EVE General Discussion

WiS, I for one, have only used it twice: once on Incarna release and once again on crucible release (to see the changes).

The main failings of walking in stations are:

It is a memory and resource hog compared to the "in space engine"

Lack of Features, Purpose and Interaction with other players

Loading times when transitioning between WiS and FiS

Development time needed to introduce features.

I was a fan of the idea of walking in stations, but it has to increase player experience, as a minimum, it is a product which should increase the level of interaction with other players within the theme and scope of what EVE is.

Now, if CCP are stuck between long development times and the *ehem* "less than guaranteed community response" on developing more WiS features at the expense of FiS. What do people think the scope is for making some of the code, models features etc, open source for people in the community to develop into mods for the game?

At first, of course there will be loads and LOADS of mods of varying qualities, vision, theme, interaction etc... and of course they'll only be able to act client side, but as soon as the community gets involved and shows what they're capable of. CCP would have some refreshing new perspective on the WiS ideas and could choose one or two of the mods to either elaborate on or developers to collaborate with.

Of course the issues in the end are with patents/money/ntellectual property etc... but this could all be alleviated with some strategically placed waivers.

I for one would be interested with what the community comes up with, look at how much of a success the build a spaceship contest was!

tl;dr: Outsource WiS for community development.

You mean make it some kind of OpenSource Project?

I can't even imagine how horrible that could end...

Hah, while there is that obvious avenue, I was thinking more of an elaboration and step up from the create a starship contest. :P

Second life, this is why letting the community take controll is a terrible idea.

I'd love to believe that the community would spawn shops, casinos, etc etc etc.

But you're forgetting one thing.... goons

It's not "less than guaranteed" as CCP already pointed out that the plans for WiS are just simply shelved until FiS has seen enough improvements. So far, the first serious improvements for FiS came with Crucible and a lot of us now expect the next expansion to improve FiS even more. It's just a matter of patience since CCP has to satisfy type types of players (those for FiS and those for WiS) and each type has to wait for their turn. I'm confident that CCP will reach a point where the WiS players have waited enough before they decide to unsub their accounts.

As for the Open-Source idea:

I do like the idea myself as I have seen this concept put into practice by one such community at Orbiter Space Flight Simulator in which the developer came up with the idea of allowing a central server to handle the complex orbital mechanics while the client (player-side) was open-source to allow for creative development by the community at large. I haven't played the simulator in a long time, so I have no clue if the concept ever left the prototype stage. But I have seen excellent works provided by the community members during the prototype stage. Such an idea would allow various computers with different hardware strengths and weaknesses to be able to utilize the simulator.

However, this can present problems in terms of property rights. Having community developers sign a waiver can be counter productive as the more creative ones get discouraged by it. But for the developers who are in it for the love of Eve, then a waiver may not be an issue.

Another problem is compatibility. Even if you have a multitude of open-source client versions presented, there is no guarantee that they will work on your computer to the fullest extent given that each version can only be tested on so many computers as the original computer's software/hardware specs can greatly impact how the next computer will handle it. I have seen this happen with addons provided by Simviation for Microsoft Flight Simulator in which an addon worked well for some, but not for others due to internal software/hardware issues that the original developer didn't account for.

I have also developed third-party content for the MSFS series as well and I have seen some people report to me that my addons didn't work well to their fullest extent on their computers.

Overall, it's much better for CCP (in this case) to do the development of the client instead of having an Open-Source version to reduce headaches. Besides, MMO players generally don't have the patience to wait for every community-based developer to finish their personal Open-Source project.