Something intresting i found...i saw people kept saying about this "years n years for a patch" business, so looked it up. cant remember the site now, but it had patches all the way back to S1......and they were all released in december or may. New patch every 6 months for the last 4 years isnt too bad in my opinion! especially when its one programmer working on the code itself.
More money won`t develop the game faster. As the dev`s has stated many times - they work at their pace, their doing it as fast as they can. But, they have a life outside LFS too, so they can`t develope the game 24/7. We just have to be patient, and think of this - if EA only was 3 guys, how damn long would they take to make a game? And...how crappy would that be?
I voted for an alternative paying method (Voluntary donation). Imho devs deserves more beverages and popcorns, and I am willingly to give those to them.
Then again, I realized I can pay extra $$$ into my account and have high-res skins etc, so maybe I should donate money that way.
If we had to pay annually i wouldn't be able to afford to keep playing lfs. The devs are doing a brilliant job even in it's Aplha stage LFS is still better than any game made by EA. Keep up the good work guys.
Noone says they are slow. The idea is to pay a bit more the license so that they are able to hire another dev or graphist, or a guy doing a better sound engine...whatever.
The (not) funny thing is how people here are afraid that LFS quality will drop if they hire someone else. This is a joke. Critical software used in nuclear power plants ( 2 million lines ADA) are developed by a team. If only one-developer-teams could take care of complicated and robust engineering, there would be almost nothing higher than ground-level.
On the other hand you are not frightened at all that your (mine too) favorite simulator could not survive a single day if the lead developer decided to quit for any reason.
The one-person-development-team is the most fragile structure ever. As I wrote before, no growth is more dangerous than growth (always risky too).
I write that because I care, not because I want everything at once. Look how many racing simulators died....there are bodies all over the road, not even cold.
It's not that quality would drop (although it would take a hit initially as the new guy worked out Scawen's style); it's more because Scawen left mainstream game development to persue it in his own way, with his team. It works for him, and I see no reason why that will change in the near future.
If Scawen decided to leave then yes, that's it. But good things will always come to an end, be it early or late in their lives. At some point we'll have to face facts that either LFS will be beaten by a rival sim in more than one small area, Scawen moves on through boredom, or Scawen moves on because it's "finished". The last two could mean that Scawen simply releases the source code, or sells the source code to a new developer.
My point and what I was expecting when I first posted on this thread was to see a guy hired to create content in the shape of new tracks/cars or put some make-up and improve the existing ones, not about someone else to do the coding or new music, since Scawen and Victor are doing amazing stuff as a one-man-army, single-handed on their development lines.
The only real thing that would make people stay on LFS (IMHO) would be more combos as new content (new cars and tracks, basically), as even if there is enough to have fun for months or even years, the more time you spend on them, the more you get bored from them.
Having someone to help Scawen code would be good news as long as he did pick that someone up and was someone with who he would have good communication, but it would be his choice, not ours. Remember that John Carmack made the best break-through engines (almost) single-handedly.
I doubt that Victor needs any help as of now
And, if anything, to donate money is a good thing, and I would donate more than I already did (not much, I apologize) if the dev's team would state that it would go towards them getting more experience into real driving to improve the feel of the simulator.
Edit : It might seem that I'm suggesting Eric is doing close to nothing, after re-reading my post. It is not so, I actually admire his work, since it's already an incredibly complex task to create one single track and to do it with such good results as he's doing is just unthinkable unless there is someone real good doing so.
That said, congratulations to the developers, they're the most dedicated three guys I've ever seen doing such a huge project, and going good with it even so long after they started. Keep your head high and your hopes up, this is called to be success!
My point for voluntarily donations isn't increased development speed, but only to "support the cause". I don't know how much money developers earn, but I would still like to give them butter with their bread...
I don't know how taxes will work in UK, but at least here it would be better to just buy more of product (vouchers for example) than donate money as when donating money tax % is going to be insane compared to when you buy product, silly, I know, but that is how our perfect world is
If I remember correctly, you will only have to pay taxes for donations if you get over 16000 euros a year. And by meaning "voluntary donations", I mean buying more account-credits, and that is not practically donation, as it is a "product" (I get to download high-resolution skins).
After all these answers I think I changed my mind since the first post. All these years many racing games developed with tones of features. But I still race online with LFS and no other racing game have attracted me, although I try from time to time some of them. Means that all the development I REALLY need is already there. Speeding up the developmend would be ok but this could bring problems that all people here pointed out and I wasnt aware of (too many cooks etc). So I think Scawen knows what he is doing and I hope LFS continiues like it is and stays the best online racing simulation ever..
especially when its one programmer working on the code itself.
