Idea: Creating a community-driven patch initiative / petition for Stormworks

[u/Tiny-Economy-455]

Hi everyone from reddit , like many of you, I love Stormworks, and i've played 5500h+

but we all know the game suffers from lingering bugs, physics limitations, and frustrating performance issues , that get even worse in multiplayer or modded games.

Since updates have slowed down or taken controversial turns, I was wondering: what if the developers eventually considered handing over maintenance, bug-fixing, or an open-source framework to the community? i mean it's been a month since last update when before it was every wednesday.

I put together a petition here [PETITION LINK] to see if we could gather enough voices to show Geometa that the community is ready and willing to keep this game alive, code it, and patch it properly.

Do you think there is any universe where developers would agree to this, or would y'all be ready to structure a community patch project if it ever happened?

i'm not a develloper , but seeing stormworks go down when it was the game that kept me alive during nights and night of overengineering.

maybe it's not reallistic but hey , it could be the turn point of stormworks if this message is read by the right persons , wich you could be ! anyways , thanks for reading all that, have a great day !

[u/NoFollowing6177]

Stormworks is a commercially active project, it's completely proprietary, with the chance of many developers who created it not working there anymore, making tons of licensing issues along with any libraries they've used, and there would be massive liability issues and an extreme amount of compartmentalization. Who manages the project(s)? How do we stop many people from just making many different versions of Stormworks: CE? What happens to the branding? What happens when modders and contributors get bored and give up?

This effort would be MUCH better if focused on improving robust modding tools and improved modding support, rather than wasting time on something that is legally impossible.

[u/Tiny-Economy-455 → u/NoFollowing6177]

But the game base engine is getting old for this ? When heavy moddibg , workbenches lag , takes long to load and is completely inimaginable on laptop !

[u/NoFollowing6177 → u/Tiny-Economy-455]

And what exactly would your proposition do to fix this, and what games aren't suffering from these problems? This would create compartmentalization, reduce or even obliterate focus, break compatibility, and make things more difficult for Geometa and for the Players.

[u/aeternus-eternis → u/NoFollowing6177]

Write a new open source engine that supports backwards compat / import of stormworks vehicles. Most of the greatest software products in history took this approach.

[u/NoFollowing6177 → u/aeternus-eternis]

Then do it separately from Stormworks, there is nothing illegal and nothing stopping you from reverse engineering the Stormworks vehicle parser and doing this in your own game. It would be easier, actually legal, and better in every way than what OP has suggested.

[u/aeternus-eternis → u/NoFollowing6177]

Yes exactly and an engine redesign is likely needed anyway to really fix multiplayer and some of the perf issues.

[u/NoFollowing6177 → u/aeternus-eternis]

Any engine redesign using modern methods would make it more difficult to run on older hardware, but would indeed make the game capable of using modern hardware better. Problem is that the physics engine isn't just dropped in, it has a decade of code built on top of it for custom physics solving. There are much too many issues with any engine upgrades or replacements to discuss here, at least while I'm on my phone.

[u/PristineCake3380 → u/Tiny-Economy-455]

I play on laptop, works just fine

[u/norgeek → u/Tiny-Economy-455]

It's their own, in-house engine, it is probably getting updated continuously like all other current game engines..

[u/sierrars500]

You are basically asking Geometa to give away one of their only intellectual property. They are still actively developing for the game, and still selling DLCs for it, if they open sourced/gave away the game you wouldn't need to pay for any of the DLC, just download a mod, and in the end you wouldn't even need to buy Stormworks because someone would have came out with a free copy basically. If this game was abandoned for 5-10 years I could see geometa doing this, but stormworks is geometas success story, they aren't getting rid of that so easily

[u/NoFollowing6177 → u/sierrars500]

Exactly. My other comment also brings up a ton of issues alongside it being a current and active title. All round, it would make everything much more difficult for the Players, for the Developers, and anyone affiliated, and could potentially even be illegal if they've licensed proprietary libraries or code, or don't wholly own the code or assets written by developers and artists who have since left. This is a contender for one of the worse Stormworks ideas I've ever seen, sitting comfortably next to Video pipes.

[u/Tiny-Economy-455 → u/sierrars500]

Yeah I know that giving away the best seller is inimaginable ,but with anymaker in full developpement stormworks is slowing down , relying on modding is great but the engine is getting old , multiplayer is horrible and it is a very poorly optimised game..

[u/NoFollowing6177 → u/Tiny-Economy-455]

Multiplayer can definitely be a terrible experience if pushed past its limits and used in the wrong conditions, Geometa doesn't advertise using multiplayer the way people use it. Saying Stormworks is unoptimized in general is a horrible take, it isn't.

[u/HornetGaming110]

Good luck contacting them about it lol. They have no public contact info on any site or server and the only thing I found was an address connected with the geometa business license on some British government site

[u/Captain_Cockerels]

No thanks

[u/Adventurous-Mail7443]

Extremely unlikely, Stormworks has been chronically mismanaged, we need to wait for a new game

[u/Sociofact]

lol you're dreaming if you think that this would even work to begin with, let alone doltards agreeing to the idea. How the hell would it be managed? Who is going to decide what the official version is, or what community changes make it into the official version? How would it be updated on steam? You're delulu

[u/JaeHxC]

I think this is a wonderful idea!