Community Project

#21 @Tom realm wars was never floated as a TSE project. The commercial project is not legal anyway
because it's shareware. Just one day we woke up and some dude from Canada was trying to sell something was not his.

We can still do Realm Wars TSE if we want.

I would not mind floating a new game plan with another original idea.

I would not call Realm Wars 1 a failure.. it has served the GG community by providing examples
and such.

Edit:
Realm Wars is VERY well documented on to be in the public domain. There never was any intention
to make it commercial. And only GG may of been able to legally convert it. Since it really belongs
to GG *.community not that dude..

As far as the failure...

That's why I suggest using new tools like TDN to document it. Existing forum resource
but restricted to SDK users. Etc.

#22 Without wishing to get into an argument about details, my point remains that Realm Wars did not survive as a community project.

#23 Robert, this isn't a bad idea but it needs to be more thought out. Yes, I know what open source is. Torque is NOT an open source engine. Only TSE owners could be able to modify it and such. Also, I believe even Realm Wars has some agreement forms you have to sign. Bottom line is, most community projects don't do well. Tom B brings up excellent points. Realm Wars1 did not survive. This isn't neccessarily a bad idea but it needs to be more thought out. If you make some contracts and plan to sell this but split/donate the money to GG or among your team, you get a project almost like a community one. Perhaps come up with a design doc for the project first? Then maybe see if anyone wants to help. Believe me, I'm not against community projects. I just understand that lawsuits can come out of them if you're not careful and thats no fun for anyone.

#24 There was no timetable attached to it. Realm Wars floundered sure. But when did anyone from GG declare it dead or
shut the forums. Take down the downloads etc? In my opinion. If GG community decides to keep working with Realm Wars
we have all rights to do such. So I guess I don't accept your premise that it did not survive. Because the body of work still remains.
And the facilities to support that body. Let's look at some of the history of Realm wars.
I'll agree it did not fully meet it planned goal.

But it did accomplish a few things and help a lot of people get started. Realm Wars also is a marketing tool for
Garage Games. (Another reason it should remain GG community property). It was only announced in Mar 2002.
There has been a lot of rotation with people working on it. Lack of overall project mgmt (to do other legit reasons).
And lack of proper controlled documentation (TDN).

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=2363

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=forums&page=result.thread&qt=4107

#25 Randy,

Please stop beating the dead horse.

Thanks,

T.

#26 Well, what we mean by dead is that no or not much development is going on with it. It's to be expected though since Realm Wars2 is in development.

#27 Just because this did not work well with Real Wars, does not mean it will never work.
Anyway, please wait for my associate to post the details on the game.

#28 @All

For those of you who are curious about what the problems were with doing the RWCP, here is a shortened list of the problems that we had with RWCP as per the session I presented at IGC 03 about the RWCP...

- Like most open source projects 99% of the work was done by 1% of the contributors.
- The project lost all of its focus and scope as more and more people tried to contribute. Each person who wanted to contribute wanted to add their own little thing to make RWCP their game. This ended up bloating the game so that it was trying to do too much at once and didnt do any of the core fundementals properly.
- There was a largely lackluster number of contributions to the project. Numerous people would sign up for a task but no one would deliver. This in turn scared off other contributors because they saw there were 20 people who wanted to do a task. In the end very little got done.
- Contributors were largely for the most part unaware of the quality of submissions that were needed. For example someone send in what appeared to be a crayon drawing of a table that they had scanned in and were very adament about RWCP using it. In most other examples people would submit in half completed work that the small 1% of serious contributors had to spend time cleaning up (in most cases redoing) and integrating. The end result that we got here was that the serious contributors spent most of their time micro-managing versus contributing the content only they are capable of providing.
- People only want to work on the cool items, unfortunately what makes a game great are all the little mundane tasks that.

... it is my hope that forture "community projects" will at least try to learn from what happened with RWCP so that the same mistakes will not be repeated in the future. If you have any questions about any of the above points please feel free to ask.

@Randy

I would appreciate it if you would stop insulting and slandering me and my team. We are getting sick and tired of it, especially when we have explained to you as clear as we can (without breaking NDAs or other legal stuff) what is going on. Also I will remind you of the following quote from Jeff Tunnel of GarageGames

Quote:Realm Wars 2
Wow! So good that GG will be partnering with MG to bring this product to life.

As such I will ask that if you have any problems that you please be professional and email me versus using the forum to try and make smoke where there is no fire. Your antics aren't amusing anyone.

#29 Here is my response to Randy's email that he just sent me complaining about RW2.

Quote:
If the original community Realm Wars 1 project continues, you are welcome to work on it, as is any person in the community. It was our feeling that the project basically died from lack of community support. We kicked in source code, designs, artwork, concepts, the name, server space, a lot of direction, and CVS servers, but still there was very little progress in the past two years.

I have not seen commercials for RW2, so I assume you must be referring to the IOTD post from Logan Foster. Logan was one of the primary movers behind RW1, and he grew frustrated at doing all of the work, so he took it on his own to start RW2. The assets that he used for RW2 were created from scratch or donated by GarageGames, having nothing to do with the original RW1 project.

To be clear, GarageGames has always owned all of the Realm Wars intellectual property such as the name, Orc, elf, and all of the artwork that we designed, paid for and contributed. If we do decide to use our assets in a commercial project, it is well within our rights. Of course, we would never use any community contributed assets or code without paying the contributors.

The bottom line is that the RW1 community project can continue if anybody wants to work on it. The RW2 project is blessed by GarageGames and in no way infringes on our promises or commitment to the community.

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

#30 Logan is a very respectful and helpful person. I think its awesome that MG has picked up Realm Wars 2 as a project and from what I saw at IGC Logan and MG are working their asses off to make a kick ass game.

On another note I think a community project is a great idea and has a lot of potential... especially if you seriously take what Logan said.

Quote:... it is my hope that forture "community projects" will at least try to learn from what happened with RWCP so that the same mistakes will not be repeated in the future. If you have any questions about any of the above points please feel free to ask.

Just because one attempt failed doesn't mean it can't work, but why not learn from that, or continue on and pick it up as Jeff has given permission to.

#31 Logan, thanks for the information. Very useful.

#32 "As such I will ask that if you have any problems that you please be professional and email me versus using the forum to try and make smoke where there is no fire. Your antics aren't amusing anyone."

With all due respect. You will not tell me what I can post on the forum. This is why I asked Jeff to kinda make a statement on
the Intellectual property issue with Realm Wars. I think coming from GG helps put the issue to bed. Realm Wars I think deserved
a community debate about going commercial with RW2.

When someone owns or has a sharware product like PHPBB2 you can't just go make a PHPBB3 and sell it. Or if someone like ID
published DOOM you can't make a DOOM 2.. why? Because it's part of a franchise at the root.

Realm Wars 2.. is .. realm wars.... That is with GG's permission it's an authorized use of the Realm Wars storyline / franchise etc.

Of course that just my opinion. I withdrawl my complaints about Realm Wars 2 and wish you luck on the project.

#33 Are their still links to realmwars 1 code/assets for people who might want to pick up where it was left off?

#34 Sure..WinCVS and go to the Realm Wars site. They have instructions there. Theres no actual installer/compressed files of the code though. You'll have to get it through WinCVS.

#35 What's the url to the realm wars site?

#36 Nvm, found it =)