Spring developer crisis

[smoth]

so are we all happy, can it be hugs and handjobs tiem now?

[Das Bruce]

1. Submitting a patch only makes you a contributor. An engine developer would be someone who contributes steadily over an extended period of time.

No true Scotsman.

[PicassoCT]

You dont become engine devs because you like hammering bugs.
As far as i remember, nobody really likes the bug searching, and refactoring, and weeding out noob-comits (n^3 in pathgrinding, that should dooo).

You become a engine dev, if you have a baby with the engine. Something you commited to it, jK had LUS. Kloot the pathfinder. Zerver MT. Abma.. well he is just here to proof your point.

The point is. you need a reason to get involved. You dont get involved, if everyone tells you the engine is basically complete, and every new cool stuff you come up with is out-sourced to a shader or lua..

In a way, (if you think of some general lua as part of the source) springengine has quite some devs doing stuff. We have smoth building a general unitsystem - zk-guys working on gui and stuff.
All that would be core engine elsewhere.

[SpliFF]

In a way, (if you think of some general lua as part of the source) springengine has quite some devs doing stuff. We have smoth building a general unitsystem - zk-guys working on gui and stuff.
All that would be core engine elsewhere.

In a way, that's missing the point. I didn't start this thread as a pissing contest for who works hardest. I was very specific that the problem I see is a lack of C++ devs capable and willing to support the low-level engine components - network, graphics, threads, sync, pathfinding and sound. Lua is not going to replace the graphics stack or net code so having game/ai devs doesn't solve the problem.

Despite all the claims that AI devs will jump in and patch the engine that simply isn't supported by the evidence. Try to name for me 5 AI devs who contributed anything but AI code (and did so consistently) and I think you'll struggle. The reality is that engine devs are engine devs and there aren't many left. That isn't a problem that a thousand ai/game devs will solve and pretending otherwise is wishful thinking.

[gajop]

Try to name for me 5 AI devs who contributed anything but AI code (and did so consistently) and I think you'll struggle.

abma, hoijui, tobi, kloot, gajop
There's probably more here you may know, that I didn't even have to name myself: http://springrts.com/wiki/AI:Skirmish:List
Now please, I want a "No true Scotsman" statement.

[SpliFF]

kloot and tobi were engine devs first. abma and hoijoi are mainly Java devs. Your list is fairly short on AI devs who consistently work on engine internals other than AI. Other than kloot and tobi (both conspiciously absent these days) how many of those could handle the internal components I just mentioned?

PS. Not sure why you mentioned yourself. You have 5 commits in 12 months, you don't meet the qualification of "active developer" by any measure.

[Silentwings]

You sound a bit out of touch there to me SpliFF - e.g. kloot is far from absent and abma does a lot more than java.

[Kloot]

There sure is a lot of angst (and repressed FUD from a certain ex-dev) in this thread.

Spring development may stop at some point when there is nobody left with sufficient interest to work on the engine anymore. To pretend this won't happen is probably naive, projects simply tend to have a natural lifespan and Nothing lasts Forever™. That doesn't mean Spring as a whole will die: the engine and every game ever made for it will still be available for download and anyone could pick up the torch again if they wanted to.

Working on these kind of projects is a huge investment in time for very little reward

This is the one and only valid reason we (like many other large projects without a clear "purpose") don't get many new regular contributors. Learning enough of Spring's code structure to make useful changes really isn't such a big obstacle for people with decent programming experience or a compsci background, nor the fact that the source maybe doesn't satisfy someone's OO wet dream (those might even be seen as challenges, it can be fun to pick an engine apart), finding the time and motivation to daily routine work is. If you are worried, then step up and at least make the occasional patch or accept the situation for what it is right now (or hang up posters I guess). Panic threads like these don't help.

I was very specific that the problem I see is a lack of C++ devs capable and willing to support the low-level engine components - network, graphics, threads, sync, pathfinding and sound.
...
How many could handle the internal components I just mentioned?

Anyone with a desire to understand them can, they ain't rocket science.

So open up your favorite text editor or IDE, grab the source and start reading.

[gajop]

kloot and tobi were engine devs first. abma and hoijoi are mainly Java devs. Your list is fairly short on AI devs who consistently work on engine internals other than AI. Other than kloot and tobi (both conspiciously absent these days) how many of those could handle the internal components I just mentioned?

There are 4 active engine devs and you want me to name 5 that are actively contributing stuff and came from AI? Yeah

PS. Not sure why you mentioned yourself. You have 5 commits in 12 months, you don't meet the qualification of "active developer" by any measure.

You wanted to name people who developed AIs and contributed patches that are mainly not AI related. I did that and never claimed to be an active developer.

[SpliFF]

There are 4 active engine devs and you want me to name 5 that are actively contributing stuff and came from AI? Yeah

I don't want you to do anything except acknowledge the problem and propose solutions. You seem very eager to deny the problem.

You wanted to name people who developed AIs and contributed patches that are mainly not AI related. I did that and never claimed to be an active developer.

You didn't do that, you actually made my point for me by mentioning ex-devs, occasional contributors and people who worked on the engine first but made some AI. I'm trying to disprove the contention that keeps getting raised that we can solve the lack of engine devs by recruiting AI devs. The evidence doesn't support that claim and your claims aren't evidence. All you're doing is adding to the constant derailing of this topic by bringing up an argument that solves absolutely nothing.

In 5 pages of conversation only 2 decent ideas have been raised. The first (kickstarter) was completely ignored by everybody and the second (the poster) is nice but a bit too localised and too general to have much effect (in my opinion). If I had an easy answer i'd give it but beating me around the head with the same argument that ai/game devs become engine devs when that contradicts the actual history of this project isn't productive either.

[Anarchid]

Kickstarter requires an inspiring singular epic and reachable endgoal.

Engine maintenance isn't one, therefore any kickstarting even conceivable to benefit the engine would be a game with enough arrogance to actually push across the game/engine threshold in force.

[hoijui]

@Spliff
you ask for 5 AI devs that are active devs, while we only have 4 active devs. that is quite stupid.
there is no question about whether AI devs are a good source for engine devs. they are! the only new "active dev" in the last few years, is abma, which was an AI dev first. we had about 10 AI devs contributing to the engine in the last few years (of course, many of them made just one or two commits). that is 100%!!!!
i would say that about 90% of them could be good engine devs. some of them, in my eyes, were better devs then all the "active" engine devs i got to know (i only remember the name of one though: hughwperkins).
AI devs usually don't stick, cause they have more attractive stuff in sight. this is not cause they are AI devs, but cause they are good devs.
PS: i don't recall abma doing any spring related java. he does pretty much everything else though.

evidence DOES prove that AI devs are a good source for engine devs (100%!!! ). the only problem is, that you don't want to accept that. it is not derailing the thread.
if this is true (and it is) then it is a valuable argument, because it means that it makes sense to make AI deving more attractive, if you want to get more engine devs.

[cleanrock]

If we can increase player base of spring games i think we would automatically get more devs of all kinds.
I think ZK has done a good job increasing player base recently (it got me back to spring).

Here are some things i think can attract more players:

easier config of games
zk is a mess to configure even if i think it may be the easiest game to configure
make sure game defaults are good (icon view distance comes to mind)

fun and good single player tutorials and missions
single player missions should prepare players for multiplayer games, atm many newbies are prolly scared off when bashed by veterans

My opinion is that engine has been good enough since long, we need to attract more players to make sure spring survives.

[smoth]

cleanrock, those are content dev issues though.

[cleanrock]

Yes, and it will help engine.
People are not interested in spring and games if games or not fun and good.
Games are most important now imo to get more players, more players mean more devs, simple as that imo.

[smoth]

I agree but the single player and mission stuff is taking time for people to develop. I cannot speak for ZK but as far as myself, I have a good while before I get to the actual game making stage again. I am, at lack of a better description bogged down with toolchain work. Much of my time right now between tool chain is planning the actual story for my game.

[FireStorm_]

...Meanwhile...

Today I spend an hour hanging up about 15 posters on campus, some A4 and A3. I didn't want to do any guerilla advertising, so I only went to bulletin boards.

I noticed two things.
Either I found a board that is used to the max, and adding a poster probably only changed the colour composition of the crazy illegible mess that is the bulletin board. (I did put them up anyway... you never know...)

Or I found boards maintained by a student association. They looked clean and nice, and my posters had to be stamped and dated. That also gave me an excuse to talk to them. It was like that at Mathematics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, so I have a good feeling about that.

I didn't converse as much about spring (let alone the engine) as I intended to. I kinda met people I know and got sidetracked in one of the bars.

Yet I feel I can do more. Maybe i'm gonna try again sometime, perhaps with different poster(s).

More likely i'm gonna target student housing buildings next, which are mainly off-campus. Hundreds of students using the same front door in a bunch of buildings... it might pay off sticking something on those doors too.

[PepeAmpere]

Stop talk and make content noobs.

[Tim Blokdijk]

@FireStorm_
Cool, in an earlier discussion there was an idea to add a "Thesis?" page to the Spring site. I still think that would be a good idea, if that's added then maybe put that url on the poster?

[PepeAmpere]

Omg is it only me who thinks current poster make poeple laugh instead of attracting them?

If you make screenshot from ZERO-K or other game and make a poster from it, you have zillion times bigger chance for some success!

Or hire some friend with at least tiny graphic feeling. PLS

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