Open Source Airplanes

No problem then Kage, for what its worth I've enjoyed our discussion. As to mulling over the topic, well really that's all anyone can ask of you, thank you for that as well.

See you in skies eh? ^.^

I wasn't going to say anything, but since you asked..

Let me see if I can collect my thoughts and without rambling on for too long. Basically to summarize, I agree with Huns position - the best way to foster innovation is to provide high-level discussion and help, without providing 100% feature-filled scripts. There should be basic freebie scripts to provide a frame-work for understanding how vehicles work, and I think the existing freebies perform that function well.

The reason I feel like this way is more artistic that business. I like creativity and originality. Let me see if I can explain myself with a story:

A few months ago, someone stumbled opon me when I was building the Dominus Shadow, and inquired when it would be for sale. I answered that it probably wouldn't be available for a while yet, because I still had to write the scripts. I was flattered that they liked the model, but I have to admit I was a little offended when they suggested I just dump a car script in it and I'd be done. Variety is the spice of life, no?

I want to create more original things. I'm sure you've seen something like this - You must've seen someone who sells 100 different variations of a single item - maybe it's an airplane, or gun or whatever. They're all essentially the same item, with just a different model. In my field they call this self-pliagarism, and it's frowned upon. I think this kind of behaviour would be even worse if a well-witten fully-featured airplane (or whatever) script was released. Instead of people just copying themselves, they'd all copy that one source.

The way things are, those that go to the trouble of writing something better than "default" all do something more original.

There are many things that go into expressing an idea in an SL design - scripts, building, texturing, and animations. I think scripts are an integral form of creative expression - I don't want people thinking of scripts as something that's a purely functional "drop in" components. It's all part of the tapestry.

I like things that are more strongly differentiated - I try to express this in the things I do. There was only one Seburo, and there is only one Dominus Shadow.

Well, I just bought one of your mechas. I don't think I'll buy another.

Why?

It was completely non-mod. I couldn't even add a bumper sticker to it.

Plus, there's like 4 prims that seem to have "died". I need to reset them, because they don't change transparency. I can't reset them or even replace them with my own prims that duplicate the "if avatar is flying" code.

Because it's non-mod.

I've had both of these problems with Tinies, but there it's not a big deal... I don't need to mod a tiny as much, plus it's less than half the price, and I *can* replace the broken parts if I need to (like I did with my Extrovirtual yellow bird because the animation overrider was broken).

If you'd sell a version of each of your bots mod/copy/no transfer, I'll bet a lot of people would buy them instead of the DIY kits. For the same reason that people would go for a more complete sample plane (even if it was made of 5 plywood prims)...
It's kind of funny, the way vendors still get so worried about their damn blink scripts even AFTER the open source versions showed up.

Aren't the blink scripts just a texture switcher on a timer? I coded one for an AV I'm working on and had it working in about five minutes. And anyone who's ever been roped into helping me de-bug a script can tell you that I'm a novice coder that can barely program my way out of a paper bag sometimes.

Ouch! If it is a big deal to you, I will provide a mod/copy/notransfer version of the Archaeopteryx or just refund your purchase. Either way's fine with me. The scripting used to toggle alpha throughout that av is, iirc, Cross Lament's excellent Flight-Responsive Attachment suite of scripts listed in the script library forum. I'm sorry you were dissatisfied with the av, Argent; let me know which way you'd like to handle it.

The Steam Golem is my first av to be offered as mod/copy/notrans on a wide scale, and is intended as my first foray into that permissions scheme. Until its release, I didn't feel ready to enter the world of support requests that I am told is engendered by mod/copy/notrans items.

As for the Tinies, all I did was cook up the original set of animations. All the prim, texturing, and additional animations (and even vehicles) were of course handled by others.

I'm afraid I'm drifting us away from the original topic of the thread, which was airplane features and later licensing.

Not to necropost or anything, but I thought this thread had a lot of light to shed on the subject: /108/44/47977/1.html