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Re: Completely Agree
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 5/14/02 10:18 a.m.

In Response To: Completely Agree (Khral)

: I realize its developers are in no way obligated to provide me or
: anyone else with that kind of experience. That's completely up to
: them. But if that was their original goal, it now seems like they've
: gone completely off tangent where their goals keep changing into
: adding more and more tiny details... rather than focusing on the
: more important (non-eyecandy) things that made Marathon great
: in the first place. It is now more of a play toy for coders rather than
: something that enhances the Marathon experience. Bah!!

Not long ago, I got flamed for saying pretty much the same thing. There are some really cool things that can be done with MML, as evidenced in M1A1, and I really like the way that peculiarities of individual scenarios can be handled in the script rather than by creating a patch for the application, but I completely agree that AO has been hurt by the interests of the programmers placing features ahead of function. Yes, that's what open source is all about, but it would be in everyone's best interest for Loren et al. to focus on getting a stable, functional, fully carbonized "final" version of AO out there that could run virtually all existing scenarios well. By doing so, they would be furthering their own interests by bringing the rest of the Marathon community into the open source movement and bringing additional talent to the project.

All of this said, the carbon version of AO really does work well.

My wish list would be:

1) A stable final release
2) Full implementation of network play (an absolute must)!
3) Incorporation of the Bridges and Balconies code to allow software rendering of OpenGL effects on older machines
4) Incorporation of high-resolution textures in the Shapes file (rather than as a separate folder of graphic files), ala Bridges & Balconies
5) Support for SDK-compatible maps on the Mac platform. I'm a dedicated Mac user, but having a common file format, just as with MS Word, would allow developers to create universal scenarios that would run on any machine. Isn't that the point of open source?

The idealized verions of AO should be able to run all existing scenarios without modifications. Unfortunately, that's just not possible and I'm not sure how it will ever fully support scenarios like Trojan, that involve patches to the original application. Unless someone can come up with an app that can deconstruct these patches, there will still have to be an effort to convert existing scenarios. In M1, the task is particularly difficult as terminal text must be patched into the original app. That's the major problem with Trojan. I only hope that the authors eventually come around and recognize that they don't have to take personal responsibility to insure that someone else's port meets their standards. That's why we have disclaimers.

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Replies:

Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Steve Levinson 5/13/02 10:04 p.m.
     Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Mark Levin 5/14/02 12:06 a.m.
           Completely AgreeKhral 5/14/02 8:55 a.m.
                 Re: Completely AgreeSteve Levinson 5/14/02 10:18 a.m.
                       Re: Completely AgreeMark Levin 5/14/02 11:15 a.m.
           Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Kanen Faud'r 5/14/02 12:31 p.m.
                 Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Steve Levinson 5/15/02 11:30 a.m.
                       Re: Will Marathon see its 10th birthday? Its 20th?Kanen Faud'r 5/16/02 3:50 p.m.



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