Hello!
After some thought and reading about making open source friendly to contributions and such, I decided to start moving in that way, finally for real.
Nearly all objects have assigned authorship. This might be seen as a bureaucratic thing, but was necessary to get right before even starting to look at the situation. If you ever wondered where did the revision numbers go when nothing in the set changed - that's why.
Once the "contacting" period is over (which is almost true), it's time to take a breath and start shoveling away the content that can't be used under the new license. Obviously there is a lot of things that will need replacement. And since brooding somewhere in corner and hoping that people come and do things will not work, here is THE list.
Currently there are three important authors who can't be contacted and their work can be considered lost:
Haru
Rmax500
Propermike
Other than this, there are several other unreachable authors whose contributions count two or three objects, maybe sometimes ten.
Note: everyone whom I managed to contact agreed. The problem is just getting to them.
Removal of all their objects, combined, will hurt the set in many different ways. Analysis...
- High speed trains like TGV or Shinkansen - almost exclusively Haru's work.
- Passenger trains, *MUs - per above.
- Ethanol chain - all made by Rmax.
- Special buildings - many made by Rmax.
- A few factories - made by Rmax.
- Locomotives - apart from the steam age covered extensively by Raven, there will be many gaps.
- Buses - doubledeckers ale solely work of single no-go author.
- Trucks - here most trailers will stay, but est. 60-80% of engines will go.
- Ships - passenger department will be lacking a lot, even more than now. The "shipping department" even right now (before removing iünlicensed objects) lacks in all aspects.
- Trams - what is left can be only up to two cars long.
As you can see, these are all "unique" assets. The rest, like city houses or citycars, will suffer a loss in diversity, but not critical.
Of course there are also some positives!
Perhaps the most interesting part is that I managed to assemble a
large (emphasis really intended) collection of rail vehicles for 19/20th century times. As long as someone can go through this ocean and sort out what is acceptable and what not, the starting date coud move as far back as 1850. The "surplus" vehicles might be used to fill the narrow gauge waytype, too.
There is a lot of houses from Raven, waiting just to replace other buildings or possibly be coded as cmpletely new objects.
Nearly all important objects (without which some aspect of game won't work) can be kept or substituted temporarily.
What must be done in order to meet the goal - get 128 to a free, releasable state?Priorities:
1) Factories
Steel mill (steel_mill)
Goods factory (classical_goods_factory)
Electronics (electronics_factory)
Forest (Nutzwald)
Sandquarry
Materialswholesale
Home market (Moebelhaus)
Surface coal mine (open_coal_mine)
Gas station (modern_fuel_station)
Either the author is unknown, or unreachable. Some are of very low quality, too.
2) Game objects
Schwebebahn depot and stations.
3) Vehicles
I guess that the existing content can be spread along the timeline enough to keep the set usable. Preferred order:
Locomotives for all purposes - rail transport is the blood of all transport games!
Passenger (high speed) sets
High capacity buses (double deckers?)
Trucks - meaning these that pull trailers, the "American" kind
Ships - we'll need almost everything. Some reefers for meat & fish, something for cars, goods, and big psg. liners and small ferries.
