Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The deal with donations

I received a donation today, and that inspired this text. For me, it is a rare
event, I believe that this is the third time that I have received a donation
since 2008 when I first released SDL-Ball. So, for me it is something rare, I
don't know how often other projects receive donations, or how they react.

Personally, I become very happy, the size of the donation do not matter, but
the fact that somebody out there used my stuff and enjoyed it to the extent
where they were felt motivated to do such a gesture. It is not like salary for
work, where you get paid to do something because it needs to be done. It is a
affirmation that somebody liked the stuff that you made for your own reasons.

The few times that I have received donations, I've been thrown into a dilemma;
Should I contact patron ?
If so, what should I say/offer?

What I mainly feel like doing, is adding this person to some kind of credits
file, or pay me respect in some other way.. Basically, letting them know that
I appreciate their gesture and also showing to others that the project gets
donations. This has something to do with motivation and pride, even if it is
small and simple projects, it makes me very proud to have created something
that people enjoy.

I remember observing that some project had trouble spending the money, I could
imagine such a problem up to the extent of "who should be given what", but for
myself, I don't see this as an issue, I'll buy something, at some point, and
decided that "this was bought with my donation money", be it beer? Fine :)

If you're involved with a project, or have received or given donations,
I'd like to hear about your thoughts and experiences :)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Stuff

So, seems I messed up sligthly with git, using another computer, which had another email address and name configured globally for git.. I'm OCD with stuff like that, so I rewrote history, sadly breaking any forks out there.. It's something you really have to think about when cloning a project... Ask yourself, "Do I want my global options in this, or set per-project options?" Anyway, I am sorry for breaking history..

I took the time to get osgg from svn on sourceforge into github.. It was nice..
I'm thinking about trying to hack multiplayer into it, everyone would start in the middle of the map on their own private start-base (no other ship should be able to land there), then race for missions, and shoot each other down in the process :)

I'm also thinking about another game concept that's so brilliant that I'll keep it a secret :P

Back to Wizznic: I'm still procastrating the annoying and unsatisfying task of making the options-menu, the level-editor-menu, the level-editor and the highscore-entry work with poiter devices.. I wanted the menu code to be as straight forward as possible, after being burned writing a 10k lines framework with all the bells and whistles, just to discover that I simply did not need, nor want such a beast.. But something in between.. The code for menues in wizznic is not abstract enough, which is also a bad thing, it makes for a LOT of redundant code, and a lot of things which evolved to a point where they now look rather silly.. But do I really want to change it now? I guess I don't.. Wizznic is nearing completion, code-wise, all that really needs is a few more packs of levels, and I'll call it finished :)