Hi guys, sorry for the late response. There is a lot of things to unpack here so I guess my answer can be a bit long. I'll do my best to structure it and hopefully address all the things you guys mentioned.
First of all - I'm really sorry for letting you down
Things didn't go the way I wished they would, and I lived in a delusion myself, believing in my ability to stretch myself to please everyone.
What I mean by that is that:
a) when I promised something, there was no bullshit on my side. It was honest and I really believed in what I promised and it was my genuine will to act on that
b) I really believed that I can fulfill all my responsibilities and still maintain steady pace of patch development because it was my hobby
I underestimated the transition from university graduate into a full-blown adulthood and unfortunately school doesn't teach us how to maintain a healthy work-life balance...
That being said, I'd like to move on and address some of the points mentioned earlier.
1.
There are few reasons:
- some protections are bypassable clientside, or could be worked-around if we people could learn about detection schemes the patch uses
- community fragmentation (many forks with different changes)
- server-side cheats
Some of the reasons are more serious than others and most of the problems except for community fragmentation could be fixed.
2.
I don't have a problem with Reborn being released with changes made by RyBack. It can be as well NightFall source-code released under Reborn name.
I think I talked with RyBack about this a little bit already.
I released all the source code (server-side, client-side + server/client bridge) 11 months ago to a group of 9 people, so if train hits me, they can carry the torch.
The forum will stay, and I don't know anything about it being removed? Maybe James can speak here, because he is the owner of the forum and domains.
3.
Maybe there will be one created, but keep in mind, that a roadmap is a map with many roads that get us to a destination, but it does not specify time.
If people need a timeframe, then it's a project with a gantt chart, and we don't have enough manpower to go this way, at least not now seeing how things go.
4.
Well.. there are brand new games backed by big corporations that die much faster and suck more. I think that Reborn is successful in the end and it serves it's purpose,
no matter what code quality it has. We were younger, less experienced (looking back with fresh perspective) and maybe it sucks today, but I guess it's because we could learn from it in the process
and now we have much better knowledge of the engine and inner-workings of the game, so by definition it will suck a bit.
Also - tools are getting better with each year which helps a lot doing more work in less time, so we tend to look at (now simple) things from the past as ancient.
5
NightFall has it. How many new requests are there? Are people interested at all?
What about OpenMoHAA? It's open source. How many people actively contribute?
I hope you get my point, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's not that easy with projects like that, unfortunately...
5.
^^^ This
Please take a look at this forum section:
https://www.x-null.net/forums/forums/88-Reborn-Projects
It was created 7 years ago as an attempt to get more people involved in things that support Reborn Project, so me and James didn't have to maintain everything just by ourselves.
Many things have changed since then, but the general idea of getting more people involved in different projects that support community as a whole still holds up.
I'd like to thank everyone for all their help. You know who you are.
Also - I don't take anything personal, and please don't take my response that way as well.
I understand that frustration or heated discussions pop up and it's a good sign, because it means that people still care.
I can't promise you anything at this point that requires timed schedule, but we can talk about it and brainstorm the best possible course for further development.
What are your suggestions, ideas, hopes? Maybe we can share the workload?