wallyweb wrote:Csaboka has made a decision to shift his focus to OTTD.
Well, IMO, he should have better made a statement like "I´m abstaining from coding for TTDPatch for the next future because I need more time for my studies", rather than to begin work for the rival project.
Honestly, I´m distressed by his decision. Not alone because I´ve been working together with Csaba on the development of so many new ideas which resulted in a multitude of new patch features over the years. I owe him gratitude. He was always interested in my ideas and problems, and he was always helpful in explaining his newest code, in finding bugs (in his and in my code), or preparing special "developer versions" for me.
Yes, sure, it´s
his decision, no doubt, but I can´t really understand it. If it´s for the programming challenge, he could have stayed with TTDPatch and remain the most important and highest-regarded developer for this project for another while, but in that other project, he could well end up as only one of all-too many coders, and the question is if that´d be of any value, either for him or for that project. One thing is for sure: TTDPatch loses yet another irreplaceable person.
Yes, that´s indeed a severe incident for TTDPatch, contrary to your consoling words, Wally. Especially after we already had to stand the silent leave of Josef.
One of the most decisive differences between TTDPatch and that other project have always been the form of organisation. TTDPatch (although capable of developing its patches in C as well, not only in x86 assembler) has always been run by a very small group of coders under the auspices of Josef, and as long as that was a functioning organisational model, it was highly superior over the more or less "chaotic" form of development in OTTD (read back in the OTTD forums about this if you´re interested) where everyone could release a patch and build his own version, resulting in OTTD having at some time four (or even more) "official" resp "quasi-official" versions, not to mention those many privately developed versions (oh the joy of migrating from "Mini-IN" to "BamBam_IN" to the latest Nightly to "Chris-IN"!). In addition, the audience for TTDPatch was always smaller than that for OTTD, but it was indeed also more mature, more polite (especially back in those days of agmtt) and it completely lacked that specific form of "greed" which had been only introduced by that "open source" project. (Sorry to have to say this, but I had to face that too many times.)
OTOH, what would be those features "taking a long time to do" for TTDPatch (or even for OTTD) to unfold in the next future? And I mean features that would stand in the tradition of TTD rather than in modifying this classic game into an unrecognizable cross-breed of far too many frills and whistles together with the usual 32-bit rendered graphics "standard" of today´s shiny computer games?
At the moment, I can´t tell. Apart from far too many bugs still in TTDPatch, we got more than we ever dreamt of. We got new vehicles which may be sophistically tuned to fit everybody´s desire, we have new industries and new cargoes (thanks to Csaba!), we have PBS (thanks to Josef), we have a sophisticated signaling system on top of that (thanks to JGR) and o/c we have those amazing "ancient" features which everyone uses today as a standard: "build on slopes" and "electrified railways" (thanks to Marcin), and not to be forgotten, we have canals, rivers, locks (thanks to Oskar), trams (thanks to Steven) and many many more. And o/c, TTDPatch had all this
prior to that other project, simply because the TTDPatch team was a group of premium developers and skilled graphics designers working closely together. So, what´s left to do? I don´t see any missing "large feature" for the near future, except maybe that "newairports" idea. (But, oh well, I´m not too interested into TTD´s air travel, so this may be a selfish argument ...)
O/c, TTDPatch still "lacks" "larger maps" and "MP over IP", but, personally (sorry again for the selfish argument), I don´t miss the first one and I´m glad that TTDPatch never succeeded in implementing the latter. In this way, the TTDPatch "community" (if ever there´s still one) escaped all the trouble with "NoFun4U", "Dr. Mengele", "Natasha bad girl" and all those other immature kids, resulting in an ever increasing need to keep MP over IP playable for the small group of "real" players, by introducing passwords, encryption, black lists, and whatnot.
Another point is that OTTD is based on copyright infringement and, according to copyright law of almost all countries, will be unable to ever get legal without an explicit arrangement with Atari, even not when eventually all of the original content has been changed/modified/whatever. That´s a fact, so please don´t try to question it yet again. For me, it´s an important point.
Just my 2cc.
All the best to you Csaba
kind regards
Michael