Spring developer crisis

[AF]

There we have it, Houjui will implement the cure cancer button into the default build panel, and the medical industry will supply the money for new developers

[hoijui]

i reeeeeaaally want Z, but maaaan...
i never said nothing about coding for spring!
i am in crisis, not insane!

aeh.. i mean.. i still want my pushkin-rights in spring, for imprinting the girls, but .. only for them! no freeky stuff anymore for my pushkin.

[NeonStorm]

And this is archived with an engine change where units can walk into another to improve pathing but block shoting?

Or where bombers which attack a distant target after the one at which they should drop their bomb let the bomb travel accross the map?

None of this will happen in a properly written mod - see most mods.

Maybe the biggest problem is, that SL requires so much ram.

Just tested, with a big map loaded up it used 100Mb memory - this is not much.

It happened both in ZK :D

Maybe ZKL uses much mem because it creates preview-icons for every map for when you choose between them.

Sometimes the ZKL tabs break and only show about 10px from the first (you need arrow keys to navigate) and hide chat (except battleroom) - only show you a 10x10px input field.
It does not support a fast (or auto-) switch for multiple engines the last time I tried it.

[babbyboolay]

Hi,

I have dabbled in spring/BA/XTA since the 2000's probably. Spring was very young at the time but had a great community. I recently picked up some ZK, which seems to be very active.

Over the last few years the mod community has become very hostile and it looks like the same happened with the dev community

As computer smart guys we can have big egos; don't kid yourself about that.

Devs are removing other devs because they don't like code commits? Also they appear to generally be acting like children. Now the engine is down to 2-3 of the 'controlling' devs. People move on without some benefit to them. Was it comradery or learning that lead devs to build a successor to TA?

The engine is probably in more of a tuning/support time in the life cycle. This is also the most uninteresting and boring time.

The Tera hosts seem to have more troll admins than actual trolls. This has always been a problem with springs as the forum answer is - "Don't like it, don't play". I also understand that server hosts are free to do what they want.

The forum seems to be dominated by troll and abuse reports of specific admins / mod dev / server admins.

We have ZK banning everyone they don't like with inconsistent rules and what looks like 20+ admins. I understand Licho hosts the whole infrastructure and spends a lot of time developing ZK, so I don't mean to disparage his effort and commitment.

Licho has now taken it upon himself to ban NotaLobby as a client because of 'trolls' and 'smurfing' using that it doesn't transmit an id or something with the lobby protocol. If you can login using it, then don't you know who is logged in using it? Seems you keep logs for 3 days on lobby.

I also read that NOTA has issues being closed source with unitsync?

The ZK problem is worse than the TERA host problem because Licho and his admins do not ban locally, they punish globally. Also ZK lobby by default only shows ZK games.

This community seems to worry more about what people can't or shouldn't do that what they should be doing for players and developers.

I understand that some of the concerns above are mod related and not engine related. However, since the engine and the mods devs are closely related then it should follow that problems culminate.

I will repeat that I understand it should be up to the mod devs and server admins to do whatever they want with the infrastructure they provide. This means that all these inconsistencies and childish behaviors also take away from the unified presentation you would need to attract new developers.

Quite honestly, I think 100% of prospective developers (myself included) would run as fast as they could away from this project when they read these forums.

It makes me sad and think that spring has run its course. It is shame because there used to be a vibrant community and general passion. It appears that what is left is a few arrogant dictators that host the infrastructure of an 'open source' project that believe everything they say or think is gospel.

I don't what to say that as a blanket statement since there are still some good people here too, and they are quiet and running away from the drama.

The problem spring is facing is not one of lack of devs, but one of hostility and drama to anyone new to the community.

[smoth]

Dude, notalobby has done many things, chief of which was to violate the spring GPL. Last I talked to danil they are working on fixing that, and they will probably come back. Licho banned the notalobby because it didn't support what was needed to join his matches. ZK is very much licho's project so he banned notalobby from it's severs. If I had a lobby breaking my project I would request the same. That is just trying to provide the admins of his server with the tools they need to enforce the rules on their server.

I understand your concerns but I feel your points are largely incorrect. However, I just wanted to stand up for the ZK team. I think they are doing a crackin good job and don't feel you including them in their rant is justified.

As far as the dev who was recently ousted. He put out a broken release to promote his pet project breaking several aspects of the official release along with some kinda revert fight. Before you deride the devs, first talk to them about why that dev was ousted. Right now I don't think you have the whole story. If they could have kept him around I am sure they would have, things were just complicated.

I feel as though you are making mountains out of molehills. Directly ask the individuals in question about the various issues and try to see if it is really that bad. Right now, please just try and relax. Between the dev who is making a childish scene, spliffs misguided thread and your post here, I feel like we are a forum filled with chicken littles.

I don't know what your particular issue is. I see players acusing the content devs of negligence.. while I personally know that cdev was gone for the weekend and when he returned, immediately was discussing resolving one of the key isses. We have people who beat the same drum over, and over, and over until someone finally snaps and gives in to their ridiculous trolling/demand. It was WORSE back in the day, I know first hand. I don't know man, I feel like you are over focused on the bad.

[klapmongool]

I think his main point is the hostility in the community, and I think he is right. Saying anything more on this would probably get me a bunch of hostile reactions so I'll pass on that for today (no, not kidding).

About zk global banning; yea that sucks. Because it is his server he can do what he want. True, but that does not mean that it can't have a bad effect on the community.

[Cheesecan]

I'll never forget the time when Licho threatened to shut down all the servers if I didn't leave lobby dev meetings. Hell, I wasn't even trolling then. A good person to have in a position of power.

[zerver]

As far as the dev who was recently ousted. He put out a broken release to promote his pet project

Wow, I had no clue you did perceive it this way. If anyone else thinks like smoth, I'd like to hear about it, and the true story is as follows:

I did indeed put out a fail release, 92.0, due to miscommunication between me and licho. The subsequent release (94.0) was not put out by me. It was found (after the release) to have performance issues. I have no responsibility for the bugs that cause these performance issues, and to blame me for making a faster engine that (by mere chance) happens to alleviate the bug (on multi-core systems only) I find to be ridiculous.

[FireStorm_]

Hi,

stuff

Run away from Spring? Difference in opinion, arguing what course to take, emotions, people deciding a different course... Please tell me, where is this magical place where people act differently or perfectly reasonable? (I heard about planet Vulcan but how do I get there?)

I think it's already close to ideal when people sometimes collide, try to stay friendly/positive, and see if they can work things out. So, what did you hope to achieve with your criticism? I sometimes think people who (only) criticise actually try do delegate, which, I think, means they care . But pointing out what you think the problems are, so others might fix stuff, often doesn't help much.

In my experience with Spring, if I approach someone in a positive way, I generally get a positive response. I'd think it would a shame if someone decided against using the spring engine after reading your post, because I think it might be a bit negative and single sided.

[PepeAmpere]

Dude, notalobby has done many things, chief of which was to violate the spring GPL. Last I talked to danil they are working on fixing that, and they will probably come back. Licho banned the notalobby because it didn't support what was needed to join his matches. ZK is very much licho's project so he banned notalobby from it's severs. If I had a lobby breaking my project I would request the same. That is just trying to provide the admins of his server with the tools they need to enforce the rules on their server.

From our last days inspection it looks, NOTAlooby is only client using not buggy antismurf alghorithm/protection. It seems there is a bug in SpringLobby implementation and it was just rewrited the same way into ZKL and Weblobby. As I was told by Licho, the blockade of users NOTAlobby hasnt started, yet, until it is clear where is the mistake.

If we are true, it sad all authors of non-springlobby clients have to reuse the buggy alghorithm just because spring lobby author is special or special.

The "antismurf protection" was implemented in NOTAlobby 4 months ago, the problem is in compatibility, because NOTAlobby keeps algorithm specification, not just "copy the code" from springlobby.

[smoth]

Wow, I had no clue you did perceive it this way. If anyone else thinks like smoth

I posted objecting about it in both news and dev. People said you were there, there was arguments and all. Odds are I was probably much ruder in dev chat or in pm with certain individuals but I am certain I was there questions both the sudden MT default AND the release you made publicly. As far as all the conspiracy stuff that was just the collective understanding I gathered based on bits and pieces gatherd. Nothing personal, just how I remember it going down and was all WTF about that entire release.

[smoth]

pere, does that mean notaloby's gpl issues finally cleared?!?!

[FLOZi]

Welcome to the new spring drama, same as the old spring drama.

[luckywaldo7]

Welcome to the new spring drama, same as the old spring drama.

It wants to be the same, but ~6 years ago it was like an abundance of fruity pies, and now it is bread crusts. People just don't feed the drama like they used to.

[smoth]

Welcome to the new spring drama, same as the old spring drama.

It wants to be the same, but ~6 years ago it was like an abundance of fruity pies, and now it is bread crusts. People just don't feed the drama like they used to.

this, is, a, good, thing. say it with me slowly.

[PicassoCT]

Welcome to the new spring drama, same as the old spring drama.

This is exactly the sort of attitdude that brings long term comunity archivers down. We did improve, we have reworked our method-acting, our direction, we have a whole new class of world actors.

We practice, we kill stuntman, we do horrible repeat-tat-tat-teat-tat-tive takes over and over again - and all you do, is drop by, drop a wordrut - and vannish into the obscure of the lurke line. No Sir, get back here, get back here and apologize.

This instant.

[Silentwings]

In my experience with Spring, if I approach someone in a positive way, I generally get a positive response.

This was/is also my experience of the Spring dev community; after having been a player for years I started also developing stuff about 2 years ago. Yes, there are some small percentage of troll-esque ego strokers who use the forums (and that's certainly a bad thing) but they mostly don't produce anything beyond talk. I don't think they would put too many content developers off, but some of the same people do cause trouble in the lobby.

an abundance of fruity pies, and now it is bread crusts

[babbyboolay]

I see a few people responded. I may be wrong but ...

It also looks like NOTALobby is banned from the ENTIRE spring server. Not just from ZK.

One ego maniac that does what he wants and it affects the entire presentation of the engine and the mods.

You should just turn over all code and development to Licho and rename spring "ZK engine".

EDIT: I stand corrected. NL is not yet banned.

[Google_Frog]

Also, http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=30120

[luckywaldo7]

One ego maniac that does what he wants and it affects the entire presentation of the engine and the mods.

You should just turn over all code and development to Licho and rename spring "ZK engine".

And now we've gone off the deep end.