Duion

At some point there was a change to use SDL2 maybe that broke some GUI related stuff, it did break something for me. I'm not an expert on that, but maybe worth a check.

I tested this and it did not work, do you know when was the latest version where it did work?

Discord is the only way to communicate aside from the forum, which is hardly ever used by anyone, since anyone is just using Discord for anything and never before was any other way of communicating advertised on the forum or by people, not even the IRC channel when it still existed, it existed kind of in the shadows.

@Timmy Maybe I worded myself not the optimal way, what I meant is that to not promote Discord as the primary and only way of communication here, not that everyone personally stops using Discord.

@JeffR Yes, it may be "convenient" but that is not what it is about, we are an open source project, so we are not about convenience in the first place anyway, people who want convenience will not use our engine, but use some more convenient engine and to make it even more convenient, buy all their stuff in the asset store instead of developing it themselves, thats the future of convenience. Convenience for me is kind of a synonym for ignorance. By the way almost all the advantages you named are nonexistent, the only valid one I see is embedding files/video, everything else you can have with IRC as well, depending on your client, but in most clients you can set it up like that as well, that you have a history, notifications for anything you want etc. There are also a lot of disadvantages that discord brings, like being proprietary, having to register, having to install potential malware/spyware on your computer, getting data harvested, getting ads for payments they want from you, since the program is not really free etc.

As hypocritical as you are I think I know who you are. You are just a talker never getting anything done, I met countless of you before.

@suncaller So far you have provided absolutely nothing, you have no prior posts, no portfolio, no anything, maybe you are just a sockpuppet account of someone or just followed me to hate on me. If you have anything, then show it, otherwise I will just ignore you forever.

@suncaller You wanted to argue if I'm qualified or not and the fact that I released a game and 99% of people here not should be proof enough that I'm at least qualified enough. I'm also one of the best artists in the community.

Great thats like exactly the same thing that was planned 5+ years ago as well, multiple times even, I even was involved in 2-3 of such projects, I even did my part, but the other people just ran away doing nothing and so the projects did not get done obviously. So don't act as if you are so revolutionary, you just dug out the plans that were made by the committee/community around 5 years ago that you deliberately buried.

@suncaller Why don't you just click the link to my website, there you can find most of the stuff I did, all you need to do is click the link that is right in your face all the time.

@suncaller Are you joking? Where are your credentials that make you qualified to judge who is capable and who not? I have proven myself over and over again over the years, that I'm qualified and able to get things done, you have nothing to show, so why should I bother to argue with you?

I don't know why you guys insiste to self host IRC instead of just making a free channel on like the many free networks there are like https://freenode.net/ which is dedicated to open source projects and almost any project has a channel there. Where is the problem? I mean you have no problems on using a totally not self hosted Discord for everything, but using a not self hosted anything else is somehow impossible, even though it requires a few clicks only. For example I use IRC for text chat, I also have a bot that keeps track of commits, it is a service by freenode or so, so no problem with that and for voice chat I use a self hosted Mumble server duion.com, which is similar to Discord, except that it is truly free and not fake free. As everything that I do, it is also free to use for anyone. I may even look into hosting whatever you want as a service, but I have not found good alternatives so far.

You did twice what? I never was in the committee after garagegames fully left the project. I also don't know how I supposedly should have blocked submissions. I was there as an artist and guiding the visual stuff, I was actually the only one contributing anything, but I was blocked of contributing anything through being ignored. When I was in the committee, it was discussed, that art will not be committed to the main repo, since the size would blow up and will reach the maximum repository size quickly. I'm not criticizing you for not doing enough, but for throwing everything over board that was planned before, like throw away the steering committee, throw away all plans that were made in it before and throw away the release schedule etc. And to top it off you claim I try to take control, while you actually already have taken all control for yourself. PS: This is the old Trello board with the original plans for the engine etc: https://trello.com/b/CsoHkTbH/torque-3d-mit-community-contributions

It is not exclusively on Steam, it is just an alternative for people that do not care about open source, but the game itself is fully open source compatible and works fully without Steam if you want or any other proprietary software. Same goes with Discord, I cannot stop people from using Discord, but I was suggesting to not use Discord as the primary and exclusive way of communication, you can have it as an alternative, but do not advertise it as the main and only way and tell everyone else that does not want to use it to fuck off. Free software is also free to be used in proprietary environments, thats what freedom is, there is no hypocrisy in this. The other way around however is the opposite of freedom, like telling people they have to use a proprietary platform and they cannot use an open source one, that is what you are doing.

Popularity is not an argument, you can just brainwash people to like something, if you have enough of money and experts on marketing, Discord is just a scam. Give away stuff for free invest into lots of marketing, get lots of people using it and then raise the prices and sell them stuff and while doing that data mine them and sell that as well. Also the IRC channel was never really advertised anywhere, it took me some time to find out about it, but the Discord is advertised on the forum front page, nobody ever cared to do that with IRC.

@Code_Man Finally a voice of reason here. I don't know matrix and I would not suggest to use anything exotic exclusively even though it is good, since it would put most people off, since people in general are lazy. IRC however does not cost any efford to create, you just enter a room name and you are ready to go, the fact that we do not have an IRC channel is just deliberate ignorance, we had one since forever before and the server for it went down and nobody cared to create a new one and when I do it, everyone is against it, just because it was suggested by me, even though it is the most normal thing in the entire open source scene ever.

I explained my ideas and plans for years now over and over again, maybe 5 years or so and all I get is answers like "Screw you", "Fuck you", "You are a troll", "You are toxic" etc sure I'm toxic when I get ignored and insulted all the time, even though I dedicated thousands of hours on creating content I gave away totally for free. I already gave enough examples like the nonexistent steering committee that nobody notices since many years, but I can give you another one that shows what attitude I have the most problems with. For example since almost forever like 5+ years ago I started to propose that we need to do advertising like at least get control over eventual social media accounts and at least update them that the engine has been open sourced and is different now etc. So for example I found the engine on https://www.moddb.com/engines/torque-3d and found that it was never updated and still showed the commercial engine from 10 years ago, so I proposed for years to take control of that page and update it. I spoke about it on the meetings of the steering committee, on the forum, in chats etc and people said they would solve it, but nobody ever did anything. So I created a new page on my own, it was deleted by moderators of that page, because they said it already exists, then I told them that the person controlling it is gone and so after long discussion I managed to convince the admins to give me control over that accounts, so finally I thought we can update it and then I gave it over to JeffR, because he was in charge and I did not want to be egoistic. Well he took it over and of course did nothing to change it and when I asked why I just got a "Screw you" as an answer. All I wanted is to update the page with a new description that it is open source now, some screenshots etc would take like an hour of work or so, but nobody ever cared to do it and as I offered to do it I got a "Screw you" as a reply again. There are so many little changes that would make a great improvement compared to the little amount of work needed to do them, but people actively refuse to do anything, often only because I proposed it. Then I get blamed for putting people of because of being "toxic" which is subjective anyway, but having no updates or activity in some areas over many years is somehow not putting people off, this is all hypocritical. I don't demand people to work harder on the engine, it is just those many little common sense decissions and actions that are never done for whatever reason that anger me and what angers me even more is, when I do them on my own, but are then thrown away or ignored by others and I get insulted again for being so egoistic even though I give everything away I do for free.

We had a better alternative since forever, IRC, that is what basically all open source projects use and have ever used, if you want to go with the flow, that is the way to go.

I'm not trolling, I think an open source project should have some kind of philosophy that at least prefers open source friendly platforms or tools to use. You do not need to register to read the forum and you do not need to register to read and write in an IRC chat, but Discord is more of a closed community, you need to register to come in and you need to be invited to the group otherwise you cannot join it?! Also the switch to discord is part of the "Screw you" policy that is run here as I mentioned here as well: https://forums.torque3d.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=11072#p11069 We had an IRC channel since forever, but Jeff decided that we use Discord now and when I said something against I just get "Screw you" as an answer. I don't agree to the terms of service of Discord and I don't want to install malware on my computer just to take part on the discussion, so I have to draw a line somewhere. By forcing people to use Discord you are forcing them to install malware and spyware on their computer.

@marauder2k9 Sure you can work on what you want, that is not what I was speaking about. Did you think I was thinking about that they were physically stopping you from it? That is ridiculous and you know that, of course you want work on what you want, the question is more, if they let you decide anything and they don't. Btw there is no "they" anyway as it was planned as to have a committee, since it does not exist anymore. You can even make your own fork and work on that how you like, but I try to prevent that, since it just adds extra work for you and your changes will not be accepted into the main repo. For example there is more than one time where I caught people trying to delete features from the engine I use and I don't want to constantly go around and bring those features back in and maintain them myself every time. Like most times I'm against the decissions made or want to suggest something else than the plan, the answer I get is just something like "Screw you". Sure in their view it is no problem to just delete things they think they do not need or break backwards compatibility where they want, since they don't have a game out that will be broken through it, but people who do are screwed. It is not that big of a deal in most cases since you can patch it back, but it gets really annoying over time.

@Azaezel I'm not criticizing that you people are not contributing enough, just mentioning that for example we have no steering committee anymore for maybe 4 years in some cases, at least that is what the forum says those people were last active. Look here: https://forums.torque3d.org/memberlist.php?mode=team The only active person from the admin team is Lukas and the only active person from the committee is Jeff, the others you almost never see. What is so hard on doing a few mouse clicks, kicking them out and ask if someone wants to do the job? I wanted to apply, but I'm not allowed, I was not even allowed to have a shitty moderator role to delete the rampant spam that accumulated already over months and nobody cared. Why don't you just let other people do something? Then we do not have to make a big drama about everything every time. It is not very motivating to get ignored all the time.

@Happenstance I just use the forum ignore function on Bloodknight, he is just trying to sabotage me since forever, I have never seen him create anything, so why even read what he writes when he has no proof of his expertise anywhere. Like me or not, the facts are that no releases in over 2 years and that the previous model with the steering committee worked relatively well and the model now does not. When the "community" took over the engine it went downward, I was at the steering committee before that, but after I was kicked out and they put a bunch of people into the committee that I have never heard of before and that never showed any activity later. So someone with zero activity is somehow more qualified for that position than me, the most active member of the community. I don't really know what to t hink, is it just pure incompetence or intentional sabotage? It is not that hard to make a few mouse clicks and kick out the nonexistent members and ask who wants to do the job, incompetent or not, existing people are better than nonexisting ones.

As an open source project, we should have an open source friendly chat platform as well, like IRC, almost any open source project is there, just not us. Discord has many issues here are some examples: https://stallman.org/discord.html Update, here are some more: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html I also think it reduces activity in the forums, which is very bad and your force people through peer pressure to get another program and register there in order to take part in the discussion there, since Discord is not a free open platform that is visible to anyone like this forum. Why not have an open platform for chat as well? It takes almost no efford to register an IRC channel, does not require installing external programs and does not require anyone to register anywhere in order to take part in the discussion.

@JeffR If the current repo setup is a problem, why not change it? Open up a new group and call that the main engine repository and assign roles. I would also suggest to split up the repo into core engine, game templates and art assets, as otherwise it gets too big and complex, I mean you want to go modular anyway, so why not go all the way. I mean any plan is better than no plan at all. If you are the one skilled enough to maintain the repo, why not become the primary maintainer. It worked with this forum as well, if @LukasPJ would not have created it, even though almost everyone else was against it, we still would sit around at the inactive garagegames drowning in spam getting nowhere. So why not do the same with the repo, ignore everyone else that contributes nothing.

How about making it first priority to make everything more transparent and democratic. All I see is "We decided or I decided..." but I don't know who that is or where it happens, it just happens and I cannot see anything nor influence anything. Before you do anything you need some kind of planning phase and take into consideration what everyone else is doing or wants to do. Why not let everyone make suggestions, see what we have and who is developing what and base our Roadmap on that, instead of one of a few people just single handedly deciding it. Before we had a Trello board with cards of each tasks, I did not like the platform, but the concept was very great, because everyone could see all the tasks and pick one and everyone else could see at all times who was working on what, at the moment nobody can see anything. If you always want to do everything alone you won't get much done, the secret to leading a successfull company is to not do the work yourself, but organize others to do it for you. You want to be like the boss and the worker at the same time. Why not divide the tasks up, for example I wanted to improve the art assets since forever, so I would contribute there, but so far my contributions got ignored so I stopped doing anything in that regard.