Lobby Development and Fairness

[AF]

As you may have noticed satirik has gone on the offensive by appealing to my character in any way we can. While I do not approve of this he has raised a handful of points indirectly I would like to address. This is not a post about satirik and I do not intend it as an attack or defence of anything I have done.

I have made a lot of boasts and promises in the past that have not come true, be that due to time constraints or changes of plans caused by new things in other projects. I have a habit of underestimating the time needed to make things work because I have many other projects and tend to not consider their full impact.

For this I apologize to anyone who has been waiting, but this is not a valid reason to target me. All us developers are guilty of this.

I want spring to move forward, which was the one thing that got me started on my lobby project. I had ideas I knew tasclient was either too inflexible for, or betalord would never implement either due to opposing opinion or lack of resources. I wanted to push the stagnant lobby development out of its plateau and force new people to come in and to innovate.

So far the lobbies have done this. An example would be lichos auto host and the auto-balancing feature, which was promptly stolen by all the lobbies and improved upon.

But for us to have a stable well nurtured lobby development ecosystem within which our player base can get the maximum benefit, we need to cooperate and get along. We need to establish an equal footing for the various project, and keep respect for each other.

Recently I tried to make another step for improvement by requesting that tasclient honor the convention of the other lobbies of keeping tasclient files in tasclient folders nice and neat and tidy. Instead I get slurs and avatars and provocation despite my request being supported by other users.

We need our lobbies on an equal footing so that we can speed up development, foster new lobbies applications and bots from new developers, and strengthen spring multi-player support in general. We cannot do this while lobby developers are provoking other developers and taunting them in response to requests and bug reports.

These project form a part of our portfolios for prospective employers, new developers, companies interested in spring, even interested friends and family. Lets conduct ourselves with a modicum of dignity and respect,

Afterall there's no reason to blow ourselves up when presented with rectangles and gradients is there?

[Hoi]

I don't get it, we have:

Aflobby
Battlehub
Tasclient
Springlobby

I might have missed something.

why? why don't people work together and make a good lobby? we don't need 4 diffrent lobby clients, we need 1 good one!

[AF]

AFLobby/Battlehub = java
TASClient = Delphi
Spring lobby = C++

Different lobby developers, different languages, different ideas, different architectures, different development practices, different attitudes, different reasons for development, differing tastes.

For example, satirik entered lobby development to give himself a better tasclient. I entered because I had ideas tasclient could never fullfiill. The spring lobby team entered because there was no viable linux lobby being maintained at the time.

And a single uber lobby would not be uber. It would require a lengthy development phase after which we would be stuck with a monopoly, and monopolys do not innovate, they stagnate. We have already been in that situation back when betalord was the only lobby developer, and innovation only picked up with the advent of the new lobbies such as aflobby and unity lobby.

Its like asking everyone to bound together to make the perfect council tax payment on a single house. The guy in that house thinks its a wonderful idea but the people doing the business think otherwise.

[koshi]

All us developers are guilty of this.

Speak for yourself please.

We need to establish an equal footing for the various project,

Could you elaborate?

why? why don't people work together and make a good lobby? we don't need 4 diffrent lobby clients, we need 1 good one!

Ofc I cannot speak for AF or Satirik, but for SpringLobby this is already happening to some extent. Besides a "core" team of developers, we accept patches/contributions from various other people. (See this list)
Also I agree with AF that diversity springs innovation.

[AF]

Speak for yourself please.

Its a fundamental feature of developers at heart, and a well documented psychological trait that we as humans are poor at estimating our time. IIRC Hoi recently posted a link to an article on 3 point estimation in another thread.

Could you elaborate?

Not taking liberties with development and respecting that we are not a part of the spring engine itself but guests, projects in our own right. We should not ride roughshod over sprign and each other or take ufnair liberties then deny them to other projects unfairly.

For example tasclients pollution of the spring root directory. Every other lobby program respects the folder hierarchy and keeps its stuff in its place neat and tidy keeping conflicts to absolute zero. TASClient treats the spring folder as if it were its own dedicated folder.

This is just one example. Another example would be modifying APIs used by multiple projects for the benefit of your own project without discussion or consultation with others, making APIs in secret then releasing them once they're finished in order to derail open discussions and development on joint projects, or throwing spanners in the works in processes for purely personal/political reasons.

[Hoi]

AFLobby/Battlehub = java
TASClient = Delphi
Spring lobby = C++

So? what's the profit of having stuff with diffrent languages?

Its a fundamental feature of developers at heart, and a well documented psychological trait that we as humans are poor at estimating our time. IIRC Hoi recently posted a link to an article on 3 point estimation in another thread.

What thread was that again?

[koshi]

So? what's the profit of having stuff with diffrent languages?

Aside from personal dislikes of certain languages, of those listed only java/c++ have the chance of providin a cross-plattform application. In that respect (and imho various others) Delphi is a technological dead end

[AF]

Also while I do have C++ knowledge and they do have java knowledge, the spring lobby developers are more adept at the APIs and libraries they have chosen than I am and vice versa. A lot of 2 way learning would be needed in order to get a joint project going.

Also java has some advantages c++ doesn't and vice versa. For example I have the benefits of stuff like garbage collecting and language features they don't whereas they have better access to native libraries.

Try to think of it like combining all the ice creams in the world into a single flavour and banning the sale of all other flavours. Different people have different tastes and different projects appeal to different people. Its the same with AIs.

Everyone said we should all band together and make an uber AI even though the very notion of doing that would be utterly flawed unless by some chance we shared a grand vision. Instead we all had differing opinions on how AI should actually work and set about implementing them, bringing our own unique strengths and weaknesses to the field in the process.

[smoth]

the springlobby guys have not started any drama. Af to be fair, we all know tasclient sucks, it has issues. However, you constantly rail on them over focusing on your own stuff. Time and energy chasing the ghost that is betalord.

[Forboding Angel]

My ONLY beef with springlobby is the fact that it does not distribute via installers at all (and as a result, no start menu item for random dumbasses), so pointing new users towards that is pretty much fail.

Yes, yes yes, I could make an installer for it. I understand that, but what about updates? Not to mention the fact that wouldn't me making my own installer just for springlobby be crossing some sort of line that shouldn't be crossed?

[BrainDamage]

My ONLY beef with springlobby is the fact that it does not distribute via exe's at all

can you elaborate that? you want an NSIS-like installer?

[Forboding Angel]

Ack BAD BAD wording. I'm sorry. I meant installers.

/me smacks myself

[AF]

e,g,: springlobby_installer.exe

[Icebird]

I'm disputed over whether I should point out you're trolling or just troll you some more. I hear the second option is the preferred one here.

[clericvash]

While i do support AF in all this i do not use his lobby i actually use springlobby for one it comes with the ubuntu debs and two i dislike java aps.

That said i think it should not only be fair but it would clean up the spring directories by having tasclient use it's one folder like the rest do.

No offence but Satirik you are being increadibly immature over it all. And i also think that you AF need to chill out a little, stop making such huge views over small things.

Everyone just needs to take a step back and think what will really, really benefit spring, not your individual little lobby projects.

[Gota]

Monopoly stagnates in a capitalistic enviornment not in an open source project where peopel create out of the desire to create and improve both their own skill and their users experiance.

[AF]

A healthy multi lobby environment drives development and most importantly progress and innovation. Those projects that do not change in order to improve get left behind.

And currently nobody but me uses my lobby, and I like it that way.

[aegis]

And currently nobody but me uses my lobby, and I like it that way.

not the only person

And a single uber lobby would not be uber.

aww c'mon, you've never seen me program?

[AF]

Code: Select all

aww c'mon, you've never seen me program?

Tempt fate I dare not

[123vtemp]

I'm about ready to switch lobbies because TASclient takes up too many system resources for me. :/ Coupled with licho's dler I have nightmares.