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#21 Thank you Ron! Don't go away, though - there are still artless heathens who need occasional advice (like me). I know how to hold a pencil, but back in the 3SS days my "art" was a huge motivator for the GG artists to get stuff done;

Quote:
What is that?!?
It's a button....
For the love of all that is Good why didn't you say you needed a button? That thing is horrible!

#22

Quote:Thank you Ron! Don't go away, though - there are still artless heathens who need occasional advice (like me). I know how to hold a pencil, but back in the 3SS days my "art" was a huge motivator for the GG artists to get stuff done;

Quote:
What is that?!?
It's a button....
For the love of all that is Good why didn't you say you needed a button? That thing is horrible!

True story.

#23 There's still something missing here.. Ron where's the donation link so that those of us who believe it is worth while to give you money in return for such lovely content packs?

#24 @Nathan true story +1

#25 I've said this before, but I really do admire your work. Best of luck to you in whatever you do and you're always welcome back should things improve from your point of view.

#26

Quote:There's still something missing here.. Ron where's the donation link so that those of us who believe it is worth while to give you money in return for such lovely content packs?

Its a nice idea in theory, but believe me, just does not work. Personally had 1 contribution to torqueterrains, yet had nearly 130gb of downloads off it

Dont get me wrong, i wanted to get the pack off my back because i lost the personal fight to finish it fully the way i wanted too... but as always theres alot of people that say stuff that just never happens.

As always its sad to see someone else hit that brick wall of realisation that the community has dwindled to a lowest point that i can recall since joining about 10 years ago myself, however... thats the way of life in this kind of industry, if theres no maintenance, no sustained push to keep updated, the something else will come along to replace it ...

#27 I don't get why people are getting their pants in a bunch over GREED, they have things they want, while the T3D steering committe has things they want. They just have different goals, it seems, and they're both open source, so as long as the licenses are compatible, code can be taken from one, modified to work in mainline T3D and sent as a patch. As such, they can't exactly be competing as economics (even and especially in development) aren't that simple, and the addition of FOSS makes it more complex. Also

"those that build on it and 'RE-BRAND IT' are CHEAP imitations."

T3D is under the very permissible MIT license, they have every right to do that, and they'd have every right to sell it as well. If you were afraid of such things happening, maybe you should have raised your concern before it was open sourced.

#28

Quote:Personally had 1 contribution to torqueterrains

I know I sent you $40. ;)

#29 @Ron: Not sure I want your stuff under these circumstances. I'd much rather pay for it, because I believe people should be compensated for their hard work. Thanks, but I'll pass. =)

#30 I honestly dont see what the issue is with Omni and creed

Omni's a product, a small team has put a hell of alot of work into that branch of theirs, and its all their own work ontop of the base T3D to a point that T3D's unrecognizable. Its their product, as much as an artists pack is their product...
same with greed, thats a separate branch, run i guess in a way similar to the old 'CE' projects, that came about due to the awkwardness of interaction with the board to get updates done, decisions made etc in a timely fashion.

I thought a long time back there was some decision made to basically barebone the core T3D engine anyhow, and modulize it, and have templates for fps, another for rts, another for a 3rd person rpg etc... isnt greed just taking that into its own hands by starting on a fps orientated core to stand up a bit better to the likes of cry engine ?

#31 We design with ours minds, we can't design with tooling, IMO that's called "generating". A success of a game is mainly by its design, not the technology, the graphics or cool effects. So even a ancient-looking game like Minecraft can be successful, simply because people have fun playing it. Do you think that many people know what kind of game engine their favourite game is running on? Most are that impatient that they don't want to wait for another splash screen during the start up. It's you and me, here on this forum, developers and designers, that put the most weight on what engine to use, what features it has and what it hasn't. I believe a good game design starts with an idea, a concept, a story, choosing the right engine is a much later phase of such an immense project... developing a game!

If your biz is to provide somewhere halfway the projects, then it's only wise to be a provider for the most broad spectrum of technologies possible or feasible.

Torque has become an engine without support from it's original developer. If you, an indie game developer and go for T3D, you go for further development in-house. It's not a big deal if you find the programmers with the right knowledge. After all, it can be a huge advantage to have the source, which you can by the way, do with it what ever you think its necessary. Some may be better off with closed software and wait for bugs to be fixed by its developers. Others might to have full control over their own biz, and not be depended on other company's decisions and speed of innovation. Game studios have developed game engines in-house before, some even became products on their own.

I see things getting messed up here on these forums, in posts like these. If Ron makes a decision to stop creating assets for game studios as a profession, breaks it down to only a hobby, then it has nothing to do with game engines being open source, being cloned or left behind to be forgotten in eternity. It's a biz decision! An forgive me if I'm wrong; it was a hard choice to make, based on the fact that it didn't bring enough in to maintain a biz at all (and some )*('s try making it even worse recently). Taking responsibility is hard, especially if it is your baby in the first place. A lot of us know what it is to make end meet, while being active in this industry. I'm keeping running a graphic design studio my self to have any form of cash flow, while developing a game for only half of the year. It takes twice as long, tech is degrading and the game industry is fading... but in the end it's all about chasing your dreams, trying to achieve what you want to achieve and live in between. Again, forgive me if I'm wrong @Ron!

It really doesn't matter if you Unite somewhere else, start Crying about it, or came back in Reality... there's only one goal, and many tools to achieve it! Less developers using particular 3D engines... what do you expect if a part of the market shifted their demand to mobile games? My original profession is "Graphic Design"... you know... books made out of paper, posters and such? You learn, you adapt, you develop and don't give up on that! As long as there is a significant market left we can continue with what we were doing! And if you're a hobbyist; there's nothing to worry about in the 1st place!

#32

Quote:It really doesn't matter if you Unite somewhere else, start Crying about it, or came back in Reality...

I see what you did there..

#33 Good Luck Ron in whatever you do. People need you on their commercial teams, you have a talent, don't stop using it!

---

Since Torque 3D moved to MIT from version 1.2, up to version 3.5 it has been given that extra momentum by the community that would have not been there if they decided to just drop the engine completely, so they did the best thing possible for its future, and from my point of view it has worked. You have OMNI and GREED out of it, and I'm sure that there will be more to come.

OMNI is different, whilst it may have some of the Torque 3D guts left in it, they have rewritten most of it, moved it over to C# and carrying the flag to make a better engine and I hope they continue for as long as possible. They have a chance at being independent, even if GG decides to close the site.

GREED in my eyes is good for the new game developer and existing community that do not like change so much, as long as they have the GG site, community and resources behind each developer then this will thrive also. You might even see genre specific clones, which wouldn't be a bad thing (RTS, Platform, Car Racing, Space....) and bundle it pre-loaded, pre-compiled with the engine and ready to go. - ideal as a base for new game developers and existing. Even a step closer to that MAKE MMO button :)

#34 @Nils Eikelenboom
(I hope you havent abandoned the theme idea?! We count on you :) )

@Jules

@Andy Wright

Quote:isnt greed just taking that into its own hands by starting on a fps orientated core to stand up a bit better to the likes of cry engine ?

Well yes and no,
my fault was to label greed as fps engine, actually the idea
was/is to block out the genre specifics for FPS and TPS
and then to move on to RTS and we have even a plan to include Steves Action Tactics Template and more.

But this is a process and it needs a solid foundation,
and the SteeringC is focused on more important things such as Bugs fixing and stability.

Greeds focus is the other stuff, we are not about taking T3D and relabeling it.

We will always point back to Greeds history and that is Torque3D.
Hell i had even a plan in place for ppl that are selling packs/ expansions for T3D. A plan to support those ppl with greed but some just gave up before it became reality :/ or they ignored Greed.

Only time will tell what will become of Torque3D and Greed.

#35 @Ron,

Being a previous buyer of a couple of your packs I don't feel so bad grabbing the others for free, but it still feels wrong !

Your work is of a very high standard and truly worth something :(

I wish you all the best, and thank you for all your contributions over the years.

Hewster

#36 Thank you Ron, very generous. Good luck for the future.

#37 Ron,

Did you hear that? Everyone here says you have nice assets.
We love your work. Make some labors of love on your terms. I know, sometimes working on something becomes just labor. Try to find the love in it again.

Thanks for artwork and continue to be your awesome self.

#38

Quote:
As I formerly stated, I am done, in all honesty, I am done with Game Development actually. I will NOT be developing for Unity or any other engine as I stated before. I will likely keep game dev as a hobby, nothing more.

Keeping game dev as a hobby was the best decision I've made. I leave the pressure at my full time paid job and when I get the bug, I hack on game projects.

Good luck to you Ron - I haven't posted in a long time and never really in the 3d area but I've been reading GG blogs daily for years now and the GG community is losing a good one.

#39 I think what is happening here is not a unique case, it is a general problem in the visual-effects-business or better our whole society.

Ron even made a thread about it explaining the whole problem, he told about the Oscars and the film "Life of Pi" which got an Oscar for the special effects, but the company who did it, went bankrupt.
So as you can see, doing good work is no guarantee to get paid what you deserve.

This is the thread : www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/133280


My conclusion is that art in general is not a good choice to make your living, since even if you are one of the best, there is no guarantee you will get anything for it.

In German there is a term for it: "brotlose kunst", in english it is "breadless art", this refers to a profession which may be important for the one who does it, but there is not much valuation for it in the society, so that it is not enough to make your living from it.

#40 THIS BLOG IS REMOVED BY THE AUTHOR.