fundraising for online mode

[ctdabomb]

Since the online mode feature is coming up on the optimistic milestones page, I propose that we have a fundraising period now or after the 0.8 release to raise money to hire a developer to code this, or to pay our current devs to give them a bit more incentive and excuse to spend the time coding this. I have no idea how much money we would need to raise, or how to do it, but I think this is something we should do and I would like to start some discussion on it now.

[RaceAce]

Maybe have like a special kart or track that only people who donate have access to? Like an incentive?

[Hero]

Name the karts/tracks after those who have donated.

For Christmas some one should give or beloved devs something about STK that's fun, inventive or something. Maybe fixes a bug. Or give them plenty of bug reports.

I think the devs could (and probably do) use the incentive of a better STK. I do too... and I would like to see my Anon on something.

BTW: Maybe we shouldn't pay them in money. It makes it feel more like STK is something you have to pay for. And anyway it might make other small developers feel like they aren't being thanked when the big ones our getting paid.

[sj04736]

At this point, I'm not so sure it's really an issue of motivation for the developers. There are just certain things that need to be in place first before online mode can be done without having to redo the whole thing a year later. So far, these things have been AI, skidding, and physics.

On the other hand, I don't think it would be a bad idea to hire somebody who's been involved coding online multiplayer for some big-name commercial game. Actually that depends... not all commercial games have an equally good online mode implementation. So hire somebody who wrote a good implementation then