I was in Ghost Town trying to raise awareness of this poll, and some guy (forgot his name) said, “Dude, there’s only like 5Ø players” (or something like that, “5Ø players” is and exact quote, though)… This got me to thinking. At this point, there are 39 “Yes” votes (for a 9Ø.7%) to 4 “No” votes (for 9.3% of the total). That, combined, is 43 votes, for approximately 89% of the current population.
Inevitably, I know, the devs CAN AND WILL do what they want, and threats or whatever, at this point, are a waste of time and effort. (¿Seriously, what could we do? ¿Threaten to quit? If I were one of them, I’d laugh my ass off at such a “threat.”) But with these results I think the poll shows clearly a very strong support in the Fonline community to release the codes.
I will reiterate that in all probability, 9Ø% of us will just have a copy to have a copy; In fact, assuming it’s released only as a mostly unusable .txt file (as I would expect), most (if not all) of the vast majority will either not know how or not be interested in converting it to a .exe file. (I know I can’t.)
Of the remaining 1Ø%, only one in ten will actually open their server to anyone other than themselves; These will mostly be select friends. ONE in ONE THOUSAND ‘may’ open their server up to the general public, but of these 9Ø% will fail in months, if not days. (If I do ever come to understand how to open up my server to anyone, I most CERTAINLY will not just let anyone waltᵶ in. If one of my friends extends the invitation, that may be a different story, but generally, no.)
A vision of “Fonline Reborn” might look like:
Multiple players set up single-player servers; Say, hundreds. These can not be accessed by anyone other than the server owner themselves, nor can they leave that server.
Doᵶens of players set up limited-player servers; By means not yet identified, players could transport their characters to friend’s servers, much like travelling between countries now. When in, say, PlayerA’s “country” (server), Golden Geckos can breath fire. When in PlayerB’s country, they can’t breath fire, but don’t have collectable pelts, either. (Perhaps they can only be purchased.) PlayerC’s country is most odd, in that you can play a talking Deathclaw, Gecko/Golden Gecko/Fire Gecko, but can’t have Power Armor. PlayerD’s country Power Armor can be purchased just about everywhere for only a few caps, but you can’t craft anything either (because he couldn’t figure out how to adjust the FixBoy, so he just turned it off). In PlayerE’s country, the Enclave were defeated (so post-fall of 2242 to early 2243), and Navarro is a broken camp of mercenaries (former Enclave troopers), who fight only for money. You can buy (or maybe steal) a Vertibird and APA there. You can also rebuild the tanker to go to sea, but to what purpose is unknown, since C didn’t put anything out there. You go for a pleasure cruise to nothing. PlayerF decided not to make any changes, therefore when you enter her country you’re right where you are now.
And so on… No two countries are the same, if for no other reason than no two players that opened their servers set up at least “a” tent differently, thus being the “center” of their world.
I am not begging, but I am asking, that the code be released. I know that Devs (and probably GM’s and Board Moderator’s) will want to have a copy for themselves, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps one (¿or more?) of them will partition their server to try different mods on different partitions, without danger of interfering with one another (hence, different countries unto themselves).
I acknowledge there ARE some No votes, and with respect, would like to hear those objections. There may be legitimate questions raised by these no votes that should be addressed (4 people could raise a million points easily), but I do wish to avoid unpleasantness at this juncture, so please let us KEEP them respectful, rather than, say, “The game needs to die/so we can all play <redacted> in harmony” or other negativity.