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Humans... Neutral, Trade-based economy, Muskets, Paladins.

68 (23.4%)

Elves... Good, Plant/Creature-based economy, Magical, Rangers & Bowmen.

49 (16.8%)

Goblins... Evil, Slave-based economy, Dungeons, Demons, Whips.

46 (15.8%)

Warlocks... Evil, Magic-based economy, Necromancy, Transformations & Spells.

69 (23.7%)

Gnomes... Good, Tech-based economy, Steampunk, Machines.

59 (20.3%)

Total Members Voted: 179

[Meph]

IT STARTED: https://www.facebook.com/MasterworkDF

It will be open till the 01.01.2014. All infos and updates will be posted on Facebook.

Like and share the Facebook page and follow the link to Paypal, if you like to participate. Share if you like, but please without spamming.
Edit: (15th Oct) Since the feedback has been positive so far, I'll add a poll. A post with more information on the races (and more) can be found here.

I had a very interesting discussion on reddit today. Several actual, but one stood out a bit. It got me thinking. My idea for modding was to finish the GUI and leave a stable and playable version of the mod, before I go on my next big tour again. Which means netbook and slow internet and less time and all that. I think I reached that goal, and would only do a little bit on the mod in the meantime, depending on what scripts are developed in the meantime.

But that poll about playable races did wake a lot more interest then I thought. People also assumed that "the next update" would magically include 1-2 playable races. Not quite, as those take between 150-300h of work; thats only an educated guess of course. But still, it is a lot of work. Kobolds alone have 80 buildings and 1500 reactions, unique to their race. To produce a complete, finished new race, I'd have to work an entire month fulltime on this. Of course I'd work on and off on the mod anyway, but I never sat down and made a schedule. Never said: Ok, its 6 days a week, 8 hours a day thing.

What if that could be changed, for 1 month? Here is the idea, based partly on Rainseekers Animal Sponsoring Drive.

• Everyone can donate to this fundraiser.
• Everyone can vote on a race.
• Everyone can vote on a charity.
• Donations are open for 30 days.
• A target goal is set, lets say 500$.
• I'll work 8h a day, 6 days a week, for 1 month on it.
• A daily devlog with progress is shown.
• After 30 days, the finished race-plugin is released.

Now, this is a random idea I got after not having all too much sleep, so if it is terrible, let me know. If you like it, let me know as well. Of course, even if the community is for such a project, the great Toad decides if this is ok or not. As soon as money comes into play, everything gets complicated. But I am sure people on reddit, somethingawful, maybe rockpaperscissors, would be happy to help spread the word.

I personally think it would be a win-win-win-win-situation. Toady wins, because it raises awareness of DF, I win, because I would actually get paid for my work (500$, imagine that), the community wins, because they get a new toy in record time (the playable race), and the charity wins, because they get a 500$ donation.  The only weak spot is that this is MDF-only, a mod... not the real DF; maybe I could write a dual version, one included in MDF, one standalone that works with vanilla DF.

So, what do you think?

EDIT: Toady One had a small entry here, answering the most important question:

I don't have a problem with people asking for money for the work they are doing, but I don't want to become entangled with anybody financially.  So I'd prefer not to receive any money or have Bay 12 be involved with any of the logistics.

[Etherdrinker]

I donīt find it as a bad idea, In fact when a mod of a game comes, some moders use Adfly link for get some support.

And is optional because the same autor post a non-Adfly link (direct).

Is the only good reason for me to deactivate the Adblock/ghostery addons from my webbrowser.

[zach123b]

there's kickstarter, you pledge money to a goal with a deadline for the end.  usually people add a couple stretch goals with rewards

$1000 in 1 or 2 weeks for a race
additional $500 for unique additions

with rewards i'm not sure
$1 gets a personal ty from meph
$50 gets a t-shirt
$500 gets to tell meph which race to add

stretch goals and rewards are optional but are nice

if it doesn't reach the goal of 1000 then no money is moved at the end

[Vabalokis]

if i had any money i would donate

[BigD145]

Dwarf Fortress is not open source so you're treading on thin ice here. Although reasonable for your time spent, you do not own the code. This is Toady and ThreeToe's shindig.

[Felius]

There's two main issues I see: First, any legal issues given this is a mod. That said, that's about Toady giving or not his approval for it, so not much you can worry about.

Second, and more concerning, making working on the mod an obligation, specially with a set schedule for it, might make you burn out and start disliking it. Never underestimate how something fun can become incredibly annoying if it becomes a chore.

[Vabalokis]

Dwarf Fortress is not open source so you're treading on thin ice here. Although reasonable for your time spent, you do not own the code. This is Toady and ThreeToe's shindig.

To be fair he dosnt try to sell anything and he shows results . We dont know if Toady is even coding past year , he could be slacking his ass off and people send him money...

[BigD145]

Dwarf Fortress is not open source so you're treading on thin ice here. Although reasonable for your time spent, you do not own the code. This is Toady and ThreeToe's shindig.

To be fair he dosnt try to sell anything and he shows results . We dont know if Toady is even coding past year , he could be slacking his ass off and people send him money...

Really?! You actually said that? YOU ACTUALLY WROTE THIS DOWN?!

[Vabalokis]

Dwarf Fortress is not open source so you're treading on thin ice here. Although reasonable for your time spent, you do not own the code. This is Toady and ThreeToe's shindig.

To be fair he dosnt try to sell anything and he shows results . We dont know if Toady is even coding past year , he could be slacking his ass off and people send him money...

Really?! You actually said that? YOU ACTUALLY WROTE THIS DOWN?!

it sound preposterous but it could be true , we dont see toady's progress but we see meph's ... just sayin

[BigD145]

Toady has shown no inclination towards this since at least 40d, which is when I got in. You don't just make an entire health/hospital/syndrome system overnight. You don't make believable city/farm/sewer generation overnight. We see progress with every release and screenshot (pointing back to city gen). You recolor squares overnight. JUST SAYIN'

[Etherdrinker]

Well he can still ask to Today about, then I still find less complicated use Adfly like links (with option to just DD so technically, no one is forced to "donate")

[Meph]

I really dislike Adfly. I dont want to force every player of the mod to go through that, that makes no sense, people would lynch me, and upload the mod to some other filehost anyway.

The whole discussion about Toady working or not is out of place. I know it was only a hypothetical thing and not really implied, but it does not contribute to the discussion here. Its off-topic.

And yeah, I know the idea is weird. But its not a DLC where people have to pay for content. Its just that people have been asking a lot about a new playable race, and the background story is this: 6 months ago 4 modders started on 4 different playable races. Goblins, Elves, Drow and Undeads. One race was released, but unfinished and very small, another is still in developement, albeit slowy, a third modder disappeared, and the fourth does anyother mod in the meantime. Not to do injustice to anyone, but if I want something done, I have to do it myself.

But the only way to actually do this before I am back on a bicycle in Africa (which truly is a lot more remote then southamerica, northamerica, europe or asia, from where I have been modding so far) is by putting in a month of full-time work. I know no one is going to pay 500$, but lets take MDF V.4a for example. It was online 10 days and had 6800 downloads on DFFD. If these 6800 people would pay me 10 cents, I'd already have the new race financed, so to speak. My estimates for MDF-players is somewhere between 10k-15k people... it could work.

Like I said, in my opinion its a win-win situation, but it depends on you, the community.

[black47]

I'm not particularly interested on the new races, but I am interested on you working on modding DF with as much quality as you have so far, so I would still support you, if Toady agreed on this.

However, with the next official release in the horizon (soon, we hope?), aren't there huge risks of incompatibility for all your work (specially for new races) as soon as this new version rolls?
I mean, even if the next update takes something like half a year, then what?
World gen, combat, civs; there's bound to be a LOT of things broken, both Masterwork and DF wise. Specially with new races.

There would be:
a) a lot of re-work to make the mod compatible again,
b) a lot of dependencies on plugins that are used in Masterwork that'd need updates,
and/or c) certain things in the mod may not be possible anymore.

Now, so far this was all me speculating about RISKS. I know DF is very mod friendly, but we shouldn't take it for granted. Also I am writing all of this while I'm lacking sleep as well, so if I said anything wrong so far about the possible risks, please correct me.


Something safer would be: wait until the new update rolls on (regardless on how long it takes), check how much of the mod needs to be reworked to have it working again, then continue with this races if you want.

If the fundraising was needed just to keep Masterwork compatible with all of the things I'm drooling about whenever I read Toady's dev log and "Future of the Fortress" posts, I would still support it on a heartbeat. (Given Toady's supports this)

---

Now, that aside, in case this idea takes off; what's your thought on giving that other 50% to Bay12 instead of a charity?
It could even be a vote option. This charity, this charity, this charity, or to the devs as a sort of special thanks for keeping this game also so open to mods.

And finally, I'll clarify that these are just ideas that I'm throwing. If none of them sound right or don't make an impact I'm totally fine with it

[Felius]

I'd say your numbers might be a bit overestimated. Consider that some people might download the file more than once due to a number of reasons, from download issues, to having more than one machine and not wanting to transfer it by usb drive/LAN, passing by deleting it by accident or even just losing the file inside some folder somewhere remote in his hard drive.

And again, do think really hard if trying to pull a whole moth modding DF full time will not burn you out and actually be productive. From what I understand, you do this on your free time when you want to do it. Making it a chore you have to do eight hours per day can make start disliking it, and furthermore make you be much less productive than doing it on your free time. The aftermath is something to consider, but you'll likely have a vacation from DF during your time in Africa, so unless it completely burns you out, it shouldn't be too problematic by the time you come back.

That all said, if you do believe these wouldn't be a problem, and Toady gives his "go ahead", I'll probably throw a couple bucks your way.

For the Ninja: Black47 have a point about the next DF update. Given the time it have been in development it is likely to have some major changes, so it might or might not be better to do it after the update. Nonetheless the previous paragraph's point stands.

[YuriRuler90]

Meph, I would definitely spend a little money towards you and charity. I spend so much damn time on this mod while off-duty that it's the least I could do.