Artemis dev here. I think very highly of Empty Epsilon and the other spaceship bridge games. I'm currently hard at work on Artemis 3, which is a ground-up re-write, using Python for embedded scripting.
I really enjoy Artemis, and it was my first bridge simulator, and it's no exaggeration to say that you basically invented an entire genre of video game.
We played Artemis in the NYC Board Game group, connecting multiple bridges together. At one point we had four bridges talking, with Communications officers on Mumble talking to each other across NYC, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
I have very strong positive feelings for it, and have purchased it at least twice. Thank you for not DRMing it.
You've certainly done an amazing job of capturing the feeling of Star Trek without impinging on copyright. That's not easy.
That said, besides the moral issues around Free/Open Source software- the reason I initially switched to EE was both practical and moral. I'm a Free Software guy, but also, Artemis under WINE is not very good, and EE has builds for every platform other than iOS.
I wonder if you might find a better model that would let you work on it without making it proprietary. For example, might Patreon give you that reliable income source? I'm genuinely asking.
I might be speaking out of turn here, but I think techbear actually makes money from Artemis, and it's kind of his job, so this is unlikely. Me (Space Nerds in Space author) and Daid (Empty Epsilon author) just have our projects as hobbies and I can't speak for Daid, but I make between $15 and $20 per month from SNIS from a handful of wonderful patrons. I'd be surprised if Daid makes a lot more than that (but even more surprised if he makes less, as EE is much more popular than SNIS). Open source games just don't seem to work very well as a reasonable source of income, and it's generally a mistake to treat them as income sources. Nobody needs them, and nobody feels an obligation to pay for them (they're free software after all -- why would anyone pay for them? Isn't a part of the point of free software that you don't have to pay for them? Arguably a bigger point is freedom to modify, but the not paying part is nice too, and realistically, more people are "not paying" than are "modifying".) Is there any open source game that makes its author a living? I'm not aware of one. It's hard to make money from any open source project, but open source games are especially difficult in that regard, in my experience.
And to be clear, I actually value the "modifying" part more then the "paying" part. If someone sends me a patch, it definitely makes my day.
techbear and Daid and me are alright, but let's be real, we're no John Carmack. These are super-niche games, not world-beating blockbusters like Doom was.
> I wouldn't call Ryzom a world-beating blockbuster.
I wouldn't either.
But you've already got two open source alternatives to Artemis, and you're asking this guy to risk his job on a gamble in which the odds are incredibly stacked against him.
I mean, if you're on the open source bandwagon, that's great, but just go with one of the open source alternatives that are right in front of you. You don't need to badger techbear.
Since I first made Artemis, the option to open-source has been available, and I had several reasons not to do so. First, I've always been a very lone-wolf coder, and I find it hard to collaborate on big projects with anyone. Either they don't move fast enough for me, or I lose interest entirely. It's a real personal failing.
Second, my code is embarrassing. I've come a long way since I started Artemis 11 years ago. But I now treat my own Artemis 2 code like a toxic waste dump; I don't wanna go back there. So the idea of exposing anyone else to my codebase isn't exciting.
Third, I've actually made very good money from Artemis. I don't make much now, but at the height of Artemis's popularity in 2013, I made over 100k that year. I did it by asking for the sale, DRM-free, money-back-guarantee, and ensuring people that the project was still alive. Donations are great, but there's nothing wrong with asking for an honest sale.
Honest question: suppose Artemis was created by a small game studio. Suppose the studio maintained paid to use servers for people to play it on-line with most server-side processing so cheaters wouldn't have any advantage. Also suppose the entire art not freely available. Would open sourcing it affect how much money could be made from it?
Bought ABSB in 2010, still got the receipt, $43.13 Canadian. Tried to get an upgrade code to ABSB 2 in 2013. Never heard back, despite trying every email address I could find. Pretty disappointing.
