Trials and Tribulations news - Conquest (RTS)

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Difficulties of [ volunteer ] open source project maintainers

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Here’s to all the maintainers out there. To all the people putting in tireless, thankless work behind-the-scenes to keep code alive, to write documentation, to cut releases, to register domain names, and everything else.

If you are releasing anything for quake 1 - you are one of us.
As I read this article more things brought that "oh wow, me too" feeling.

I'll just highlight a couple here.

The problem is that it takes a huge amount of work to keep any momentum.

This is a well made point I have tried to articulate before. Sometimes life gets busy. I have to set the [ ever increasing ] complex quake c aside to deal with things. Sometimes for months, or even *shudder* years. Have to face hard facts - this makes me $0...I've never even been close to having game development as a career. The closest I came: "IT banking service & communications." Yeah, I know EBCDIC and a slew of other comms protocols.

Then I get personal time. I want to finish a mod or qc project. I open up scite, my source editor of choice. Load the code. My mind goes nowhere. Zip. Not inspired, not motivated, zero momentum.
I go do something else.

Periodically I read the .plan file. I look around at stuff I released, and other great quake releases.
Try to get inspired. Maybe play a game or two. Then it finally happens, and I'm rolling again with my favorite code base. Like meeting up with a great friend who has been far away for a long time.
Sometimes I even get lucky.

I just released this monster: Quake Hack beta 1.4.3

That is one of the most complex quake mods I have done to date. Required to do what it does: completely new quake c, reliance on extensions I've never used, engine side mods to handle map things, new map editor specifications, and all that tightly intergrated. This is literally bolting new tech onto the darkplaces engine. A while ago I abandoned a glquake / tenebrae engine mod for darkplaces. I decided I didn't want to maintain an engine mod along with quake c mods.

I'm on the 3rd tech build. That means it didn't work the first two times and I rebuilt it. Not all from scratch, but close. When you don't have a lot of personal time, it is very difficult to throw out months of dev. and just start over. That dreaded moment when you realize what you have does not work.

he/she has all these cool ideas, but as each get released there is a growing amount of noise to distract from future ideas.

I have more ideas than I can ever use. A mass of text files and paper notes. They detail mod plans, map designs, game ideas, and the list goes on. I just hope that by the time I retire and can focus 100% on these dreams that I still have the drive, focus, and will power to release more.