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* Edit - old thread now locked was this.
http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-3d/mandelbulb-3d-development-officially-suspendet/
Edit ends here*

Btw, I have finished my evaluation and came to the conclusion that I will give it a try.

But, please do not expect too much in the first steps, the code is indeed very complex, because it is optimized for speed at all costs (which means of course, that it contains lots of ASM-code). This was what I meant above with "not the whole fact", it is not a Delphi-program you can find in books, you can not just download FreePascal and compile it.

Another statement I made above (which was also not well understood, maybe because of a language barrier) was "to a certain point".
I currently do not think it is possible to make the project survive in a long time scale. But, this is not intended by now.
I think the program is working well, and it is possible to make it work better. Add some options there, some formula here, etc.

But, I currently have no plans to make it new from the ground up to finally reach a code-quality which I would release to the public.
Would make not much sense, because there is Mandelbulber, which does something like that (I do not mean re-coding MB3D, but creating such a software from scratch).



And, finally, please stop the discussion if it would be ethical or not to release the source-code. The original source-code will not be released. Never. :-)


Back to the code...

Andreas

 :toast: :horsie:

I'm happy you decided that, and the fact that Mandelbulb3D's development will continue... but one thing... I worked with Pascal and Delphi in the past, and I would love to give this a try also. Collaborating or maybe forking another version independent from yours. Also I maybe could try putting togheter a gpu version, as I'm not that bad as a gpu programmer, using the rendering techniques for hybrids I could find in Jesse's code, and giving the proper credits to him of course. I sent Jesse a message yesterday about the source code, and I'm waiting for the reply... I really understand the policy of not being publicly shared but if you have it, I think I have the same rights as you, as in a selflessly manner I have contributed to this software with some formulas and ideas that I don't think I even have to enumerate here as they are already known in the community.

So, I hope I still can board this train too :)

 :worm: :thumbsup1: :banana: :chilli: :banana: :chilli: :banana: :chilli: :chilli: :chilli:

I you are are interested in a collaboration, please contact me at FB, so we can have a quick chat.
I think I would dislike a independant fork because it will be annoying/confusing for the users.

You dislike it in this particular case, or you dislike project forking in general?

Pablo please continue your discussion in another place, sorry to say that but that's Andreas' decision
Luca :beer:

Why?

people, yes its a global decision and an overal nice to have state of development to have the main branch centralised, using a version control system like git it can easily be checked out by others, and if they have reasonable improvement it gets merged with the main branch easily there is more than enough for one person to do on that project

How does this differ from open source? (asking for information, not criticizing)

Should there be a new Child Board for the continued development of Mandelbulb 3d (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?board=168.0)?
Should people continue to use the existing Child Boards for bug reporting (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?board=226.0), beta testing (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?board=228.0) & feature requests (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?board=229.0) or will new boards be created?

Lawyery answer (in general, not specifically for this particular project): the license would not have to be an open source license.

There is a bit of general confusion about the concept and terms under the umbrella of "open source". IMHO this stems from the fact that there are really three different things under the hood of every successful open source project:

1. The irrevocable legal and practical right to modify and distribute the source code. This is what licenses are about.

2. Certain unwritten standards of craftsmanship. Let me call these "open development"; e.g. platforms like github or sourceforge, which are designed to enable unbureaucratic access to the actual development process.

3. A certain silent agreement on a particular codex of behaviour. For example, you don't make destructive edits to source code repositories - instead you debate with the other developers. You don't fork for minor reasons. In short: you collaborate with others, understanding that they as well as you are volunteers. Even if you personally hated one of the other contributors, you'd still respect each other for the work you both contribute freely.


IMHO, all three of these are required for a project to be "truly" open source.

From my point of view: nope. Unless many people want to create their own forks, then it may become difficult to track state :D

Okay, now I read this again (when I came home I was not very concentrated), and must say that I dislike the sound of this.
And, more importantly, I do not want to discuss this here further. I just want to concentrate on the matter itself for now.

Best regards,
Andreas

There is a very, very simple solution to this.
Do you know how a TV series has a master show runner?
Or a film has a director ?

Basically what's needed is the person who controls the show as it were.

So anyone who wants to develop it and add new features, gets the source code and can develop new features etc..
This is passed onto the "show runner" / " director " who then integrates all new features and publishes a release.

So the ideal situation would be the original author becomes show runner instead of developer.

So the original author is not cutting code anymore and has time to do what he now wants.
Then over time, a new show runner is voted from the existing developers.

So here are the decisions to be made:

1. Who is show runner?  ( this should be orginal author ideally at first iteration )
2. Who are the new developers?
3. What features are they planning to hopefully add?

Naturally the more developers the better, but  I expect there are only 1-10 on the planet who have the skills and interest to keep this cool project rolling.

Please everyone does this make sense ?   Most decent open source projects start like this. Linux for one.

In this case it can remain closed source - except to the active developers.

Us enthusiasts just want to see it kept alive and not a cultural aritifact like fractint, which let's face it nobody uses that anymore , but we all did when fractals took off.

Because soon - just a few years - every fractal enthusiast will have a fast but cheap openCL graphics as standard, and people will move to programs that operate the new fast interactive way.

This project needs to be kept alive with a longer term logical development roadmap and many developers working together.

...Mmmmm, I lke the sound of this.
I really hope you could work this out together  :beer:

People you are talking about nothing. ;)
Seriously.
1. The code is obscure. Every apparently insignificant change takes weeks of intense work.

My first idea was to raise n° of max formulas to say 32. This would make some people insanely happy I am sure. ;)

That means, if it's done... the whole parameter handling needs to be rewritten, losing compatibility, so to load params we need a conversion routine.

Imagine, given this, how insane is to think of ANY other modding.

2. The code contains large pieces in assembly. That's the source of nonportability and trouble. But also that's why the program is the fastest renderer I know.

Many things are hardcoded, not using constants just plain numbers.

Probably the idea was "ok the limit is 6 ... ok the max is 100 ...so don't bother it just works".
And it works ;) but change 6 to 32 or 100 to 1000... it's not so easy as it seems.

3. Again. Jesse asked to not publish the code. THIS DECISION IS NOT UNDER DISCUSSION
If we begin to pass it around it will likely end in the internet... for some reason...
Once this happens, no remedy exists.
This is a risk I don't want to take.

So again stop asking and asking.
The possible will be done when possible. ;)
Also don't try to insult or discuss about how Jesse codes. No please.

IMHO gpu rendering it's indeed the main feature that would make sense to develop asap instead of adding 50+ formula slots or whatever. Also full custom formula editor. Trying to code a gpu version of Mandelbulb3D it's something I'm considering since a while, only I didn't have the time before. I was hoping to have a nice and kind conversation about it with Jesse, like in good old times. Now I am only hoping this guy will do something good about it, now that I am aware he is the new owner of the code, now that I know I am officially out of the further development of M3D, and now that he somehow have this almighty power to decide which things are allowed to be discussed here, and which things I can say or not, based on his likes and dislikes. Haha, that last thing alone it's so ridicule and hilarious that I won't take this guy seriously anymore.

I love diversity, like it is in nature, in life itself, and like it is in fractals. I don't see what's wrong about multiple projects and versions. That would be awesome... Mandelbulb3D forked... a fractal program converting into a fractal. The only thing I could think of about Andreas don't liking it, it's the fear of another version resulting better than his own... lol

Hopefully the ones reading this thread will understand that it's not about likes or dislikes, it's about what is right and fair. Anyway, I will move on... I will work on a parallel project later or sooner, with the help of the right people, and with or without M3D source code. This guy is of course free of doing what he wants with Jesse code if he gave him the permission... I don't see yet in him any good ideas or determination. Only doubts, silence requests, complains, dislikes and authoritarian behaivour. Not to mention he's asking for low expectations since the start, lol. At the end of the day, my offer was indeed a GPU enabled Mandelbulb3D with fully customizable formula editor. I don't see what he is offering at all... But ok, it was Jesse's decision to give him the code, I cannot do anything but accept it. I will only make clear that if he decide at some point to make a commercial version, he will have to remove Amazing Surface and other formulas that I gave to Luca and Jesse to code for the program, and not to this man to get some money out of it.

I hope the spirit of M3D will prevail and not be lost.

Johan, you know what I am talking about, please allow me to use your own words:

“I am definitely a solitary Artist, but the exchange with the mathematicians and programmers at fractalforums.com has meant everything, without them I would not be where I am today with my art."

"I had a close collaboration with Jesse during the development of Mandelbulb 3D."

"I love this mutual respect that we have for each others skills at fractalforums that is what makes it such a intense boiling pot of ideas."

http://mandelwerk.deviantart.com/art/The-Mathematician-206354052
http://mandelwerk.deviantart.com/art/The-programmer-207422735
http://mandelwerk.deviantart.com/art/The-Artist-206966558


Luckily, the possibilities are still infinite. Despite Luca's opinion :)

I request a (colored) 3D point cloud export feature in ply format.  ;D

Since we are making suggestions...

I would like to offer an idea that I think will be easy to implement.  Just a few more features from the main program ported to the 3D Navi.  Specifically the "repeat from here" checkbox and maybe an undo feature for when we move to a bad spot and can't get back where we wanted to be. 

If moving features to the Navi is indeed easier, then while it's happening maybe even the formula tabs themselves for easy swapping formulas without jumping from window to window.  But, of course, I am perfectly happy with the software as it is!


A gpu version would be fantastic!!  If I had a graphics card   :hurt:


And colored point clouds sound interesting.  I have difficulty UV Mapping some of my obj files because they are so large they choke most programs capable of UV Mapping 3D Models.  So anything that would simplify that aspect would be great   O0

Sounds hopeless! :sad1:

People will ask questions. This is the kind of information needed to answer those questions.

Understood.
Are the ideas and methods inherent in the code to be kept private as well?

@DarkBeam: Do you know if the Monte Carlo render piece (that was added later in the development) required a complete rewrite?
If not, could other modules be added in the same way? (GPU rendering for example)

Request:
One thing I would like to see in the formula tab is the ability to swap two formulas rather than shifting.
Need to be able to swap forward or backward.
Example: F2 selected and right click to swap with F1 or F3.

Nice, how you try to turn your own anger against me. Did I say, I want not to collaborate? I did say yes, and you should contact me to talk about some ideas.
You didnt, but now you are writing about me in this thread in the 3rd person. With you showing such a behaviour, I have no interest in a collaboration with you.
But, you may still contact me, maybe it is a language barrier or something...

The other thing: Did I state that I want not to publish the source code? It is a wish of Jesse, of course, and we have to respect this, unless he is changing this boundary condition.
This can not be changed by discussing a lot and a lot again :-)

This money-argument is just ridicoulous, no need to waste more words on it.

Regarding the several versions: You know the situation from Apo? Apo2.09, Apo2.06JK-version, Apo2.09 3D Hack, Apo7X, Apo7X private edition, ...
It was a thought for discussion from my side, but you seem not very open to a discussion...

 :beer: Anyone?

 :flowers: maybe .... ?

There is no money involved, just lots of work, feeling and emotions. I really don't understand all the frustration and anger towards Mandelbulb 3D. I mean, we have Mandelbulber which is open source and under development. More possibilities for the future. Then there is Fragmentarium which used GPU, which on the long run could make both MB3D and Mandelbulber obsolete. This is also open source.

Since Mandelbulber is under active development, I don't understand why people are not moving towards this piece of software. Features can be requested and added, GUI could possibly change. And the developer is openly asking for help, giving everyone the chance to join. Why don't people just pick the stuff they like from MB3D, and request it for Mandelbulber?

Do MB3D users just want to stay in their comfort zone, fearing the change of using new software? What great things does MB3D have that makes everyone stay with it?

/me don't understanding the whole issue

@youhn : I agree 100%

There may be some wisdom in Jesse's decision.
Technologies change fast, highly specialized asm does not.
The "ideas" represented in this program are good and will continue to be expressed by others ;)

Thank you, Jesse, (and other contributors) for expressing these ideas and sharing your program.

This is something that many of us would love to see happen. I sincerely hope everyone expressing different opinions or ideas can take a step back and calm down. I would hate to see the possible progress of continued development for MB3D abandoned before it has even began due to differences in opinions. Surely all ideas are worth discussing and priorities could be given? I respect all coders opinions and ideas (Kali's, thargor6's, Luca's, everyone!) and it seems to me good things could be accomplished if all could work together.  :dink:

And something I've been curious about is could MB3d be made 64 bit? I'm not a coder, so sorry if that's a dumb question like I usually ask...

Actually, yes!  I cannot speak for others, but I do prefer to remain in my comfort zone when it comes to creating my Art.  While I have no  fear of the change of using new software, I simply see no need to do so.  I don't even use UltraFractal because I hate it's UI so much.

That does not mean it's not a good program, just that I have software I am comfortable with, and enjoy using.

There is absolutely no logical reason to use a program to relax and make art with when I find it cumbersome and a bother to just learn the interface.

That is the only reason I don't use Mandelbulber, UltraFractal, Fragmentarium, and a host of other software from many genres  ( example; I use Carrara for my 3D work because it's affordable and I took right to it's interface without any steep learning curve.  And despite it's immense power, open source nature, and fantastic reputation - I will never use Blender for anything other than a file converter as I simply Loathe it's interface!)



All that is nice, but it fails to take into account the wishes of the creator and owner of the program!

If he says it will never be open source we just have to accept it.  He is not here to defend himself, so we have no choice.  

As for 64 Bit - this was asked a lot when Jesse was here.  Yes, it would require a complete re-write and was deemed too much work.

Back when Carrara was 32 Bit only, users found a way to make it "Large Address Aware" which allowed it to use more than the 4 GB Ram limit set for 32 Bit software.  It was totally outside of the program itself and no coding was needed.  If that could be done for MB3D it could use a lot more RAM, but it would still run at the same speed.  The benefit would be in large calculations and higher resolution images.

Anybody have any idea if that is possible in this case?  I admit I am clueless in that department   :evil1:

It wasn't my intent for my comment to seem to be against Jessie's wishes and I'm sorry if anyone saw it that way. I was commenting on the different ideas on continued development, and how the coders seemed a bit thin skinned and immediately flying off the handle. I want this to succeed and not get bogged down with different approaches, forked versions and opinions. I think that would be in the best interest of everyone, wouldn't it?

Sorry if I misunderstood your post.

Yes, people are getting, as you say, a bit thin skinned over this.

I hope my words didn't imply I was scolding you in any way!

The future of MB3D is in good hands with Andreas, and I look forward to whatever he chooses to do with it.

Exactly this is my approach :-) But, I'm open for discussion of anything, just in a mature way  :beer:

we could continue releasing official versions here in the forums,

@thargor  you are in control of the main development and coordinate contributions ? (for now ) ?

I just ask; all the collabs must be mature and trusted persons, and Jesse's decisions is not under discussions.
Should be enough for everyone ok?

Yes, I will try, and I have also some concrete ideas for now, even if I did not announce them, yet. I was also talking to some users yet to know what they demand and browsed through the suggestions here.


And, the really GOOD news: I had a long conversation with Kali this evening, and we spoke about all of those controverse topics. We cleared all the stuff which caused aggression, some only due to language barriers, and also sorted out our emotions.

Best regards and a nice weekend,
Andreas

nice that you sorted it out with kali

i as fractalforums admin can offer various stuff, e.g. a dedicated GIT repository can be hosted on my server as well, just in case you dont have a version control system yet, and as i said before i would love to have the binaries published here at a central place - this is just my wish for stengthening fractalforums position, and as it has been founded here and developed over the years

this is just an offer, and i am happy with every direction a stable development of it goes

As Andreas said, we sorted out this chain of unfortunate events.

I would only add that someone for some reason I don't fully understand, was making noise between us and that contributed to the misunderstanding.
But I don't want to continue any controversy, and I'm also not running away from my responsability on this bad moment we had here.
So I want to say sorry to all of you for my behaivour.

Luckily, Jesse was here reading this thread and sent me the source code by email. You know, Jesse being generous is not a suprise at all.
But it was still a very nice surprise when I checked my mail this morning :) - THANKS JESSE!

And more good news... today we agreed with Andreas he will lead this project and I will only try to contribute and help him with the further development.
I understood the multiple forks idea was not going to work well in this particular case.

So I think we have a happy ending here, and also a happy beggining after all :)

Cheers :beer:

Kali

Cheers! :beer: :-)

Cheers! :beer:  :whistle2:

Oh, and I'm on a holiday for this week. So please don't think we talked a lot and now happens nothing :D Some actual development will start next week!

Best regards and happy easter to you too,
Andreas

Super easter news! looks like we have the show runner and collaborators!

Looking forward to future releases - some great ideas have already been presented for new features.

May I suggest one of these  bug tracking soft dev type apps? ( plenty of free web based ones around ! )
So there is a website where people can up-vote features ?

It would be cool for collaborators anyway to see what's what.


  :D

@all  :beer: ..i'll even buy you all one if we ever meet up and i'm a traditional tight fisted scot so that's saying something peas love n tings..great to see resolution on this.. and really looking forward to continued development..thanks folks

(No need to comment on this, just to show some sign of life:) a little bit belated, the development has just started today! Will post a link to an alpha-release as soon there is something serious, my plan is to have an open alpha/beta-test. So everybody who is interested, may just try it out.

Best regards,
Andreas

Great news, and I'm sure many of us look forward to it

Thank you Jesse for giving your baby into new hands. I think this was not an easy step like with every huge project. Thank you for giving us such an impressive piece of software with so many great features. So many different fractal worlds have been already found and so many still stay hidden in the realm of math and wait for their exploration.
The possibilities are infinite and the infinity is possible.
Lets dive into it  ^-^

Andreas we can hardly wait :D

Hello all,
because the sourcecode of MB3D finally was made public, it is now possible to create a central repository, where anyone who wants, can contribute.
I will create such a repository , and also check in the changes I already made from my local Git repository and post a link later.

Andreas

Hello all  :dink:

Thank you for the great toy
 
alpha1 + Fo7 Fo8
(http://www.evolution-of-genius.de/3d/fractal/mandelbulb3d_alpha1_jotero.png)

Please to Fo16  :embarrass:

ciao
torolf