First of all this has nothing to do with Elements the game reward codes. Anyone not interested in coding (with a computer), can skip this announcement.
This is something I feel I need to discuss about now that a lot of people are interested in producing custom code and scripts to be used in Elements community events and competitions, or the forum itself.
Rule of thumb:
If you want to give custom code to be used in Elements community forums or events, you need to give us the source.
This is not because we want to steal the code. I would never let anything like that happen. It's simply to ensure that once made "official", the system won't suddenly disappear leaving us with nothing. We've had a lot of people just disappear, never to be seen again, and I've personally wasted tons of time because of this.
There are two main options here:
Option 1 - Keeping the code to yourself BAD
You make some custom code and maybe start your own website using that code. You want to keep full control to yourself, and you don't want to give the source to us. If you some day decide to abandon the project and delete everything, we are left with nothing. You have full control, we have zero control.
Option 2 - Donating the code to us GOOD
You make the custom code and donate it to us for free. We will put the custom code on our server, and you will naturally be given all credit. We are not going to use any part of that code to anything else than what you provided to us.
If I have options, I will always go with option 2 because it's a more safe solution. This is the internet and I don't know any of the community members in real life. If I went with option 1, they could some day decide to quit and I could do nothing about it but to start from scratch again, wasting huge amounts of time.
Lets take Planplans deck image builder code as an example of option 2 and how it should be done. He made the code, gave it to us, and even made a short tutorial on how to implement it. That's exactly what we are looking for. If Planplan gets eaten by a bear tomorrow, his deck image builder would still be available to us.
I guess the main question here is whether you want to keep the code to yourself or donate it. So before you start a big coding project to help the community, please make sure that you are ok with option 2 because otherwise it's very unlikely that your code will ever be implemented.
Related to this, I'm thinking about starting a forum section (or a sticky thread at least) that would list all kinds of cool projects community members could be a part of. I know there are a lot of coders out there who would like to help make things run more smoothly, or give us new cool things to play around with. More information about that later.
Thanks for reading.
