Open Letter to DivVerent of Nexuiz / Xonotic (Opensource FPS

[mikeusa]

Dear DivVerent of Xonotic (formally Nexuiz).

Since you never liked me, apparently, and only humored me because you had a many year long dearth of mappers, and you greatly dislike my maps, hate my beliefs (though you pretended to go along with them in private messages in the past (I have the logs, I read them over, my memory is not faulty)), hate me so much that you will never make a feature I'd want ever again, and have said that you were _never_ a friend (I didn't believe that), please, as a favor, remove my maps and other supporting media from your servers, download websites, etc. I know you stopped updating your download website with my maps long ago (months, year?), and that's when I started to get the feeling that you disliked me. I then figured, though, that you were just busy with paying work where people at least compensate you for your effort rather than endlessly complaining and feeling that the developers of a free game owe the users something (rather than the "scratch an itch" theory of open-source development). Of-course, you don't have to do this as the maps and media are GPL or sometimes under even less restrictive licenses, but since you have revealed your disgust for what I have created and proclaimed that you will never help me again (cmon) I don't see why you would want to have my hated works available.

Furthermore, before the fork, we discussed [what is now Xonotic] as moving away from LordHavok's insistence that all features added to the game be related to that which would be useful to a quake-like small-corridor small-map first person shooter. We discussed the fork becoming more than that, of opening new horizons for the mappers, and you seemed to agree somewhat with this idea. Also one of the very reasons for the fork was to get rid of LordHavok's quake-like-FPS-only 9-weapons only requirement. You also said I'd be more involved with the fork than I had been with nexuiz, I would not be excluded to such a degree as previously.

Today you seem to agree with LordHavok's opinions of game-scope (quite limited), and from the beginning I was excluded in totality from the fork. So what was this fork about? A changing of the guard only? Forcing me out? Getting fresh new blood? Merely a managerial trick? Xonotic is Nexuiz is the community?

Why can't things be the way they were, the way they were meant to be, the way they were discussed as being?

I do notice that you stopped talking to me, for the most part, once I conversed with other people, members of the Xonotic "community" as they are called, about features I requested and that you subsequently created. I can only guess that you had told them previously that you had no contact with me, that you didn't like me, indeed disliked me as much as they do, and now them learning that you had been in constant and productive* communications with me for years a doubt has been raised in their minds as to how loyal you were to the "community".

This likely forced your hand and you had to, by demand of the community, make reality the fiction which they believed was true; the distance and the dislike between you and I. Something which never previously existed, not for one moment since I joined the nexuiz scene and contacted you, so long ago, about a feature that was missing from func_rotating, concerning the map blueamuse.

Once upon a time, Open-source was known for it's flame-wars, and it exalted the fact that Free Software existed amongst a community where it was not one's skills in navigating the social feelings of the group or agreeing with the beliefs of the masses that raised one's standing and built upon the project, but ones real accomplishments and creations. The code not the conduct. The media not the morals.

You recently, near your farewell to me, said I was socially-retard. Once upon a time, that did not matter.

Sincerely, always ready to return from banishment back to the shadows from where I whispered for years prior, should your new mappers falter in their productive will (and they shall), your friend;
MikeeUSA

*(For me at-least)

[mikeusa]

Some time ago the Open-Source First Person Shooter video-game Nexuiz was bought out by a commercial development team called IllFonic(TM), as this happened the lead developers of Nexuiz forked the project and set out on a grand journey filled with new ideas. Now, some months after that happenstance the allowable ideas are narrowing and stifling group-think is emerging as the strongest force in the Nexuiz / Xonotic saga. The social dance surrounding the embryonic new project has become more important than any contributions themselves. Gone is the old mantra of "show me the code", giving way to the demand that all contributors must be appropriate in their thoughts and actions: both within and without the project. Social outcasts need not apply. Open-source has changed.

[Electro]

Huh? I thought it was meant to be Open Source, not Open Letter.

I really don't understand what you're trying to do here besides possibly create a stir?

[gnounc]

Don't bring that shit here.

[mikeusa]

Xonotic uses Darkplaces, this is the place to post things related to darkplaces things. I wish divverent would stop hating me.

[mikeusa]

It is an open letter about a darkplaces-using opensource project. Which... sadly... has narrowed it's scope it seems.

[dreadlorde]

[mikeusa]

[Baker]

[mikeusa]

[Baker]

Joking aside, I'm not unsympathetic to what you are experiencing ... I'm just saying that most of us here aren't deep enough into the Xonotic community to know the inner workings.

For example, I know div0, esteel and -Z- and that's about it. And I only know them by their contributions and functions within the Nexuiz/Xonotic project.

Over the years, the people overlap between Nexuiz/Xonotic and Quake proper have thinned with LordHavoc really being the only person I know with that much familiarity with both [or maybe not .... he's probably too busy].

I find this sad in a sense, because many people in the Quake community don't know what Xonotic is and don't really know what Nexuiz is either, except the more hardcore and diverse types. It is kind of like how whatever Q2 communities there are remaining don't know much about Q1/QW or vice versa.

[mikeusa]

Video of a map in progress: http://ompldr.org/vNWtraQ/dpvideo010.ogv

Uses div0's random portals. Good thing, I guess, that he made them before he finally decided he couldn't stand me. Every map reload it's connected together differently.

Tiles/prefabs (buildings) I made (GPL Licensed):
http://omploader.org/vNHNodA/sc_tiles.zip (WIP)
I wanted to make a sorta simcity clone. There are over 20 buildings I think. Mansions, middle class housing, lower class housing, terrain, roads, highways, railroads, subways, underground water pipes, factories, apartment buildings, gas stations, convience stores, water tower, tunnels, corporate highrises, chemical storages, warehouses, etc, Loop-de-loops. Divverent gave indications that he would help make the map converter, one day, but that was near the end of his toleration of me. Never going to happen. I made a piano model he wanted in hopes of reigniting a friendship that I am now told never existed. I have the logs though and reread them, he is friendly and seems to agree with some things I say in the past. Actually talks with me too, more recently he just says 2 lines and then ignores me for the next 2 weeks. Everyone else hates me with a passion.

(Free-Libre-Opensource) Textures I made:
http://omploader.org/vNHNlZQ/suburbtex.pk3 (WIP) (Newest)
~300MB of photo-realistic textures I made with my Nikon camera, homedepot and lowes visits, and the gimp. Natural and simple materials. GPL.
http://omploader.org/vNHNkZw/caethaver2 ... es_png.pk3
~80MB older texture pack made in the gimp.

(Free-Libre-Opensource) Textures which contain a mix of things I made, and things I modified from opensource sources:
http://ompldr.org/vNWx0ZA/castle_bunker_textures.pk3 (WIP)
~180MB-- Mostly skyboxes I made in terragen, medeval tapestries and banners I made in gimp. This one is always growing.

None of these things above are appreciated, at all, by any of the Xonotic hiearchy. They tell me to get the fuck out because of my social beliefs and the fact I want a good wife, rather than a woman as my master.

(Free-Libre-Opensource) Textures which contain a mix of things and things I modified from opensource sources and opensource things that are just packaged from other OSS games who open their media:
http://omploader.org/vNHNkcQ/bztourny_textures.pk3
http://omploader.org/vNHNkag/csorginal_textures.pk3
http://omploader.org/vNHNkbQ/cliffwall_textures.pk3
http://omploader.org/vNHNkbw/interspace ... xtures.pk3
http://omploader.org/vNHNkaw/blender_pu ... _cloth.pk3
http://omploader.org/vNHNkeQ/javaclassi ... xtures.pk3
http://omploader.org/vMnRhMw/bonusarena3.pk3

[mikeusa]

I want to know why divverent's behavior towards me changed, why he grew to hate me like all the rest fairly suddenly (everyone else hated me since forever), and how I can get it to be like the past, where he liked me.

[Electro]

It's like a bot, only worse.

[Spirit]

Making a topic like this is a perfect example why one might not like to work with you.