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The Genesis3D World Editor is now permanently stuck in BETA 2.

No new development is planned. This is due to the fact that I received a total of $80 in payments after thousands of downloads. Unfortunately, I was correct in my assessment of the Genesis3D Open Source License for tools.

Who do I blame for this? I blame David Stafford, who I believe ruined the potential that the Genesis Open Source Project once had. Due to his short-sightedness, all Genesis3D development is essentially stagnant.

Read more on this, if you want to know what went wrong.

November 6th, 2000

I've released BETA 2 with quite a few bug fixes for those of you running under the older 16-bit Windows (Windows 95, 98, and Me). I never tested BETA 1 under these operating systems, and there were numerous crash bugs which only occurred on them. In the future, I will test on these operating systems before release.

NOTE: If you are doing development work under Windows 95, 98, or Me, then you should probably switch to Windows NT 4.0, 2000, or XP. They are much more stable, and less prone to these weird types of bugs.

I also added a few minor features and compatibility enhancements in this release:

• Compilation constraints have been increased to allow for larger and more complex maps.
   
• Sun light entity support added (sunlight doesn't lose intensity over distance, like other lights)
   
• Header files with entity definitions for GTest and Reality Factory have been included in the Headers folder. Rename or move the header files to switch between development for these two Genesis projects.

October 31st, 2000

The original Genesis3D World Editor (known to many as GEdit) was barely usable, which any experienced map architect who has worked with it already knows. While working on as the lead developer in a game development project, I started modifying the original editor to meet the needs of a map architect that was very critical of how GEdit was organized.

I soon realized that GEdit needed a complete user interface make-over before it was going to satisfy him. I also realized that it would be nice to distribute a professional map editor for use by mod makers for the released version of our game. I worked fairly hard at learning the internals of GEdit, and began work on the new Genesis3D World Editor (version 2.0). Unfortunately, the whole game was put on hold for almost six months because some team members (including myself) could not invest enough time into the project, for a variety of reasons.

For those six months, the new World Editor languished in a broken state; with many hours already invested, but not in a releasable form. I had no financial incentive to finish it, and had plenty of other work to keep me from it. This new version probably would have been released eight months ago (I would have put priority on it when I was working on it) if there had been some financial motive. However, due to the structure of the Genesis3D open source license and David Stafford (who is able to change the license, but chooses not to), there is essentially no incentive to release new tools for the Genesis3D engine. This is too bad, because the Genesis3D engine could really benefit from the improvement of its tools.

I am sure there are plenty of other programmers who have modified or built new tools based on the source code of the tools shipped with the Genesis3D SDK, and have used these tools internally, but cannot release these programs and their source code for free. I'm sure there are also many programmers who would invest time and effort into creating new tools for the Genesis3D engine, but will not do it for free.

I'm a big supporter of open source, but there is no such thing as a single solution to all problems. Open source can actually cause a stagnation in progress if applied incorrectly, because there are only a few people willing to work so hard for free. I think this stagnation has happened with tool development in Genesis3D.

My suggestion is that tools should be excluded from the open source license requirement to the release of their source code for a period of six months (instead of immediate release of source code, as it is now). This would allow a programmer to create a new tool (which would benefit the Genesis3D community), the programmer could profit from the sales of the tool (for at least six months), and then the community would profit (again) from the release of the source code after the six months period.

Why should the source code for tools be different than the source code for games?

• You often can't separate tools from the original Genesis3D source like you can with games. With a game, you can leave the Genesis3D engine as a library and keep the source code to your game separate. Because of this, games can be created in a way that does not require the release of their source code.
   
• The purchase of a $10,000 full Genesis3D license (which doesn't require release of source code) may be a minor cost to someone selling a game to potentially hundreds of thousands of people, but it is way too much money for a Genesis3D tool which will probably sell less than a hundred copies.
   
• A game is sold to end users who could care less what type of engine is being used, and will never pay for a Genesis3D license or improve the engine source code. A tool that makes it easier to use Genesis3D is sold to potential users of the engine, who are (or are considering) using the engine, and may pay for a license or make other contributions to the engine source code after they start using it.
   

I hope other people agree with me, and they contact David Stafford about this problem. In any case, it would be too late for me. But, at least now no one can say that I have a conflict of interest.