[Wanderer]

Soo...

Something made for Starfox: Shadows of Lylat.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arKxbX7Jzzk

Credit for scripting goes to yours truly and Axem, and ofcourse to WMC for making the scripting system as well as to DaBrain who made the graphics for the 3D aiming aid.

The number array seen on the left side of the screen is just showing some debugging information so ignore it...

[Roanoke]

thought this was secret ?

[Wanderer]

The actual Lua script used for the corridor mode is still more or less a secret but images and videos of the end result do not matter...

[Unknown Target]

If you're showing the video, why keep the script to do it a secret? Someone else may be able to use it

[Wanderer]

Pretty much the same as people posting fancy pics of 3d model meshes and textured models. All completely useless without the actual model and texture files.

[Roanoke]

If you're showing the video, why keep the script to do it a secret? Someone else may be able to use it

Pretty much the same as people posting fancy pics of 3d model meshes and textured models. All completely useless without the actual model and texture files.

I think UT means it would be nice to release the code to the community. I'd like that, given my own pet-project could use it, though I'd fully understand if you chose not. 

[Nuke]

heh, cool, you got it to work.

[Bobboau]

hmm. yeah, BWO sure would like to have an edge on everybody else, maybe I should make it so the triggered animation system only works for us until we release. come on it's called a community for a reason, I dislike the secretive nature of mods as it is, don't set a new precedent by keeping code to yourself, especially scripting, scripting needs as much help as it can get right now..

[Shade]

Just people seeing what can be done with it will help scripting quite a lot, I imagine. More and more people are waking up to how powerful it is every day. As for this, we'll get our hands on it when the mod comes out. It's not like he's keeping an engine upgrade covered up so that noone else can use the feature, since the tools to do it are available to anyone with the skills to use them.

I mean, I'd certainly like to get my hands on that sweet Galactica model that Omniscaper has made, but really, if I wanted it bad enough then I've got the tools to make one myself (given enough blood, sweat, tears, and a gratuitous amount of cursing at TS3) so I can hardly complain that he wants to keep it private until his own mod is ready for release. After all, it's his work.

[jr2]

Try PMing Wanderer with what you have in mind, I'm sure he might be able to help somehow, perhaps...? It never hurts to ask... (well, usually!)

[Unknown Target]

Keeping models to yourself is a little different than keeping code...I mean, scripting code needs to be learned by people to be implemented, whereas if someone gives a model to the community then they're really not teaching anyone anything by having other people have it, it's just an art asset.

[Bobboau]

there is a difference between technique and actual material, this is more technique, how to make rail missions, than actual material, a rail mission.

[karajorma]

Didn't I already have this argument a couple of years ago?


Now I'd be the first to complain if I thought Wanderer was holding stuff back from the community but he isn't. If someone asked scripting questions of him I'm pretty sure he'd go out of his way to answer them. If he doesn't want to give away the result of a lot of hard work that's okay with me as long as he isn't hiding that it's possible to do what he is doing.

For me I think there is a huge difference between asking how to do something with scripting and simply giving people the finished product as a fait accompli and I tend to feel that Wanderer's approach will actually do more for scripting than simply posting the scripts once he's finished them.

Let's look at the rather poor take up of scripting. Would posting the rail script help with that? Sure. A few people would use it. Would it help get us more scripters? Probably not. People would alter the script only on the most basic level, not understanding what it did. The way to get more people scripting is to show them all the wonderful things that can be done with scripts and help them take their first steps making their own ones. Posting fully working scripts appears to be having the opposite effect. No one is bothering to learn since they can just use the scripts nuke and wanderer have posted.

[DaBrain]

Wanderer isn't holding back anything.

I decided that it's ok to release a video clip of it, but not the script itself. To motivate more people to script and show WMC what he has made possible.

I don't even really have a problem with releasing the script, if that's ok for Wanderer.
Still, it would be a little bit sad for us to have nothing new in our mod.

And listen to the wise words of Karajorma.

[Nuke]

well my original thought on scripting was that examples are necessary to help new scripters acquire skills be example. this is how i learned quake c, by studying the hundreds of examples that that had been posted. but it seems that under freespace, this hasnt worked. unlike an fps, freespace doesnt require scripting to make mods, if it did we would have more scripters. i tend to see newer modders preferring shortcuts though table editing or with fred, than to actually learn another programming language. lua isnt that hard and anyone with a highschool programming class under their belt could probibly figure it out.

now scripting has been around for awhile and many examples are available and most still work or have been updated to work in the newer head builds. there are a few scripters around willing to share their knowledge. were not gonna do the work for you, but we can point you in the right direction. we should be allowed to keep a few secrets, especially something thats been made for a not yet released mod. thats what makes the mods special, without the supprise, its just freespace with some different ships. my big secret would be the pirate hud ive been slowly developing. ive contributed a fair amount of script for everyone to play around with, and so has wanderer.

rather than complain because you want something that someone else is keeping under wraps for the time being. you should realize that with an hour here and an hour there, you could implement your own custom never before seen cool feature. theres lotsa code out there to examine, lots of expertise here and all you really need is some patience and notepad
if you failed to notice ^that was your cue to start learning scripting

[Wanderer]

I really hope that modders would at least try to utilize scripting a bit more - and also learn to write more of it rather than just using the example scripts - than what they do now.. It might be a tad difficult in the beginning but now there are several examples and whole lot of people who can help you out.

[Gregster2k]

Worst case scenario:
HLP gets proprietary; modmakers demand encryption for their mod files so that other people can't steal their work. All mods are lower in quality overall because a key feature that one mod could benefit from, is denied to them because the others have made it proprietary. As a result, everyone is reinventing the wheel the wrong way to do the same thing in scripting that another mod already does perfectly. People "stealing" ideas, people flaming each other because they are using each other's ideas, people flaming each other because they won't give up their ideas/models/whatever. People stop bothering to learn to mod because they are intimidated by large mod groups which keep their secrets to themselves. A general air of fear of other modmakers and infringing on intellectual property within the community; nobody shares, everyone hoards.

As long as there are people willing to share within the HLP community, we're good. When SoL is released and on-rails scripting is given to all, a new "genre" of games for FSO will be opened up. It might be far off, but someday we might be making that "Freespace FPS" as a House of the Dead type game with Shivans in it. A two player (simultaneous or online) rail shooter with full support for lightguns...battle Shivans, Vasudans, NTF...

I think an open source attitude with already-released mods will promote creativity, learning and better quality mods. Granted, there will always be script kiddies following people like Wanderer and Nuke around (I myself am currently a member of their ranks). Sharing techniques inevitably creates clones, knockoffs, and blatant copy and pastes, but there is also a limit to what one can do with mere "cut and paste" scripting, and when the script kiddies reach that limit, they will either give up or become script gurus themselves.

[Roanoke]

Modellers have been revealing their secrets to new guys for years.

On a related note, I've been reading the script examples and have no idea what to make of that little lot....

[Nuke]

i have no problem with people using my stuff once my mod is released (and i release in increments whenever i feel substantial progress has been made). but in the development stage where everything is buggy and nothing is complete it seems kinda pointless. i intend to release scripts as part of the next release of nukemod, which will be modular and easy to integrate into other mods without any knoledge of scripting (and il even include instructions).

im sure when the starfox people release their mod, they will have no problem letting other modders take a peek at what they did and how they did it. if you ask nicely they might let you borrow some graphics and some script. just so long as you give proper credit to anyone whos stuff you may use. its not a question of should mods be encrypted to prevent data theft. my opinion is its an open engine and mods should reflect that as far as releases go. as far as how open development should be, i think that should be up to the modder. i dont mind if a mod runs a tight ship, so long as there not sneaking secret features in the fs2open codebase and not telling anyone.

[karajorma]

Modellers have been revealing their secrets to new guys for years.

No one here is keeping secrets. I'm sure if someone had a 90% working on-rails mode of their own and were stuck Wanderer would help them fix it if they asked him. There's a difference between asking for help and simply sticking out your hand and demanding stuff for the good of the community though.

Wouldn't it be good for the community if BWO, Inferno and MT gave us all their mods? Lots of campaigns could use their ships. Some campaigns may even require a specific class like BWO's superbombers or Inferno's supercaps before they can even get started. So you can make the same argument for ship mods you can make for scripts. Why does no one demand that they release mods for the good of the community?

hmm. yeah, BWO sure would like to have an edge on everybody else, maybe I should make it so the triggered animation system only works for us until we release.

I'll tell you what the difference is. Code is a special case because we all have to deal with the effects of any code you add. Which makes it hugely unfair to say this code is just for mod x (one reason why I intend to make it possible to do all the -TBP and -WCSaga flag stuff via tables as well, so that anyone can use it). If you add the animation system to the code now you've forced everyone to deal with the possible bugs and memory footprint increase your code would cause.

If Wanderer holds back his script has he caused any problems for people who don't want to make an on-rails mission?

Secondly if you hold back code you can end up massively wasting your time if someone else comes along and commits a different system to yours. You can't rip theirs out in favour of yours as they committed first. You'd either have to ignore your system in favour of theirs or fork the code.

That's why code is a special exception. We all have to use the same code. Holding back features in code is stupid and counter-productive. Just implement them. Given the poor documentation we coders provide your team will probably be the only one to use it anyway.