All these years I race online with LFS I found out two interesting things among others.
1. Very slow development. We have to wait for years and years till some interesting development will happend
2. The price of the LFS licence is very low. You pay only once and you drive for many years. Other games you have to pay every year to play online.

Although I like paying only once and race the next decade I would prefer to pay every year but I could see more development speed. I understund that doing that will reduce the number of the people that race online with LFS and that could be a problem. But if there was a small amount of money would not be a be a problem to the users and would be a great push to the developers so they could proceed with greater speed.
What do you think?

Other: Voluntarily donations.

I would gladly donate something at least once a year (The day I get tax refunds... ), just to support the cause.

I am quite sure that the intention of your thread is good, but the question might be wrong, and I'm going to explain why I think so.

Probably the matter at hand is asking the developers whether they would accept making their team grow, so more content could be made in less time, which is the actual root of the problem as far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong, but the three guys are working on LFS only as of now), and thus contributing to that from the community would be a good and well-founded idea.

Keeping in mind that most of the content of LFS is fictional, they have no license fees to pay and can work under their own policy since there is no distributor with interests on their project, money would be a bottleneck if they wanted to hire experienced professionals from the game making industry, but first they should allow or be willing for that to happen.

In case they wanted to expand the crew so the game could be done/finished/supported better (or faster), I would be willing to pay on a yearly basis, yes.

But first things first.

Many posts and interviews with the devs suggest to me that they like their current work method and don't wish to add anyone to their team. Because of that, I don't think paying more money would make development any faster.

I'm not into the idea of paying a subscription fee anyway. I like that I've paid once and can play LFS as much as I want (or as little as I want without feeling like I'm wasting money). Also, charging a subscription fee for a game that's still in development would be a little bit presumptuous and I think it would alienate many potential buyers.

Yes, there are few games what requires ie. monthly payment for MP. But I think it's just stupid and wrong. It's actually kinda stupid to pay every now and again, just for a permission to play, it's only a game after all. LFS is awesome game and I'm happy with this payment method. And besides I'm a poor student.

And after all, I think that development of LFS goes nicely, I wouldn't want to update like every month to a new version, just to get practising new physics and stuff. New improved stuff is always nice, but still.

If it was a required recurring charge a lot of people would simply stop playing, me included.

The thing is, even all the money in the world wouldn't really help. The team is 3 guys and they keep saying that this is the way it'll stay. The more people you add, the more disparate the ethos becomes, the more programmers you add the more styles you get and the harder it becomes to identify bugged lines of code. At least with Scawen doing all the code, he knows where everything is so can find bugs and kill them quickly. Add another 5 programmers and that gets a lot harder.

A voluntary donation would be much better, but other than saying thanks I don't think it would accomplish anything.

You can donate money easily, just transfer some money to your LFS account, but that won't speed up development.

Development speed on LFS is what the devs have decided… it’s tot because they don’t have enough money.
It’s their decision to increase the development rate and the price we pay for it.
You have done less than 12000km and you got bored already? These km are not enough to learn not even the basic racing line on every combo.
LFS is about racing competition… not fancy new cars and staff… (Although there is no one that would say no to new content additions)

Quote from _--NZ--_[HUN] :

You can donate money easily, just transfer some money to your LFS account, but that won't speed up development.

Oh ya, forgot about that! It is like donation. Thank you for reminding me.

Yes some games require a monthly payment and some an anual payment, but those games have dozens of servers owned by the game company and therefore have extra costs...i think there´s no servers owned by this development team(please correct me if i am wrong). Also those kind of games offer you some "extra" content to your game in a regular basis...and this game is very Alpha

I would not pay a cent more, at least without some MAJOR improvements....

In this post i gained knowlege of the fact they are only 3 guys i feel i have to say wow great work....and keep wondering what a major company could do if they followed the example o this 3 guys(what ever the example is :-) )

Quote from TONI_PT :

....and keep wondering what a major company could do if they followed the example o this 3 guys(what ever the example is :-) )

Major companies would do as they do right now (= no changes). Don't get me wrong, I do respect what devs have done and I do not question their skill, but their trump is that there is only 3 programmers (Prooved earlier that it is more efficient in certain ways), not their overly superior coding skills. After all, they are not gods (Even they are worsiped by some users).

Quote from Gekkibi :

...Don't get me wrong, I do respect what devs have done and I do not question their skill...).

I wont.

They (Devs) as humans not gods have done an astonishing job, i am not aware of the tricks in this kind of business but on a first a aproach it looks like 3 guys DONE this game, wich i think is the best sim in a pc. And in comparison to other games (of major companies) regarding a real and "truthfull" vehicle simulation it stands way above any other.(altough it looses in almost every other aspect-like visuals etc)

The Concept of the game, the per-person produtivity, the compromise to reproduce reality above all other game aspects... Just think on this game beeing developed with countless zeros budgets, and they still in charge(the lfs devs)

Too many cooks...

Quote from Forbin :

Too many cooks...

not enough ovens is what i say.

Quote from TONI_PT :

...

Yes, sure. Three programmers can make really nice simulator, but the biggest difference between LFS and big commercial game is that I bet Scawen don't own an estate and at least half a dozen sports car... In other words, money.

Why should some big game company make a realistic racing simulator if they wont earn huge piles of money with it? The reason why these three men made LFS was love for the idea of online racing simulator. It is something that big game houses doesn't have.

yep if development sped up, and there was quality of course id be happy to pay more cash

Quote from Gekkibi :

....Why should some big game company make a realistic racing simulator if they wont earn huge piles of money with it? ....

I see what you mean and you´re right, it probably wouldn't sell that much.

Can some one explain the metafore of saying too many cooks or ovens in english? as i´m portuguese and live here i don't really understand some funny talks....but i'm sure they are usefull posts

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Quote from tristancliffe :

Too many cooks spoil the broth

In other words, if you have too many programmers, it slows down bug-fixing and improvements, because everyone does everything differently than others.

And I have no clue where to place commas in english. Probably I use way too many of 'em in a one sentence. It is due to finnish grammar(,) where you put them in literally everywhere(,) as shown ín here.

Commas are a funny thing in English. Some, like me, tend to use them a lot, especially when writing less formally. Others, like chavs, don't even know what they are. Yet more others use them as little as possible, hating their intrusion spoiling the flow of a good sentence.

I use the rule; If I'd pause there in real life then a comma should probably go there.

But yes, too many programmers can become counter productive. I need not post examples.

Quote from Gekkibi :

In other words, if you have too many programmers, it slows down bug-fixing and improvements, because everyone does everything differently than others.

I don't really think that's the issue. There are enough subsystems without significant overlap in a game engine to allow a couple of programmers to work on it without stepping on each other's toes (up to a certain point of course). One programmer could easily work on tyre physics and vehicle dynamics without getting in the way of another programmer working on international languages support and other GUI issues. It may indeed make bug-hunting a bit harder, as you won't be intimately familiar with every piece of code, but bug hunting is somewhat of a black art anyway. Most of the time I don't know WTH I was thinking when looking back at code I wrote a couple of years ago. Might as well have been written by someone else.

The sticking point for Scawen and the other devs seems to be the vision. They want it their way, and they want to get there by doing it themselves. And that's fair enough to me...

Quote from Forbin :

Too many cooks...

Quote from tristancliffe :

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Thinking like Tristan I am. Scary.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But yes, too many programmers can become counter productive. I need not post examples.

No doubt, but who think too many starts at 2?

Nope for me. its not the desination, its the journey. I like the way that LFS is being developed right now.

I think they real issue here isn't that "too many cooks spoils the broth", but that it's the way Scavier want to work. I mean, they're only 3, you won't make me believe that a team of, say, 10 programmers, would be counter productive.

What you need to start to see big problems arise must be somewhere like 150, where there's so many people that individual opinion becomes worthless, and they're more or less following what a small group of people decide.

I think when people participating in the creation start to say "omg, we're working on what will be a shit product", you've got a problem. I mean, look at the games out there, some are so terrible; it's impossible that everybody working on it thought it was a masterpiece. However, with 10 people or so, everybody can bring his own ideas, and most importantly comment the 9 other's ideas without it becoming a huge mess (like a forum is).

Quote :

Yet more others use them as little as possible, hating their intrusion spoiling the flow of a good sentence.

I really do believe you need a comma after that "yet"! Besides, the rest of the sentence seems flawed. That said, I probably shouldn't taunt the post machine like that