I was reading through some of the threads, and it struck me how many different pet issues people have (I’m guilty myself, to be sure). It must be really hard for the ReNoise team to sort it all out! I was especially thinking about the infamous “Buzz functionality” and how much extra work it would involve to implement that.
Maybe there could be a “Development Boost” fee/donation/whatever. If you pay the fee, you get to suggest something and have more “weight” behind that suggestion than someone randomly complaining in the forums; i.e. put your money where your mouth is.
Don’t misunderstand me—paid users would stay on the same release schedule fee system, and wouldn’t pay any extra to have a fully functioning ReNoise. For people who MUST have features X Y Z, however, this gives them an opportunity to contribute more than just hot air.
I guess the only problem is if suddenly everybody “buys” different pet issues, leaving the dev’s mostly in the same place as they were before. Maybe it could be like on KickStarter, where different development issues get “voted on” and you only have to pay if your issue “wins” with enough votes—that way people wouldn’t feel bad if their issue never got implemented.
This suggestion has been done a couple of times in the past.
I’ll quote the most important down-side part of your plead that is the reason why donations won’t be accepted:
It is not only the fact that many people pay for different options, they also donate different amounts, yet each one considers his amount as sufficient that a solution could have been in the next edition. Not all stuff can be put in the next edition and stuff cannot be scheduled.
It will only raise expectations but also cause a lot of disappointments. If people were not allowed to attach any kind of voice to their donations, the disappointments grow even stronger.
The dev-team has no goal in creating disappointments but developing the program from where it stands now as good as to where it can be extended without being pushed (and demotivated).
If you only fixate yourself on hoping one specific feature being implemented each release, this will still be the weight you hang on it yourself, it is not a weight you can cling onto the Dev-team.
If only the big money people always had better ideas. Unfortunately, more money also implies more available options and also, more potential wrong strategic decisions. Imagine that someone donates $5000 to implement next to the phase meter, a 3D avatar that dances, and moves, following the BPM. Imagine the amount of coding time required by this “cool” visual feature, that could be considered by many of us as a pure waiste of energy.
Renoise is not exactly money driven (even if money is necessary) but community driven. Everyone has the potential to bring some fresh suggestions & inspiration to devs. The new “track grouping/collapsing” feature is a good example of what can happen if everybody hits the +1 button inside a thread. Some ideas (for example, … let’s say… protecting .xrns track content with a strong encryption algorythm) initially seem very good, but in the end, reactions & knowledges of the community, reveal that some features could not work as expected. A strong and active community is somehow better than money.
how can you have something against an optional feature… never understand that response. (just because it steps trackers on the toes?)
not that i’m looking for a roll btw.
I was sarcastically making a point about such a scheme.
If people start putting up money for certain features, eventually there will be a situation where two groups will both give money to implement things that will be the opposite of each other.
Also… isn’t piano roll kinda tuff to implement as on one track there can be (infinitely many1024 or so) different samples triggered? (only 12 notes at a time though, but… im just sayin. instruments would need different colors then too to recognize shits.)
What we should all do, is to upgrade our licenses to push some more budget into Renoise development and trust the teams decisions on what to focus on.
It’s quite obvious which features many think are important here in the forums
