so long as the game keeps being sold on steam and proceeds go to the IP holders (Nordic) and nothing is sold here on FAF everything FAF does such as modifying the game even eventually down the line compiling a game from edited source code is authorized so long as the people playing this modified game are only people who own FA.
and this is guaranteed because FA only launches it's patched version of FA once it recognizes the folder it's being pointed to as a FA install directory (from steam installation or CD installation).
so what I'm suggesting here is to push what we've been doing here as a community in FAF into overdrive.
tired of pathfinding causing unomptimal unit movement, this bumper-car behavior and units getting stuck?
tired of this game struggling on your single core and basically single thread where there is actually so much untapped potential?
tired of that one proposed balance idea/bugfix that everyone has agreed would be cool that IS. NOT. being refused in any way shape of form by anyone it just is hard coded into a non moddable region of the game-engine? (I seem to recall this was the case for carriers building while they move but if it's not I digress i'm sure there are other examples)
tired presenting this game to your friends and having them dismiss it as "ugly"?
well these are some of the things a kickstarter for Supcom source code could help with.
the money would be legally sworn off to purchasing the source code and dev time to implementing these things.
with it in the bag it could be a handy tool for setting up a new IP as well.
this kickstarter model would only get us so far but if a new IP was created and we accepted the concept of paying for it then the staggering difference in means would imply a much more powerful workforce. and potentially a much more satisfying experience.
This other IP would obviously be hosted on FAF as well and there are several reasons for this :
- FAF would mean great mediatisation for this IP : "what's this a new tab in FAF ? a new game within FAF? oh i have to purchase this on steam first? oh and it's made by some FAF devs and an idea of the FAF community? shut up and take my money!"
extrapolations aside, you see what I mean... - why fix what isn't broke? develop a whole new separate multiplayer system or reuse the existing one to save time? hmmmm...
- both games would synergize drawing players to one another and pushing each other to better places
obviously this is part two of this and way waaaay down the line but if I didn't mention it I'd be omitting the argument that perhaps would motivate people the most into this.
the purpose of this post is to start a discussion around this idea, to become more informed (yes also about it's feasibility) and lastly to test the waters on this idea. I don't shy away from the idea of hosting the kickstarter myself in which case I'd front all my personal cash.
anyways I'm sure anyone with a decent understanding of code can appreciate that had supcom been released but a year later (and had it had extra cash) it might have featured multi-threading and multi core as these sorts of CPUs were only beginning to hit the market.
but the engine lacking these new techs doesn't make it un-elegant or un-optimized from the point of view of single thread computing.
and with the source code and after several months maybe of analyzing it we could devise a strategy to multi-thread and multi-core FA perhaps with today's compilers compiling to linux with either vulkan or openGL API is also not out of the picture.
I realize the linux bit is maybe stretching it but such APIs as vulkan or DirextX12 may lend themselves to an integration in such an engine as FA.
with such an API the engine would then scale much much better over the current-day hardware even if we were to demand even more from it.
oh and feel free to suggest names for what we could call this fantasy IP
I'll be honest I don't think square enix and nordic will let anything with "supreme", "commander" "forged" or "alliance" in the name slide so "FAF2" is off the cards and anything like "supreme commader 2, the real one" won't be accepted.
why not try to make the best of our sad lot in fate and not care about a silly name. names are what we make them into we should make a new name that shines in it's own right.
(I'm saying this because I see an IP purchase on top of the lot as something that's a big waste of money when that money could be going into dev time instead)
