a.k.a. happy hobbitish birthday to me

Two years ago, on my 40th birthday, I gave the EVN community a present by allowing them to download SFA for one day.

Since I'm a casual fan of Douglas Adams, I'm doing the same this year.

Here's the procedure: On my birthday, Friday, November 11, I shall be accepting PMs on the EV-Nova.net forums requesting the download link (which means that yes, you must have an EV-Nova.net account). I shall then PM you with a response.

I will not accept PMs requesting the link after Friday (midnight, CST).

The link will be active through the weekend, so even if you get the request to me late in the day, or it takes me a while to respond, you'll have an opportunity to get the link.

I've announced this on the SFA forums over at EV-Nova.net, and I'm announcing it here in the Developer's Corner out of gratitude for all the help and support the EV Developers community has given me over the years. I am not making this announcement formally on the general EVN board because, frankly, I'm really only interested in sharing this with you folks, since most of you have been around long enough to engender my trust.

Caveat:

If I learn that someone who did not get permission from me to download SFA during that time period has that build of SFA anyway, I shall not release SFA to the public. Period. There is to be no distribution of the link that I PM people with on Friday without my express permission.

If I learn that people are asking other people for the download link, or harrassing the testing team members for the link, I shall delay the release of SFA (and I will announce both when I learn of the harrassment and when SFA is ready that the delay will occur).

And yes, I will be posting belligerent PMs towards me on the EV-Nova.net SFA boards for everyone to see.

I am trusting you all to behave as adults, to act responsibly, to be polite, and to respect my wishes. Violation of this trust by any one individual will result in the cancellation of the project altogether.

But I know that doesn't mean any of you.

And it's looking more and more like I'll have this sucker finally put to bed by March or April or thereabouts. How cool will that be?

Cool. I'll have to go see if I have an account there.

Though I dislike the not releasing SFA if some idiot does an idiotic thing disclaimer. You've already seen that some random person is likely to go against your wishes, and now you're simply opening yourself and the Nova community up to having a great thing ruined by a single idiot.

Sure its your choice to do what you want with your project, and I hope nothing bad happens, but it doesn't mean I have to pretend to like or agree with the "one idiot disclaimer"

This post has been edited by Ragashingo : 07 November 2005 - 07:35 PM

Do you mean that by making that disclaimer, I've guaranteed that someone will break it, or are you reminding me that it had been broken before with the public alpha? It's my hope that the disclaimer will prevent such an occurance again, and frankly, I hate the fact that I have to even consider it -- I would rather have faith in people's level of maturity and respect.

No, I'm not saying that it is guaranteed that somebody will break it, and yes I am reminding you that somebody broke it in the past. By placing this limit you are raising the stakes very high, and greatly increasing the chances of disappointing a large number of people who wish to see SFA be finished. If one person, out of several hundred that day decides to go against your wishes then you punish the hundreds that did as you asked. It seems mighty unfair to punish those of us who respect your wishes. Is it really worth throwing away multiple years worth of work because of one person? What is so important that it needs to be protected so heavily when if things go according to plan SFA will be finished early next year?

Quote

I would rather have faith in people's level of maturity and respect.

Yes, that would be ideal, but you are talking to an audience of people that most likely ranges from 10 and up. I really wish you'd rethink your conditions. I can understand and would agree with the condition if you found out about realtively widespread downloading of this version compared to the number of people you authorized to download it. But setting yourself, and me, and the rest of the people who want to see SFA finished, up for disappointment because of a single person is not the way I'd do things.

So let me repeat my request on its own in the clear: Please reconsider your one person conditions, as they are heavily biased towards your and our second disappointment based on the possible actions of a single person.

This post has been edited by Ragashingo : 07 November 2005 - 08:32 PM

I'll consider it. Or reconsider it. Or something.

Besides -- haven't you learned by now that I'm prone to hyperbole to prove a point I'm passionate about? <grin>

If anybody doesn't want your project to be released, or simply doesn't like you, you just gave them an open door to destroy your project. And if you don't follow through on the threat, you lose credibility.

If you do cancel your project or plan to if a single person screws up, and you're going to throw away so much of your time and effort, then really, why bother working any more? They way you're doing this looks like you're just begging for an excuse to cancel. If you're having problems or just not feeling motivated, don't set up for a scapegoat, just cancel the project now, and save yourself the effort.

Really, I can't imagine why you're doing a pre-release thing like this anyway. Just work on the project, finish it off, and release it in March or April. Don't bother with pre-releases and threats. It only makes you look bad.

UncleTwitchy, on Nov 7 2005, 05:02 PM, said:

I would rather have faith in people's level of maturity and respect.
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And while it is no place for me to dictate my wishes upon you, since this is your work and you may do with it what you which, I would like to request that you actually do have this faith. If the plugin is so close to completion, why voluntarily open up the chance (one that will very likely come to fruition with your current terms) to have it dashed away? No, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that; why would you be so willing to dash it all away?

If you would truly rather have faith in people's respect, why pose this little test to the community?

And if this is a check to see whether your work would be respected upon release, with such absolute and harsh terms, I would once again like to step near my lines of acceptable conduct and ask what the heck you're doing on the internet. If this is what you expect, then I'm afraid you will never be able to share any of your work with anyone other than your closest, most trusted friends, and in my opinion, that's a terrible way to live.

Although I'm curious to see what SFA is like, as it stands I wouldn't participate, on principle. While I may be wrong about this, it feels to me like a set-up to "demonstrate" humanity's flaws and "punish" us.

I'm sorry if this comes across as a flame, or as overly harsh. I'm responding to what I feel is an overly harsh and ill-conceived concept. It is certainly within your right to disagree with my opinion.

I agree with Weepul. You seem very willing to throw away your work. This has to be a set-up, for what precise reason I don't know for sure, but it is a set-up.

Oh, no offense taken, and no, it's not overly harsh. I should apologize -- the caveat was not meant to make this come across as a test, and I'm very, very sorry that people are perceiving it this way.

No, I wanted to offer this up as a reward and thank you, not a test. I'm so sorry it's coming across the other way.

A reward doesn't usually come with threats.

I think Ragashingo makes a very good point here. It's not the best decision to make conditions for one person, that's just asking for someone to break the the conditions.

sigh

Guys, I'm sorry. This wasn't how I wanted it to come across. I'm just (what I hope would be) understandably paranoid based on what happened with the public alpha. What would you recommend so that I can rectify this?

As I said, I meant this as a "hey, you guys rock, want to see what I've been working on?" kind of thing.

What you've accomplished is grand, don't get me wrong.

UncleTwitchy, on Nov 7 2005, 05:58 PM, said:

I'm just (what I hope would be) understandably paranoid based on what happened with the public alpha. What would you recommend so that I can rectify this?
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What I would suggest is that, first, you re-evaluate your expectations, and second, simply finish and release the plugin normally, without another teaser to require special conditions. Even without one, I think we'll still appreciate this plugin quite a bit.

This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 07 November 2005 - 09:11 PM

Can do, but I have promised something on Friday, and I don't want to totally disappoint.

So what I'm thinking is that I'll still release something on Friday, with no restrictions, but make it really crippled -- like, I dunno (this is just off the top of my head), half the galaxy, only a chunk of the Ready Room missions, maybe only the TOS-era ships and resources -- just enough to mess around with and explore some of the universe, but not enough to spoil stuff or be worth "stealing," if you know what I mean.

Does that sound like a reasonable compromise? At the very least, it would make for a much smaller download.

This post has been edited by UncleTwitchy : 07 November 2005 - 09:40 PM

That does sound like a reasonable compromise. May I ask what did happen with the public alpha?

Whatever works, UT. I'm looking forward to the whole plug, but as I said, whatever works.

UncleTwitchy, on Nov 7 2005, 07:31 PM, said:

Can do, but I have promised something on Friday, and I don't want to totally disappoint.

So what I'm thinking is that I'll still release something on Friday, with no restrictions, but make it really crippled -- like, I dunno (this is just off the top of my head), half the galaxy, only a chunk of the Ready Room missions, maybe only the TOS-era ships and resources -- just enough to mess around with and explore some of the universe, but not enough to spoil stuff or be worth "stealing," if you know what I mean.

Does that sound like a reasonable compromise? At the very least, it would make for a much smaller download.
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Thinking about that, why not make the zip file require a password? Or maybe a one time registration code that after use becomes void? Then give everyone a different code to then use only once... Just a thought though.

UncleTwitchy, on Nov 7 2005, 09:58 PM, said:

sigh

Guys, I'm sorry. This wasn't how I wanted it to come across. I'm just (what I hope would be) understandably paranoid based on what happened with the public alpha. What would you recommend so that I can rectify this?

As I said, I meant this as a "hey, you guys rock, want to see what I've been working on?" kind of thing.
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I'd suggest simply releasing the plug when it is finished, and not before. If you want to show something off, release a few screenshots.

It's his plug. He was only trying to be nice.