Let's learn from Wesnoth and think about the future of spring

[smoth]

I didn't say everything but many things need to be lua'd now knorke.

People can make mutators and not violate a content license. That argument is bunk.

You cans sit here and feel good about your perception that spring's decline is because things didn't go your way or that you can pull a hindsight is 20/20 thing and talk about all is wrong but hey I am here trying to see positive ways to improve things without killing spring. Try and stay positive. Negativity is infectious and doesn't encourage people to stay or make things better.

We both agree something's can be taken out of the engine and lua'd. Lua in springs has grown greatly. We need to examine what parts can be simplified(within reason), what needs to be in the engine sync/desync, sound, network, pathing etc. right now I am waiting on an engine dev like jk, Abma, Kloot or even Tobi to come in and say something

[Super Mario]

ALL OF IT'S GAME LOGIC SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED AT THE LUA SIDE

I disagree, I do see the engine dealing with some of the hairier stuff (movetypes, targeting) and some of the very common stuff (resources).

It's a hyperbole, if it's in the engine, then it needs to be genetic as possible so that the game devs can provide their own implementation.

[Google_Frog]

Ironically, the TA-isms in the engine cannot be used even if you are trying to go slightly beyond TA (mechanically at least). Zero-K effectively has lua implementations of:

• Resource generation.
• Proration (the incremental build system).
• Stockpile.
• Air repair pads.
• Target priorities.
• EMP and paralysis.
• The metal map.
• Nanospray.

It would have been great if these features were already gadgets, then they would only require modification to suit my needs. In some cases I am using the Spring variables (such as stockpile count and engine resources) but I doubt it would take me too long to replace that with Unit/TeamRulesParams if I had to. I do worry a bit about performance though. For example Spring still handles reclaim in ZK and worry that spamming AllowFeatureBuildStep would be costly.

I did not even aim to write full lua replacements for these systems. Just, over the years, bits of the engine break down and I found it far easier to write a gadget around it than to report it and have it fixed in the way I wanted.

[8611z]

There is no hindsight:
All that has happend in past years was predicated and little of it is a suprise.
Staying positive has nothing to do with repeating the same obvious mistakes, while learning nothing from it because only seeing world through rose-tinted glasses.
And after the damage is done act surprised when others are annoyed by it.
If you want to be positive than stop these dynamics or you are part of the problem.

As knorke pointed out, there is a different interest between gamedevs and enginedevs.
Enginedevs want to broaden the scope of what can be created (even if it breaks existing games) and gamedevs want most of all stability, cause its rated frust (frust-rating-scale) to fix stuff that was considered perfectly fine just one engineversion ago.

This is not what I wrote.

[FLOZi]

Back then people were screaming "Oh noooo a hacky Lua thing! But I want it in engine!"
Now the same people are screaming "Oh nooo a hacky engine thing! But I want a Lua!"

Myself and Smoth have nearly always been on the pro-lua isde, so no, not "the same people". (This is not an invitation for you to quote us out of context in 2005 or something, disclaimer: stress the nearly.)

That is exactly the stuff that can be Lua, completly.
None of the Lua functions about resources like Spring.AddTeamResource() or Spring.UseUnitResource() are nessecary. They do not need to be expanded to work with third, fourth or n-th resource, such things do not make it any different. Really flexible would be to remove all this.

I disagree slightly here, I feel an engine framework for resourcing makes game logic easier to implement; consider also interaction with the metalmap. I even went to the effort of considering the required API and discussing it with jk.

All* mods on https://springrts.com/wiki/Games use .tdf / .fbi / .3do / .cob files in varying amount.

Minor point, but sweden branch of S44 is/will be pure lua & s3o. It is a long term branch but it will allow us to do things that simply are not possible under tdf/fbi/cob.

[8611z]

Myself and Smoth have nearly always been on the pro-lua isde, so no, not "the same people". (This is not an invitation for you to quote us out of context in 2005 or something, disclaimer: stress the nearly.)

If anything is taking things from "2005" out of context then it is the claims about "TA"-Spring:
Yes, it started with copying TA but that other things took longer to implent is simply because nobody had done it yet.
That is the whole story. No TA-crowd trying to block anything or whatever.

Bringing up age-old crap are posts like:

You guys have not had the run of the house for 7 years now. Tons of stuff in the engine has been done for the TA crowd and the engine has revolved around you guys much to it's detriment.

It is strange to see people comment how the "TA-crowd" and "TA-ism" was suppossedly holding engine back for that long time; while in that time frame, yes those same people made big dramas about requesting something in engine.

I feel an engine framework for resourcing makes game logic easier to implement; consider also interaction with the metalmap. I even went to the effort of considering the required API and discussing it with jk.

"Eassier to implent" in the words of this thread: "I can see sheer laziness"
Obviously it is nice that engine helps with many things: We are too unwilling or unable to write everything from scratch.
(Or at least were when we started)

I know https://springrts.com/wiki/User:Flozi/E ... dResources but do not see the big deal:
Instead of "metal" & "energy" there would be different strings/resources.
Ok, but it is still TA-eco just with more resources. Nothing about it is "generic."
It is "TA2" with more than two resources.
I agree with this:

Realistically, such support would be a huge undertaking and probably not worth the effort seen as most of this can already be done purely through lua, and the 2 engine 'hardcoded' resources are flexible enough to be used in various ways (c.f. S44 & MCL). Backwards compatibility would also be a maintenance nightmare.

Minor point, but sweden branch of S44 is/will be pure lua & s3o. It is a long term branch but it will allow us to do things that simply are not possible under tdf/fbi/cob.

Nice for you, of course lua has advantages.
However some mods have their def & unitscripts functional already, so they have nothing to gain.
It is enough that the Krogoths and Peewees can walk & shot; nobody cares about more and it is okay.
Sometimes people are SO fanatical about Lua but are basically only changing file extension from .cob or .fbi to .lua without gaining any advantage. except bragging rights how their mod is oh-so-modern.
...and then it is the same "funny" TA-scripts just blindly converted and defs still have all the copypaste and non-functional parts.

I do not like what "pro Lua" means sometimes:
-Old wine in new skins. (Lua scripts/def in old style, just different synthax)
-Fanatical ideas to remove TAisms because of 100 TAisms their mod only uses 99
-Claims to not use "kludgy" engine-thing but actually is just feeding the engine slightly different.
-Someone else made a Lua and now you could copypaste it into your mod
-Complain about TAism, but actually just want engine changed to use a different -ism.
-Bonus points if peopleperson has never made anything in the scale they phantasize about

[AF]

This thread reminds me of the old thread when people like Storm raged over C++ gadget AIs and the unfair capabilities it could give people in games and it even being necessary for all manner of things, my how things have turned around

[PicassoCT]

GF has a point there. What remains in the engine is basically a starter kit. If you something exotic or diffrent, its copy & paste from the zero-k or another repo.

Which gets us to another point . Its tough with such a distributed architecture to maintain performance. Performance as in - how hot a piece of code is, as in how long the engine stays in it.

Finally the audience question is not really answered. Who is the main audience of the engine?

Amateure Minecraftian Devs?
Professional Game Developers?
Old TA Playerbase?

Finally Infrastructure.. this is a dangerous topic. Everyone needs it.
And it is often not doing what it is expected to do. (Join #newbie if you want to debate that)
Good User experiences are tough.. maybe thats all there is too it.

[Super Mario]

GF has a point there. What remains in the engine is basically a starter kit. If you something exotic or diffrent, its copy & paste from the zero-k or another repo.

Which gets us to another point . Its tough with such a distributed architecture to maintain performance. Performance as in - how hot a piece of code is, as in how long the engine stays in it.

Finally the audience question is not really answered. Who is the main audience of the engine?

Amateure Minecraftian Devs?
Professional Game Developers?
Old TA Playerbase?

Finally Infrastructure.. this is a dangerous topic. Everyone needs it.
And it is often not doing what it is expected to do. (Join #newbie if you want to debate that)
Good User experiences are tough.. maybe thats all there is too it.

Or you could do a poll. That always works.

[smoth]

Knorke, I have written tons of Lua to constantly insist that I write everything from scratch so you can somehow respect me more is asinine. Keep pushing that point about how kdr/lurked/aegis/Peet/whoever helped me get started wrote something that I have built upon. It doesn't show technical ineptitude like you think. It is because I can work with others, learn from them and it makes me a better and more efficient coder. Anything that I have done you dismiss as superfluous or outright minuscule over the years. Just get over it. I am not turning this thread into another fight between you and I about how you see me as some hack. It is a weak defensive point that you like to retreat to.

Another problem is you see people's personalities, skills and attitudes as unchanging. We are not thus.

Google frog has some hey points

[PicassoCT]

I think Gajops analytics approach is also needed in the lobbys.
We need a way to show how close to a game a user got, where the user usually got stuck. After what actions/games did he abandone (aka close the lobby before first or second game).

So i guess a central analytics server would be great, with statistics which reflect the newby-staying power of the lobby and also show where in the gui the point of no return was.

[8611z]

What do you want to analyze?
Is there anyone left who still does not know about "where the user got stuck"?
Maybe read almost every single review ever?
The problems are known since years, it is slowly being worked - all good.
However there is always dumb "marketing attempts" where stuff that is KNOWN to be broken gets hyped up and then fails to deliver.
It is never a surprise because all the bugs were known. Similiar anyone can see when promised features like campaign or whatever simply do not exist in SVN.

If you want to analzye something then analyze why people in their greed for playernumbers & fame people always choose to ignore things.
Always stupid justications like "It does not matter lol."
Or other favorite reason: "It is nessecary to take risks!"
Wow, so much courage to take the "risk" to release something clearly broken/unfinished.
Such """"""positive""""""" thinking to to believe that it will magically work and missing features will magically appear.
And NEVER have I seen any admitting the mistakes. Or at least just be silent and do not repeat it.
Instead always shifting blame, explaining to players how it is not your fault but someones/somethings else fault.

[AF]

What do you want to analyze?
Is there anyone left who still does not know about "where the user got stuck"?
Maybe read almost every single review ever?
The problems are known since years, it is slowly being worked - all good.
However there is always dumb "marketing attempts" where stuff that is KNOWN to be broken gets hyped up and then fails to deliver.
It is never a surprise because all the bugs were known. Similiar anyone can see when promised features like campaign or whatever simply do not exist in SVN.

If you want to analzye something then analyze why people in their greed for playernumbers & fame people always choose to ignore things.
Always stupid justications like "It does not matter lol."
Or other favorite reason: "It is nessecary to take risks!"
Wow, so much courage to take the "risk" to release something clearly broken/unfinished.
Such """"""positive""""""" thinking to to believe that it will magically work and missing features will magically appear.
And NEVER have I seen any admitting the mistakes. Or at least just be silent and do not repeat it.
Instead always shifting blame, explaining to players how it is not your fault but someones/somethings else fault.

Interesting, I would like to see your well thought out plan of action to help people who make this mistake get back on track

[8611z]

Interesting, I would like to see your well thought out plan of action to help people who make this mistake get back on track

How do you help people who jump out of airplane without parachute? From some mistakes there is no good recovering. If you somehow survive then:
First steps would be to"be silent and do not repeat it." Then admit mistakes, which does not mean to fall on knees and cry "bawww I am so sorry", but simply recognize mistakes and learn from it. Continue to deny = nothing changes.

Community must have self-control. Be critical about promises that seem too good to be true.
Do not blindly write praising reviews or give upvotes. Try the game, test everything if it is really as good. Look in SVN if promised features actually exist. Does it seem organized? How is it being tested, if at all? How are bug reports handled? Ask yourself if the person can realistically accomplish what they talk about.
Did you answer these questions with "Yes, I checked all that and really was convienced it would work and be positive for spring"?
Yes = rethink why you got fooled
No = think why you did not say anything

[PicassoCT]

Knorke, remember that testgame, that you, emanuel and i had in jw. That was the only game of jw that ever got played.
Realistic perspective, aka as looking down, is the stuff that kills you.
All those successfull people claiming that it was due to there methodic planning, they are partially right- but at the end of the day, there is a CEO sitting in his office praying

"Please, dont let it be that i have forgotten anything.
Please let the money be enouh till release.
Please dont let those people who work for me, realize that the confetti flying away from the bandwagon, might be vital engine parts."

There are several examples of projects that rolled out of the garage dysfunct and where fixed on the move. So the release problem is not the buggy release and the attitude, its the missing repair team that fixes stuff while the wagon rolls.

Now regarding toxic people:

Humanity is not made of a monolithic block - copys of the same human over and over. And suprise, some of the more - exotic- ones are some of the more productive and creative ones.
Insanity helps.
Surviving the dry, desperate and desolate times and go on with what one does like robinson crusoe.
Producing stuff that a balanced individual might never produce.
Look at the german Tatort. Typical Scene. A man and a woman, standing in a stairwell, shouting at one another.

"Shit. I hate you so much!" "Asshole!" "Hate. Door banging. Emotional monotony as authenticity.

What is wrong here? It was produced by a well-balanced individual, filtred by a well balanced bureacratic state-run company. No insanity.soc
Now lets look what a boderliner writer would make of this?

"Shit, i hate you so much! But i love how you yell, here in the stairwell! The only time in your live you put effort into something."
"The acoustics of hell, nowhere sounds Asshole like music- I hope you die! " and so on.

Notice the difference. Insanity breaks the monotony. Insanity spends time refining a bullet dropping animation, where the normal people are out there celebrating the weekend.
Difficult people have a right to exist and produce stuff. And yes, they are found on the interwebs, where text interaction limits social deficit impact and collaborating is easy.

So forb botched his steam release, cause he had no plan to come up with additional server and how to migrate infstructure?
fine here we are- discussing the infrastructure of spring. Good point. We need infrastructure that can scale dynamic up with amazon or google rented servers.

Community has difficult people? Prevent them from replying to newcomers..

[raaar]

yea, there's examples of people doing blind leaps forward and making successful games, businesses, etc. because groups of people worked through the issues and made it work (sometimes barely). They succeed where a cautious "reasonable" group would never even try..... But there are also lots of projects and businesses that just fail.

The other day a dev was saying the "add the option to disable legacy behavior" is significantly harder for them than just removing it. I don't buy it. People seem to be overestimating the cost of legacy and/or underestimating the cost of replacing it.

Please focus on making useful stuff and fixing the problems we have, not on creating new ones..


About infrastructure. Its state needs to be more transparent :
- how much money does it require (for donations)
- what's the backup in case it fails
- how loaded is it
- will it be able to handle a spike in number of players


About advertisement, news, and such. There's the saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity", and it's wrong. For example, I don't want other people advertising my game. Their timing may be off : it may generate an influx of players when the game or infrastructure isn't ready and i'm not available to reply to their issues.

[8611z]

Knorke, remember that testgame, that you, emanuel and i had in jw. That was the only game of jw that ever got played.
Realistic perspective, aka as looking down, is the stuff that kills you.

I remember that.
But I do not remember that you denied all the bugs that it obviously had. I also do not remember any claims about "if JW is on steam then spring is on steam!!!" and how great that will be.

Humanity is not made of a monolithic block - copys of the same human over and over. And suprise, some of the more - exotic- ones are some of the more productive and creative ones.

For every "crazy professor" there are 100 dudes who are just regular crazies.
99% of "asshole geniuses" have nothing genius about them.

So forb botched his steam release, cause he had no plan to come up with additional server and how to migrate infstructure?

That was only one aspect.
Somehow there is much concentrating on this one thing, maybe to make it look like as if the whole thing was outside his control or whatever.
It is also how you handle failure. He was still celebrating the "sucess" and planning tourneys and trying to cast games when others were trying to figure out what to do.

There was no plan for anything.
Join MP game to download files? That was not "planned" it was stupid workaround others had to put into FAQ for him.
No maplist. Slowly recognizes why that fails and put in a list. Then removes it again and all back to previous fail.

Look at this bug: https://github.com/EvolutionRTS/Evolution-RTS/issues/3
Do you think this was the first time this bug in widgethandler was reported? On github bugtracker yes, on google.code it had been long before.
Kinda dumb thing to delete your bugtracker without looking if there is unsolved problems?
The bug in widget-handler was known for years. It was reported in old bugtracker several times but always closed with dumb explainations why it was no bug or did not matter. Players had also mentioned it in comments and he had experienced it himself.
Also just noticed this comment: "Smoth has been working with the widget/gadget handlers. From what I understand he may have already inadvertently fixed it." How would it be "inadvertently" be fixed if the file was not changed? Maybe magic!
Me, but also several other people, including jK, had said long before to easily fix it. But just resulted in dumb rages about how "the fix makes it worse!!!11" and "it is already fixed."
Same with the bug that game instantly ended after start.
Now how likely is it that everybody in spring/#moddev was wrong?

Always denying when something does not work.
I notice Linux download do not work, other test too and notice same. He has appearently never tested but knows everything better.
Same with Mac version.

Or the crap with singleplayer.
When players asked where the singleplayer/campaign was, at first tried to explain how a broken spawner-thing and NullAI should totally be considered singleplayer.
Then started to deny that SP was ever announced because "FACEPALM! it is not on the game page. learn2read lol!"
However originally steam's game-page did state singleplayer. Or look at the greenlight-page where it still says "singleplayer."
Or look at his comments how he is working on SP and will "throw in a campaign to sweeten the deal" and whatnot.
THAT was the game players voted to have on steam. Lame bait.

Also so lame to tell players "Look at the SVN: You can see how hard I am working on the game! Last update was just yesterday!"
If gamers could actually read SVN log they would see that none of the changes adressed any issues they reported...

"I am responsible for the lobby, settings app, maps, widgets, gadgets, units, engine version, etc that my players use. Not you. I control the whole infrastructure. Don't say most. What you mean to say is "*A"."
Always portraiting yourself as amazing "one man dev army" and after fail blame others. LAME.

There's the saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity", and it's wrong. For example, I don't want other people advertising my game.

Yes, excactly! If good publicity exists, so must examples that generate bad publicity.
But too late, spring is already on steam now.
"Fwiw, I wanted evo on steam to be an easy entry point for not just evo but other spring games as well.
I don't know that I have succeeded in that manner in any way shape or form, but I did try."
Thanks for the nice coordination with everyone else!
Always hating on how other projects reflect bad on spring - and then do the same thing on biggest scale ever.

So the release problem is not the buggy release and the attitude, its the missing repair team that fixes stuff while the wagon rolls.

Attitude is excactly the problem. Someone builds a bomb wagon and then you can either watch it crash into a bunch of people and your own stuff or hecticly try to play repair team. Some people should not have driving license.

tl;dr
too soft community exploited by few willing to walk over dead bodies

User was warned for this post- Felony 2. Please avoid repeated intentional harassment. (Silentwings)

[PicassoCT]

Not entirely true. Lessons were learned. Zero-K has now tools to test infrastructure on massive scales.

While previously such events where not even worth considering work investment, people now invest time.

Also don't think that reputation sticks to engine from games. Zero-K gets a clean slate.

And Forb can be nice and he is productive. Yes, the "I can wing it" attitude can be annoying.
But so is the idea, that stuff anybody can use for free for anything carrys any way a reputation.

But the outcome of my work is not defined by someone else having used the same costume on the same stage.
Different shoes and audience knows and notice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... gine_games
They made DeusEx Invisible war with the Unreal 2 Engine.
Engine was spoiled, not a maiden true and pure, ever after?

[smoth]

I am not getting drug into this but the evo released while failed did give us some valuable feedback from people

[abma]

did someone collect constructive items of this thread? i refuse to read 6 thread pages

1) Is it necessary Spring have short/long term goals?

yes, its good!

2) What should they be? (prioritise!)

0. create a forum where only people have access who are constructive
1. single player content (missions/campaign?)
2. allow single player games to be run without dedicated lobbies
3. allow multiplayer player games to be run without dedicated lobbies
4. better graphics


not sure how to prioritize these:

- improve / simplify infrastructure. i.e.:
a) uploading games/maps should be a simple page like on replays.springrts.com and then afterwards some notes / screenshots can be added to the game/map.
b) improve lobbyserver, implement proerptymap (?)

- modularize code
- make ai development easier (i.e. fix python interface, allow threading, use ...)
- simplify game/map development

also https://springrts.com/wiki/Project_proposals