Two things have occurred to me:

1. I really want to make Quest 5 take off, because I think it has the potential to be awesome
2. Nobody is going to get rich in the 21st Century by selling desktop software that makes text adventure games

So... I was wondering if anyone would be interested in Quest 5.0 as an open-source project?

Obviously making it free would be a popular move. You don't need to tell me that. What I'm more interested in would be: is anyone interested in coding it?

I'm not asking for anybody to commit to anything for a while, I just want to get some feel for if anybody would be interested.

It's currently written using Visual Studio 2008 (.net 3.5) with a mixture of C# (for the "back-end" things) and VB.NET for the GUI. I've just migrated the code to a hosted SVN repository, so if anyone's really keen I can give you a login and you can have a poke around. (My next checkin will probably bring the project into VS2010)

Note:
- I'm not going to be open-sourcing v4.x
- this may not even happen anyway, I'm just putting the idea out there to see what people think for the moment, so no promises!

I'm probably not saying anything that people haven't already said against open source, but I am concerned about the potentially casual nature of people's comittment to the project both at its inception and in subsequent revisions / versions.

So, one - coherence: A platform with multiple programmers' fingers in the pie could run off easily in multiple directions. I'd rather continue to pay for something written with a coherent approach than to download freeware that seems to conflict with itself, or worse, find that the freeware boasts features that are only half-heartedly developed because other contributors got excited in the beginning and then faded away and left stuff hanging.

Two - follow-through: I would imagine that in the end, no one who touched the programming would have a complete picture of the overall program, what certain features did, or have coherent and fluid documentation, and you would be left in a position (the entire community would be left in a position) of those same people making themselves available to tackle updates. 5.1 might need some tweaks by people who worked on various parts, but those people are now longer available (at least not all at the same time) to push out a revision, so, I think it's too easy for freeware to become crapware unless there is more than just excitement about it - there needs to be solid commitment throughout the product's lifecycle, free or otherwise. Imagine that 5.x is open source, and the entire community is relying on this new programmer to make a wonderful new feature come to life, and suddenly the entire release is threatened because that person must withdraw from the project for whatever possible reason.

Three, vision: turnover in programmers might result in new programmers instigating a mid-stream change to the program that leads it in a direction not originally intended, either by the original person who touched that bit of programming, or, by the community at large, and then work would be needed to steer the program back on track.

So, oversight and follow-through would be my concerns. While daunting in its size, I'm sure, for one person to program, if you make it open source, there may be trade-offs that dim the program's popularity.

One thing you could do, possibly, as a half-step to opening up to the possibility of people helping you, is for you to make the backbone of the program, and other people write modules for it, so one person is writing an array handler, another is writing a text parser, etc., and the modules are granular enough that the sudden loss of any programmer's time wouldn't pull the carpet from beneath the project. You wouldn't want the same programmer who is burning out on writing a portion of the GUI be the same person who is burning out on script parsing, or what have you, but cutting the program's development into a lot of tiny pieces means lots of programmers touching it at the same time, or having them tackle those pieces one piece at a time, and therein slowing release.

Not sure what is the best answer, and I feel for you as far as the need to offload some of the programming overhead. I'm sure whatever decision you finally come to will be the best. Good luck

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not expecting huge numbers of programmers, certainly not initially, and I would remain in control of the direction of the project. I would expect to vet any contributions quite strictly, and use branches/forks sensibly so that we don't end up with loads of half-finished features.

It's not really just about offloading the development work. I expect that I will still do most or all of it for the foreseeable future - it may be that nobody is interested in contributing at the moment, and that's fine, maybe people would be interested in just looking at the code for now, and only contributing later on when it's more complete. It's more about getting people to engage more with the software, and having the potential in the future for people to push things in new and interesting directions.

I've set up a project on CodePlex: http://quest.codeplex.com/

Anyone interested? Let me know!

So is Q5 open source now? Are you definitly looking for programmers?

Yes, the code is uploaded to CodePlex and I've started filling in the Issue Tracker with the required features. It's early days which is why I've not announced this anywhere else yet - I need to write some developer documentation first.

Yes I'm definitely looking for programmers, so please sign up at CodePlex if you're interested

I'm interested, so I'll take a look to the code.
You can count with me.

I'll make a little publicity in foro CAAD in SPAIN, so is possible, someone more are interested...

http://foro.caad.es/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4267

Alex wrote: It's currently written using Visual Studio 2008 (.net 3.5) with a mixture of C# (for the "back-end" things) and VB.NET for the GUI. I've just migrated the code to a hosted SVN repository, so if anyone's really keen I can give you a login and you can have a poke around. (My next checkin will probably bring the project into VS2010)

I can't load the project in my VB.NET 2008. The program says that the application is build in a new versión of VB.NET 2008.

I can't load either, in my VB.NET 2010.

I read you planned to make a bring the project into VB.NET 2010.
When you have the code in 2010, please upload to codeplex, so I can load it in my VISUAL STUDIO 2010.

Thanks Alex.

I have now moved the code over to Visual Studio 2010, so you will need to use that. I've managed to work on the code using fresh check-outs from CodePlex on different machines, so I'm sure it's all checked in and correct.

Are you using an Express version? You probably won't be able to to load the entire .sln file at once, as it's a mix of VB.NET and C#.

If you're using a full Visual Studio, please let me know what errors you're seeing.

Well, I re-installed all VS2010, now in spanish versión.
You can view the installed product here:



Now, I unzip the file in C:\trunk directory, and all seems look right, but:

When I push the play button, that is the first thing I can see, and I don't know how to go on.



because when I push load button, the system try to load a DLL, but nothing happens when I load it.

Can you tell me why?

And another thing, when I read all the code, in what part, would you wish that I work?
Sorry but my english.

And thank you again Alex, for your patient with me.

You need to set the Start-up Project. In the solution there are various project files - Editor, EditorController, GameBrowser etc. You need to right-click the "Quest" project and select "Set as StartUp Project".

I've just written a wiki page here: http://quest5.net/index.php?title=Developers

It contains information on how I think the open-source project should work, as well a brief technical overview of how the system works. Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions - it's early days for this, and I've not run an open-source project before so I'm bound to get some things wrong.

Thanks!

Well...

Now, all is fine.
I'll take a look at all the project, and the documentation.

For me, is the first project open-source too, so I'll do my best.

I'm desolate Alex.

I have two hard disk in RAID 0-STRIPE (500 GB each) (1 Terabyte in total)
One of the disk crashed out....

And I can recover the information.

No backup... I know.. I know..... I deserve... I Know.



Well, now I installed Windows 7... but.. I don't like at all...

So, I'll return to XP....

But, the worse.. is I lost everything.. and... I can't be able to look at code of QUEST 5.

I hope, I will see, in a few days.