scenes, if they so desire of course. In the case of DFU, the only things that are somewhat obfuscated are the data that Bethesda has obfuscated themselves, and at this point much of that has been decoded and is now generally easily readable and editable, and in the worst case you can just cut off that "inaccessible" data and put in your own from what I have seen. Which during this experimentation in Unity using DFU I have learned so many things, but when a project decides to hide all of that "stuff" behind an arbitrary wall, it leaves me without that ability to play as I see fit, and instead am left with their tools to try and interface with the systems they can freely use in the room behind the closed door.

If you ask me at least, arbitrary barriers are the exact opposite of what "community contribution" and "open source" are all about. While I personally don't care about ownership, I care about transparency and being genuine about what you say you stand for and support, but I don't see either of these things in so many projects out there, which makes me come to the conclusion so often, "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself."

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