zoot

That's not what I said. I said I would be opposed to it if support for Facebook specifically is hardcoded into the game. Which I why I suggested supporting it server-side. That way, the user could choose which social network they want to support by switching servers. Instead of being given a "it's Facebook's way or the highway" kind of deal.

I think not. Endless amounts of cheap "freemium" games does this since they can't afford real advertising.

By the way, I completely sympathize with the desire to share scores with your social network. I've often wanted to brag with my pwnage of qBot myself. But not if the cost is that Facebook's advertisers get to leech off every such post from every player of the game.

Because:

It's not so much what the buttons say, but rather the function they have - which is to increase Facebook's revenue. Admittedly, I do not have any scientific study proving that most volunteer contributors would be opposed to such a thing - it's just that I have never met one who wasn't.

Should visibility be a goal in itself? Granted, Facebook may attract a lot of "newbie" players, but is that desirable if it scares off potential contributors?

Which is why it was suggested that it be implemented via an intermediary server.

It's not a question of whether social media dies (it won't, it has been around in various forms since the 1970s), but of whether the specific APIs into Facebook and Twitter break, which they routinely do. See for instance this article about how it has affected Zynga. Also, you should be aware, though you may not disagree with it, that what is being suggested is essentially an ad: every time someone shares their scores this way, it's additional exposure for Facebook and their advertisers. By extension, when people are working on 0 A.D., they would also be working on boosting Facebook's revenue. I firmly believe that a lot of potential contributors would be turned off by the suggestion of them basically working for free for a corporation as crassly commercial as Facebook. Overall, I think everyone would be much better served by this going over some kind of intermediary server.

Have you seen this: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1318

Or an ellipsis (commonly used in Windows UIs). Isn't it intended for setting difficulty and the like?

Could it be a per-ally setting in the diplomacy window instead of a per-market setting in the building panel?

I kinda like that too, if it can be put into the UI without feel overly out of place.

Agreed.

There are absolutely security issues, but I don't know if they pertain specifically to auto-updating or it is something common to any type of software distribution? Obtaining a sense of security by making it harder to update feels a bit like "security through obscurity"?

About formation turning, there is a bit of discussion here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16310 I only have a partial understanding of it myself, but maybe you can find some pointers there.

Could you please stuff the vitriolic language? It doesn't really add anything to the discussion and only helps polarize people from moving on to other topics.

IMO this is not true. If said ally turns on you, you have effectively been showering the enemy with resources at your own expense, making you less likely to win.

Would that preserve the alpha channel so nasty edges are avoided?

I guess it is to some extent personal preference/habit, but it just feels overly manual. The 'svn diff' in itself is simple enough, but then you need to find somewhere to dump it, name it without overwriting something you will need later, open Trac in a web browser, find the right file again in an upload dialog, upload it, wait for someone to go through twice the hassle of applying it again on their end, and hope that they are on the same revision and has the prerequisite patches applied, and then if the patch applies, they may want to make a tweak to send back to you, and then you go through the whole process again with the roles reversed. In Git I do: git commit; git push. Then I ask someone to have a look and they do: git checkout. Then they make their tweaks and do: git commit; git push. Then I do: git checkout. Done. Often I will not even need to touch Trac. I can just tell them to have look via IRC or they find out by themselves from my commit feed and catch up without me saying anything. Overall, in my experience, it is so much more fluid and, frankly, natural.

I agree that it is difficult to become accustomed to the codebase, but I've found that even after I have familiarized myself with some small part of it, the whole process of making patches, getting feedback, making more patches etc. keeps being drag - you can dedicate some time to overcome the 'familiarity' issue, but the process for getting your changes integrated keeps being a PITA no matter what you do.

Out of curiosity, how many major contributions to other projects have you made in the form of patches? Even stwf who made the new sound manager was eventually given SVN commit access, because (I assume) maintaining such a big system through patches just doesn't make sense.

My hunch is that more people will contribute if the project moves to Git. I won't guarantee it - but the whole process of having to make a patch for every little change is quite cumbersome.

I don't see any point in translating the wiki. It has tons of pages and they are changing often, so it will quickly fall out of sync.

I agree, and I can totally see a way to combine it with Gitification, so as to minimize duplicate work. Unless something else has already been planned.

That's why the market receives 25%.