$12256 / $11500
I will again create topic for your blogpost, for this one: http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/blog/20110620 this time :)
I propose to discuss entire blogpost in this topic, but personally I want to add my opinion for this:
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But currently I'm the only artist on board for tile sets and sprites. Maybe I should do high-level code management on v0.15 via github and focus my time on creating art? Or should I get through a few more releases before I switch to an art focus?
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Look at these pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games , http://osgameclones.com , there is many opensource game engines, part of them have opensource content and only few of them have pretty and consistent graphics, like flare have from start of development (thanks to you Clint). For me it looks like lack of good graphics is usual problem for opensource games. So I definitely vote for your artistic work.
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If I switch to art, I think it could be a strong move for the project.
I'd still be looking at pull requests and testing code. I just don't want it to seem, to the other code contributors, that I'm making them do all the work :)
There seem to be a lot of FOSS games out there that put all their work into the engine and just expect artists to show up and work for them, so they end up programmed fairly well but with crap art assets. So yeah, I say working on art is probably the way to go.
I also think that if you are happy to do so you should concentrate on the art.
I agree with fcxSanya that it makes Flare stand out - the art is eyecatching.
I think the code will continue to develop at a good rate. Even if it is a little slower maybe that would be better as we will get more testing and planning done. At any rate I was planning to concentrate on cleaning up the code for a while instead of pushing forward - some refactoring and documentation of difficult bits.
However I will be away for two weeks as of today so won't be able to do anything then but I look forward to checking back in when I'm home.
Art (many levels + quests), but on the other hand: multiplayer (lan) is also very nice.
There's a lot people who can code, but very few people who can make art in a style distinct to FLARE. It would probably be a strong move for you to shift focus toward art and content (coding when you want/need to implement new features for the content). Chances are it would push back the speed of releases, however there would be a lot more for people to look forward to in each release. To tell the truth, players don't care about "classes refactored to use the FileParser class" so much as new maps or quests.
don't forget that you actually have contributors that will consume some of your time as well ...
except that I think that you don't really need much input from us, but will figure out the best solution yourself.
p.s.: I uploaded the new flare song, hope it fits :) ... if not just mail me