Author Spring RTS Book-Packt Publishing

[Regret]

They have allegedly donated over $100,000 to FOSS projects.

Which took them 4 years and is the total amount of cash 300 book projects altogether earned so far. Average ~$83 a YEAR per project.

What would be the benefit from this project? No monetary value.

What publicity would a printed book bring? Who today buys a book about x engine rather than reading available freshly updated wikis / tutorials online?

Wouldn't the time and effort put into organization, endless debates and consensus searching be better spent filling / updating the wiki with information?

[knorke]

I do not want to prevent anybody from writing such a book and I do not take part in the development of spring but still:
Wouldn't a online documention, for example a good wiki help spring alot more? Seeing how that could slowly grow while work on the book might stop at 80% thus it never gets published and all effort is lost.

edit: omg regret

[Tribulex]

I do not want to prevent anybody from writing such a book and I do not take part in the development of spring but still:
Wouldn't a online documention, for example a good wiki help spring alot more? Seeing how that could slowly grow while work on the book might stop at 80% thus it never gets published and all effort is lost.

edit: omg regret

i like this guy alot too. Always sees to the heart of the matter.

[AF]

Neddie, you are the one not actually bothering to take it in what I'm saying. Your posts are an embarassment to english comprehension.

To which I issue these impossible challenges which are a neccesary pre-requisite to Neddie being right.

• AF: Spring is not ready just right now, we should wait till things settle
• Neddie: AF says its hopeless and spring is too topsyturvy to ever be bothered with
• My Challenge to Neddie: Name a single spring API which does not have a superior gadget based replacement, a side API, or has recently undergone major changes or deprecation within the last 6 months

• AF: There is nothing in the publication forum that is not already in this thread
• Neddie: AF says its hopeless and spring is too topsy turvy to ever be bothered with
• My challenge to Neddie: Since I did nothing but say what had already been said, no copy pasting, find me something secret in the publication forum that hasn't been mentioned in this thread, other than the posting of Tobis reply which is hardly a secret at all

• ]Your perspective of hopelessness is predicated upon laziness and fatalism, and cannot claim to be more reasonable than my own which you imply is naive and "starry eyed".

• My Challenge to Neddie: Please find me saying we should never bother with the idea of a book.

I would like to address this particular paragraph:

Perhaps I should have been clearer. As it is, you're taking information about said forum and the contents thereof out of context to further your agenda - this is disruptive and will not be tolerated. You've stated your point over and over; repetition will not make you right.

This is a loss of control which was inevitable. You are frustrated not because I have leaked information. This information is already common knowledge, and can be found prior to me posting it in this very thread.

My post does not detail anything about the content of posts in that forum save for mentioning vaguely the topic of 2 posts without saying what they actually say. It does not say what is in Tobis reply to Packt publishing, just that the forum is dead, nor does it say what verbosities Argh mentioned, (although if you are curious forum readers, refer to Arghs last post).

Now neddie, if you look very carefully, you will see I am not quite repeating my points at all, because they aren't identical, they are not the same. Some of them I have reiterated yes in different ways, but this si because you utterly failed to comprehend them correctly and got completely different interpretations that make em assume you must not have bothered to read it properly.

All the other forum posters who replied managed to get the right conclusion, so why didn't you?

This thread has exploded because you are incapable of exercising the necessary english comprehension and understanding you normally show and are instead allowing your quirks and emotional tendencies to blur and taint yourself.

The same tendencies that give you a never-ending to do list that you barely do any work on, that make you offer all the help you can give to every project that comes along despite having neither the time nor the skill set to do. The same ones that compel you to take measures to keep troublesome users within the community for reasons of personal affiliation and forum politics, despite it damaging the very things you are trying to fix in the longrun.

I dear sir, am in the glorious position of posting in a thread burning with flames with a calm and rational mind, making clear and calm responses, it is you who are reacting to this with blithering blunders and TNT explosions. It is trolling without trolling, and it is a gift you bestow through your refusal to sit down and take in what I've said and think, instead of assuming and skim reading.

[MidKnight]

You guys have written about 10 pages of argument in the last day.

Wouldn't writing about 10 pages of book have been more productive?

[Forboding Angel]

Personally I would have to say that about 66.6% of me agrees with AF, and the other 33.3% agrees with what JK said.

If the wiki were started from scratch (Of course old info could be ported) with a very clear outline and strictly sticking to that outline, I would embrace it, but in it's current state, the wiki is a hapless mess.

[KaiserJ]

How about some poorly written fan-fiction?

Commanders eyes glittered hungrily as he eyed the pile of wrecks lying just further along the the windswept sands of the delta. stepping forwards past the protective wall of laser towers, he raises his dgun to the ready, gears and servos clanking wildly. the wrecks are there, and he means to eat them.

Too boring for you? how about some EROTIC poorly written fan-fiction?

Commanders eyes glittered hungrily as he eyed the exposed supports protruding from the back of the AKs torso. recently resurrected and pressed into service, from that -other- army, he cannot help but ignore the femenine lines and the flash of light off her freshly scraped undercarriage as it shines in the late afternoon tabula sun. he raises his dgun to the ready, gears and servos clanking wildly. the ak is there, and he means to have his way with her.

Still too boring? how about a change of pace, lets write some about the people BEHIND the game

Sefidels eyes glittered hungrily as he eyed the refidgerator over his shoulder, aside from his game of DSD. recently stocked with european meats and cheeses, it contains the very lifeblood of a spring player... carbohydrates and fat. unable to resist, he raises his sandwich knife to the ready, bones and tendons griding and twanging wildly. the sandwich is there, and he means to have his way with her.

[AF]

I fail to see how mine and jKs opinions are incompatible, and agree with him.

My point is not we shouldnt write a book.

My point is we shouldnt write a book yet. If we wrote one now, it would be a tremendous waste of our resources and those of anybody who buys and attempts to use the book

When we have a clean workable wiki and an ecosystem of articles and tutorials in and around the site, then writing a book would be easy because most of the content is already there in similar forms and would need mostly paraphrasing and adaptation.

[Argh]

@Kaiserj: thanks for having a sense of humor

My point is we shouldnt write a book yet. If we wrote one now, it would be a tremendous waste of our resources and those of anybody who buys and attempts to use the book

This is the definition of futility. It's been over five years now. There's nothing to wait for, ever, unless we're waiting for the project to cease development...

When we have a clean workable wiki and an ecosystem of articles and tutorials in and around the site, then writing a book would be easy because most of the content is already there in similar forms and would need mostly paraphrasing and adaptation.

If you'd like to contribute, please do so... if you feel like an area needs help, and don't know the answers, ask.

Compared to most other OSS projects... Spring's Wiki is actually pretty damn good. I get pretty confused when people complain about this.

What do you want?

*How-To guides? On just about every major topic, we have them.
*Code samples? Yes.
*Documentation of just about every feature of the engine? Yes. There's always something minor missing, but that's just it- it's minor / obscure.
*Lua Documentation? Hell, yes (and thank jK and trepan and a few other people for that!).]

So, in one short paragraph... what... exactly... does the Wiki need. Not nebulous words like "organization". A specific goal. That you are willing to put time into yourself, preferably.

[AF]

Argh, how to guides in forum posts don't really count because they take a long time to find and are usually out of date.

Much of the API in the wiki is incomplete and many call outs are missing, and what is there is usually out of date, and the structure is poor. There are no examples, and little documentation on individual call outs in many places.

And how on earth do you find it all? Most howtos and tutorials are buried aside from the few shiny ones that got stickied.

And please I have made numerous changes myself and written articles in the past, uploaded things, started threads. But I am just one person. In the end I have my own time to work on things outside of my thesis and courseworks and job hunting, and I already spend a lot of that small time on spring related development.

If you really want to start playing blame game lets look at the inumerable Argh posts that get lost under a mound of new posts, which attempt to help people, and are normally followed by other posters disputing your advice. Despite many calls from em to change the approach you take to this and instea dpost it on your site, you have completely ignored this.

If Argh had followed my advice we would already be a good length of the way there, argh would have a site with a good size more traffic, and he would have a greater reputation, as well as a nice hub of information to draw on.

Instead this advice has been lost in forum discussions and politics as time has gone on because of the stubbornness and ignorance of one individual forum poster who has decidedly wasted an opportunity to present his work and skills to over 2000 unique visitors per day by chasing after a static active audience of 1000.

[Argh]

So, basically, instead of hunting down these elusive Argh posts, copying them into the Wiki, etc., you'd rather bitch about how it's all my fault that I'm not personally maintaining the Wiki to a very high standard for free, when I think it's quite adequate, and have no idea what you're talking about, regarding "missing" stuff?

I mean, seriously... wtf. The number of callouts that aren't adequately documented at any one time is a handful, and they're usually for cutting-edge things that just entered into use (and may not be stable features yet, to boot). There's nothing major that is missing, and I use the Lua reference daily. I'd be more than happy to fix things there, if there's anything missing that people need to know more about, but there's that Catch-22... people have to ask for help first.



I guess my final analysis is that if it's missing stuff, and this is my fault somehow, then it's an Open Source project and you can ask me, here in public, about anything you want to, and I will answer as best as time permits, right here and now.

You have five hours of my time, and this is a one-time deal, because I'm not an Answer Machine and I have real work to do. I'll check this thread every thirty minutes... so start asking questions. Start a thread or something, and I will be happy to put all the magical information that's revealed into the Wiki. Happy now? I can't commit more time, but I'm certainly willing to help with anything that is really obscure that anybody thinks I have the answers.

[AF]

In light of a poster retrospectively changing his post rather drastically, I remove my own reply and label him a fillibusterer

[Argh]

Your argument's circular and illogical. Either I can help by illuminating obscure things, or I can't.

It's not a "filibuster" when I'm perfectly willing to answer some questions here. If anything, each minute you're wasting on snarky replies is another minute I'm not going to spend on answering your questions. The fact is, I don't have any "secret sauce" or magical stuff that isn't public.

If you want a list of all known callouts... the Wiki's actually pretty complete atm, I think. IDK, ask jK / Kloot, but IIRC, nothing new has been added lately into Git in re: Lua-->engine.

[Soul]

Spring RTS book has written itself, just CTRL C this whole thread in to notepad

I was having similar thoughts, although i was going to propose sending them all our threads on the entire forum.
As well as any saved logs from #main.

AF did i ever mention the joy your bring to my life regularly? You just summarized an entire subforum in 1 post, so I dont have to pull strings to get into it.

I agree, and i propose that we give AF the task of summarising previously mentioned forums and logs, before sending them to Book-Packt Publishing.

Your argument's circular and illogical.

I can't find anything wrong with having circular arguments, even illogical arguments sometimes have some validity, or purpose.

Your argument's circular and illogical.

No.

Your argume-

I said No.

[Google_Frog]

I agree with AF that creating a book now is not a good idea due to the major changes from a game creator's point of view. Many TA things are being removed (resources) and unit scripts can be done in lua. I know there will always be changes but these changes effect core elements so the eventual outcome of the changes would require large sections of the book to be rewritten.

I mean, seriously... wtf. The number of callouts that aren't adequately documented at any one time is a handful, and they're usually for cutting-edge things that just entered into use (and may not be stable features yet, to boot). There's nothing major that is missing, and I use the Lua reference daily. I'd be more than happy to fix things there, if there's anything missing that people need to know more about, but there's that Catch-22... people have to ask for help first.

It used to be better but now it seems new things are not added. I read source nowdays. There is no Catch-22 for the lua referenced wiki, every callin and callout should be documented.

[AF]

Indeed, but what's more is that there is a large volume that by definition isn't covered but will need to have been covered by the time the book is ready, namely APIs that have yet to be finalized, and newer additions.

Examples including sections of the new AI interface, potential in the ASSIMP branch, specular SMF, and many other things of which the majority of the how is detailed either directly in the code, or in forum posts that will be buried in 6 months time.

Arghs offer of answering questions and checking every 30 minutes is unhelpful as I am not asking for the answers so that I can fill them in myself.

My time would be better spent making efforts to document what I already know, for which I have provisions planned, and steps I have already taken to attempt to alleviate things, e.g. my release of the Visual Studio project for people wanting to use the new C++ API with VS2008.

Arghs point is merely an attempt to sidestep and avoid the point levelled at him that he misses out on the huge opportunity to promote his site both for the good of the community, documentation, P.U.R.E sales, and his own reputation and kudos, for very little cost, and in some cases, less.



What I would suggest is that we compile the existing tutorials together into a central section, rather than having small link collections in individual wiki sections, so that one can simply see everything at once. Tutorials written up in forum posts should be converted into common formats starting with html/pdf, and we should be able to download tutorials for offline viewing.

Help posts answering how to do something should also be taken as an opportunity to write a tutorial, even if it's small. These posts can easily be changed in many situations with minimal fuss, and a more permanent answer is far more valuable than a transitory reply.

When this is done we can package them together and call it an ebook of sorts, who knows, Packt may decide this is worth publishing. The beenfits of this would be enormous simply through lowering the barrier and providing a one stop shop for information one can read through

[Argh]

@Soul: again, thanks for having a sense of humor. Sometimes that's helpful around here

Examples including sections of the new AI interface, potential in the ASSIMP branch, specular SMF, and many other things of which the majority of the how is detailed either directly in the code, or in forum posts that will be buried in 6 months time.

1. In a practical book on development of a game for Spring, you don't need to know about the AI interface or ASSIMP. By definition, these are things that game developers shouldn't be worrying about.

2. Specular SMF is just one teeny feature, and until Beherith releases his version, it's unfinished, imho. It's not a world-beating thing where we should halt everything, either; old maps will still be working after it's done. If we're going to play that game, then Spring will never, ever be "ready"

now it seems new things are not added

Can you give us any recent examples? Usually stuff is documented within a month or so, after it's been tested and feedback's been given.


****************
Anyhow... just taking stock of the current state of the documentation, here's my take on where things stand:

1. I don't *think* any new COB callouts have been added since P.U.R.E. 1.0(i.e., over 8 months ago). FLOZi could confirm that, or I could go check that source, but I'd be extremely surprised if that's changed, since COB's going to be second-string vs. Lua animation from here on out, and won't be seeing new features.

2. COB is well-documented, structurally.

In terms of how-to, not so much. If nothing else, we probably need a complete, "how to script a walk-cycle for bots" and "how to script factories, builders, transports, and other Special Units", because these areas are lamentably obscure.

3. CEG's pretty well documented, and well-organized, imo. The only things that might improve it are some short videos demonstrating each major effect system.

4. UpSpring documentation could be improved a bit, but my video actually explained a lot of the workflow, my written workflow explains a lot else, there are quite a few good articles on modeling / skinning / uvmapping... and newbs can always ask stupid questions if they want to know more. I haven't seen a project fail yet, because the people working on it couldn't get their models in-game.

5. The sound system is pretty well documented; there's public source for auto-setup of your sounds, however you want, or with standardized categories. Or you can ask some questions.

6. FLOZi released that very cool Resources script that makes that part of Spring a lot less of a chore.

7. Things like icons and buildpics are pretty straightforward, but maybe aren't documented as well as they should be. That might be a nice quickie.

8. Game structure needs some pictures of folders, and better overall flow; it feels more technical than it probably should atm.

9. It'd be nice to have a short description of how synced / unsynced works, how gameframes and SlowUpdate cycles work, and how safe communication is achieved, for people just getting into game design, who don't understand how engines work. I might write that, then ask for some peer review so that I don't make us look bad

10. I'd like to see some efforts made to document MoveCtrl better, preferably with a simple, well-commented example project. It's a major feature of this engine that needs some documentation love. However, other than simple crap, I haven't done anything with it, so I'm not the guy to ask.

11. UnitRendering is mainly black-box; either you're jK, trepan or Kloot (or me, believe it or not), or a lot of it's very mysterious. Unfortunately, it's probably going to remain that way, to coders who aren't already pretty strong OpenGL people.

jK's shader framework, which is not finished atm (and I have no idea when either he or I will get back to that) makes it a lot clearer, but as I said, it's not fully operational at this time, and I'm pretty uncomfortable presenting a paper on it just using Kloot's code, because I feel like jK's framework is ultimately where we want to go, in terms of transmitting structure to noobs. Kloot's code is very stable, though, and has been for months, other than me making minor alterations to keep it compatible with the shadowmaps and a few other things along the way.

***********************
Anyhow, that's my list of things that could use some work atm.

So, other than the stuff that's maintained by various developers in a semi-proprietary way, that's where things stand, I think.

[AF]

Please post links to referenced material

The ASSIMP stuff is of not because it would fundamentally change how we define models. It cannot be documented because it is not finalized and in release yet, but when any book is finished it would be a critical flaw.

AI is of paramount important to any game which is not purely multiplayer.


They are just examples however. We could play this game all day and the only person who would benefit is you by completely ignoring that point you don't like.

[Argh]

Please post links to referenced material ...I think that covers everything except for Lua, which is its own area, and my video, and you know where it is.

The ASSIMP stuff is of not because it would fundamentally change how we define models. It cannot be documented because it is not finalized and in release yet, but when any book is finished it would be a critical flaw.

No. It will be backwards-compatible, or it won't be adopted. We've had long conversations about this, and I'm quite confident in saying that.

It's certainly true that future content workflow procedures might change significantly; so what? It doesn't change the validity of current methods, nor will they become obsoleted overnight.

AI is of paramount important to any game which is not purely multiplayer.

Yes, but all practical AIs being developed for specific projects, so far as I am aware, are being done with Lua, so it's a sub-branch of Lua development.

[AF]

They are just examples however. We could play this game all day and the only person who would benefit is you by completely ignoring that point you don't like.