#main Topic and CA updater

[Otherside]

there is a real reason not to upload CA to sites...

ok stables r the only thing played now and it only happens once a week the file is still 40 + mb asking sum1 to do that once a week is hassle...

[[Krogoth86]]

there is a real reason not to upload CA to sites...

ok stables r the only thing played now and it only happens once a week the file is still 40 + mb asking sum1 to do that once a week is hassle...

Well I can't refuse to use that "self-made" argument again. Why insisting on having stable releases once a week? Why not every two weeks, three weeks or to say the truth following a rule I find way more wise i.e. doing a new stable release when there actually is a big bunch of new content and with that said a new milestone is reached. Such a feature/content based solution imo makes much more sense than to just define such a very short time span for no apparent reason. If you want more recent releases just use the updater...

The need for weekly stable releases also somewhat implies that CA still is very buggy and unbalanced which probably is something you don't want to imply and it also should be safe to say that this isn't the case...

[Licho]

@Licho:
So you now may ask why this was integrated into the CA Updater at
all rather than creating a neutral programme on its own.

I started adding map/mod downloading feature first just like an experiment for CA players to encourage greater variety of maps.
Then I realized it would be more usefull as an open generic system for mods/maps so I transformed it to it.
Now its firstly too hard to separate two applications secondly I dont see any reason why to force people to have yet more application running. I want to eventually make it pluggable (mods having own tabs with custom context), but thats a lot of work to do.

Imo its like complaining that spring is focused too much on TA.. it is because it evolved that way..

Well I now want to be upfront with you: I never understood this argument so maybe you explain it to me. To my mind this situation was 100% self-made with the long-time refusal to upload the stable releases to the common download sources.
There was no real reason for not doing so as it worked and still works perfectly fine for all the other mods...

Until very recently (3 weeks), stable was actually not used. All people were playing latest version released on average 2x per day. Since we managed to "teach" people to play stable instead (released once per week) we can and are uploading stable to those sites.

But its very tedious process, and CA has 50MB (expected to grow by another 10MB soon), so even 50MB x 6 for uploading and weekly downloading for everyone arent convenient/feasible.

I would also like to note that there are just 2-3 comparable successfull mods BA,XTA,NOTA and each releases far less often.

The third thing that lines up with this "advertising conspiracy theory" is the refusal to just upload the CA Updater itself to the common sites.

I addressed this in my previous post.
Its unpractical/unsafe for several reasons. Read it again.

For example, last week I created downloader version which used 64bit compression. Problem was spring could not read it, I fixed it as soon as I noticed it. But for people who downloaded new CA version during that period, one 64bit archive was created and this was further modified by downloader to create new and new CA versions, each with compression that spring could not read.
Those people were reporting problems for weeks.
Having downloader on those sites I would have to update them all as soon as I change downloader.

Why should I do it? For people its more convenient to use caspring link - its always up-to date because its also used by self-update. For me its far more convenient to just upload to one place.

So why should I conform to some other rules serving no actual purpose and just causing problems (see my experience with UF downloader hosting).

[Licho]

Krogoth - we dont have fixed interval.

Stable is released when sum of changes produced by normal commits is large enough.

For example last week we change lots of effects, added new models and buildicons, replaced annoying animated start boxes etc..
So there was reason to release it as stable because we simply wanted to play with new version..

Balance changes or major bugs are actually very rare. Im not aware of any balance change in past months.

Slow release rate slows down progress and "feedback" loop. We dont want to do it.

[Licho]

And btw is the dead Krogoth on new tasclient load screen part of BA conspiracy/sublimal programming/aggressive advertisement? :)

Anyway I feel honored you think its a conspiracy, I always wanted to be able to do something such amazing, like making secret pact with aliens, plot to kill Kenedy (again) or working my ass off on downloader for community and then as a reward being hated/viewed as conspirator.

Btw my Springie also has CA updating mode .. probably also part of great conspiracy. It also has ladder mode, was Meltrax conspiring too to take over mids of kids with no money in free game?
We will never know, but I heard that IceUI displays hidden frames with hypnotic messages!

This post is sponzored by HypnoToad

[[Krogoth86]]

Now its firstly too hard to separate two applications secondly I dont see any reason why to force people to have yet more application running. I want to eventually make it pluggable (mods having own tabs with custom context), but thats a lot of work to do.

Imo its like complaining that spring is focused too much on TA.. it is because it evolved that way..

Well what I wrote shouldn't be a critique on the software and its development itself but just a simple explanation that the CA Updater in fact advertises CA (which isn't a bad thing but that's not what that part was about) and #main shouldn't have mod ads - especially not in every login message. So its not so much about the updater itself but the "rules" what must and must not be in #main and as it was said for many times that #main mustn't be used for advertising a mod...

It of course isn't a severe issue because of which you should go mad and spam Anti-CA-Updater propaganda everywhere you go but you should consider this rule, think about it and maybe come to the conclusion that in terms of fairness it shouldn't be listed there...

Until very recently (3 weeks), stable was actually not used. All people were playing latest version released on average 2x per day. Since we managed to "teach" people to play stable instead (released once per week) we can and are uploading stable to those sites.

This doesn't make a good argument imo. I have no doubt that what you said is correct but with not doing anything to actually support playing the stable releases (i.e. uploading those stables to common sites) you cannot argue with that. With everyone using the updater for CA it's kinda logic thing that the latest versions are used especially as you said later that there are no real bugfixes / balance fixes in a newer version so playing the lastest version has (nearly) no disadvantages...

So arguing against the uploading of stable versions as good method because they don't get played which is affected a lot by having no uploaded stable versions available in the first place somehow doesn't work...

But its very tedious process, and CA has 50MB (expected to grow by another 10MB soon), so even 50MB x 6 for uploading and weekly downloading for everyone arent convenient/feasible.

I replied to this in my posting towards Otherside: Why that weekly cycle for the stables in the first place?

Why should I do it? For people its more convenient to use caspring link - its always up-to date because its also used by self-update. For me its far more convenient to just upload to one place.

So why should I conform to some other rules serving no actual purpose and just causing problems (see my experience with UF downloader hosting).

Well with this 64Bit being an exception to the rule and the auto-updating functionality I don't see a real reason here. Just put up a working version which will update itself anyway. So you don't have to replace those downloads with new versions so often (maybe even never if you don't change essential things on the auto-update) - creating the torrents for all the stuff you have takes longer than the update anyway so it's no real difference between a new and a bit outdated version when you do a download the updater's exe again...

Stable is released when sum of changes produced by normal commits is large enough.

For example last week we change lots of effects, added new models and buildicons, replaced annoying animated start boxes etc..
So there was reason to release it as stable because we simply wanted to play with new version..

Balance changes or major bugs are actually very rare. Im not aware of any balance change in past months.

Well on the one side you told of the updater being the way to go because of the recent updates and now you tell of updates just being cosmetic stuff which are created more or less out off "curiosity" and have no real basic arguments that support the creation of yet another stable version. So if those many frequent stable releases don't really affect anything serious why is there a need for so many stable releases at all (and their number was your argument against standard hosting procedures like all other mods do)?

If you want to use the newest graphical niceties use your updater to get the latest version but imo this shouldn't be an argument to justify the frequent stable releases. So I'd suggest either a not so frequent pretty much constant release cycle of every few weeks or use a fixes/features/content basis to decide when a new stable release should be there...

With that said it's true that pretty much all of the big mods have rather rare new releases but their new stable versions also always have quite some fixes / additions so you cannot really use this as an supportive argument of yours as your frequent releases don't have such major fixes (at least usually)...

And btw is the dead Krogoth on new tasclient load screen part of BA conspiracy/sublimal programming/aggressive advertisement? :)

Well that's a rather cheap comparison because Spring was and still is mostly about TA and the Krogoth belongs to TA so as long as there is nothing that tells you "Yup - that is from BA!" it's valid imo (I don't know the new load screen yet so I don't know if that's the case)...

Anyway I feel honored you think its a conspiracy, I always wanted to be able to do something such amazing, like making secret pact with aliens, plot to kill Kenedy (again) or working my ass off on downloader for community and then as a reward being hated/viewed as conspirator.

Well as I tried to point out as good as possible (especially with using the conspiracy in quotation marks) I don't think of it behaving the way I described it but I just with many of your postings I just have the feeling of this being the subtone...

Maybe I still wasn't clear enough about this...

[LordMatt]

Can make page long arguments about this, or just do the right thing. I would say the same thing about any mod with regard to #main topic or software.

[SwiftSpear]

It's really a simple complaint. There is only so much space in the #main topic, and we've been mostly using it for unbaised and fair things, like links to community help resources and current news. We don't have the evo installer in the #main topic, we don't have the current version of PURE, we don't have anything mod specific, because there is lots of mods and not endless space.

The question is why CA should get space in the #main topic when every other mod does not.

Personally, I think the better solution is to provide more mod accessible advertising methods and eye space within our lobby clients, rather than banning any mod advertising simply because there isn't enough space currently to do it for everyone. I'm sort of indifferent to the ultimate results of this. But the complaint is valid.

[LordMatt]

Well said. I also don't like the fact that some mods (e.g. BA and CA) have moderators associated with them who could promote the mod in the #main topic, while others do not have that opportunity. When BA was just starting out, Noize or I could have put a link to BA in the #main topic, however in my opinion that would have been misusing our powers, and so we just spammed the heck out of #main, like any other user could do.

[Vadi]

(I see this as BA, the overwhelming popular mod, is sensing trouble rising. Anyone else with me?)

[Forboding Angel]

At least the evo installer is mod independent. Any mod can use it as their updating system. All it would require is someone renaming the sd7 of their mod that would serve as a base, and then all that is required is pointing it to a server (which I will be happy to provide) to get the patches and base from. It's all in a .bat file, so it's actually really simple to do.

CA Downloader does bother me btw, because getting CA is pretty much enforced within the thing when you start it up the first time. I have a version of CA that I didn't want because of it. For that reason I haven't been using it.

You'll find that almost everything contained within evolution are pretty much suited to be used with other mods should they so desire.

But seriously, what are you gonna do? CA has an army of people developing for it and happens to have several programmers as well as lua coders in on the deal (whereas the rest of the mods in spring are either 1 man projects or everyone helping everyone else). They don't even bother to explain what all their lua stuff does (unless you already know lua) because (direct quote from quantum) "We want you to ask us". The CA ppl have been rather helpful, there is no doubt about it, but I get tired of having CA rammed down my throat at every turn.

In evolution I have gone to great lengths to make the content accessable to everyone. Read the license ffs, I pretty much give ppl the right to do whatever they want as long as they don't call their mod "Evolution RTS" and credit (somewhere, anywhere) the people to whom credit is due.

I suppose what I am saying is that I resent the attitude of the CA people. It is not conducive to a "Community", unless that community doesn't mind having CA crammed up their asses every time they sit down.

[tombom]

(I see this as BA, the overwhelming popular mod, is sensing trouble rising. Anyone else with me?)

No. Stop being stupid and insulting everybody who is trying to argue in a certain way by suggesting they're all evil and not allowing change.

+1 to licho's post it dusnt bother any1 on the forums its just helping new people all the hate is coming from BA fanboi's/devs

Thanks for your contribution Otherside! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

[Forboding Angel]

+1 to licho's post it dusnt bother any1 on the forums its just helping new people all the hate is coming from BA fanboi's/devs

For the record I am neither... I have played both, but did not particularly enjoy either of them.

[Otherside]

BA didnt resort to main topic changing

resorted to ingame spam and PM spam which is imo much worse than wat CA Is doing

do any of u actwally read the #main topic is it such an eye sore ???

i think u guys shud be more thankful to licho

if it wasnt for his work no Springie no P2P no nuthing and the p2p was made for CA in the first place so be thankful for CA even if u dnt like or play it. (even gave BA all of its new LUA)

this should all get fixed soon hopefully with the lobby integration

[[Krogoth86]]

i think u guys shud be more thankful to licho

It's not about being thankful and I think no one here said something negative about this. It's just that #main has its rules as what should be said there and what not. Listing the CA Updater in that opening posting isn't conform with those rules and so it should be removed there. That's what it's all about...

[AF]

It seems BA is throwing boulders down the hill.

Licho, does your program implement a lobby interface yet or do I still have to reimplement it from scratch with my own torrent client?

[tombom]

It seems BA is throwing boulders down the hill.

Can we please debate without resorting to saying everybody who is arguing against you is part of the EVIL BA CONSPIRACY? It's pathetic.

[Licho]

I still plan the interface no need to duplicate client code, but as I said I need to refactor code for downloader.
I now stopped changing downloader because quantum works on making it and springie linux compatible.
As I said we would welcome any help..

And btw some links are heavilly associated with mods. For example front-page of spring-portal.com
reads
GET BALANCED ANNIHILATION NOW!!

Followed by list of changes..
So wtf.. why cant another "biased" source of mods/maps with most complete map list of ALL of them be used??

[Licho]

It seems BA is throwing boulders down the hill.

Can we please debate without resorting to saying everybody who is arguing against you is part of the EVIL BA CONSPIRACY? It's pathetic.

Well obviously Noize is BA developer, LordMatt ONLY plays BA, TomBom has frequent argues with some CA developers (me), Krogoth develops another mod, ForbodingAngle develops another mod .. actually all of those people could be accused of having hidden motivation and not being strictly impartial :)

[tombom]

It seems BA is throwing boulders down the hill.

Can we please debate without resorting to saying everybody who is arguing against you is part of the EVIL BA CONSPIRACY? It's pathetic.

Well obviously Noize is BA developer, LordMatt ONLY plays BA, TomBom has frequent argues with some CA developers (me), Krogoth develops another mod, ForbodingAngle develops another mod .. actually all of those people could be accused of having hidden motivation and not being strictly impartial :)

And you develop CA, and Otherside plays CA, and Vadi hates BA, and and and and

Fuck you. I don't even care about CAUpdater being in the topic. I'm sick of the stupid dicks that make up this community.