Pessoal, desde que o Duckie Dickins avisou formalmente e Miss Wright (dona do DCS) que ele vai fazer um meter concorrente do DCS todas as armas dele foram prejudicadas, uma vez que ele que escreveu todos os scripts de danos das armas DCS, que são usados até hoje (30.7.2012) foram escritas por ele e com a atualização do DCS para 2.44 as armas do Dukie se tornaram melhores e por menos da metade do preço de uma arma razovel DCS.
O fato é que houve uma queda das vendas das armas DCS e nessa última semana era possível ver eventos em que até 60% de todas as armas não eram DCS. Diante disso, e somando o fato de que o Duckie Dickins tornou-se concorrente do DCS, houveram mudanças radicais com a atualização do API que não permite que as armas do Duckie Dickins soltem os especiais.
A seguir a integra do comunicado ele sobre o que aconteceu:
".::[ Dickins Weaponry Newsletter]::.
.::[ July 29, 2012]::.
Dickins Weaponry Headquarters?radegast://embeddedasset/1
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WWW : http://www.dickinsweaponry.com (Still under development)
Facebook: http://goo.gl/jxJVg
Twitter : http://goo.gl/Dwa4W
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.::[ What's Going on ]::.
Well it's only been about 48 hours since my last newsletter, and not surprisingly, once the news about my involvement with a new roleplay & combat system was announced, DCS2 has pulled enhanced weapon API access from Dickins Weaponry which means our line of dcs enhanced weapons are no longer enhanced.
Now just to clarify something, I knew the day I parted ways from being lead developer at DCS2 that I would no longer be allowed to produce DCS enhanced weapons. It was never said to me that I couldn't produce any more weapons, but I assumed it as I would no longer be able to add database entries for any new weapons, as well as entry changes in the event that I changed any of my existing weapons. I was under the impression that despite not being able to create any new dcs enhanced weapons, that my older products would continue to be enhanced until there was significant changes to the API that the current scripts inside would stop communicating with DCS2 enhancement server side scripts.
I did one update in January to make sure all of them had the combo system per initial agreement that all DCS enhanced weapons would have the combo system. I had delayed putting it into my own during the 6 month period I was lead developer of DCS2 and did not have the time to work on my own weapons since all of that was devoted to keeping DCS afloat with enough sales to not only keep the servers and SL sims paid, but to keep a roof over the heads of Miss Wright's family. whose only form of income was from excess sales of DCS products. after her separation from DCS creator Dimentox Travanti.
So, on friday I announced the remodel project of my weapons and my involvement with a new "roleplay with combat "system that is in the early stages of development. On sunday the 29th which is today, I received a message from Miss Wright which stated the following unfounded accusation....the 3rd unfounded accusation I've received since my departure from DCS2.
Message via Skype
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[12:00:08 PM] Miss Wright: hello duckie, if youre not going to respond to my request and since you seem to be focusing on other competing combat systems, I am turning off your api, but thats not really the reason, you see I was trying to be professional about this keep it straight business, but after opening and having to update many weapons that you nerfed by giving them 100% or less than 100% scaling, when people were accusing and saying they werent scaling, and you said they were, the ad says they were, but some were scaled down at 85% of power, some at exactly 100% so thats not scaling, you put me in a position of false advertising, what you did was illegal, we have fixed most of the issues you caused, but you are no longer with DCS, the only reason you had the api was because you were helping. So with all that said, we are removing the api, I strongly suggest you keep an honorable stance with this to your customers. I have your NDA. I have chat logs, and screenshots. I shouldnt have to say all that, but you have been pretty nasty, so let's keep this civil, unless you want to go to court, just make an announcement that you are no longer with DCS, because you are not.
[12:02:53 PM] Miss Wright: you should probably send out an update
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I responded to her, letting her know that she was talking out of her ass and didn't know how her own system even works. I then pasted several lines of skype chat logs that I had with Dimentox back in May of 2011 of exactly how the damage scaling system worked when he implemented it and was instructing me what to do. I also cited that Dimentox himself had set the scaling damage of the DCS tesla's at 65% of the maximum *SCALED* proc and extra per-swing damage, and that the maximum SCALED damage differs from player to player based on their stats, which is where the actual scaling is determined....their stats.
I then listed every weapon I worked on during the 6 months I was as lead developer where 6 weapons did over 100% of the maximum scaled damage, 2 did 100% of the scaled damage and one did 95% of the scaled damage due to it being a short range weapon with a fast damage-per-second modifier.
It's obvious that the weapons scaling accusation holds no water and this is just a case of anti-competitive business practices. What is sad is that I stayed away from any projects involving combat meters and was still accused falsely for a variety of things including leaking the API and leaking code to the UCS combat meter which ended up being Dimentox himself.
This is obviously not about scaling damage in DCS weapons. It's not even about a request to get a percentage on sales of my weapons that happened last tuesday apparently while I was at work and had missed until now.. When I became the server admin for DCS back in March of 2010, I no longer needed to pay a percentage on sales to DCS. I continued to pay a 20% "donation" to Toxian City for over a year after I wasn't required to. When I took over as Lead Developer, I agreed that only getting 5% commission on items I worked on for DCS was fine because I still had sales of my own weapons and Miss Wright couldn't literally afford more than that. So much so that the DCS servers were shut down on more than one occasion due to late payment of the server bill. I was emotionally blackmailed with stories of how her daughter couldn't get a new dress for her high school homecoming or halloween costumes for her children to go trick-or-treating, and even postponed birthday parties because money was so tight.
In the end, I was sucked dry until enough was enough. I scripted the Guillotines entirely. They sold for 3500 L$....my 5% earned myself a mere 175L$ per weapon. One of the weapons, I cannot remember which, I took time off of work to finish it so that it could be put up for sale in time to earn enough to cover the server bill. My 5% never came close to paying back the wages lost for taking time off to finish those weapons. After I left DCS, my 5% commission payments slowly dwindled until I haven't received anything from any of the weapons I helped create. I'm talking the new ones after dimentox had left. The guillotines, the war fans, the iron maidens, the divine rites. Just because I left the company doesn't mean the commissions end on work done on a commission based agreement. My own customers suffered with outdated weapons. Many of them did not include the combo system until after I left DCS as I had no time to update my own weapons when I had to push out the next server paying release to allow everyone to continue enjoying DCS2 and Toxian City
Yes, she did offer a larger commission but it was always bitter sweet. In one hand a bigger commission and in the other a sad story about how her children go without things. A bigger comission would be like taking food out of the mouths of children. I had thought she was a friend but it seems to hold true that you should never be in business with friends.
So, at this point at time of this newsletter, I have checked and have confirmed my weapons disabled from accessing the enhanced weapon API and it's not me who loses out. It's the players. All nearly 7000 of you who have purchased weapons over the years, but it's not uncommon for a weapon developer to lose API access. However in this case it appears my involvement in a new system poses a big enough threat that my customers have to suffer for it. Rest assured once the project I'm involved with goes live, all of my customers will get something extra for the inconvenience of being at the mercy of an unscrupulous game developer exhibiting their anti-competition tactics to lock you into their "Pay-to-win" business model.
I will see about updating all of the weapons and pushing out a modifyable unehanced version of the weapons so you can at the very least drop in the personal-use dca enhancement script into it...as well and include a no-mod unenhanced tournament edition for those who try to play fair with no enhancements.
Thank you for your time and patronage.
Duckie Dickins
Developer and Owner
Dickins Weaponry
Dickins Weaponry Headquarters?radegast://embeddedasset/0"
