I'm at a loss

[Guest]

  After running Ambardia for almost 4 years I just don't know what direction I should go in now.
Do I rebuild from scratch in EO? The reason I came to Eclipse in the first place was because I just don't have time to learn to program. It saddens me every time I see someone post for help and see responses of "learn to program" If I am going to learn to program it sure as hell won't be in VB6.

  Regardless of the limitations of past versions of Eclipse, it was still the best damn engine in the world for non programmers to work with. I believe that eliminating the scripting is a bad idea. Every great game engine in the world right now is working to improve scripting with the game engine. Is VB6 so bad that a good programmer can't make a scripting engine that will run smoothly with it?

  I know I am speaking out as a non-programmer and that every programmer out there will have this reason and that reason why their way is the better way but let me just say that the majority of this communities members are not programmers. As you guys work to develop Eclipse in whatever form it shapes in to try to remember that. If you just want a community of programmers then maybe you should create a new community just for Mirage based programming.

  I believe I have contributed positively to the Eclipse community and its name and I hope to continue to do so. The recent changes are fantastic and exciting. I'm all for moving forward and change, just please keep in mind we are not all programmers.

  Bumper Sticker: BE NICE TO NON-PROGRAMMERS!

[Aydan]

I agree with you but it won't happen. It's already here and no one will change. Noticed the lack of new games coming out? I remember when there were games out regardless of size/quality and people had fun. Now look at it. Programming a decent engine but nothings being made with them because of the whole programmers only thing. Some people want to just make a game for a small side hobby like myself. But it's pointless these days.

[Sealbreaker]

well.. all the time you worked on ambardia you could've learned a LOT. But instead you "wasted" (you didnt waste your time… ambardia was great) your time on improving ambardia scriptingwise etc.
I think a game like ambardia could have a great playerbase if done again, but it's a question of how much work you wanna put into scripting etc. that you could actually use to learn how to program

-seal

[Robin]

@Ambard:

> -snip-

The people replying with 'learn to program' are breaking the forum rules and receive warnings whenever I see them do it. Once again I'll attribute it to people trying to emulate me. The only time I'll say 'learn to program' is when someone requests an outrageous re-write of their source code. If someone asks for help I'll help them, but not if they want us to program an entire new system whilst they sit back sipping on their coca-cola.

I'll say what I always say in this situation; Origins requires no programming experience at all. Hell, it requires less programming experience than any previous version of Eclipse. The old 'settings.ini' was simply an external copy of a lot of the options sets in modConstants. You can find a lot of similar stuff in Origins.

You can change the entire inventory, bank, shop and spell layout with just changing the 4 constants they run off. You can change character sprite sizes by just making the sheets bigger. Try and do that in Stable. You take a 5 minute job and make it go on for an hour or more.

I'm going to be a bit mean here and point out that you've spent a lot of time learning to script. I realise you just used what you had available at the time, but you still spent a _long_ time learning how to use it. You can do the _exact same thing_ in Origins by simply doing it through the IDE. Not only is this better but it's infinitely easier to debug the damn thing because it's a compiled language, not a shite interpreted pseudo-vbcode Microsoft Scripting Control… mess.

If you're saying that people shouldn't be going around saying 'learn to program' then you're absolutely right. We've never endorsed this and if I see anyone doing it they'll get a hefty warning.

If you're saying we should support old versions of Eclipse because people have invested a large amount of time learning to script then I'll say 'No'. Look at every single Stable/EE game around. It's buggy, unstable and if the userbase gets to any decent size the entire thing is just a nightmare to debug.

If you're saying I should write a scripting engine for Origins then I'll simply say that if you've taken the time to learn the syntax and problem solving skills required to use VBScript then you'll have no problem doing the exact same things in VB6\. All you need to do is learn the layout of the source code, and that'll take a weekend at best.

Sorry about the ramblings, just wasn't sure what point you were trying to make.

@Aydan:

> I agree with you but it won't happen. It's already here and no one will change. Noticed the lack of new games coming out? I remember when there were games out regardless of size/quality and people had fun. Now look at it. Programming a decent engine but nothings being made with them because of the whole programmers only thing. Some people want to just make a game for a small side hobby like myself. But it's pointless these days.

I'll call out your bullshit here. There were _never_ a large amount of active games around, either at Eclipse or Mirage. Probably the place which had a large amount of released games was the original Player Worlds, at that was 9 or 10 years ago. Times change. It's not Origins' fault that people aren't releasing games, it's the person's fault. If they want to release a game they can pretty much use the default Origins. It has everything you could need, especially with the huge amount of tutorials for additional features. They just choose not to.

Hell, look at all your projects. You make a quick Zelda rip every so often, add in all the graphics, then just drop it completely.

Eclipse didn't have a large amount of released games before Origins was even released, and obviously before the emphasis was shifted on to it. The only possible way you could blame any of that on Origins is by saying it raised the standard which people struggle to match, but even that sounds horrifically weak.

[Marsh]

Yea ive always agreed with you there ambardia. Its great to have a engine that requires programming to use but scripting really does add alot of versatility to the engine. Though there is still the Stable version of Eclipse for people to use and have fun with. It doesnt really matter if its not the perfect engine as alot of people are only doing this for fun. If you dont want to have to source edit you can still make a uniqe game.

Though on the other hand I started with scripting, if you are going to learn how to script that is only a tiny step behind programming. You might as well go for it.

Personally at this point in Eclipse i kind of consider Eclipse having 2 main versions. Stable for begginers and Origins for people that want to take it to the next level.

[Robin]

@Marsh:

> It doesnt really matter if its not the perfect engine as alot of people are only doing this for fun. If you dont want to have to source edit you can still make a uniqe game.

We don't have a problem with it because it's not perfect, we have a problem with it because it's impossible to make a game with it. Ask anyone who's actually released anything created in EE or ES. It requires a _huge_ amount of programming to make it not crash every day. The features are unfinished, half of them break the server and every single question people ask about it is to do with fixing the inherent problems with the core programming.

When an engine requires significant source editing to make it run properly you _know_ something is wrong with it, and it also proves that Origins requires less programming knowledge to use.

[Aydan]

@Robin:

> The people replying with 'learn to program' are breaking the forum rules and receive warnings whenever I see them do it. Once again I'll attribute it to people trying to emulate me. The only time I'll say 'learn to program' is when someone requests an outrageous re-write of their source code. If someone asks for help I'll help them, but not if they want us to program an entire new system whilst they sit back sipping on their coca-cola.
>
> I'll say what I always say in this situation; Origins requires no programming experience at all. Hell, it requires less programming experience than any previous version of Eclipse. The old 'settings.ini' was simply an external copy of a lot of the options sets in modConstants. You can find a lot of similar stuff in Origins.
>
> You can change the entire inventory, bank, shop and spell layout with just changing the 4 constants they run off. You can change character sprite sizes by just making the sheets bigger. Try and do that in Stable. You take a 5 minute job and make it go on for an hour or more.
>
> I'm going to be a bit mean here and point out that you've spent a lot of time learning to script. I realise you just used what you had available at the time, but you still spent a _long_ time learning how to use it. You can do the _exact same thing_ in Origins by simply doing it through the IDE. Not only is this better but it's infinitely easier to debug the damn thing because it's a compiled language, not a shite interpreted pseudo-vbcode Microsoft Scripting Control… mess.
>
> If you're saying that people shouldn't be going around saying 'learn to program' then you're absolutely right. We've never endorsed this and if I see anyone doing it they'll get a hefty warning.
>
> If you're saying we should support old versions of Eclipse because people have invested a large amount of time learning to script then I'll say 'No'. Look at every single Stable/EE game around. It's buggy, unstable and if the userbase gets to any decent size the entire thing is just a nightmare to debug.
>
> If you're saying I should write a scripting engine for Origins then I'll simply say that if you've taken the time to learn the syntax and problem solving skills required to use VBScript then you'll have no problem doing the exact same things in VB6\. All you need to do is learn the layout of the source code, and that'll take a weekend at best.
>
> Sorry about the ramblings, just wasn't sure what point you were trying to make.
>
> I'll call out your bullshit here. There were _never_ a large amount of active games around, either at Eclipse or Mirage. Probably the place which had a large amount of released games was the original Player Worlds, at that was 9 or 10 years ago. Times change. It's not Origins' fault that people aren't releasing games, it's the person's fault. If they want to release a game they can pretty much use the default Origins. It has everything you could need, especially with the huge amount of tutorials for additional features. They just choose not to.
>
> Hell, look at all your projects. You make a quick Zelda rip every so often, add in all the graphics, then just drop it completely.
>
> Eclipse didn't have a large amount of released games before Origins was even released, and obviously before the emphasis was shifted on to it. The only possible way you could blame any of that on Origins is by saying it raised the standard which people struggle to match, but even that sounds horrifically weak.

Valid points, I can't argue against that. Origins does require less knowledge thanks to the thought out systems you did, but I guess it's just very different for some people, I mean I'm so used to seeing the 'old' and 'bad' code from the mirage days and looking at origins makes me literally scratch my head with no idea what I'm doing.

Yeah i guess making a game with default origins is possible and it would be pretty good but I guess some people get a bit greedy with 'features'. After such large amounts of quests, skills and other nonesense people had in ES, although poorly done, they were there and I guess people like having those kinds of things in a source/engine because it makes them have at least something to do other than grinding.

Meh either way Eclipse should pick up again at some point. Also how can you call BS? I remember there being plenty of games around, player worlds for sure, Konfuze did, Elysium did and Eclipse had at least a FEW… Rebellion Online anyone?

[Robin]

@Aydan:

> Valid points, I can't argue against that. Origins does require less knowledge thanks to the thought out systems you did, but I guess it's just very different for some people, I mean I'm so used to seeing the 'old' and 'bad' code from the mirage days and looking at origins makes me literally scratch my head with no idea what I'm doing.

That's pretty much what I'm saying. Although it's different and has a small learning curve for people who're used to old versions, if someone comes to the community and only knows Origins then they completely cut out both learning how to do stuff in an outdated version and having to learn the changes between said outdated version and the new version. You simply can't use Stable as a stepping stone. Origins is a completely different river.

@Aydan:

> Yeah I guess making a game with default origins is possible and it would be pretty good but I guess some people get a bit greedy with 'features'. After such large amounts of quests, skills and other nonesense people had in ES, although poorly done, they were there and I guess people like having those kinds of things in a source/engine because it makes them have at least something to do other than grinding.

Quests, skills and all that other crap have been released as tutorials. They require just as much knowledge as you need for installing custom scripts; Knowing how to copy and paste.

@Aydan:

> Meh either way Eclipse should pick up again at some point. Also how can you call BS? I remember there being plenty of games around, player worlds for sure, Konfuze did, Elysium did and Eclipse had at least a FEW… Rebellion Online anyone?

You were making out that it was 100x better back then and everyone and their grandma released a game. If you think back there were only one or two games which actually lasted and were managed properly. The lack of games now-a-days isn't because there's an emphasis on programming, people just aren't releasing as many games.