IronDuke_slith -> RE: Now that Origins has concluded... (7/9/2005 11:32:51 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Joel Billings I had a discussion with David Heath at Origins (and I think Erik was in on it) about WitP code. The decision was made to keep the code in house for a while longer. For now, Mike is working on WPO and on fixing some WitP bugs. At some point in the future (and I can't say if that's later this year or a year from now), we expect to open it up to a select group of programmers who sign up to work on it. We would not plan on just giving out the code to the world, at least not at that time. We have our doubts about the ability of volunteers to significantly improve the game without causing even more bugs, but we expect to be willing to try it out down the road. We certainly can't give up the revenue that we continue to make on WitP. Based on current sales trends, I'd say we have sold somewhere between 40-70% of what we will eventually sell, so you can see there is still a lot of sales that we expect (and need) from WitP. Opening the source could jeopardize this revenue. Down the road, it is very possible the code will be opened up for all to access, but that'll have to come later. Just to indicate the ongoing sales potential of WitP, we sold about 15 at Origins. Considering the game was a year old, this is a very high number. SSI games rarely sold more than a few copies at a convention if they had been out for more than a few months. At the risk of upsetting someone keen to see this open sourced, I'd say the above was the best way to go about it. It seems to me that open sourcing it too early will give too many people too many chances to do too much. As it stands, we're all playing the same game. Everyone has something they'ed like tweaking maybe, but many of the tweakables have people for and against said tweaking. I'd hate to see different versions of this come out that differed in some way. Getting talented volunteers inhouse allows you to get a lot of the "like to haves" done, but in a controlled environment. I'm also pleased to hear people are still buying the game in numbers. It makes for a bigger chance I'll find someone I can beat. Now a request to you: Get an early night. Get up very early tomorrow. Re-start working on War in Russia. please........
|
|
|
|