Amethyst on OpenCollective?

[erlend-sh]

@ebkalderon & co, any chance we'll be seeing Amethyst on OpenCollective? Mixing open source and money isn't without its pitfalls, but OpenCollective is designed to make that easier, and there's no shortage of opportunities for spending. Strategic spending is a major part of my job at Discourse, so I'd be happy to offer advice.

In my experience, one great use of funds in a project such as this is art assets. Good looking demos will do wonders for your pitch. Ideally, you'd even manage to source original assets that could be CC-licensed and shared freely, which is a great PR opportunity.

I can commit to $20/month to kick things off.

[Xaeroxe]

I'd prefer to do this once the project is more commercially viable. We still have several major vacancies that make Amethyst difficult to recommend for a game development project. At minimum I'd like to get the following done before we consider doing this:

• [ ] Animation system, both 2D and 3D
• [x] Physics system
• [x] 2D sprite rendering
• [x] UI framework

Right now funding poses a real risk to the quality of the project in my opinion, as it permits people who are neither commercial users or code contributors to have significant sway in the project.

EDIT: I appreciate your eagerness to contribute, however I feel our most dire need at the moment is for more code, not more money.

[Xaeroxe]

Alternatively: We could start this early, but I would prefer an absolute policy in "standing our ground". We will not make decisions regarding the direction of the project in order to meet the whims of a financial contributor. "I'll pull my funding if you don't do it my way" should always be met with stoic resolve to not compromise the quality of the project in the name of appeasing financial contributors. We've made it this far on $0/month and we shouldn't risk our long term goals to meet short term needs.

[Xaeroxe]

@amethyst/engine-devs I think we're presented with 3 options here:

• Defer until the checklist is complete
• Start now, with no expectations for large amounts of funding at this point in time.
• Don't do this at all.

I think I prefer to start now. Ultimately this decision really rests with @ebkalderon.

[ebkalderon]

I don't mind doing this at all, I welcome it! However, I agree that it might be too early to start with this now. My personal list of required features is, at minimum:

• [x] Rudimentary UI support
• [x] Text rendering
• [ ] Better tooling

Other features like physics and intuitive animation are both a huge deal, but ultimately not deal-breakers to all games. See simple games like pong, snake, breakout, etc. But being unable to render a simple menu screen or high score table, or lacking any form of artist or gamedev tools support is definitely a showstopper.

[erlend-sh]

Sounds good! I'll revisit this in a few months or so. Also..

Other features like physics and intuitive animation are both a huge deal, but ultimately not deal-breakers to all games. See simple games like pong, snake, breakout, etc. But being unable to render a simple menu screen or high score table, or lacking any form of artist or gamedev tools support is definitely a showstopper.

💯 👏

[erlend-sh]

I'd like to revisit this. Other Rust gamedev projects are already having good results on Patreon:

• https://www.patreon.com/sebcrozet/overview
• https://www.patreon.com/tomaka/overview
• https://www.patreon.com/citybound/overview

...and judging by Amethyst's steady influx of GitHub stars and inquiries on Gitter, lots of people continue to be excited about the great work you all are doing.

Right now funding poses a real risk to the quality of the project in my opinion, as it permits people who are neither commercial users or code contributors to have significant sway in the project.

This is a legit concern but bear in mind it's entirely up to you to decide when you start spending any money and on what. I think a great use of the funds would be Ludum Dare-esque contests for small game demos and assets.

It is exactly because Amethyst is still intensely focused on code development that I'm unable to contribute with my own skillsets, such as community building and marketing. In the meantime I'd love to have a way to show my continued support for Amethyst. It's not about buying any kind of deciding power, and you can make that abundantly clear in your copy.

I still recommend OpenCollective over Patreon though, since it's built specifically for open source teams and they are themselves an open source project.

[torkleyy]

I think a great use of the funds would be Ludum Dare-esque contests for small game demos and assets.

That's actually a good idea. I'm strictly against paying people for contributions to this project, I think that simply doesn't work well for community projects, but a game jam could be a nice way to get shiny example games and more attention.

[AnneKitsune]

We could accept donations, and use that to put bounties on the hardest features that nobody wants to work on. As said previously, game jams could be nice. If you can do them remotely though (like ludum dare), the cost would actually be minimal (if any?). I personally think amethyst is coming to a point where it is near ready for 2d games. The most important features that we are missing is simply "good graphics". Particle systems, effects, trails, etc...

[erlend-sh]

We could accept donations, and use that to put bounties on the hardest features that nobody wants to work on.

I share @torkleyy's sentiment above: Paying for code contributions is very difficult. I do exactly that for Discourse, but the dynamics are very different for a for-profit company that already has multiple employees on payroll working on the open source code.

In a project like Amethyst, if you pay someone to contribute a feature they're not necessarily gonna have enough tie-in with the project to stick around and maintain it. A few months/years later the feature inevitably goes stale.

Contests are an excellent fit because they don't require any ongoing maintenance; they only serve to give the project a momentum boost. In a similar vein art assets (especially minimalist ones for prototyping purposes) are an excellent purchase because they require minimal maintenance.

[AnneKitsune]

Getting free assets for prototyping is as easy as getting paid ones though.

[erlend-sh]

Since it's looking very likely that Amethyst will soon have a Discourse forum, this seems timely:

https://blog.patreon.com/patreon-discourse-integration-mcrider

[erlend-sh]

Done.

https://www.amethyst.rs/blog/non-profit-announce/ https://opencollective.com/amethyst