Today's public discussion on SourceMod ended very well. I appreciate the people who took the time to join, ask some great questions, and give their support to the project.
A log of the chat is attached to
this news post.
We decided to hold a public vote on the continuation of the project. The problem is that we don't like any of the existing programming languages. Only Small has a perfect blend of amazing speed, simplicity, and our own support code. On the other hand, Small is quite lacking. The code is very old and difficult to maintain. We came up with two options:
- Delay SourceMod, and all of the big design considerations we wanted to solve and perfect. Spend the next year writing a new language and codebase, then restart SourceMod with our new codebase.
- Restart SourceMod using AMX Mod X code. That is, the important language pieces such as the debugger, compiler, VM, JIT, and the various modules it has.
This poll is not about choosing a different language. This poll is about the fact that if we're going to relearn a new compiler+VM+JIT from scratch, we want it to be one we write to be perfect. So, we'll either spend the time writing something new, or just use the old cruft from AMX Mod X.
It's important to realize in this poll, that either way, SourceMod is not a magical answer to Source. Certain things, like HUD Messages and mod-compatible menus, are simply impossible to do without Valve reversing their own decisions.
AMX Mod X plugins would not be backwards compatible without modification because of Source's limitations.
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