Unfortunately I'm not a programmer, but yesterday I went through a lot of kickstarter projects and got the impression it could be feasible to get the funding for (a) paid programmer(s) if we can put together a good, concrete development plan and a good presentation.
An impressive example is Frontiers. I know it is very different because the main developer is a very experienced VFX-guy who obviously is capable of doing nearly everything needed himself as well. But he is onto a much bigger project.
If the code base of Trigger isn't outdated the game project could be revived. It for sure wouldn't be a small task, but it might work.
The good thing about Trigger is the fact, that it actually works already on a wide range of systems. It is even in the repositories of the largest GNU/Linux distributions and there is a port to Windows. (I'm not yet sure if it even works on Apple computers right now.)
As well it already has quite some maps, cars and textures to play with.
It mainly lacks a user interface for adjusting the settings. Of course there are many possible features which would be fun to add, but the most important thing from my point of view is the obstacle, that most users would need to edit configuration files in order to get proper adjustments. (Especially if they want to install the game on a Windows system.)
Just to give you an idea of what I imagine:
basic funding:
menu driven settings
new menu interface (for handling more options, maps and vehicles ... as they may come)
unlocking extensions by winning events (or maps)
extended funding:
user profiles for storing personal achievements
better input device support (Joystick, Gamepad...)
tuning vehicle options in setup (motor, wheels, colors)
adjustable in game music option
huge funding:
different surface physics (snow, ice, mud, sand, asphalt...)
allowing real (collision resistant) 3D-objects for buildings, tunnels etc.
high polygon vehicles, maps and high resolution bitmap option
headlights and proper shadows
cool advertising game video
incredible funding:
multiplayer and network gaming
gui map and vehicle editor
damage model on vehicles
Rewards for backing with funds
The game is free software. Therefore everyone get's the complete game for free, but we can offer rewards like:
your name in credits
you can name a map
you can name an event
you can name a vehicle
If huge funding is reached:
your personal monument in a map (with your name on it)
your personal building in a map (with your name on it)
...
This are just some spontaneous thoughts. Maybe you have better ideas. What du you think?
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I thought about this and I see several other potential issues, in addition to those you mention.
Going through kickstarter would likely involve creating an official legal entity (e.g. charity), which involves a significant administrative, financial and fiscal overhead if you start from scratch. Another issue is the absence of an existing active developer; hiring and monitoring a programmer should be done by a current experienced programmer, and we lack such.
Nice idea however I don't see this happening soon.
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I can understand, that at best a programmer should be in charge of coordinating the efforts, but I don't get why we would need to form any legal entity since every private person is one as well. It might not the best idea to put such a project on one personal shoulder, but I don't know of any reason why this should be legally necessary.
But I don't want to convince you of anything since I wouldn't use kickstarter at all. Maybe I can find better options. I will let you know, if that is the case...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2013-07-01
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Receiving funds and paying wages is a big deal in many countries. I'm currently admining LyX at GSoC, and to receive funds from Google involves a legal entity (for- or not-for-profit org), taxation issues, cross-border bank transfers, etc. I would expect that anything kickstarter-related implies a similar and significant administrative overhead.
GSoC for Trigger would be nice, and less stressful than kickstarter, but we would need at least one experienced developer familiar with the code base and available to mentor, and I don't think Jasmine would be into that.
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A shame. But can anyone answer the question if the code base of Trigger Rally is still fresh enough to be a useful base for a modern computer game if we can find someone who could program? It as well could be, that beginning a new project might be easier and more promising if the code base is just not a good base for what is expected from computer games nowadays. I'm unable to answer that question...
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I think the car looks already similar enough. In my opinion it would be more interresting to get the landscape more alike. But not only in the background image. The in-game details could get seriously improved... ;)
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Unfortunately the latest version of online TriggerRally can NOT work. They did NOT provide any release of the old version. Please visit the following link.
offline Trigger Rally was developed with C++ code.
I have hands-on development experience of C++.
I do NOT know who is the project lead of offline Trigger Rally.
Can I fork the latest version of source code Trigger Rally (released in 2011-10-13) to my GitHub account so that every software engineer can contribute the improvement of Trigger Rally?
I am moderator of open-source C++ project "FreeRDP-WebConnect" at GitHub.
I'm jareiko, the original developer of both versions of the game. I've released the source code of both of them as GPL, so you don't need my explicit permission to fork, but thanks for asking anyway. :) There's a copy of the C++ version here on SourceForge but you can clone it to GitHub if you like.
Thanks to the efforts of several people, the content assets (models, textures, etc.) with the C++ version are now also GPL and freely forkable. However, the JavaScript version of the game has many non-free content assets so it's more difficult to work with as an open source project.
I'm afraid I have very little time to devote to either project right now but I'll try to answer questions where possible. Thanks Onsemeliot for drawing my attention to this thread. :)
Jasmine
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Thanks to the efforts of several people, the content assets (models, textures, etc.) with the C++ version are now also GPL and freely forkable.
I'm not so sure about that. I think Liviu replaced qubodup's new textures with the original textures because when I downloaded the game last time from the repository I got the old textures with unfree brands again...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-05-14
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Sorry Liviu. I didn't want to tell something wrong. Then it must have been qubodup himself. At least last time I got the old car textures from the repository and added the free textures from my backup afterwards...
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(1) I svn clone C++ code from the SourceForge link to Ubuntu 12.04 desktop
(2) I remove the empty directory "contrib"
(3) I compile the C++ source code
(4) Trigger-Rally game works well on Ubuntu 12.04 desktop
(5) I create a new repository and clone the C++ code from Ubuntu 12.04 desktop to GitHub
Every Trigger-Rally team member/engineer can make new commits to offline desktop Trigger-Rally upon the new requests at SourceForge and GitHub.
I will go through the C++ code base of Trigger-Rally and make new commits to improve offline desktop Trigger-Rally.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Winston Hong
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what are your plans for the fork? Did you install the game already? Which car-textures are available in your version? Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
Maybe I can help you in any way if our visions are compatible.
Onsemeliot
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That couldn't have been the problem since I had a completely erased disk, when I installed my new system and compiled the game from source last time. Strange, but it doesn't really matter if I am the only one who had this issue.
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(4) Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
I did NOT pay much attention to the names of the cars. All the data files come from the following link. http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/data/
Now I will focus on C++ code.
(5) Maybe I can help you in any way if our visions are compatible.
Thank you very much for your help. If I need the help, I will post the message here.
Now I need to gain in-depth knowledge of the C++ code base first.
Hello qubodup.
Thank you very much for your great guidance and the links.
I start the game again and get the answer to your Question #4.
(4) Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
Yes. qubodup has changed the names of each car. These cars are NOT called "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba".
If this racing game becomes popular in the future, the Trigger-Rally team can get some financial support on the project from a car manufacturer so that the car manufacturer can provide their car model for the game and name the car models in the game. Such funding can support both online game and desktop game.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Even if we are quite lucky you jumped in to help us with the coding I'm a little sceptic about the chances of this game becomming a cool big hit since it is far from being a shiny, polished high end game Car manufacturers might want be associated with.
Even if I'm wrong with this expectation I fear a deal with car manufacturers might be quite difficult since the GPL licence and the legal expectations of brand owners do conflict in a very basic way: GPL software is required to be independant of proprietary elements. Brands are protected and are not free to share or adapt by others by nature.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Unfortunately I'm not a programmer, but yesterday I went through a lot of kickstarter projects and got the impression it could be feasible to get the funding for (a) paid programmer(s) if we can put together a good, concrete development plan and a good presentation.
An impressive example is Frontiers. I know it is very different because the main developer is a very experienced VFX-guy who obviously is capable of doing nearly everything needed himself as well. But he is onto a much bigger project.
If the code base of Trigger isn't outdated the game project could be revived. It for sure wouldn't be a small task, but it might work.
The good thing about Trigger is the fact, that it actually works already on a wide range of systems. It is even in the repositories of the largest GNU/Linux distributions and there is a port to Windows. (I'm not yet sure if it even works on Apple computers right now.)
As well it already has quite some maps, cars and textures to play with.
It mainly lacks a user interface for adjusting the settings. Of course there are many possible features which would be fun to add, but the most important thing from my point of view is the obstacle, that most users would need to edit configuration files in order to get proper adjustments. (Especially if they want to install the game on a Windows system.)
Just to give you an idea of what I imagine:
basic funding:
extended funding:
huge funding:
incredible funding:
Rewards for backing with funds
The game is free software. Therefore everyone get's the complete game for free, but we can offer rewards like:
If huge funding is reached:
This are just some spontaneous thoughts. Maybe you have better ideas. What du you think?
In the mean time I red the terms and conditions on kickstarter and can not with a clear conscience recommend using this service.
Short: no promises, no rights, many risks and a horrible communication strategy.
I thought about this and I see several other potential issues, in addition to those you mention.
Going through kickstarter would likely involve creating an official legal entity (e.g. charity), which involves a significant administrative, financial and fiscal overhead if you start from scratch. Another issue is the absence of an existing active developer; hiring and monitoring a programmer should be done by a current experienced programmer, and we lack such.
Nice idea however I don't see this happening soon.
I can understand, that at best a programmer should be in charge of coordinating the efforts, but I don't get why we would need to form any legal entity since every private person is one as well. It might not the best idea to put such a project on one personal shoulder, but I don't know of any reason why this should be legally necessary.
But I don't want to convince you of anything since I wouldn't use kickstarter at all. Maybe I can find better options. I will let you know, if that is the case...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2013-07-01
Receiving funds and paying wages is a big deal in many countries. I'm currently admining LyX at GSoC, and to receive funds from Google involves a legal entity (for- or not-for-profit org), taxation issues, cross-border bank transfers, etc. I would expect that anything kickstarter-related implies a similar and significant administrative overhead.
GSoC for Trigger would be nice, and less stressful than kickstarter, but we would need at least one experienced developer familiar with the code base and available to mentor, and I don't think Jasmine would be into that.
A shame. But can anyone answer the question if the code base of Trigger Rally is still fresh enough to be a useful base for a modern computer game if we can find someone who could program? It as well could be, that beginning a new project might be easier and more promising if the code base is just not a good base for what is expected from computer games nowadays. I'm unable to answer that question...
I made a dummy page in order to illustrate how a new in-game menu could look like:
http://www.veganmania.at/div/trigger/menu/
Please do not complain about the mostly dead menu links! So far I just designed the login and the races/events pages.
The page looks very good. I like the logo (upper right) though I'd be happier if it looked more like the car in this video.
;-p
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-04-19
Hi wrencherd,
I think the car looks already similar enough. In my opinion it would be more interresting to get the landscape more alike. But not only in the background image. The in-game details could get seriously improved... ;)
Hello Onsemeliot.
Thank you very much for your great contribution to Trigger Rally.
I have visited the dummy page created by you.
http://www.veganmania.at/div/trigger/menu/
It is similar to another online Trigger Rally. Please use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to visit the following link.
https://triggerrally.com/
The online Trigger Rally has been mentioned in the official website of Trigger Rally.
http://trigger-rally.sourceforge.net/
Part of source code of online Trigger Rally can be found in the following GitHub link.
https://github.com/CodeArtemis/TriggerRally
Unfortunately the latest version of online TriggerRally can NOT work. They did NOT provide any release of the old version. Please visit the following link.
https://github.com/CodeArtemis/TriggerRally/issues/57
It seems that the latest version of offline source code of Trigger Rally was released in 2011-10-13 (2 years and a half ago).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/trigger-rally/files/trigger-rally/trigger-0.6.0/
offline Trigger Rally was developed with C++ code.
I have hands-on development experience of C++.
I do NOT know who is the project lead of offline Trigger Rally.
Can I fork the latest version of source code Trigger Rally (released in 2011-10-13) to my GitHub account so that every software engineer can contribute the improvement of Trigger Rally?
I am moderator of open-source C++ project "FreeRDP-WebConnect" at GitHub.
https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP-WebConnect/issues/36
Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Winston Hong
Hi Winston,
my dummy page was ment as a suggestion for the offline game, which I clearly prefer.
Unfortunately I can't answer if it would be ok to fork the code, but I will ask on the Trigger Rally mailing list and hope jareiko will answer...
Thanks for your effort,
Onsemeliot
Hi Winston,
I'm jareiko, the original developer of both versions of the game. I've released the source code of both of them as GPL, so you don't need my explicit permission to fork, but thanks for asking anyway. :) There's a copy of the C++ version here on SourceForge but you can clone it to GitHub if you like.
Thanks to the efforts of several people, the content assets (models, textures, etc.) with the C++ version are now also GPL and freely forkable. However, the JavaScript version of the game has many non-free content assets so it's more difficult to work with as an open source project.
I'm afraid I have very little time to devote to either project right now but I'll try to answer questions where possible. Thanks Onsemeliot for drawing my attention to this thread. :)
Thank you for your fast reply, Jasmine. :)
I'm not so sure about that. I think Liviu replaced qubodup's new textures with the original textures because when I downloaded the game last time from the repository I got the old textures with unfree brands again...
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-05-14
I made no commits on textures and vehicles following qubodup's commits.
https://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/data/vehicles/
Sorry Liviu. I didn't want to tell something wrong. Then it must have been qubodup himself. At least last time I got the old car textures from the repository and added the free textures from my backup afterwards...
Hello Onsemeliot.
Thank you very much for your great help on my question.
Hello Jasmine.
Thank you very much for your great help, quick response and explicit permission of cloning the C++ code of offline desktop Trigger Rally to GitHub.
Hello Trigger-Rally team.
Thank you very much for your great contribution of this amazing racing game.
I have cloned the C++ source code of offline desktop Trigger-Rally to my GitHub account.
https://github.com/winstonhong/Trigger-Rally
is a copy of
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/
(1) I svn clone C++ code from the SourceForge link to Ubuntu 12.04 desktop
(2) I remove the empty directory "contrib"
(3) I compile the C++ source code
(4) Trigger-Rally game works well on Ubuntu 12.04 desktop
(5) I create a new repository and clone the C++ code from Ubuntu 12.04 desktop to GitHub
Every Trigger-Rally team member/engineer can make new commits to offline desktop Trigger-Rally upon the new requests at SourceForge and GitHub.
I will go through the C++ code base of Trigger-Rally and make new commits to improve offline desktop Trigger-Rally.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Winston Hong
Hi Winston,
what are your plans for the fork? Did you install the game already? Which car-textures are available in your version? Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
Maybe I can help you in any way if our visions are compatible.
Onsemeliot
Hi Winston,
Glad you're interested to help! Are there specific features you want to
work with?
There are a few feature requests and bug reports:
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/bugs/
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/feature-requests/
Onsemeliot: you might want to clean your svn repository (delete and clean
checkout?). Nothing was changed as you can see in
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/commit_browser
Cheers,
Iwan
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-05-18
Hi qubodup,
That couldn't have been the problem since I had a completely erased disk, when I installed my new system and compiled the game from source last time. Strange, but it doesn't really matter if I am the only one who had this issue.
Hello Onsemeliot.
Thank you very much for your quick response.
(1) what are your plans for the fork?
I plan to improve C++ desktop racing game by fixing the open issues.
(2) Did you install the game already?
I did NOT install the game.
Instead, I compile the C++ code on the Ubuntu 12.04 desktop.
./configure
jam
Then I run the game directly using
./data/trigger
and it works well.
(3) Which car-textures are available in your version?
I do NOT know which car-textures are available in my version.
I just clone the data files from the following link.
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/
It seems that the latest car-textures was updated on 2013-10-13.
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/data/
(4) Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
I did NOT pay much attention to the names of the cars. All the data files come from the following link.
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/code/HEAD/tree/data/
Now I will focus on C++ code.
(5) Maybe I can help you in any way if our visions are compatible.
Thank you very much for your help. If I need the help, I will post the message here.
Now I need to gain in-depth knowledge of the C++ code base first.
Hello qubodup.
Thank you very much for your great guidance and the links.
(1) I will try to fix the bugs first.
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/bugs/
(2) Then I will try to provide the new features upon the feature requests.
http://sourceforge.net/p/trigger-rally/feature-requests/
I will report my progress here.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Winston Hong
Hi Winston,
I'm really happy you want to help out here. Please let me know if you want my help with graphic design for examle...
Best wishes
Onsemeliot
Last edit: Onsemeliot 2014-05-18
Hello Onsemeliot.
I start the game again and get the answer to your Question #4.
(4) Do the cars have qubodup's made up names or are they called: "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba"?
Yes. qubodup has changed the names of each car. These cars are NOT called "Ford Focus", "Mitsubishi Evo" and "Seat Cordoba".
If this racing game becomes popular in the future, the Trigger-Rally team can get some financial support on the project from a car manufacturer so that the car manufacturer can provide their car model for the game and name the car models in the game. Such funding can support both online game and desktop game.
Hi Winston,
Even if we are quite lucky you jumped in to help us with the coding I'm a little sceptic about the chances of this game becomming a cool big hit since it is far from being a shiny, polished high end game Car manufacturers might want be associated with.
Even if I'm wrong with this expectation I fear a deal with car manufacturers might be quite difficult since the GPL licence and the legal expectations of brand owners do conflict in a very basic way: GPL software is required to be independant of proprietary elements. Brands are protected and are not free to share or adapt by others by nature.