[crossfire] Crossfire+/Crossfire2 Versioning and Metaserver

[Robin Redeker]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 01:20:40PM +0200, Yann Chachkoff wrote:
> >> 
> >>  My quick thougths on this:
> >> 
> >>  Crossfire+/crossfire2/schmorp should really come up with its own
> >>  unique name for the project, just as daimonin did when it split
> >>  off.
> 
> >The difference between Crossfire+ and Daimonin is that we currently
> >still are protocol compatible. Aside from that only some of our maps
> >differ and the overall gamebalance was changed (from the users view).
> >(If gamebalance and maps are significant, then I wonder whether cat2
> >is Crossfire).
> >
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the code has changed as well, including
> switching parts to C++ and integrating Perl as a scripting language.
> That, more than the content, makes the project different IMHO.

Not only parts, the whole C code has been made compileable with g++.
But to the _user_ there isn't a big change. I mean, if the current
crossfire server is rewritten in for example scheme and speaks the same
protocol and has the same or similar rules, would it be crossfire?

The project is indeed different, but why shouldn't it have 'crossfire'
somewhere in it's name when it's inheritance is still so much visible?
(Daimonin has indeed nearly nothing to do with Crossfire anymore, but
thats mostly because they use completly different rules, graphics and
overall design).

> AFAIK, cat2 is still Crossfire: although some of the game content is
> different, the server code is basically the same. Thus, yes, that's
> the same application for me.

So the difference that makes us Un-Crossfire is something that can't
be noticed by players/users!?

> >> Calling it most anything with crossfire in its name is confusing.
> 
> >I don't really understand that, who finds it confusing and why?
> 
> Are you joking ? "Crossfire2" presents your project as the 'next
> version' of Crossfire (which is still in the 1.x series). Are you so
> naive to believe that using the same name for both projects does not
> create confusion between both ?

Could you re-read my question? I'm not asking about 'Crossfire2', I was
asking about the confusion that is created when we have 'Crossfire' in
our name. Eg. 'Crossfire+' or 'Blabla-Crossfire-BlubbBlubb'.

The original statement was:

   Calling it most >>anything<< with crossfire in its name is _confusing_.

I understand that 'Crossfire2' might cause confusion. But the question
is: who is really confused? Is a user/player who just runs cfplus or
gcfclient and connect to cf.schmorp.de confused because the server
software that runs there has a similar name to the server software that
runs on metalforge? - I guess not.

I agree that 'Crossfire2' is propably a bit confusing when it is
mixed on sites like freshmeat or linux game tome. But at least as far
as I see it: a name like 'Crossfire+' or 'Crossfire-ng' is pretty
different from 'Crossfire' and shouldn't cause confusion.
Similar as 'syslogng' isn't confused with 'syslog' or 'quake' with 'quake2'.

In the jabber community there is jabberd14 and jabberd2. First jabberd2
was meant as successor of jabberd14, but jabberd14 couldn't be replaced
by jabberd2 and it still persists and is developed. And there is only
few confusion about the differences of both as they are distinguished by
the '2' and '14' in the _name_ part of the project. jabberd14 has the
version 1.6.x now.
It seemed indeed to have seeded some confusion, so the placed a note on
the website of jabber14 that jabberd2 is a different project. But at
least to me they are very distinct.

We don't object to change the project name to 'Crossfire+' again. But
some rationale or explanation why that still is confusing would be nice.


Robin