End of Whacko

[UnConeD]

There's no point in stretching, so here goes: Whacko AVS VI is the last in the series, there won't be a VII.

There are several reasons for my 'departure', I'll try to sum up the most important ones:

- My life is becoming busier and busier. College is taking up a lot of time, and I'm not even doing much. Exams are coming up and I find I have tons of work to catch up... AVS has been taking away too much time for me.

- AVS is frozen. It's been ages since we've had any improvement in AVS. We're still stuck at 2.5(.1), with a huge wishlist still growing every week. It's definitely a challenge to keep trying to innovate on a fixed platform, but when the challenge becomes a chore, it's not fun anymore. In Whacko AVS VI I had to spend ages trying to come up with new ideas...
On top of that, we never hear anything from the people who developed AVS, it's like AVS is the annoying piece of software that is still used but that no-one wants to update because its architecture is outdated. I really hope the current Nullsoft-silence is because they're working on an AVS3 that will be hardware accelerated and include all the things we want, but then again that's just wishful thinking: Nullsoft has always been eager to release beta's and previews, so why would they keep this a secret? The same goes for AVS presets on the winamp.com site... non-AVSers find that presets swamp the database, and tons of low-quality work is included in it. It's unorganized and hard to find anything if you don't know it by name.

- I'm running out of ideas. I hinted at it here above, but I'll say it again: making Whacko AVS VI was damn hard. I kept thinking what the hell else I could do that wouldn't look like something that could've come out of packs I-V. I have a few neat ideas, but none of them are possible in AVS without getting an FPS below 0.1 on a shiny new PC. Innovation has always been the trademark of Whacko AVS, so without it people would just get disappointed.

- After 6 packs, people are still complaining about style and responsiveness. You might say that these people are jerks, but look at the ratings El-vis or Fsk or any of the other technically superior packs got. No-one complains about style with them, so obviously they are doing something that I'm not. And if after 6 packs, I still can't make presets with style, then why would I expect a seventh pack would be better? The idea of making technically complex presets was the original idea behind Whacko AVS, yet that's obviously not enough.

I'm going to take a break from AVSing. I might come back in a few months, but that's not a promise, more of a wish. AVS has been fun, but for the reasons above, I can't continue anymore.

Nevertheless I see good things on the horizon, with all the talented authors around .


(PS: For the faq or wishlist, I suggest someone else who feels up to it takes the responsibility. Just bug Rovastar if you want an update, but try to submit everything in copy/pastable UBB code so he has as little work as needed.)