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"Store"


Azaezel

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In the interest of giving folks with a primary monetary motivation an 'in', perhaps it wouldn't be untoward to throw in a subsection or 3 for engine extensions.


Say...


Open Projects (tipjar. this would be where folks that turn over their code with no strings link their paypal or patreon, ect for folks to toss in if they wish.)

Community Buyouts (Individual purchases, or funding campaigns with an agreed upon end-goal that flips it into a core feature)

Paid Extensions (What it says on the tin. Authors are responsible for maintaining their own codebases vs head, keeping assets up to date with any changes, ect)


Thoughts?

Edited by Azaezel
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Not a bad idea. Definitely would make sense to have an area that can focus on products and projects people could put cash towards without getting lost in the other sections of the forums.


Would it make sense to have an entire subforum for it? Or just a singular 'Assets and Products' area to make threads in?


Also, while it's a long way from being actually usable, I started tinkering with an actual storefront configuration, here


Theme needs work, and no doubt there's all kinds of limitations and issues with the software side, but it's an interesting investigative push into the area. I think we really could use a real asset store to better consolidate stuff people are working on and would like to sell.


It'd also be nice to have so the new Project Manager could hook into it and all those nice, fluffy convenience features.


If anyone's got knowledge on the webdev side, lemme know and I'd be willing to let them poke around at it, see if there's any woeful sorespots.

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I'm not so much a fan of a shop, for non essential things like art assets it may be fine, but engine enhancements should go into the main repository.


A subforum may be fine, where people can post their campaigns with link to their Indigogo, where people can pledge.

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I'm in favor! For both code plugins/enhancements and art assets, as well as finished games, a working and active store system would be nothing but beneficial, if someone has the gumption to take it on. I would imagine there would have to be some kind of vetting for quality assurance though, which could turn into a major time commitment. But if it benefited lots of people then hopefully there would also be enough volunteer energy to make it work.

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Is a good idea to have a store. But here is my opinion :lol: a lot of people don't like t3d for the torquescript right? but a lot of "new people" like t3d because is MIT and so on..... my point is that we can't please to everyone. But we need as community to find something in the middle :roll: have good free assets/stuff (ready for t3d) may be include in the template or in a repository separate... and of course the store.... give something to the people can begin with the engine and sell all the other stuff... like this we can at least decrease to both side the open source people and the capitalist people that only want is money :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: (Joke)


Hope the point was understood :lol: and yes the store! :D


BTW I can help with the store...



Regards,

John

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Middleground that covers the range of interactions would be why the initial notion of havin 3 subsections. Suppose resources would make a 4th. Pretty much a code for code guy m'self, so no real dog in this hunt, but it does seem to be a conversation that needs havin. (also, updated the op for clarity on point 1)

Edited by Azaezel
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A store like Unreal wen art packs and simple blueprints are sold it's good. But I fear that will not happen here, this is an open source project, sustained by the good will of it's contributors, put money in to the equation and you can guess what will happen. People will charge for all their stuff and stop contributing to the main repo, it's just 2+2, why i should do something for free wen i can earn money with it? So yeah, i think i made my point. :?

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@Janders

It's a possibility, sure, but at the same time, people still contribute PRs to Unreal as well, and there are lots of people that just toss stuff up for free to the Unity store, even though it's possible to sell it on the store instead.


Some people just like contributing. It's possible that major, shifting features could become less common in the face of the opportunity to sell it, but there's definitely people that don't especially care about that, and practically no one is gunna try and sell a bugfix or the like, so at minimum, fixes and minor improvements would likely be just as common as they are now.


That said, as a whole, I think it's probably for the better to at least have that avenue. For people that aren't as comfortable with core development, such as Duion, being able to pay a bit of money to pick up a game code starter kit would make perfect sense, and that isn't the sort of thing that's likely to be rolled into the core repo.


Same could be said for a programmer that could make the game code, but needs some art and the like.


The only potential hangup a store could see is pertaining to major features implemented in the engine code side of things, and as I said above, I'm not sure that it'll be as drastic a shift as some may fear it is.

Especially if we have alternative payment methods like being able to hook to funding campaigns like what Rich has going or tip jars.


But there will always be some people that just like contributing stuff for free, either because they like the challenge, or want to make it so others don't have to deal with some crap they had to put up with, etc.


@Johxz and @Azaezel

Yeah, the sub-forums thing Az kicked this off with is probably what we can go with as a compromise for the near-term until we can hash out the store enough that it works, since as I mention it's not there yet.

And even once the store DOES go up, those subforums can still be used to highlight products put up on the store, or freebie contributions/tip jar/buyout projects.

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oh @Janders have a point... :? :| but we can management the both side... the old garagegames they had free and not free, blender3d has this too. For that my point still valid give something for free maintaining the spirit for open source enough so that it can be used at least for the prototyping phase and the others stuff sell it, people they will pay, why? because as @JeffR said the programmer will need to do the models/textures, etc, etc... and the art people the same thing for his logic of the gameplay and other stuff.... even people of either hahaha :D so they need something to start using the engine and will pay eventually

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Speaking strictly for myself, the main reasons I throw stuff on over (aside from the whole 'well, xyz is loosely based on freely offered examples, or yzx is really simple stuff) are


1) Code PRed is code I don't have to worry about re-merging. (time = moneh)

2) Code PRed is code with multiple folks looking for bugs on. (time = monehx2)

3) Code PRed has a higher probability of being extended by someone with a similar mindset than if it was locked in the company codebase. (time = monehx3)

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My whole point of people starting funding campaigns was to keep them away from selling their stuff in a store fashion so it can benefit the development of the engine.


If we are honest, people will not sell many items since there are not many Torque users, so instead of that better sell them through a funding campaign to make it open source, so people who want it will get it for sure and later it may become open source and benefit all.

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Stores are not easy to setup and manage. That said, I could see if for like premade art or game type assets and plugins that are from commercial sources, like some of those Voxel engines or network libraries.


For base engine contributions, it might help to have a separate area of this "store" for engine contributions. Where it can be a donation system that will allow people contributing code who would like to have some financial return to give to the engine. The caveats being, only if the donation goal amount is reached (no indiegogo where even if its not, they still get paid), and they must have a working version before they ask.

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Personally i don't think a store will stop people contributing MIT code, it won't stop me contributing anyway. The only time i would consider selling a code add-on, is if it was highly specialized towards a certain genre/solving a very specific problem. It's code like this that would never make into the public repository anyway.

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Clicks do not say much about how many active users there are.

You have to consider we are talking about a game engine here and game development has a very high entrance barrier.

To get started in game development you need to either be an experienced programmer or an experienced artist or better both, each discipline will take you years to learn and to get good at and even then you still will need month or years to get good with the game engine also.

So your initial estimate of 100-200 is likely more correct, the core contributors are more like around 10 people.

The other pseudo-free engines are only successful because they target what I call the dreamers, mostly young people who think they can make a game, grab an engine, realize they don't get anything done and buy some stuff in their store and then still never get anything done.

So after all of that they can show high numbers of "active" users, but this is kind of faked numbers, the real active and productive community members are always far lower.

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  • 6 months later...
itch.io is for hipsters.

 

Ok, here is why I suggested Itch.io


1. It would give Torque 3D more exposure than just putting up an standard storefront on this site. I am unsure how many people are aware of torque 3D anymore. Itch.io could give a good boost to torque 3d.

2. It would act as a centralized place for us to get assets, projects, and the like from.

3. Everything they are doing is open source from the client to the server software. So If we wanted to do our own store front for torque we could do that.

4. We do not have to host a store front which will up the cost of hosting this site.

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  • 1 month later...

I think tbh the best thing to do would be to start with an asset store, modeled somewhat after opengameart but with a requirement that packs come 'torque ready' so that they become easily usable for novices. I would also recommend that in the beginning at least while the repository gains 'stock' that the requirement starts of non-commercial. Expansion to commercial and alternate categories could be added relatively easily.


Also, it has to be noted that my base pessimist nature has to make comments about the insane levels of lawyerised bullshit around software licences and image copyrights emanating from the USA which makes even a free 'store' something of a logistical and legal nightmare in some respects

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  • 4 weeks later...

The problem is that Torque already has a store - just nobody can buy anything from it.


Garage Games was pretty brutal about making sure anything Torque would be sold on the GG platform. Distributing *any* code outside the GG-login controlled system was potentially grounds for having a license terminated. In retrospect the whole thing was absurd - GG wouldn't even let TGE licensees see resources based on TGB and vice versa. That's why nobody ever did anything like write a Torque-based article about modern terrain techniques at Gamasutra. Talk about reducing visibility!


Some folks tried to get around it and sell independently by starting a thread on the registered forum that a purchaser would then make a post to and verify license that way. But generally speaking most devs with anything marketable just sold through Garage Games - while the lesser stuff was submitted as a (now deleted) resource. So everything that existed up to whenever GG decided to pull the plug is locked to that platform or gone.


The bulk of the Torque ecosystem (including the store) rests with a group that's off giving Lua seminars to Canadian schoolkids - or some such nonsense - and seemingly don't give a hoot about Torque anymore. So it's really worse than needing a store. We're trying to rebuild an entire decade's worth of ecosystem that Garage Games ferociously controlled (and to some degree clearly still does) yet has deleted and/or left fractured while they're off doing more important things.


It's a bit of a pickle. And honestly it makes Torque appear to be damn near dead.

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The problem is that everyone seems to ignore the work of other people and what is already there.

People still wait for someone "official" do to something, but there are no more official people caring about Torque3D, we are the official people now.

Resources can simply be posted here in the forum or whereever you want now.

And regarding the "store" this will likely never work out in the old way, since Torque does not have a big consumer base of "dreamers" who will occasionally buy something, but are not serious about game development, since that is what the stores of other engines mainly live from.


Regarding the store I already have something like that for around 2 years now:

http://duion.com/art/main

I share my art there, all licensed under the extremely liberal CC0 license. It can be used as a multi user site as well, but I had relatively few contributions by others yet.

Maybe people ignore it, since they don't want to be associated with me since of their personal problems with me or whatever irrational behavior they have.


I'm pretty much the only producer of open source art that is game ready for Torque3D at the moment.

So you either do it yourself and/or use what is already there or wait for something that will never happen, as most people are doing for around 3 years now.

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