Aurora. I now own the rights to it.

What should I do with it? Should I open the forums for registration and open source the engine? Can anyone help me develope it? Is anyone even interested anymore in Aurora?

Dunno what to do. I've cleaned up the forums and banned a few members. I have the 2 ip's of the posters who posted indecent topics and images. I'll be finding out soon from BRL if they are posters here and will name and shame them.

Just to make things clear. Antony is not supporting Aurora anymore.

We can all chip in and support it ourselves or I can remove the board and call it a day?

Waddaya think?

sounds cool, would be nice if both the ogre engines could somehow be consolidated into one.

making it open source would be very unfair on the people who have just paid for it.

I have the source to everything. Alas I'm not a C++ dude and wouldn't know what to do with the source.

Why is that?
Are you implying some short-sighted "you must suffer as I did!" behaviour commonly associated with cranky old people? ;)

jk, but it may turn out to be the best solution.

Including myself because I bought it too. What do you think I should do. I'm not knowledgable enough to understand what is going on in the source so I cant (by myself) improve on aurora and iron out any bugs.

Sell the source to Mark!

..make it open source man...I would like to put my hands over it..and if that happen, i will purchase Bmax before BRL's 3D module come out..

I don't see how making it open source would be bad for the people who purchased it, at least there would be a chance for further development. Whether you decide to open source or bin it, do it quickly and move it to the official boards, I'm tired of hearing about it.

I suspect that the people who have bought it would be happier to see it develop and others get it for nothing than they would see it fizzle out just to keep it to themselves.

But my suspicions are no use to anyone. The forums allow you to differentiate between purchasers and non-purchasers, don't they? Why not ask the people who paid what they would prefer and go with the majority?

Change its name, open source it, change the forums to somewhere else and let someone with real interest take over the project.

Distance yourself as far away from it as possible before you get asked for refunds, now you're the owner :)

I think Gabriel and Qube's advice is sound. You don't want to be carrying Antonys baggage. So your better off renaming it.

Plus Aurora Engine is a trademark of Bioware I think anyway. So you may get forced to change its name later anyway.

Ok.

I'm going to change it's name, release it as a new Ogre Wrapper for BMax and will use http://www.max-coder.com as it's new home.

I'm going to kill the invision board completely in a sec so say goodbye to that board. I'm trying to get the rights to MaxAVI and the other module from antony. Hopefully I can release the whole lot soon as opensource for people to update and develope.

I'll try to get a workable website at max-coder.com as soon as possible.

good man Amon... that's the route to go...

i would like to take a look at it and implement what i can... shader stuff most likely...

--Mike

If it's fair for me to ask... Why is it that he's handing you the rights to these things, anyway?

Good choice, though. Thank you!


Edit:
!
That board is dead. Hehe, you're working pretty quickly.

Amon: I Hope you kept the few tutorials I wrote?

I don't know dude. All I did was email him regarding the state of the forums and asked if I could take over the whole thing. Suprisingly he agreed. As Aurora comes with MaxAVi and I think opticaNet I emailed him and asked if I could have the source and rights to those also. Just waiting for a reply.

[edit]



Oops! Err! can you email me them? If you still have them.

Anyway, I just hope Antony doesn't turn into this guy :P

Open Source. Name Change. Note on front page of forums reguarding all this info so you don't get asked for refunds of funds you never got. Good Job Amon!

That's James T Kirk in a scene from Star Trek II.

He's every right to be hacked off, Khan just "buried him alive" on Ceti Alpha V.

I would like to ask that those who have paid for it speak up about the prospect of making it open source.

Frankly, while it may sound unfair, rude, etc. to those who have paid, I think it would be in everyone's best interest, those who paid for it included, to have it open-sourced regardless of any nay-sayers.

Those who purchased it will not benefit from it remaining closed unless it's handed over to a new developer who can support it (no offense, Amon, but I highly doubt you're capable of such :P [mind you that I am not offering to work on it -- I loathe Ogre and would sooner begin programming in BrainFook than use it]). Worse comes to worst you can set up multiple licenses for development so that those who have purchased it and donate to its development get better support and the like (I should probably do that with my modules..).

Anyhow, the point is that regardless of whether or not those who purchased it feel they are being cheated by having paid for a product that would become open source, it's not in their or anyone else's best interest to see it remain closed and die. As has been suggested, I would consider handing it over to Chris C if he wanted it and perhaps let him take what he could use to further develop his female pig... er.. SOW. Yes. SOW. Not a female pig. *cough*

ACTUALLY... They were stuck in the Genesis cave on Regula I... Not Ceti Alpha V. CA-V was just where Khan was stranded. :)

Yo. I vote for open source. No point letting it stagnate as it is. Better to let everyone benefit. Pretty obvious that Aurora/Shinji Craptashi isn't going to be progressing the engine any further.

Amon: Did you get any list from Ant, who has bought the engine ??

What? As opposed to just dropping it all together? Personally, if I had payed any ammount of real money for something that just got dropped like a bad habbit, I'd prefer if someone (like say Amon and anyone he can coerce into helping maintain it) picked up where the old product left off. After all, an open source product is better than no product at all.

Well.. I paid for it, and I hope it to be open sourced honestly, or make it availavle to Chris C that he can enhance the SOW wrapper that everyone can use.

@ckob : I've got a copy of your tutorials if you need them;)

> revevant authoerities.

Man, I love those revevant authoerities.

Aurora: You may want to change your signature...

Open sourcing it isn't such a bad idea, Apart from pissing off those who bought it.

There are some things in it I'd like to look at TBH.




Bingo, brilliant Idea.

well good on you Amon.

I love the Kaaaan clip :-)

Does this mean that since you own the rights to the software you are also responsible for outstanding issues such as refunds and good-will payments for wasting our time?

I never purchased this btw, I would not touch anything Ant had been near.

If you say so. Haven't seen it for about 10 years. :)

Why do i feel like Kirk now?

Luckily I was past caring after word 6.

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.

(I guess that means make it open source if you like since the people who have paid for it don't seem to care anyway).

Meanie. :P. I'd say anyone who wanted a refund should go back to Ant since he's the one who got the cash. Maybe they'll get a peice of an Xbox360 each. Amon's been given a freebee here and has the power to release a good thing free to the members of the community. :)

Yeah I was just being a pain in the arse. BUT it's something Amon needs to consider.

Absolutely! Either way, I still think Amon should do the right thing and let the community at it. Less hassle for everyone!

why should Amon even consider the paying customers?

He got the rights to the software from Antony, but as far as I see it - its Antony's "company" that ripped people off, not Amon - and I don't see how the "baggage" would transfer from Antony to Amon just because the source code changed hands.

Antony is the "villain" here, and those who bought stuff from him in the first place should take this as a lesson learned.

Some suggestion I think, but not pretty good.
with following steps:

1.Make binary version available, I can help host mirrors.
2.Fix know errors if Amon have time, or hand it to Chhris.
3.Release a working source version, with less restrictive licence, and the license owner subjects to Amon.
4.When new products released, watch and wait for a while, to prevent further issue.

Those money is actually nearly nothing, but the policy from the original author is somehow bad, make it opensourced can help many people here.

Amon does NOT own the rights to it in any shape or form without a written and signed statement from Antony Wells saying as much. Antony at any point could just run off with it again.

One Eyed Jack is right...Amon, be careful with this...dont do anything without papers signed...

As Aurora contains three diffrent products and i agree with One Eyed Jack there can be legal problems.

Amon: Did you get the rights for "Aurora" or just the wrapper for Ogre ??

Aurora contains 2.5 products in max. OpticaNet bases on Vertex' freely available BNet ...


Amon: If you decide to make it a "community product" and need another mirror, let me know. I'm always willing to support usefull community products when possible.

He does not have the rights to anything at this point in time until he has written and signed permission, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't (yet).

would you consider an Email a written permission?

It has do be signed, Like a NDA.

nope... i think that an email originated by the author, giving amon ownership rights to whatever, could be sound basis for legal ownership...

though, i'm no lawyer though, and you should get some more knowledgeable proffessional advice...

--Mike

even if it would be digitally signed it wouldn't have any legal consequences in 99% of all countries ... only paper based contracts (either through mail or FAX) are documents that hold in front of law.

Ive heard it said by ppl that Ant is Manic Depresive, If this is so, then even if Ant gives Amon full permission, this may not be a legal transaction. I dont know Ant personaly, so I dont know if its even true, but if it is then we have to concider this posibility.

http://home.att.net/~mikey102/imcured.wav


that's a good point HK...

--Mike

Also Antony wells has just posted here : http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=60073

Not half an hour ago. His signature indicates that it is very much still on sale...?

Note: anyone with an iota of intelligence can see he also calls himself shinji as well. He also admits that amon buys him blitz accounts. That the two are firm friends comes as little suprise.

Amon: Did you recive my mail ?

I'm going to ignore One Eyed for now. The guys been banned more times than me. :/

Anyway, I have seen that Ant has Aurora for sale in his sig still. I'll ask him to remove it. I have packaged Aten3D with all the updates and source and it's ready for download. I'm in the process of setting up a phpbb forum on max-coder.com so people can register and talk about the engine.

I got your email Alienforce although I've only just checked. I've been busy today. I would welcome the help with Aten3D that your offering and will welcome help from anyone else.

Anyway, please give me some time (about an hour) and I'll release everything.

Thanks. :)

OK, The forums are here http://max-coder.com/forum/index.php

If you can't be bothered to register and just want to download Aten3D you can do so below. :)

http://www.max-coder.com/aten3d/Aten3D.zip

5 stars for you Amon... looking at this in a few...

--Mike

Maybe first thing would be to clean the entire project and build a new installer/package with some small tutorials.

BTW: one file is new for me, "AD Test.bmx" ??

a wiki of sorts would help... for the tuts and docs...

can you host one on your site A?

--Mike

Nice stuff Amon, though, I am a little shocked that Ant handed over the rights to the code so easily! :/

I think this is going to be a great move for the community as a whole, but it probably just goes to show that the wrapper was a one trick pony to get a few quid out of people!

He probably cannot build another one now, well, one to sell to this community, which is another good thing!

People might still feel a little ripped, but when you look at the bigger picture, what with the amount of talent on these boards, they could end up with a better product than they were going to originally get anyway!

Another thing Amon, get a paypal account up and running for donations, could help with the hosting if nothing else!

Dabz

Amon, open the forums.

Further discussion about Aurora is no longer welcome here.