[An4ximandros]

 I would like to say that it should be up to the author to decide when to release something. If it's a collab, then it should involve some kind of vote by all the people who worked on an asset. No one else should have a say or use peer pressure to force some subconsciously to release their work.

[Lorric]

I do think it's wrong to pressure someone. Either way. They made it, they should decide what to do with it.

It could discourage people from making stuff in the first place.

[Kobrar44]

I made it, I am not discouraged and I am all for releasing it. I'll upload the unmodified version, because Scooby gave it quite a facelift, and I sugest releasing the modified version as well, if Scooby doesn't mind.

[MatthTheGeek]

Of course the people who made it have the right to make their own decision about it. They have also the right to know it's a bad decision. Not telling them is not helping them.

[Swifty]

Just curious, does the community expect a TC like Diaspora to release it's models the instant we have a fully finished POF ready? I'm understanding a lot of the reasoning put forth by the people in the thread but I'm genuinely curious what a mod like that should do in order to maintain the spirit of cooperation.

[headdie]

basically if you dont want this dont release teaser shots of your assets

[General Battuta]

Just curious, does the community expect a TC like Diaspora to release it's models the instant we have a fully finished POF ready? I'm understanding a lot of the reasoning put forth by the people in the thread but I'm genuinely curious what a mod like that should do in order to maintain the spirit of cooperation.

That's a really interesting question. If you've got a community of active mission builders who would benefit from it, I would probably lean in the direction of popping it ASAP - it's not going to hurt you in any meaningful way, and getting the new ship set up and installed will help those FREDders branch out into tabling. The downside is that this could create technical difficulties if you've got to fix something with the model later for the release proper and earlier versions of it start overriding later, fixed ones.

The Diaspora community is more consumer-oriented than creator-oriented, and I think the general project tendency is more towards the standards of a 'real' game. What do you think?

[MatthTheGeek]

I believe that  releasing assets before R1 would not have helped because 1) the modding fanbase was nonexistant since this was before release, and much more importantly, 2) they wanted to stay under the radar of whoever have the rights to C&D.

Now that R1 is out of the door and that they have attracted potential modders, regularly releasing assets would be an excellent way to keep that community alive, giving them more stuff to build missions with and giving them regularly a good occasion to dust off their FREDing skills. It's a long wait until R2 and it seems most of the potential FREDers have already deserted the ship.

[BlasterNT]

Another question could be workflow.  iirc, most professionally developed games develop their assets in passes, where an entire "fleet" of models get improved incrementally many times, and models are not really finished until the entire thing is almost done.  I prefer to operate this way, simply because I like to work on what I'm most excited to work on.  The pressure for release can operate counter to this method, however. 

[Mobius]

The Tychicus is a beefed up Strike Cannon from Colony Wars! 

Good Old Days!

[MatthTheGeek]

Many people have released WIP but playable ships followed by a more complete version later on. The Newet is one such example. This does not disrupt the workflow in any meaningful way.

[Angelus]

No, but it creates an tech support nightmare.
Personally, i don't think that an additional freighter or other civvie ship would make a difference, it wouldn't draw in fresh FREDer blood, just because a new ship was released.

[Lorric]

The Tychicus is a beefed up Strike Cannon from Colony Wars! 

Good Old Days!

Aw yeah!

A Colony Wars Freespace mod would be so awesome, wouldn't it? 

[esarai]

The Solaris was released literally the instant it was done. You're jumping at shadows here - people have presented a case for a (really good, mutually beneficial) way of handling assets that's helped lift this community out of a pretty difficult period. You're getting pretty worked up here.

Because I don't like people using my ships as an example of exclusivity, I'm gonna confirm Battuta's statement in hopes it kills this argument once and for all: the Solaris was the last asset to be completed prior to WiH's release.  Everyone assumes we were holding onto it, but this couldn't be further from the truth.  If the Solaris had been excluded, WiH could have launched 2 days earlier.

[Phantom Hoover]

if only the karuna had been completed too amirite

[MatthTheGeek]

I don't think it was even started until month after the original release.

[SypheDMar]

The Diaspora community is more consumer-oriented than creator-oriented... What do you think?

I think that the communities like the Diaspora community are trying to capture an entirely different market than the rest of the FreeSpace communities, which happens to be more consumer-oriented. Even if Diaspora isn't a consumer-oriented market (which they are), I think they should have more leeway because the market they're trying to capture do not (at the time) play/mod on the FreeSpace Open engine. And even if the target audience can now mod and play Diaspora, the market they're still trying to capture is still very new and still developing. Without a strong lead spur content creation, I believe that the Diaspora developers should be able to hold on to their assets without being viewed as asset hoarders.

[Dragon]

Besides, Diaspora assets are of little use outside Diaspora itself, usually being very noticeably BSG-related. Really important stuff like scripts or code were actually released before the project itself.

[Hades]

Besides, Diaspora assets are of little use outside Diaspora itself, usually being very noticeably BSG-related. Really important stuff like scripts or code were actually released before the project itself.

That doesn't stop several people from using WCS or Scooby ships in FreeSpace mods despite being noticeably WC-related, now does it?