Hey, I just found Crossfire the other day by accident 
I'm looking at making my own mod, was poking around for inspiration/ideas, saw screenies of CF and have, uh, decided I needed to "research" this mod Seriously, kudos to everybody who participated in this. I haven't had a chance to install yet, cause of work, but I'll be in-game shortly...
Anyway, the reason I post here is this. Aside from a few scattered servers, there is a dwindling number of people playing this game. I personally I'm looking for some way to attract more people to FL so we can all keep playing. Here's the thing, though.
There is a strong tendency around the FL community to "horde". This is not the easiest game in the world to mod, and many different people have come up with many different wonderful ideas. However, many of them have the attitude "this is MINE" and "we've built this from the ground up that's how it's gonna stay", etc, etc.
If society as a whole worked on these principles we'd have never left the stone age. Why does everyone have to reinvent the wheel everytime they want to do something? For example, I have NO EARTHLY IDEA how to do most the stuff y'all have done. I would be hard pressed to even figure out how you did it TO steal it But suppose I wanted to use some of those ideas, you expect ME to spend years researching and experimenting just because YOU did? How can anything progress at that rate?
I gathered the whole point of CrossFire was to demonstrate what FL was capable of, that it can still compete. What's the point of doing all this if you aren't going to let other people learn and use it, too? Most people are not outlandishly wonderful modelers, effects guys, coders, etc. If they are, it's usually only one of the above. If they can't use somebody else's stuff, at least in part, they probably are not going to be able to do much without a massive team of people with multiple talents.
And as someone mentioned earlier, what happens when you lose interest in CF? It ceases to progress? It gets pulled of the server and mod sites? Taken very far at all this attitude just becomes very selfish and stupid. It is a COMPLEMENT that some else was so impressed by your work that they wanted to include it in their project. I'd be delighted if someone did that for me.
And again, FL is slowly dying. And you're wanting to disrupt and drive off people? Even if some of them are assholes, I'm sure a lot of them are not. All you'll end up doing is stirring up a lot of shit and both sides look pathetic and juvenile.
I'm not defending the guys that stole your work, they sound like dickheads, they should at least credit that they got/learned from you. It does however sound like you're making a far bigger deal out of them than is necessary. They are a private click out there, playing alone, and you're worrying about them. Forget it and find something productive to do before you piss of their hackers.
If you're not careful, you'll attract MicroSoft's attention and they'll close ALL OF YOU down. Cause guess what, in relation to this game, virtually EVERYTHING YOU DO belongs to them. Even your original work, aside from graphics, much of the coding and modifying you did to the base game, that base game belongs to THEM, as none of this would work with any OTHER game, that means it, also, belongs to THEM.
You've put a tremendous amount of work into this project, all of you have, but seriously, WTF? Lighten up. This ain't the end of world, and at the very least it further promotes FL. That's a GOOD THING. Don't be tight asses.
