zfnWhere has this discussion taken place, or was that sarcasm? Only myself and Zetos have replied to this thread, both expressing uncertainty in the idea, plus your survey of 106 responses at the time of this post are negative. 68.9% of people said they wouldn't be open to subscribing to mastercomfig+, not to mention the16% maybe and 2.8% don't know. That's 87.7% of 106 people who are against/uncertain to the idea.
There's been discussion here, on Discord and on the Steam Community. It doesn't really matter how many people won't subscribe, since mastercomfig+ isn't designed to negatively affect them (in fact, stuff will trickle down to the main config so it can only help them). The only thing that matters is how many people will subscribe, as that helps me determine how extensive the analysis can be and if I can sustain it at all.
zfnWhat is machine learning? How does it work? How exactly will that be used here? What sort of performance impact will it have on my game, if it is gathering data specific to my system? What sort of performance boost would I be expecting to obtain from all of this? Would this all be included in the .exe file, or will that be a separate download? What sort of data is being collected? Have I misunderstood the idea completely?
So the app will collect hardware and OS information, similar to Steam's hardware survey. It will also collect performance data while you run the game. I'm not entirely sure what the performance impact will be yet since mastercomfig+ isn't close to being actually implemented yet, but my goal is to make it close to zero since this is a performance config after all.
So all this data is submitted to a server which analyzes the data using machine learning, which makes associations between hardware details, performance data and settings. As more data comes in from a wide variety of systems, it will be able to analyze enough data to make predictions about optimal values and performance for different settings.
zfnWhat exactly will the difference be between the paid version and the free version? If we set aside cvars which are mostly personal preference (decals, props, gibs, ragdolls, ropes, effects, sound, lighting, shadows, post processing, character visuals etc etc), what exactly will mastercomfig+ be suggesting to improve performance that we don't already know thanks to your efforts so far?
You shouldn't set aside those values, as that's a big part of mastercomfig+. Here's a mockup of how it would look like:
https://i.imgur.com/VJmIyeL.png
This would replace the presets with a preference slider for performance/quality, along with a performance estimate based on your selections and hardware.
https://i.imgur.com/5wmTAVb.png
Individual settings would show relative performance estimates and highlight highest performance/quality options, so you can tell what the best tradeoff is going to be.
In addition to these recommendations/performance predictions, it will also tune hardware specific settings optimizations, like clipping, z reject, occlusion, etc.
zfnIf the number of people subscribing is lower than you originally thought, how long will you maintain the project for?
This service is extremely scalable. The quality and speed of the results being generated might suffer from less funding, but I don't see a likely scenario where I would have to shut down the service altogether.
zfn I have no intention of using mastercomfig+, but I appreciate your efforts and enthusiasm for this 10 year old game. Nevertheless, will I be able to donate a single lump sum of money your way, instead of seeing -$2.70's on my bank statement each month?
I think I've stated this before, but you are in no way required to do a recurring payment. You can do a single payment which pays towards your subscription, and you get to keep any values gotten from the service even after your subscription expires. So let's say you donate a one time payment of $18.09. That would be enough for the biannual payment + 1 month, so you would get the service for that long and once your subscription ends, you get to keep the values generated from it, but you won't get future values as the service does more analysis until you pay for the service again. And, if you pay any thing extra (like let's say $1.70), it will go towards paying for your service as it accumulates to the required payment.
Bucakeas for ways of payment, i've always preferred simple one-shot paypal donations so i can decide what i want to pay/can miss, and later i can always come back and put in extra. i realize that might not be ideal for someone putting in time consistently, but i think it's safe to assume that some might not bother with patreon at all, while they would consider something like paypal. (just a suggestion to have that as an option as well.)
Patreon provides PayPal as a payment method. And, it's fine if you pay only one time, as explained above.
springrollsthrow in my 2 cents, i'd totally be willing to donate for all the effort you've put in but i'm also really really against subscription based services (perhaps scarred by forgetting to unsubscribe from esea premium....) one-shot donation would be greatly preferable, mastercomfig+ would be cool also but i dont really play the game anymore so that's not really the main appeal for me personally
As explained above, there's no requirement to do a recurring subscription. Also, think about it like this: you donate money one time, and you get something extra, even if it's just for like a month or so. I think that's better than just donating and getting nothing at all and there being no clear benefit to how the donation will improve the config's service to its users.
ComangliaFrom the posts above it seems the most ideal solution would be to make a payment system not terribly dissimilar to humblebundle. Put in X amount of dollars = X months of subscription + remainder being considered a straight donation. Without a recurring subscription, of course you can still have a subscription method as well, but I believe having the prior method would be preferable to the majority of people willing to donate/pay you.
I'm not sure if I understand the issue with a subscription, you can still do one time payments and you get the service for as much as you paid for. See above for more information.
ComangliaI can only imagine the amount of time Mastercoms has put into this and it really makes me wonder how you could possibly have that much time.
I spend on average 3 hours a day on mastercomfig.