No PSI-KILLER has understood
Exactly.
The members of the TBP team wanted to wrap up in order to move onto other things, because we had achieved what we wanted to do, but also for the reasons PSI-KILLER described. Having one FINAL release makes it very easy for the casual gamer. They download the game. They play it. They don't need to worry about patches which may or may not work, and may or may not break earlier content. They don't need to worry about figuring out how to work the mod system. They just
play. Plus it gives mission designers a static target to develop for instead of a moving one. It's an enormous advantage.
The work Flipside suggested is an enormous update (see my comments on Flipsides specifics). Even hardcore TBP revivalist Bobboau has admitted the patch would be huge. I worked for TBP for years, as technical manager, as co-project leader, as solitary project leader - twice. I know what's involved. They are trying to pass it off as a minor tweak and it's simply dishonest. I would go as far as calling this TBP 4.0. It requires a development team and a ton of beta testing. A restart of the project.
In spite of my team's wishes - I actually gave them an opportunity to prove to me there was a
damn good reason for this! Talk about going out of one's way to be reasonable. I asked Flipside to give me detailed specifics. I looked at the evidence with an open mind but saw nothing except vague responses. There are things that - might - potentially be a problem, multiplayer might not work, we can't give specifics but we'd d like to fix anyway. Karajorma has also admitted TBP isn't really buggy. The SCP team see warnings? So what! We
know there were some warnings for programmers running debug. Not for end users running retail
. Sometimes it was a case of inconveniencing programmers instead of gamers.
The bottom line is the end user experience in 3.6.9 is excellent. The end user experience
in multiplayer though it has some very minor
game engine related (not TBP!) niggles is also excellent. All 3.6.10 has to do is maintain backward compatability and run TBP as well as it runs under 3.6.9!
Their justification for an update was so far outweighed by the negatives, the disrespect to the team's wishes, enormous risks with few guarantees about testing, support, or backward/forward compatability and so few concrete benefits... it was a very easy decision to come to. It was absolutely the right decision to come to. It's project management 101. Huge risk + negative or no reward = rejected project proposal
This whole affair has indeed been very depressing. The problem for me is that - for the most part - this thread seems to be only visited by die hard TBP revivalists whose longing to see TBP updated is overriding common sense. They simply aren't willing to accept anything except complete unconditional surrender to their demands. I even said I would not accept their patch in it's "full" form (check the quote!), suggesting room for negotiation? How was that received? Badly. This "my way or the highway" attitude and the utter disrespect they have shown me and my team as was has only served to further reduce my trust in these people. Trust being vital in this.
There is no way back now. Hence the decision I made to withdraw my work which Vidmaster in a display of real maturity has respected and I know Tomcat (responsible for most of the models in TBP) agrees with.
