OpenXcom Forum

Modding => Released Mods => The X-Com Files => Topic started by: cleanass on April 04, 2024, 01:06:23 am

Title: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: cleanass on April 04, 2024, 01:06:23 am
Hi folks,

I have enjoyed multiple playthroughs of this wonderful mod. You have given me the joy of childhood which I feared forever lost, and for that, I am eternally grateful. However, the Cydonia ending is a bit anti-climatic after a few times.

I am willing to pay for at least 2 more alternate endings to be developed. This could be a setting at the start of the game, e.g.
- Alternate Ending Random
- Alternate Ending One
- Alternate Ending Two
...

The actual "depth" of this alternate ending isn't even that important, so long as it's a surprise, and at least close in depth to the Cydonia ending.

I can pay in crypto or wire transfer or whatever. We can workout format and simple agreement, I can even have it notarized and enforcable in USA if you'd like.

I would of course want this to be released and incorporated into next version of the mod. This must be shared.

Any takers?
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 04, 2024, 01:59:12 am
I'll just state up front that I don't have the time, willingness nor mapmaking chops to do this. And $1000 is not exactly a lucrative offer for several months' worth of free time, either.


But on the offhand chance (probably a really tiny, Sectoid pet rat sized chance) someone else does: how do you define 'close in depth to the Cydonia ending'? Is this just about one mission at the end of some existing story arc different from current pre-Cydonia stuff? An entire additional story arc? A different set of a few missions instead of the Lunar Base raids, but proceeding from the same general anti-alien/MiB arc?


I don't think the engine actually supports an alternate 'Cydonia', although it does look like you can make any old mission end in total victory or defeat (not necessarily at the same time).

And you probably aren't going to get animated cutscenes, a slideshow at best. I don't think any mod to date has made new animations, though I could be wrong.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: cleanass on April 04, 2024, 03:35:58 am
Regarding "how do you define" - I'm basically talking about the last mission where you go to cydonia, which IIRC is two-part mission, first above ground, then under.

Not talking about entire separate story arcs or something as drastic, requiring "several months of time" as you put it. I don't see a reason to lose Lunar raids or anything else for that matter.

Don't need any animated cutscenes, but some custom art at the end would be cool, maybe AI-generated.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 04, 2024, 10:57:10 am
Well, a single mission with an end-of-the-game cutscene seems a lot easier than what I imagined at first.

If you don't find takers here, perhaps ask on one of the Discords/Matrixes.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 04, 2024, 03:09:32 pm
Well, I am seriously considering adding multiple endings anyway (based on siding with other factions). However, it remains only a possibility due to how much time and effort would be required.

I honestly appreciate the offer, but regardless of what happens, I'm not taking commissions like this one. I'm already spending as much time on XCF as I can and want to, so it's not really a money issue. I simply don't want to devote more time to modding XCF, since for me it's a hobby and I don't want too many constraints, especially considering that I'm also somewhat involved with making content for X-Piratez.

Besides, I think such a paid commission would go a bit too far with how modding is supposed to work, especially considering that other people actively participated in making XCF for free. (Yes, I have a Patreon, but it only offers small, symbolic rewards to patrons, so IMO it's not paid content.)

Having said all that, I'm happy to know that there is demand for multiple endings. Maybe one day?
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: cleanass on April 04, 2024, 10:24:09 pm
Thanks for the input.

I found your point about going bit too far with "how modding is supposed to work" to be rather interesting.

As a professional software developer of over 20 years myself, I recall countless times that I contributed to open source projects, based on some custom features that we needed to build for our own purposes, for which we were paid. The customers were usually happy about the prospect of integrating their paid work into open source project, because they would get benefit of further development and refinement of said feature for free, by the community.

Personally, I don't see an issue here. Seems to be like everyone benefits at the end. Those people that are on the sidelines that "actively pariticpated in making XCF" are welcome to participate in this, just as much as you.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 05, 2024, 12:18:52 pm
I understand that you don't see the issue, but some people very much do. I wouldn't want to rile up the community by producing literally paid content, that's one thing.
But also, I think it goes too far against the principle of modding. It is a legal grey area by nature and therefore should avoid any suspicion of monetization. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it is meant to be a hobby and artistic expression - charging money for it is just inappropriate and socially harmful. That's like paying a game master to run RPG games "because they need to make the effort".
Naturally, this is largely off-topic, but I thought I should share my point of view. Please note that these are my personal opinions, and some important, respectable members of this community see it differently. It's a complex issue. But I think we all agree that modding is worth doing, and we are grateful to the players who appreciate our work. :)
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: cleanass on April 05, 2024, 08:14:10 pm
I think "paid content" usually means that you are selling your work to users. We aren't selling anything to anyone here, the plan is to give it away for free.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 05, 2024, 09:12:31 pm
Here, the problem with paid content is not whether it's given away for free in the end, but rather in who gets a say in what the content is. Patron-type supporters usually get some rather minor say, your version comes potentially with a notarised and presumably enforceable contract.

Now, it may or may not be a significant problem, depending on the details, but I kinda felt the urge to rant a little, so... :P


In my experience, the problem with paid modding is threefold:

And, well, usually the reason people don't take paid commissions is because they've already got more things than they will ever be able to tackle on their todo list, and a commission is likely not to align very well with their overall vision. If the stars align and the commission is something they really wanted to do in the first place, that's where this kind of proposal can work out reasonably well.

Case in point, I gather from Solarius' reply that just replacing Cydonia with another mission is not what his end goal is. So at best this will be a placeholder mission or missions that gets replaced at some point, at worst it'll be creative self-sabotage. In either case, it'll be 'wasted' time from the perspective of realising their own vision.

Also, what Solarius said. Modding has been walking the line between 'authorised by the IP holders' and 'blatant piracy' a lot, and most genuinely interesting mods I know are guilty of intellectual theft to some degree of another. So, as a sort of penance, modders generally try not to gather more coals on their heads by also asking for payment.

Finally, your example of getting paid to write features for open-source projects in the hopes that the community will maintain those for free doesn't really sound as A-OK as you're trying to picture it. Essentially, it seems that you and your client were hoping to cruise forever on other people's voluntary work in return for a one-time contribution. Perhaps there's more nuance to it and it was not quite as one-sided as that, but this seems to be the essence of it.



In the end, these might or might not be insurmountable problems in a specific case, like this proposal here, but there are enough issues to make any experienced modder wary of taking such an offer just on principle.



P.S. There are paid tabletop GMs, and opinion on whether they're worth it is just as divided as the opinion on paid modding, if not more so.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: cleanass on April 05, 2024, 09:42:05 pm
Thanks for the insights!

If all these things are concerns for anybody, I suggest an alternative: I will donate the money to a charity of your chosing.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 06, 2024, 11:38:02 am
Like I said, I'm not in a position to offer whole new arcs, regardless of where the hypothetical money would go. But if I can, I will go in that direction anyway, eventually.

Also thanks for the comment Juku, that's quite insightful.

P.S. There are paid tabletop GMs

Not on my continent. :P
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Finnik on April 07, 2024, 08:04:27 am

Not on my continent. :P

I used to GM don't pay for pizza and drinks, ordered for the session =)
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 07, 2024, 11:13:36 am
I used to GM don't pay for pizza and drinks, ordered for the session =)

That's not payment, that's bribing a GM, and it's within the accepted norm. ;D
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: 75338 on April 19, 2024, 06:46:13 pm
Mad respect for the work done on this mod.

I'm guessing a bunch of people wanting to throw money or bid on development would get annoying, but I'd love to see a way to be able to pledge money for different stuff.

I'd chip in $10 for the alternate ending. I'd gladly pay $100 to graphically show agents using commercial planes from major city hub to major city hub in the early game.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 19, 2024, 07:42:46 pm
I'd chip in $10 for the alternate ending. I'd gladly pay $100 to graphically show agents using commercial planes from major city hub to major city hub in the early game.

Me too! :D
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 21, 2024, 02:26:09 pm
Organize some kind of support system for modders who face financial difficulties and are forced to quit modding and fight for survival.
There are already several such systems: Nexus collects donations for modders, there are quite a few 'donate to a [starving] artist' enterprises like Patreon/Subscribestar/Ko-fi, there are also Kickstarter and alternatives where people beg for money due to all sorts of things, from cancer treatments to criminals shooting them in the head while on vacation.

Any potential money you could get from the OpenXcom community even under the most fortuituous circumstances is going to be tiny, because the userbase just isn't there. Never mind that if we somehow magically did have a system of financial support, there would be a lot of incentive not to pay out to the poorest, but rather to those who contribute the most. Which won't really change much anything for the worst off.

Modding and even game dev in general are not and have never been an answer to financial problems, short of being a lucky founder/executive. Ask all the devs who sunk their life's savings into a pet project that never saw the daylight... :(

The solution is to use the free time you spend on modding to try to dig yourself out of that hole (learning new skills, looking for a better job, getting a side hustle, even navigating the bureaucracy to eke out a bit more support in more developed countries), not dig yourself further in.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 21, 2024, 08:06:42 pm
...in a country where there are wars, no one wants to hire anyone, and if they do, then they either pay less than $100 a month or come soldiers and demand from their superiors to send their workers to the military registration and enlistment office for a medical examination and military service (in simple words, they are taken to war, since there are always not enough soldiers, we are suffering huge losses).

...

Previously, my government at least gave assistance to poor citizens in the amount of $50 a month, now the president and politicians absolutely do not care about their citizens and they refused to help everyone in need, people are so weak that they simply cannot protest, and if they go to protest, then the army will shoot them for betraying their homeland.
In that case your problem is not 'bad finances', it's "relatively meek person in war-damaged country". Historically, there's been no good solution to that. I suggest considering emigration instead of hoping for modding to provide what it doesn't provide to almost anyone, anywhere, even in countries far better off than that.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Juku121 on April 22, 2024, 04:40:04 pm
Let me just say that my personal experience with Russia, Russians, Ukrainians and Ukrainian refugees does not quite agree with your picture of it.

I agree that war sucks, getting press-ganged into it sucks worse, and Ukraine is a country wrestling with a giant pile of problems, most of them self-inflicted. But at least it's trying. I strongly disagree with your idea that surrender or defeat would make things better, even for Russia.

In any case, if you think life in Ukraine is worse than under Russia and it's too hard to go over the western and northern borders, there is always the option to defect to Russia or its new colonies. There are people who (presumably) make money as propagandist streamers for the reconstruction of Mariupol. That's in all likelihood an order of magnitude or two more income than you'd ever get from modding anything.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: SupSuper on April 22, 2024, 07:24:59 pm
Guys, this is getting way off-topic. I sympathize with your situation, but this is not the place for it. If you wanna chat further, take it to DMs.
Title: Re: Willing to pay $1000 USD for alternate endings
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 08, 2024, 09:52:43 pm
Since the thread has been resolved, and then started going in an inappropriate direction, I am locking it.