[TuxKart-devel] The nature of this game.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

As must already be very aparrent, I'm not a happy camper.  Just
about everything that's been discussed here since the GoTM vote
has been 180 degrees away from where I think it should be going.

It's increasingly aparrent that for many people here, the idea of
improving and extending TuxKart has somehow changed into a desire
to essentially throw away EVERYTHING that currently exists and start
what is an entirely new game.

1) Ingo's is clearly of the view that he wants a fairly 'normal'
    GoKart racing game.  TuxKart is not intended to be that.

    His models (whilst very nice) are of essentially standard
    go-karts and not the wilder designs of games like DoubleDash
    and others of the 'krazy kart' genre.

    He's also expressed (in the Wikki section on tracks) that he
    wants more normal tracks - shorter laps and a greater emphasis
    on kart driving with less on the gadgets, powerups and collectibles
    that are also the trademark of the genre I have in mind.

    He also wants much shorter laps - I feel the ones we currently have
    are already too short (again - compared to other games of this
    genre).  What he is suggesting is true to what real go-kart racing
    is all about - but very far from what go kart games are like.

2) Changing the GUI entirely.  Well, I can at least understand the
    logic behind this (although I still disagree with it) - but I think
    it's out of scope for the GoTM effort - it wasn't even mentioned
    in the ToDo lists that people voted on.  But - OK - those aren't
    meant to chain us down.

3) Characters:  Several people have argued to throw out all of the
    existing characters (with the possible exception of Tux).  Fine,
    but unnecessary in my view.  This too was not something that came
    up in the "ToDo" list or the pre-vote discussions.

4) Tracks:  Do we intend to improve the existing tracks and add more,
    or toss out all of them and make entirely new ones?   I kinda get
    the feeling from reading Wiki and peoples comments that the latter
    is the basic intent.

If all of these things come to pass - along with the (very needed) AI
and physics changes - then there is NOTHING left of the original game.

You might as well leave TuxKart alone and write an entirely new game
from scratch.   This is fine by me - but there is no chance in hell
you'll get it finished in two months.

IMHO, GoTM has to go back to the original ToDo list that was voted
on - and confine themselves to improving what's there rather than
tossing everything out and starting again.

One of GoTM's bullet items when choosing a game to work on is the
cooperation of the original author/maintainer.   I can tell you that,
my cooperation level is plunging - you guys are doing a fine job
of pissing off the person who single-handedly got the game to the
point where people liked it enough to overwhelmingly vote for it.

All of those people didn't vote for your private visions of the
game - because those visions were never expressed prior to the
vote.  They voted to improve what they already saw and liked.

Well, let's do exactly that - and not toss it all out and start
again from zero.

If the decision is to toss everything out and start again then
please create a new SourceForge account in order to do exactly
that and not tear TuxKart apart and leave a smoking ruin at the end
of two months - because that's exactly what'll happen if you try
to tear everything down and rebuild it.


Please discuss.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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