I wonder if it’s a good idea to open up to donations? I certainly would donate some, as I like to donate to projects I like (and this is certainly one of my favorites).
Did you give any thought about it?
i would also like to donate a few euro’s to this rather promising project!
me too
Donations are now closed and will be at least while I’m able to pay off server. I fear it would be more trouble with deciding who and how should use that money than real advantage.
And I don’t know if it would be fair to accept money for duplicating game that was developed by someone else (NWC).
Anyway thank you for generous intention 
Tow, may be you put here your post address, and anybody why like vcmi may send to you a postcard? 
http://www.celestialheavens.com/forums/images/smiles/all_hail.gif
I couldn’t agree more. For a while I was thinking what/how to answer in this thread. In a way you guys deserve some sort of a “reward” and “help” for all that you invested in this project (mainly time, but also money). But then I realized it will be a hassle and a headache to set up an account for donations, then to decide what exactly to do with those money, who should have access to the account etc… It may turn out to be a waste of time and risks to even spoil the relations between the devs once the debates on how to manage the money start. And as you said, that’s only half the problem, the rest being the fact that this is just re-creating NWC’s game.
I think the best “donation” we can make is actually in “time”. Our time is sth the devs most probably need more than our money. Especially if more people with coding skills would make more time for it, it could make the difference between finishing the basic game in 1 or 2 years, hence saving Tow/TowDragon money, but in a different way (and of course time as well). But not only coders, also testers are welcome to dedicate more time, to help spot issues sooner or help identifying the steps that lead to a certain bug, to ease up programmers’ job.
The intention is indeed generous, and it’s nice to see people want to support the project in whatever way. But if money is not a possibility, let’s ‘donate’ what we can: our time and skills.
I hope that in the future all of us, especially Tow & Tow Dragon, will be able to sit with beer next to the comp and play VCMI rev. 1.0 with fully implemented and working H3 and say that was good job and worth to spend all that time on it.
I think it would be the best reward.
PS>Ofc, if you need money don’t hesitate to ask
I need money :P, but looking what i done and what done others it looks it wouldn’t be fair (my part of improving vcmi is too tiny)
I think everybody needs money, but as Tow said it would be PITA to divide it fair
so probably better not open donations until there’s so much people that they would donate 200$ or more together 
Sorry for pulling out that old thread. I agree that splitting the money is impossible. I suggest to accept donations for server hosting bills only. That would be fair for everyone! People who don’t feel like coding are happy to spend a few dollars to at least help out that way. I have a few posts that say people would donate me/others to port VCMI or other games to Maemo (like fheroes2). I clearly don’t want the money you deserve, I’d like to point them here.
If you get too much money (let’s say the servers are paid for 2 years) then you could start some kind of contests. Take a part of the source and ask developers to make it twice as fast. The one with the fastest solution gets a small reward? Just an idea…
Take the money and feed the servers with it!
I have been getting into the Elemental beta, however the Stardock forum stability is rubbish. How much (no currency terms, just a rough description) does it cost to host these (VCMI) forums? And do you find them reliable when they are under high usage? Are there any cost-effective forum set-ups that can handle heaps of traffic pretty much all year round? I was thinking perhaps some Stardock fans (like me) could donate a little bit of money to start up and/or maintain a much better forum, as the current one has errors and crashes and is reasonably frequently offline many times for hours. (I think it would seriously be hurting their progress with their new game.)
I know this might be a little off-topic, but I’m interested in your answers.
Best regards,
Steven.
It’s not so simple, the thing is that I’m maintaining on the server other, not related to VCMI sites and using it for various private initiatives. Donations given to VCMI won’t be entirely used on purpose of VCMI. I feel more comfortable paying for server myself, at least while I’m able to afford it without problem.
Donations won’t speed VCMI development up, because we don’t lack money. As Zamolxis wrote above - the best possible donation is your time. Code contributing, testing, advertising project among friends or even some kind words of support here - it all helps us more than money could.
VCMI forums are not the biggest “cost generator” for me, I have on server another, about ten times bigger (though and less visited) forum. As for VCMI, downloads and screenshots hotlinked by several popular sites use much bandwidth, if we are low on resources, downloads can be redirected to the sourceforge (as I did a few times at the old server).
I think that VCMI forums only should run fine with a decent shared hosting account. It’s cheap nowadays, ~30$ / year at trustworthy provider should be absolutely enough.
If you think about setting up new forum, selecting a reliable hosting provider is an absolute priority. Look for opinions (especially negative ones), it’s better to pay a little more and avoid troubles in future. Don’t trust providers with unlimited space/bandwidth for pennies, and providers without history.
Good provider should allow you switching between hosting plans, so you could start with cheapest one and upgrade it as the forums develop. It’s practically impossible to predict how many resources the forums will need before its running.
Have you had a look at the Elemental site (forums.elementalgame.com)? How much do you think it would cost Stardock to run an always up, web-site for all Elemental game traffic? Or do you think it is better for them to focus on improving their (currently stability-poor) forums instead?
Best regards,
Steven.
True, but those who can’t code, or don’t have time to test/advertise/support are glad to have another option to help. I understand that you don’t need the money, still, you could set up a PayPal account and leave the money there until you’d have a usage for it. You could even split the server costs and take the money that would be used by VCMI. Document it in the Wiki… Or just let it sit there until you loose your job and need the money. 
Once again, I fully understand why you don’t want donations, but there are people that only could help that way and would be happy if they could. Guess there has to be a way?
I not feel like collecting money in hope I’d find a decent usage for it. If there will be such a need, then we’ll think about fund-raising.
If one really needs to share money now, he can donate libraries we use or some charity. Or check if fheroes2 guy accepts donations
What about beer?
Nach another idea for collecting cash would be actualy paying somebody to do some coding but i guess it’s double edged sword
Paying somebody to do the coding would be very costly. I don’t think we could get enough money.
BTW, here is a nice text about donating open-source projects:
codinghorror.com/blog/2008/0 … jects.html
maybe paying somebody for making part of work of the project which isn’t coding?
I.E. animated VCMI Logo shown when VCMI starts or some menus graphics?
some graphics for new features? graphics for new town? and not only graphics - some music, some stories for new content… well maybe something not audiovisual too?
i can do you something in after effects when it comes to such thing like text ;p -i like playing with that
You could start at pledge of some sorts? Some computer games pledges reaches six digits. I am not someone who could do any real help on this project - but I do very much love to play HOMM3 - and have been since it was released. I would very much like to contribute something to the project from time to time - but unless you need music lessons - I do think money is the only thing I’ve got.
I like this idea. What about gathering some money to hire an animator to redo the original game’s creature sprites in hi-res, or redraw some of the battle backgrounds or menu art? We could even get a kickstarter project running.