[IPAndrews]

These two Guys behind you, are more loyal to you, than you believe. All they do, they do only via the Zathras-Mod. They do not modify the Core-Files.

The Zatharas files are copes of the core files. When one of my models appears in Zatharas that's still my geometry, my uvmapping, my pof editting, my table entry, etc... Taken without permission. Whether you choose to treat this as wrong, or dishonourable, or theft, is down to your own personal opinion and you're entitled to it.

I've seen many excuses as to why this behaviour is fine. It's to be expected really. This is the TBP forum. Full of hardcore fans. I can't blame the hardcore fans here for wanting to see development continue, even if that's not what the team wanted or in the best interests of the product. Afterall hardcore fans are less bothered about complicated forced updates, new bugs etc...

I was new on this forum, when you quit (or had to quit), so must say that I haven't read everything. So what's are your good reasons, to fix nothing?

Well my arguments are archived here for all to see. If you're interested go have a look.

And what happend to "This is from the Fans for the Fans"?

As a fan, the fans have always been my priority. Again. my arguments are archived here. I think they make sense. All you'll see from the other side are vague comments like "it must be done" or "it must be fixed". They won't actually give details. Reason being - there weren't any.

The truth is - Zatharas wasn't in the best interests of fans. At least not the *majority* of casual fans I represented who just wanted a working polished game. It was for lazy developers who couldn't be bothered to maintain backward compatibility, and it was for a few power crazed types who wanted to revive a completed mod and steal the work. You'll notice Zatharas is now an "official download". Originally it was supposed to be a "fan development". Funny how it's now been quietly promoted huh?

By the way I'm just replying to your post out of politeness. I'm not under any misconception that anyone here actually cares what I'm saying or what I think.

Peace and love.  

[General Battuta]

At least not the *majority* of casual fans I represented who just wanted a working polished game. It was for lazy developers who couldn't be bothered to maintain backward compatibility,

Original TBP wasn't working or polished.

It had problems in it. They weren't your fault - the problems were not necessarily detected by the engine during TBP development - but they were nonetheless problems, and would have been problems even on the retail FreeSpace engine. They were problems certainly not present with Volition assets. The fact that you didn't and couldn't know they were broken doesn't make them any less broken.

(This is why the backwards compatibility argument is wrong. FSOpen has been fully backwards compatible all the way back to retail, so long as the assets it uses are made properly. It remains so. The changes between 3.6.9 and 3.6.10 simply allowed the engine to scream about errors that it would otherwise have choked on. These errors were not present in retail data.)

You started out from a good, defensible position, but your moral high ground vanished when you decided to burn the entire mod rather than allow the errors to be fixed.

It wasn't done, it wasn't finished, it wasn't polished. It is now - or at least it's closer. Absolutely free, pro bono, your work made better with no effort on your part and nothing removed or reinterpreted.

And there have been no signs of the problems you were worried about: no complicated forced updates, no crippling new bugs, nothing.

Your fears haven't come to pass. You can rest easy, and you can drop the 'thief' act. Your own wishes were for public development.

[PSI-KILLER]

General Snyder is MIA????

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Jeff Vader]

The Zatharas files are copes of the core files. When one of my models appears in Zatharas that's still my geometry, my uvmapping, my pof editting, my table entry, etc... Taken without permission. Whether you choose to treat this as wrong, or dishonourable, or theft, is down to your own personal opinion and you're entitled to it.

Makes one wonder why you chose to create a mod for FSO if being really easily moddable and having an open source game engine are really such horrifying things in your opinion. Why use such an easily moddable game? A game for which the average user can fidn tons of modding articles, tools and other instructions. Why rely on an open source game engine that is used by half-dozen other games? Why not just create your very own game and encrypt all the files so that modifying them afterwards would be painfully difficult at best. None of this would have happened and you could sit around somewhere, egoing over the fact that no one can access your models and textures and data tables.

As a fan, the fans have always been my priority.

I see.

I hereby withdraw my work on The Babylon Project from all versions. Past, present, future, team developed, fan developed. This is a complete withdrawl of permission. As such I expect downloads to be deleted from Hard Light Productions and other sites.

I can't see how this comment would bode well for any fan. Slightly before this whole thing started, I was actually thinking of grabbing the latest version of TBP and playing it again (because I remembered it being cool), but then your statement discouraged me from doing so.

Zatharas wasn't in the best interests of fans. At least not the *majority* of casual fans I represented who just wanted a working polished game. It was for lazy developers who couldn't be bothered to maintain backward compatibility, and it was for a few power crazed types who wanted to revive a completed mod and steal the work.

It could be assumed that the TBP team knew the fact that FSO is an open source engine. It evolves. It doesn't just rot around in a corner. If it can be improved and be made to work better on new hardware, it is done. And this wasn't about backward compatibility. TBP had downright flaws in its models, tables and whatnot. I still can't understand how fixing those issues and making sure that fans can continue to play TBP, particularly multiplayer, with minimal errors could be as sick, twisted and evil as serial raping, as you seem to imply. No one was going to start redoing the entire core TBP; some people just wanted to fix errors in it.

And what if someone outside of HLP decided to do their own modding and release their contents out in the open? Would you hunt them down and demand them to undo what they have done?

[chief1983]

...Zatharas...Zatharas...As a fan...Zatharas...Zatharas

Some fan, can't even spell 'Zathras'

Also, it's the official Zathras, doesn't mean it's officially endorsed by TBP, but it can't hurt to mention it on the website.

And, I love how you still haven't wrapped your head around the difference between the SCP breaking the way a feature works and thereby breaking backwards compatibility, and adding debugging to the engine to report issues that were always present but not previously reported by the engine.  Or, when a feature _had_ to change because the implementation itself was buggy, precluding the possibility of any sort of backwards compatibility.  I'll drink to that one.

[Revan]

I've seen many excuses as to why this behaviour is fine. It's to be expected really. This is the TBP forum. Full of hardcore fans. I can't blame the hardcore fans here for wanting to see development continue, even if that's not what the team wanted or in the best interests of the product. Afterall hardcore fans are less bothered about complicated forced updates, new bugs etc...

[...]

As a fan, the fans have always been my priority. Again. my arguments are archived here. I think they make sense. All you'll see from the other side are vague comments like "it must be done" or "it must be fixed". They won't actually give details. Reason being - there weren't any.

Well perhaps i need to make thread archeology.[/quote]

But one example: The Truster-Problem of the Mindwinter is easy to fix. 2 Minutes Work, if you know what is to do. 5 Minutes if you want to test the fix.

It is a minor Bug. But there have been many bugs like this. There have been other Bugs, that i self would be able to fix, in my first modding days. Without new bugs. Everything easy to fix, if you know what you have to fix. And no, I don't see me as a Superdeveloper or something.

Another Thing. You said it is completed. I never understand how a mod can be completed, when there is a race, that is haveing a own supportship but not one fighter.
In my opinion a Mod in this Universe can not be completed. It is to cosmopolitic.

In order to ask once hypothetically. What if anyone had moddelt new ships. A complete Abbai Pack for example. Wouldn't you want to integrate it? (Lets do so, as if you are still the Project Leader)

By the way I'm just replying to your post out of politeness. I'm not under any misconception that anyone here actually cares what I'm saying or what I think.

No one would answer you, if nobody thaks care of that what you think. But you get answers.

[Fury]

Enough of this. Topic locked.