Problem with what youre saying is that you want it to be so if one person makes a tool no one else can recreate it at all. This feels like saying tools like gimp are bad because they directly copy photoshop’s ideas. Whenever somebody makes a paid tool free alternatives are made. The reality is people that use this plugin most likely weren’t going to buy elttob’s plugin either way.
Which - okay yes, let’s talk about that. This is disrespectful. Incredibly so. In economics parlance, this is known as “predatory pricing” and it’s a tactic used to offensively drive others out of business. It involves selling - or even giving away stuff - below cost. I’d point you to the example of Amazon getting Diapers.com shut down by massively undercutting them to an unsustainable degree.
I wouldnt really call this a “competitor” as its most likey less feature complete and less polished. If anything this plugin almost works as a “trial” of yours. I personally used Gimp until it couldn’t fufill my needs and then purchased photoshop. I would argue its likely better to have an inferior open source lying around than an equivalent but pirated version.
I say this because now if you google “relight free roblox” This inferior plugin is at the top as opposed to an actual pirated version
However, yeah this plugin is a middle finger to you. If a large corporation made your plugin this would be more acceptable imo. I dont think its cool of this guy to market this as “free version of relight”
tldr: most people who use free versions weren’t going to used paid versions, this inferior open src version will be what comes up when people look for pirated versions now. Still not right to make things like this since you’re taking away from indie developers.
I like Elttob’s projects a lot, I even bought Volumika, but holy cow, to see everyone here be like “NOOO YOU CANT COPY THIS IDEA ITS DISRESPECTFUL” is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, that’s like if I called you out for using Blender instead of Autodesk Maya or whatever paid 3D modeling software came out first (i have no idea).
He did not stole code, he made it himself and made it for free, cry about it lol.
Here’s the thing, it’s very identical to elttob’s upcoming plugin. You can’t tell me that he’s trying to make a free version to what elttob is working on.
Please don’t try and make a free alternative that’s just straight up very identical to elttob’s plugin. It’s not you trying to be original, you’re just copying his plugin visually.
An example of a free alternative that is original is Paint.net. (the app is literally called that, but if you click on the link it’ll lead you to a dead site)
Paint.net is clearly a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, but the visuals are completely different. They have some same tools, but they also their own separate tools. For an example Paint.net doesn’t have a smear tool, and Adobe Photoshop does. If you want a smear tool imported to Paint.net, then you’ll need to install a community made plugin.
I think the point has been made. Let them continue working on this in silence. Even if I vehemently disagree with their methods and do find it utterly disgraceful, I’ll be happy to compete with them.
Here’s why. I could sit here and whine all day about the morality of these things. But that’s forgetting what’s really important here. I’m not here to defend some fiefdom of users. I’m here because I wanted to elevate others’ work. Arguing with someone about whether it’s right to copy doesn’t solve for that. I don’t want to spend my life doing that.
So let them. I’ll just work harder because that’s better for everyone. Now then, let’s see if you can keep pace.
Honestly, I think it’s amazing and it’s better then I could do and it’s open sourced. Will definitely be grabbing myself a copy of this. This is free as well and open sourced? I love this!
At the end of the day, I don’t care about the other product. I care about supporting people that might not have a lot of attraction and in this stage, we don’t really get eyes focused on us as smaller creators. I encourage people to help these smaller creators out because we’ve been there. Amazing work, don’t let anybody get to you.
This proposes that it’s a bad idea for alternatives to have just as many features or even more than what the thing it’s an alt for does. It has no stolen code, UI, or anything. Of course it’s going to have a similar feel to the other product.
Guys, leave this topic alone. Let’s get this thread back on topic - I’ve already said that I’m fine with it. Debate this somewhere else; they deserve to have space for people to actually talk about the product and new releases. It’s only fair that we don’t derail their thread further.
Honestly, this is great. This avoids a monopoly on this small niche of plugins, you cannot really steal a concept and complain much about it, else more than a quarter of the devforum that releases simulator games would he held liable as hell, because they are very much a copy of a copy of a copy, even if you deny it much. I’d also note that both parties are wrong, Elttob because he is acting (I’d argue) in bad faith by politely disagreeing with the intent of the plugin, being that it is a copy of it’s plugin, which in my honest opinion is quite overpriced. By the looks of it, it’s just some trigonometry sparkled in with some calculations, not hard to replicate, still, OP decided to make the UI literally a 1:1, which is what I claim is wrong on their end.
The fact that bro’s 20 dollar plugin was easily rebuilt in a few days by a little kid on the devforum and put up for open source, makes you question if it was really worth 20 dollars.
Yeah, it’s just middle school high school mathematics with a sprinkle of Physics. It’s nothing particularly special to be worth 20 dollars, anyone who has a Physics book, and has the will to endure it can make a 1:1 clone, without pasting source
you could probably even just write a script for that in like less time too, put all of the existing properties for instances on roblox inside a table, then loop through the table and check if the target class has that property and just check if the last class has that property, and then you copy it to the new one and bam!
that’s the simplest way I can think of, there are probably even more efficient ones, but you get the idea.
I get his whole “price your work thing”, but like bro really be selling a glorified script i can build for 15 dollars.
Also I do not dislike elltob, i actually like a lot of his plugins, I bought InCommand and Volumika because I really felt like those were worth the price and loved them.
I don’t have a problem with people competing and making an alternate product.
The main problem ̶i̶s̶ was that the OP doesn’t even describe what the Plug-in does! I still don’t know which of “the other guy’s” plugin this is supposed to replicate.
Zero effort was put into the description of what is it or what it is supposed to do.
Is this volumetric lighting(as in fog) or is it just setting up the sun angle?
So, back on topic: What the heck is it?
EDIT:
I see he has added some details to the OP so it is more clear now what it does. This is not what I expected it to be, but at least there is a description in the OP now.
@Elttob 's Relight plugin is absolutely not worth its cost and because of that, someone like OP here made a 1 to 1 recreation in a few days and made it open source. Which in turn will send Elttob’s sales into the toliet.
Paid plugins should actually be an actual piece of software that adds extensive assistance and tooling for development (Such as Moon Animator and Datastore Editor), not just speeding up a part of a game that already isnt very tedious (Celestial and shadow positioning).
I fully support what was made here but not the part of directly copying another plugin. Competition should be about making products that offer different and better tools to accomplish the same task.
If paid plugins are going to be the new standard from now on then developers need to actually make professional tools, not just a glorified Sun Position Plugin with fancy UI.
Experiments! Turn on experiments in the settings to try out the new