I am leaving the project (sorry)

[Crimson Wizard]

Frankly I am not quite in the mood to talk much about this, but I know that I should explain something, so, I'll try to put this as simple as possible.
Regardless of how much I try to persuade myself and force further, I feel that I am unrecoverably loosing faith in both the project and my own abilities. Looking back, I made so much mistakes, mostly in organization and design of the changes I did; I lost too much time pursuing several goals simultaneosuly; the plan I made up when just started to refactor the engine was put aside in favor of the new features. I think I was in some dire need to do something captivating back in mid 2012 when I started working, and that played a negative role, I was too hasty, jumping from one thing to another. My mistakes depress me so much that I start to feel repulsion thinking about this work.
As I learnt the existing code better and about problems that were required to be fixed, I was coming to the thought that AGS is simply not suited for upgrade that everyone wanted. It appears to me that although it reached certain state with existing features and capabilities, it took more than 10 years to evolve into what you have now with the work of one man (Chris Jones), and it will take too much time to evolve further to the next "level" to keep up with the demands of the modern day game developers and game players.
Perhaps it could be better to start a new engine, back couple of years ago, built with completely different design in mind, to replace AGS, but it's too late for me to try that now, especially not alone, especially while other engines and frameworks appear - this makes me feel that my work is getting useless in the perspective.
I was thinking about maybe making couple of more versions before stop, but I feel emotionally exhausted now. I guess I am simply not the guy to take on a lead in something (nor I really wanted to, it just happened... somehow).
Honestly, I am pretty much ashamed to tell all this, but I think I should tell the truth.

[tzachs]

This made me really sad

I'm not trying to persuade you to change your mind, but just for the record, I found your organizational skills and leadership (as well as your programming skills, of course) superb!

[Gribbler]

I'm really REALLY sad to hear this. You were my guiding light here and one of the most helpful people on the AGS forums, someone I could always turn to with every scripting question. I've already thanked you in my game's credits but I want to tell this you right here: if it weren't for your tips and code suggestions The Bum wouldn't exist. THANK YOU CRIMSON WIZARD!

[Stee]

Sorry to hear this CW, although I understand where you are coming from.

I hope you don't abandon us completely. No one expected you to put in the great amount of effort that you did into AGS and we are all very grateful to you for doing so. It may not look like it to you, but there have been huge changes in the AGS engine, a large part of which you are responsible for. I do think sometimes people overlook the huge scale of work and time it takes to get a new version of AGS out the door, especially when you are trying to look through and decipher another persons messy code. I'm sorry you feel over burdened by this (you shouldn't) and wish you all the best in the future.

I understand where you are coming from in terms of the expectations people put on future versions. The engine is legacy at best, and some of the requests people expect out of the engine wouldn't be plausible without a whole rewrite. To those people, I'd suggest either looking at other engines or rolling your own.

I hope you stick around, even if it's just in the forums.

[bicilotti]

Sad news. You managed to push the project forward and organise the effort of other people towards the same goal. As much as it is depressing, I appreciate you took some lines to sketch a "post mortem"; there is food for thought there.
Thanks for all you have done CW!

[Kitai]

I sympathize with you CW, and want to thank you a lot for what you accomplished up to now. I didn't follow it from very close and I know many other people contributed to an essential extent, but you clearly fed the project by your devotion to it.

I guess that if after realizing such a great project (3.3.0) you feel depressed, then maybe it would be better for you to change something about it. Sure AGS is a great tool, it produces great games and brings together a great community, but if you feel repulsion thinking about it, there's nothing to be ashamed about giving a wide berth.
Hope you'll get better and have some time for you, and again many thanks.

[selmiak]

Come on! You are a master wizard, what you did is really astonishing! It took a long time and the result is really polished, I like 3.3.0 and will use it a lot, just like 3.2.1 lasted long. I'm not expecting update cycles like on firefox or chrome just to have a new version number. Just relax, take a break, take some vacations from ags coding and go party. Because ... YAY!
But I'm somehow confident if you ever decide to stop coding on the AGS source in the future because of unity or so you will not leave us here and sooner or later get some interest in this again anyways. I saw this is your wizard glass sphere. but yeah, YAY 3.3.0!!! \o/

[EliasFrost]

No matter what you do, there's always things to improve. But it's equally as important to acknowledge when you do something amazing.

I haven't been around enough to really get a feeling for the people on these boards though I'm sad that you are leaving the project, v3.3.0 is great and its additional features really helped me organize my project in ways unimaginable with the old version, a lot of convenience was added and it's great. I'm sure lots of people think the same. Thanks!

[abstauber]

Don't feel bad, you did an awesome job. If it weren't for you I suppose we would all keep waiting for AGS 3.3
So thanks for this version, thanks for all the time you've put into AGS.

Now go create "Two of a kind" I bet - using AGS is way more fun than developing it

[Snarky]

I'm very sorry to hear that, Crimson Wizard, but I also understand it. It's been clear that playing a role you didn't really want has weighed heavily on you. Even if you wash your hands of the whole thing, I hope you still stick around on the forum.

One thing I'd encourage is to not be ashamed of your mistake, but to be proud of them! They're not failures. No one could have taken on such a huge task without going wrong on occasion, and it's only by daring to go ahead and do stuff even if it might turn out to be a mistake that anything gets done at all. And having made all those mistakes, you've learned a lot. Plus you managed to release a pretty damn good updated version, so it's not like it's been a catastrophe. Although I haven't delved into the code, it seems pretty clear that you're leaving it in a better state than you found it.

So yeah, go relax, and give yourself a pat on the back for what you've done.

[Billbis]

Thanks again for all what you have done, Crimson Wizzard. I wish you a lot of success for your future projects! Feel not ashame of leaving this one, because you have done much more than your share IMHO.

[Atavismus]

"No remorse, no regret", no shame: you did an awesome and important job.
Maybe it's time for other people to deal with this huge amount of work.
We all thank you for your time and devotion.
Take care and see you around

[qptain Nemo]

This could be seen quite optimistically in my opinion.
I may be weird for preaching detachment from AGS to AGSers on occasion (and I may also be biased as someone developing their own engine), but I like to believe that the AGS community has always been more about creativity, shared interests and well, community, than just attachment to a piece of software. Therefore even if the fate of AGS as software seems really grim after this post (and frankly it does), the community doesn't have to follow it into the grave. There are only so many ways this could unfold but all of them could be handled gracefully, be it a centralized community project of further AGS development or several "competing" alternatives. It's all good really. And I hope that after hearing it from CW maybe people will finally face the simple truth that as the time passes maintaining AGS becomes a less and less sensible idea that simply developing a similar solution from scratch, especially if it's not actually from scratch but utilizing powerful components such as (for example!) SDL, Lua etc. After all, the way I see it, the only really valuable and non-trivially-reproducible part of AGS is its user friendly IDE. Everything else would take very little effort from any competent programmers to make.

Which is also why I'm quite intrigued by the idea of a project to develop an engine-agnostic IDE, perhaps aimed at the point and click adventure paradigm for a start. The ability to develop a game in a user-friendly IDE and then produce it using more than one engine with only minimal adjustments would empower and benefit everyone, the engine developers, the game developers and the players. It's not easy to pull off, but it's not exactly impossible. Provided the underlying engines are suffciently flexible, it's just the matter of standardizing a couple of abstraction layers. I'm not gonna pretend I'm crazy about all the work it'd still entail but the benefits are really tempting. (If you want a really easy implementation of this without any actual tight engine integration, it's possible to just make an "adventure scene designer" that exports your room designs into xml or something and then have willing engine developers support easy importing of those.)

Just saying.

[Stupot]

I'm sad to hear this, CW.
You took on an unenviable task, but you've done some great work and it hasn't gone unnoticed.
Go and have a well-deserved break and play some of the games you've missed out on :-) x

[miguel]

I can't really add on to what everybody already said, so I'll just thank you for your tremendous effort. Thank you CW.

[Gurok]

Oh this is depressing news. I don't want you to stop developing AGS, CW, but if it's what you must do, then so be it. No one person could possibly account for all of the craziness that goes on within the depths of AGS. Don't beat yourself up for little things like the 2.72 import. It's nothing that CJ wouldn't have done anyway.

I think the key thing is to take baby steps. Maybe you're just depressed because whatever you're working on is too big a chunk of work. I agree that AGS needs an overhaul or a new engine to replace it, but tinkering around the edges of the current engine makes a surprisingly large number of people extremely happy. Please don't go, CW :-(

[mitlark]

Meanwhile, in Enterbrain headquarters...
"What can we do for the next RPG Maker? Oh, now I know! Grab the previous one, add some text boxes here and there, stick Ace at the end and profit!".

The first time I read this post I didn't really understand you. I mean, I knew you had reasons, but I have no knowledge about the engine development and stuff. All I have seen this time I've been using it is a cute face and a nice body *rawrrrrr*. But after reading a little of more involved people now I think I understand a little better.

If anything, I think that starting again from scratch could be considered. Not as AGS, but as its... child?

[Alan v.Drake]

Your deeds have been invaluable CW, I hope you'll find a more rewarding project to spend your time having fun!

- Alan

[Tramponline]

Sincerely, there's is no need for you to feel ashamed about anything!

I've nothing but the UTMOST RESPECT for you, Crimson, either way!
...other than a HUGE 'Thank You!' for all you guys DID achieve and the endless amounts of hours & energy you (and the other brave & semi-masochistic whizkids) poured into this project!

If anything, I should be ashamed that I didn't give you & show you the support you deserved.

[mitlark]

I know I speak for everyone when I say that I hope CW would consider being a part of that.

I give you my mouth in case you want to make it speak, because I'm with you.