Redesigning rewards from now on, feedback welcome.
Added 2019-12-29 16:52:07 +0000 UTCAs I have been on vacation, and as Rรฉmi has been extremely busy preparing the 3.2 releases (which is the first major one he does on his own, and doing a more than fine job at it), the voting for the previous months have been kind of a mess.
So, besides having a catch-up voting in January, we were looking at redesigning the rewards. We understand that far most of our patrons don' t really care much about them and only want to support the project, but we are still very grateful with all ofyou and want to give, at least a little bit, back.
One of the things we were discussing is having the ability to vote proposals from our new proposals repository so the selection process is a bit simpler. As always, the idea is to make sure they are made when time is right (as like, a lot of the rendering ones are only being possible now that the rendering code is being re-written, and now that George will is hired full time to work on GDScript and scripting in general, many regarding to those will be finally doable now).
Leaving that aside, tutorials are very time consuming, and truth is that we now have a large amount of contributors and community dedicating to doing these, so they are not as urgent from us.. so we were discussing about replacing them with more "immediate" rewards. Things we were discussing cover something like:
1) How would you do it?: This would be a similar voting as tutorial/docs, except instead I (Juan, or maybe a guest from time to time) would explain in a recorded video how would I work on a specific game or part of a game, and explain the engine design related to that in the process.
2) How does Godot work? Juan or a guest would explain how a part of Godot works at source code level.
3) What's the status? Someone (probably Rรฉmi) would get feedback on a proposal or feature and explain what the status, if its wanted by devs and users, not wanted, explain why, or what would be needed to do it.
And finally, we could do a live QA for patrons. Originally there was not much interest due to the community not being as big as it is now. All this would be eventually published in our or Godot's official channel after some months, being originally only exclusive for patrons.
What do you think? any ideas or feedback also very welcome.
Comments
If everybody sees a ray-traced car, then Patreon can download a test-build, where they can fly around, or there are more cars, or something . . Something nice, but not important, not ' luxury ', ' special ' . . So Patreons see a little bit more, but not nicer, sort of . . .
Jasper Brooks
2020-03-24 10:03:46 +0000 UTCMaybe Patreon users could download an alpha build, with Vulkan, and have some extra-nice stuff, or levels in them, to show what it really can do . . Saw Juan Linietsky's raytracing spinning do-nut videos, maybe make some special, extra-cool demonstrations, of the same things, that Patreons can download, like just bigger, more advanced, but not ' better ', just ' nicer ' . . . .
Jasper Brooks
2020-03-24 10:02:30 +0000 UTCI would like more hard-core tutorials from you, about perhaps making Vulkan, plans for big features for the engine, technical stuff . . . Like, on a higher, more detailed level . . That'd be enough, to deserve the money . . . :D
Jasper Brooks
2020-03-24 09:11:19 +0000 UTCI have an unusual idea - what if instead of all those votings we all accumulated a virtual currency balance of how much money contributed to the project in total, which could then be used as a bounty for issues like this: 1) a patron goes to github issue an claims to put some virtual currency on a bug; 2) if this bug ever gets fixed by a non-hired dev, that dev is paid this from spare Patreon money, and virtual currency of the patron is reduced accordingly. And for Akien to not lose all the salary due to this, some sort of system might be created, e.g. only donations above initial $100 (total, not per month) count as virtual currency.
Igor S.
2020-03-19 16:40:06 +0000 UTCI would gives rewards according to first name length; Longer is better (except for Godot updates) ๐
Christian Baune
2020-03-13 16:34:49 +0000 UTCMy opinion: definitely try to give as much boost as possible on the affinity between Godot and Blender. I'm having some hard and inesplicabile (because I still can't find workarounds) hard times with some materials included into geometries exported from Blender to Godot, under .GLTF 2.0 format. Even after a complete wipe out and re-bake into Blender, I still have some of them completely gray once imported into the engine. I also suggest to implement into Godot Engine some special features for the 3D engine under the similar form of a Blender modifier panel in order to have at least some pre set features for common action games like: gravity, 3D particles, VFX to add on Light sources. Actually it's a huge struggle even to set a simple FPS shooter, classic Wolfenstein clone or similar. At least, the A B C of some aspects are needed, if you really want to drive all this as a valid alternative to the colossus of gaming industry.
Carlo Sitaro
2020-03-06 00:41:35 +0000 UTCThis sounds like a great idea! The explaining of how the engine functions in the background would help understanding how the engine works/behaves as an end-user. Please try to do as high audio quality as possible (clear, easily understandable) to increase the accessability of those videos!
Reneator
2020-01-24 15:10:25 +0000 UTCThe UI is already pretty good and I'm really excited about Vulkan support (and therefore Metal on Mac/iOS). Interesting you mentioned Blender 2.8. I went back to try Blender after maybe 10 or 15 years of ignoring it due to its awful UI and I was blown away by 2.8's changes. I've now got some Blender basics down. Given that, I'd love to see greater Blender -> Godot compatibility where possible. But anyway, I'm just so happy that you guys have made Godot and given me the chance to go back to a childhood dream of making games without having to built everything from scratch.
Peter Thorne
2020-01-10 09:12:48 +0000 UTCHonestly 1, 2 and 3 all sound great and definitely great incentives for sponsoring the project. Can I suggest also some kind of process be implemented for gaining feedback on Godot's UX from sponsors? I feel like, especially from Godot 4.0 onwards, Godot is shifting into a 'mature' game engine, with mature feature set and community, and with that shift, the focus should start moving to UX and performance. Juan has already outlined performance is going to be a focus with 4.0 which is great, but I think UX is something that is worth pushing to get more people talking about Godot's UX design and ways in which it could be enhanced. Perhaps for a 'Blender 2.80' style upgrade with Godot 5.0?
Grady
2020-01-02 00:30:16 +0000 UTCI'll push for the merging (1) and (2), and having the rewards being able to vote for which one gets done every month. I think both (1) and (2) are pretty great ideas; from the comments its pretty clear that some people care about being able to jump into the engine, while others care about how to make things in Godot. Both are great since they help bring more people into the Godot community! As for "other" reward items, I'd be curious in being able to see what happens if there are regular meetings with the main maintainers, even if its just minutes after the fact!
Austen McRae
2020-01-01 22:30:17 +0000 UTC1 & 2 sound great, 3 would be good when a lot of questions come up about a specific feature but not sure how often that happens. I disagree with the opinion that 2 is not relevant to end users, I think even for those of us who aren't working on engine code, having some insight into what's going on under the hood will help us make better decisions about how we structure our projects.
Terran
2020-01-01 21:19:17 +0000 UTC2 or 3 would be awesome! Also, it'd be nice to hear back on the end result of the selected options. Like, I vote every month, but I don't really know what came of those votes. Maybe I just don't know the right place to look? But it'd be so cool to have a status update a month or two after a vote saying "here's the PR for the thing that got voted on back in X month" so I can see what happened and follow along on the work.
David Snopek
2019-12-30 15:36:56 +0000 UTCI like all three ideas and I think the order of relevancy is 1 > 3 > 2. A live Q&A might be very cool, but in my opinion it should exist outside the reward system. If you have time for it, then great! If not, not much is lost, I think...
Bernhard Werner
2019-12-30 09:32:44 +0000 UTCI like option 1 a lot, and being able to vote on priority, when there's something in the options I need. I am focused on 2D and somewhat amateur on way to turning pro, which might be different from most patrons.
Khore Fluxo
2019-12-30 09:02:21 +0000 UTCI definitely am interested in 2) but I think a mix of all three (maybe rotating) might be great as well
IndustrialRobot
2019-12-30 06:44:02 +0000 UTCI agree, both 1 & 3 ๐
Mored4u
2019-12-30 03:12:12 +0000 UTCI would like "How would you do it". Hope it gets done regularly
Juan Velandia
2019-12-30 01:23:31 +0000 UTCI agree, both 1 and to a lesser extent 3 would seem to be useful for most of the end-users.
Ben Vercammen
2019-12-29 20:27:49 +0000 UTCIs the Q&A only for $18 tier patron?
Janders
2019-12-29 19:29:31 +0000 UTCBoth 1 and 3 make sense, 2 is a bit not relevant for me unless I would like to make my own engine or fork Godot. But I'm focused on the result instead.
Arseniy M
2019-12-29 18:42:15 +0000 UTCI vote for "How would you do it?" style tutorials as a possible reward.
pipboy90
2019-12-29 17:07:53 +0000 UTCHey guys. I think you should add two more rewards between 'Mini' and 'Gold' - it's quite a big gap.
Oleg Reva
2019-12-29 16:58:32 +0000 UTC
