I did not post here to cause any arguments, and this will be my last post here. If anyone has any more questions following my post to follow, then they will need to get in touch with me on either of our forums. I will address the concerns listed here (minus the trolling comments). Thank you for all of the constructive comments, we will use those to improve our game.
About the license issue:
Armagetron Advanced was released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License. According to the wiki this is what we found the GPL license to be about:
The GNU General Public License known as GPL is an example of a powerful copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft. Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to.
The major change in GPLv2 was the "Liberty or Death" clause, as he calls it — Section 7.[14] This section says that if somebody has restrictions imposed that prevent him or her from distributing GPL-covered software in a way that respects other users' freedom (for example, if a legal ruling states that he or she can only distribute the software in binary form), he or she cannot distribute it at all.
The terms and conditions of the GPL are available to anybody receiving a copy of the work that has a GPL applied to it ("the licensee"). Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version.
One is only required to adhere to the terms of the GPL if one wishes to exercise rights normally restricted by copyright law, such as redistribution. More specifically, the GPL requires that redistribution occur subject to the GPL.
So we understood the GPL to mean that basically as long as we credit Z-man and the Armagetron Advanced Team (which we thought we did) and provide the source, which we did, and redistribute under GPL, which again we did, then we have followed the guidelines of the license. We can not impose restrictions, so the nature of open source licensing (which is so that developers have freedom) ensures that freedom. Luke-Jr did state that the formatting of how we credited Armagetron was not quite right. We didn't intentionally do it wrong and the headers will be fixed in our next source release. He did say that it was obvious we were trying to follow the GPL and it was just a technicality as far as the formatting. We didn't realize that the sty+CT patch wasn't by the arma dev team and we will rectify that as well. If there are additional errors in the way we wrote the licensing, we will fix it, for we intend to follow it to the letter of the law. Now my understanding is that the changes we have made in our forked version are protected under that same license so if Armagetron Advanced wants to use any of our code that was not in the original source (“steal all the good bits back”-Z-man), then they also have to credit us. So our menu, the music toggle on and off controls and our color picker for example, would have be be credited to Manta and the TR2N Origins Team if used.
To Zman's comments On the history page, I would welcome a more detailed and accurate Arma history, if your team would be willing to provide it for us. As far as being a subculture, I'm not really sure how that works and one of the things we are striving to do is have all of our versions be the same as far as server and client versions. We felt like the differing client and server versions contribute to the lag problem, since the game is so subject to lag. If we did subcultures we would end up with the same issues with server versions, from the little I understand of subcultures. The version number is Manta's humor making a “hitchhiker's guide to the universe” reference. I thought our forums were openly readable, but I'm having some issues with permissions. I will try to fix that. Disney isn't using TR2N now, they are using Tron Legacy for their new movie, but if that becomes an issue, we can deal with that and change it at a later time.
About Phytotron's questions
You do not have to be in a clan to play anyone is welcome to play. There will be competitions and tourneys, our hope is to support those competitions and tourney community wide, so we don't have pockets of competition that doesnt' get good “press” so to speak on the main website. Anyone can host servers, including dedicated ones from home. We just ask that you d/l our server so that the versions of the client and server are the same version. We think that the differing client and server versions contributes to the lag here on Arma. We wanted to try to fix that with only one version at a time.
Configuration settings are available, you can change everything you could in arma. We did try to set a few things in the menu instead of the console to make things easier on the new players we hope to attract with our game. We are experimenting with new game modes and uses for game elements, path is actively developing with his dbd servers for this purpose. Down the road we are planning to move to a new engine, and try out new elements, but we need to get our community set up first. We do not have a last man standing or old school server up as of yet, but I believe compguy has plans to put up such servers within the next week or so.
We do have a bug report section on the forum to take bug reports and we would be honored if you posted them there. We do have a development team that will try to fix those bugs. I don't have a mac so I was unaware of the esc key not quitting, it works for me in windows and linux. We do not plan to use arma bug fixes long term because as we develop our game is likely to be more and more incompatible.
We are pulling our Wild West servers over to TR2norigins, I know ID pulled theirs over. The others might be leaving servers up in both games, but I'm not sure yet. We made different instachats for the new game. I didn't know who did the arma ones
I'm glad you mentioned that for posterity sake. We made more insta chats because at least for me, there weren't enough before by the time I put my insta's in for team play, then for general game play and then for managing the tournaments and servers in general. Nano was able to use a second set of insta chats using a config file, but that is too hard for new players to manage. The instructions are for new players that might d/l the game and then hit F1 for help and not have a clue about what the default keys are, or how to talk in color chat. This way they have a template that they can change and see how color codes work. The players who have been playing for a while already know how to change what the insta chats say.
We are in the process of making a read me instruction manual, and we do have a help page on our website with lots of instructions on basic game play, as well as an instruction video on how to authenticate. We plan to make more instructional videos and post them on our website. Again our goal is to make the game new player friendly.
We are working on the universal keyboard issue and that will be out with a future release. We have no idea why the music cuts out when we exit the active window, I suspect it is a setting much like the display where u can specify keep window active and the video runs. We are looking into that as well for next release. I thought the floor detail and mirroring were in the graphic setting section.
I do know we somehow left off the movie pack in the mac d/l. Path is aware of this issue and he is making a new client that is repaired. As far as the comments on the game modes, double binding and rubber use, that is what I am talking about when I say we have a different vision for the game than the Arma community. Our game modes are centered around these features and there is nothing wrong with being different. That is why we are moving in our own direction, and thus won't pollute your communities ideals that you have for the game.
And we think that the changes we make will attract new players to the game, so 2020's idea is possible. In fact, being a teacher, I can see the value of having such a gaming league to give the students something to do besides run the streets and getting into gangs. Some of the ideas we are using for our game and website are because I asked my students what they liked and didn't like about Arma. I was able to get an unbiased opinion of what middle school students thought about the game and told them after they gave input about our project. I even have some teachers from my Masters program on board with starting a team in their schools.
Van-hayes questions
The purpose of the clan application is so that we are able to get the needed information to put up on the website and to be able to add their members to their group so that they have a clan member rank on the forum. In order for a clan to be put up on the website and have links to their forums and such, they would need to provide that information. If a clan is voted out from the community then their information would be removed from the main webpage, but no steps would be taken to stop them from playing. They just wouldn't get representation from the main community page.
Same thing for the servers, if they want to be listed on the webpage, they need to give us the information and contact information in case their server has an issue. What we don't want to happen is having hundreds of unreachable servers on the master list, it takes up time and resources pinging the master servers so that is why we would remove them from the master server list. I'm not sure what you mean by the read me's, are u talking about in game, or in the source code?
About the issue of why we forked
Wild West and the clans involved in our community haven't been an intricate part of the Armagetron Advanced community in some time. We have no desire to split the community, we are just simply moving our already separate community elsewhere. I only posted here as a courtesy to the developers of Armagetron, so that they knew our reasons and the truth, since others were posting untruths and mis-truths. We hold no grudges, nor do we want to be at odds with the Arma community.
We just want to have the freedom to develop as we see fit, without having to run to the Arma community for permission and more criticism every time we have an idea. Also the level of the changes we needed to do in order to facilitate the community competition atmosphere were not a level that any of us had access to (i/e website), nor were the game modes we want to develop valued at the Armagetron Community level (i/e rubber and game modes with zones). In order to fix the issues the CTF community was having, it is evident that the community needs to be run by all clans, not sponsored by only one. Although Wild West did a lot to help the community grow, it is evident that we can not go much further with the set up we have now. It was our desire to turn the CTF community into one where more clans had input and access to the whole community assets.
Please keep in mind, the changes that we made to both our community website/forum and the game are changes that we pitched to the Arma community in the spring of 2009. We were met with strict criticism and decided that we needed a less restrictive environment in which to develop. The Arma community as been around too long, is very established and has its own set of politics which makes it very hard for newer people in general to be included into. I'm not saying anything is wrong with Arma, what you have works for you and to each his own. And not everyone has been unaccepting, some of you have been very nice and helpful. I'm simply trying to convey our reasons for deciding to go our own way. The development in Arma tends to progress slowly, and part of that is due to the nature of the politics I referred to.
We also realized that the contributions that Wild West has made in general to the Armagetron community was not recognized or valued. We have a large player base that was fostered by the atmosphere in our segment of the community, and we have built the CTF community immensely with our servers and well run tournaments. It became evident during the events of the summer, that although we have freedom to do what we want, when it comes down to it, we are still under the ruling of the community at large. And thus said community had no interest in protecting or valuing anything we were trying to do.
We didn't completely clone Arma, we started off with Arma as the baseline and implemented our changes (with more to come in the future) to make a product that is more conducive to the ideals we have in mind. We do not plan to stay tied to Armagetron, we are moving into our own arena and we will not be running back here for help or approval. We plan to prove our worth as community leaders by succeeding. We wish you all the best and perhaps our leaving will prompt a resurgence in development for Armagetron.
. im sure we will find a solution to the hangs and freezes) 