where is the IMDN - Page 2

where is the IMDN

Discuss the source code and development of Spring Engine in general from a technical point of view. Patches go here too.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

if you dont know about something whats to say it doesnt exist? And if it doesnt exist anymore, you could say you killed it off......

And that is technically true. the spring release cycle in itself and the lack of notice outside #sy has killed off a number of projects and almost crippled some others via demotivation.
User avatar
jcnossen
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 2440
Joined: 05 Jun 2005, 19:13

Post by jcnossen »

I don't think its fair to blame sy of dying projects. The spring team is not morally obligated to watch and stimulate other projects, its all free time anyway. If people have a nice project, they should come if they want exposure of it, this is how it works in any opensource environment.
We're not to blame that they are using the wrong channel... please.

The succesful projects are made by people who find it interesting to build something, not by people who need others to motivate them. That is not something you can change anyway. This category of contributors might stick around a bit longer if you give them lots of attention, but will leave as soon as the news has passed.
User avatar
smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Post by smoth »

in all fairness, I have never had a hard time reaching Tobi, trepan, yeha, or JC. They have always been more then friendly and quite accommodating. I really appreciate the kindness they have shown me. If someone doesn't have the ability to contact a dev then they cannot operate Private messages on a forum... and that is concerning to me.
User avatar
AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

You and tobi keep going on how you arent obligated to motivate people. Where did this come from? It can be argued that some of these people have more motivation than you or tobi at some points, and they dont always want exposure immediatly, and they're fully aware that if they wanted that they only need post a thread in #main.

I point out iamacup + UF 2.0+3.0(soon to be rolled out) as one prime example of this lobby side development who has since moved to #sy.

But a lot of the 'deaths' you say I shouldnt blame #sy for are because of demotivation via lack of notice, relying on things then having it all udnermined, or sudden unexpected events throwing everything upside down and inside out, all pretty much avoidable by watching #sy like a hawk 24/7.

I leave you with this:

http://bdsm.kicks-ass.org/Spring/peeks/cli1.jpg

A functioning java lobby that went totally unnoticed, yet was killed off believe it or not by the community being asses in #main.
User avatar
BvDorp
Posts: 439
Joined: 14 Oct 2005, 12:09

Post by BvDorp »

Really, AF, doesn't it bother you that, in any discussion or argument you're participating in, there's almost no one to find who supports you?

People that need the devs to support them, more than now, are useless, because in the end, the part when bughunting, annoying complains and more annoying feature requests come in, there's little glory to be found.

So, my point is: the devs are enough aware of what's going on, and should not be asked to be around more than they do now.

More beer and chips, anyone? :twisted:
User avatar
jcnossen
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 2440
Joined: 05 Jun 2005, 19:13

Post by jcnossen »

A functioning java lobby that went totally unnoticed, yet was killed off believe it or not by the community being asses in #main.
Indeed hard to believe that someone is able to make an entire java lobby but doesn't post a single message on in on the forum, irc or through PM... either of which would have caused attention to it. For all I know it could have been the nextdoor nabour who demotivated the guy, but that doesnt make it the spring teams fault.
User avatar
Licho
Zero-K Developer
Posts: 3803
Joined: 19 May 2006, 19:13

Post by Licho »

Tbh, no contributor should require attention of devs. It's not a kindergarten, people should have another motivation than gaining notice/respect of dev team.

And regarding that lobby - well I think that many people like to experiment. But experimenting != commitment to finish their project and maintain it for some time. It's relatively simple to make small demo program, but as usually, 80% of project takes less than 20% of effort and remaining 20% of project take 80% of effort. This will be true especially for any lobby client - which has strong rival in tasclient and is going to be used by hundreds of people. I also made springie autohost during two days of "experimentator" mood but it took another month of occasional work to implement remaining features I envisionaged, fix all bugs, hear out complaints, and refine it into final stage.

Devs were friendly to me, my questions were answered and small features were added to spring to make autohosting easier. Betalord was releasing lobby updates without any prior notice (so I had to change authost for new protocol quickly after each new tasclient release :), but he was otherwise helpfull too.

Biggest detractors were some random users who keep telling me that autohosts sux, they hate it and want autohost servers removed from lobby.
I noticed only one negative reaction from devs and it was just AF complaining about springie implementing !maplink too, besides cookiebot.

Any person that is going to modify engine itself needs even more courage and willpower - to spend hours just reading code or fixing hard bugs. I don't see any way how present devs could motivate someone to do it (and how would they find out that person is skilled enough and has enough willpower to do something usefull).
User avatar
LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Post by LordMatt »

Licho wrote:Truth
tombom
Posts: 1933
Joined: 18 Dec 2005, 20:21

Post by tombom »

AF wrote:I leave you with this:

http://bdsm.kicks-ass.org/Spring/peeks/cli1.jpg

A functioning java lobby that went totally unnoticed, yet was killed off believe it or not by the community being asses in #main.
What happened? Your lobby looks pretty cool, I'm not sure why you decided to stop work on it.
User avatar
Peet
Malcontent
Posts: 4383
Joined: 27 Feb 2006, 22:04

Post by Peet »

He's not talking about aflobby >_>
Kloot
Spring Developer
Posts: 1867
Joined: 08 Oct 2006, 16:58

Post by Kloot »

That's Orakio's client, who left in a hissy fit after posting
an exploit in #main and getting rightly shafted for it. Big
loss?
Last edited by Kloot on 20 Jul 2008, 19:44, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Indeed, however your all making a lot of assumptions.

Licho, I asked you about !maplink not because I was being negative or I wanted a monopoly on !maplink, but because I was being pestered via pm by people who found it annoying when they got pm's from 7 different bots sometimes with conflicting results.

All of you also seem to be full of assumptions too, exept bvdorp whois just trying to troll.

btw bvdorp, whats the point of saying something if you require a whole chorus of people behind you saying it too? If that was the case nothing would ever be said.

I'm not blaming the sy's, I'm blaming #sy. The channel not its occupants. There are a number of people who refuse to log onto that server or cant. I know blackliger as a prime example refuses to log into that server unless summoned because it hasnt got persistant nicknames and registration. Others are in positions where they cant get there or find it awkward for a variety of reasons.

Whatsmore you continue to assume I want devs to take an active role. On the contrary in my previous post I tried to point out that people dont want devs barging in offering support and motivation, I never asked for that at all, and tbh it'd be quite egotistical if they did that.

And tombom you should take the tiem to read all the forums or at leats look at what threads there are, as thread titles can give away information too. You'd notice that since I gave up on AFLobby in november I've since pickd it up again and gotten quite far with it.

You all seem to be making a huuuge deal out of this and blowing it out of proportions and trying to shift what I'm saying so that it looks like I'm attacking someone when I havent mentioned anyone nor do I wish to imply it.

Jelmer you seem to be reacting as if I targetted you, when I targetted something that doesnt even have a physical form.
Tbh, no contributor should require attention of devs. It's not a kindergarten, people should have another motivation than gaining notice/respect of dev team.
And yes licho I respect that statement and I whole heartedly agree with it, but I fail to see how it is applies once you discard the assumptions of other posters.


In the mean time I think one solution would be an IRC logbot. Procedures plans and notification of development cycles and events are next to impossible if your not sitting in #sy for most of the day. If your project depends on another project you'll want to know what direction its heading and how it will develop and what events are iminent, yet this is next to impossible outside of #sy.

The only guidelines and planning or statement of intentions outside of #sy are tim blodjiks roadmaps, which arent being adhered to outside of resync and only in the vaguest of senses.

And is it so hard to believe that someones motivation for building something may be aimed at the people in the lobby and the people they hang out with and not the people in the forums and the devs?
Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

Post by Tobi »

You seem to think you miss a real lot by not sitting in #sy or something, but there really isn't that much discussed there. Most really important stuff is /msg'ed anyway (which isn't much either :o), and somehow I have the feeling that will only increase if there sits a logbot in #sy, so that everyone can out-of-context quote us on what we say there...

Also, plans or roadmaps are nice, but if you know in advance that no one will follow them anyway, then I don't see the point of making/publishing them.

Don't understand me wrong, I'd prefer an more open&planned development process myself (If we would know release times beforehand, we would publish them. However, we just don't know them until the moment supreme), but most attempts to push towards that didn't work anyway, so we just continue doing things the way we feel most comfortable with. And since it's a hobby, I doubt we could be really wrong regarding that...

I don't think it's a good to change IM service/server/protocol because some persons refuse to log on for personal reasons. That way there wouldn't be any IM protocols left in the end because there's always someone who refuses to log on to that particular server/with that particular protocol.

And finally, if someone really wants to know some plans, they have got a mouth to talk with and a pair of hands to chat with, so they can just message one of us...
User avatar
smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Post by smoth »

However, normal processes like a planned release are a bit out of the feild for such an atypical project like Spring. There are tons of features in the works and for the most part it reached it's origonal goal and now grows to huge proportions.

I can barely keep up with all the new features while I develop my mod. However, I don't want you guys to stop adding them. The engine is not perfect and it has it's bugs but I love what it can do. It gives me the more freedom then any rts has ever had, if I could devote more time to helping you guys I would.

I find that #SY combined with PMs here and the manits all work out quite good. There are many bugs still sure, there are things that need attention but to be honest, I hate taking up the devs time. The time they talk to me could be time they are working on stability, desyncs etc. So I am glad they do not sit at the beck and call of the player base or addon base.
User avatar
AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Well it'd just be nice fi thigns where clearer. For example your work on sync. You can piece it together from the forum and svn commits, but there's no quick simple statement saying what you'd like todo or that its one of your roles.

And yah I guess I read too much into whats in #sy when I'm not there but I am always hearing things about spring or the lobby via hearsay that are important that I could get from sitting in #sy. And I dont think that all devs should end up spreading out to as many methods of communication either, my original aim was mearly to raise awareness.

And if an IRC bot is put up to log, and people quote you out of context there's nothing stopping you linking them to the original logs.
User avatar
smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Post by smoth »

most of the stuff I know is because I ask the devs. I only do that if I need to know it though. So that may be how others are finding things out, by asking the devs, also many of us read the tracker and get all hyped up about some things that get commited to spring. So some of us get it from there.
User avatar
LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Post by LordMatt »

Having participated in testing the upcoming release I now can see why its pretty much impossible to predict when they will happen. Many things have to happen together: 1) The right devs have to all be on together in #sy. 2) The engine has to be bugfree (from what ingame testing can tell). 3) The installers have to be tested and working properly. If any of these things aren't true the release will be delayed, so what's the point of projecting a release date when almost certainly something is going to come up?
monohouse

Post by monohouse »

well, it would appear that it already exists, it seems #sy is mentioned in every post, I assume that is the tasclient.exe channel ?

but it is empty, no one there at all.
...and..actually there is one here to support AF, he's right - if people are not awear of something is going on, or some person working on something that some other dev(s) did not know about, he would make the same thing from scratch, while there already has been progress made in that idea, which would take us away from efficiency of development, however I also would like to admit that jcnossen has a point as well, the fact that motivation is personal is true, however - if some developers would not provide necessary information for the other developers' (because they don't know what's going on, don't know the code (like me) or need to know what to do and how the main developers would like it to be done) it would not be possible to make significant and rapid progress in any direction, each developer does what he wants without assistance ("you *could* use char here", guidance ("duude "if (teh == "sux") then ..." won't work you should use "if (teh != "pwn") then ...") or discussion ("what you think of that ?", "do you think this is better ?", "maybe we should also include that here too ?"), for an example - join the Mplayer mailing lists, I've been there and I was surprised how much attention I got, and how everyone was very forthcoming, which still proves the point : this is necessary.

btw this ISN'T about the release date(s), this is about efficient development through efficient communication and inter-developer attention, if all of the above would be good, you would not need to know the release date (due to the improved development efficiency the release dates would be significantly shorter) I think that the more developers there are - the more important is the communication between them, also the more organized is the development crew the easier it would be for them to start working on the right and needed things, which would contribute to preventing projects from dying off, which would increase motivation (because of the support), I think it is far from just release dates and in case it isn't - it should be, developers should be in contact.

and Tobi and other devs - I can understand that someone might not want to use microsuck's Messenger, I can also understand someone that doesn't want to use ICQ, and I can most certainly understand anyone who does not want to use Jabber/Aim and Skype - because all of these are crap, however - I am yet to find even ONE reason why anyone would not want to use THIS and THIS
Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

Post by Tobi »

Because it's yet another client...

For historical reasons #sy on QuakeNet has been the primary developer chat channel (and #taspring on FreeNode the secondary, more linux focussed channel), and I still don't really see a good reason to change...
monohouse

Post by monohouse »

good to know, that's all that I wanted to know, all these posts...just to know #sy on QuakeNet.
Post Reply

Return to “Engine”