Stop adding features, fix the bugs!

[Diablo]

I just heard about the leadership change so I think it's time to bring some points on the table. I may get flak for that, but avoiding the reality never improves things. So let's start:

0a.d. is a joke among the gaming developers community. No game has ever been in Alpha mode for so long. No game perpetuated bugs over and over all updates. One good example of that is when pressing and holding the mouse to drag around and select troops. We often have troops in that selection that are no longer there! What a major annoyance! And let's talk about the difficulty to garrison troops in a tower when there are plenty of enemies around. Sometimes it's also hard when there's no troops, but trees, etc.. But yet, we see announcements like "Vulcans!". Just stop adding features and fix the bugs once and for all! Another perfect example of things that shouldn't be: I recently did the update then upgrade of my Linux laptop and it automatically updated 0a.d. No problem with that, BUT it also deleted all my saved games and removed the map I was playing on before that update. WHAT THE HECK!? Another stupid bug are the .... doing whatever THEY want. You try to move them away, but no, they just stop and attack! This whatever the settings are for those troops. And why there isn't a document telling people what troops do what depending on the situation? Like, are there better troops to garrison the towers or do they all have the same effect? I had to ask around about the females vs the towers to find out they help prevent capture, but doesn't add anything. But what about the other troops? Is there one better for the towers?

The list is VERY long. All those things shouldn't be, and that's why it's frustrating, and why many who could get involved to help, don't want to. If you want this to work, you must have a team to review EVERYTHING done so far. Set a list of all bugs, then start working on it. And in the mean time, STOP adding stuff! A good leadership is one able to deal with that. Something that hasn't be done the way it should have been so far. 

Sorry, but the truth had to be said...

[alre]

games are not open source and only maintained by volunteers. it's an impossible comparison.

[Genava55]

4 hours ago, Diablo said:

But yet, we see announcements like "Vulcans!". Just stop adding features and fix the bugs once and for all!

Using Vulcan should drastically increase the performance and reduce the lag.

4 hours ago, Diablo said:

Set a list of all bugs, then start working on it.

The list is there: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&type=defect&milestone=Backlog&group=type&col=id&col=summary&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=component&col=time&order=priority

4 hours ago, Diablo said:

And in the mean time, STOP adding stuff!

People making balancing changes and small features are not the same people than those working on the engine and on the core of the game.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Genava55

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, alre said:

games are not open source and only maintained by volunteers. it's an impossible comparison.

Also I feel like many modern games would just call what we have a live service and charge a fee for each update.

[Vantha]

 

6 hours ago, Diablo said:

But yet, we see announcements like "Vulcans!". Just stop adding features and fix the bugs once and for all!

For me personally, performance has always been the biggest issue of the game. So for me, Vulkan falls more under the category 'enhancing playability' than 'adding new features'

Edited October 23, 2023 by Vantha

[Atrik]

6 hours ago, Diablo said:

I just heard about the leadership change so I think it's time to bring some points on the table. I may get flak for that, but avoiding the reality never improves things. So let's start

This sounds pretty unfair. One would rapidly figure out how much Stan did for the project (I know only 1% of it, and still it's obvious). I guess next project leader would be honored to take on his legacy.

I don't want to ask in the dedicated topic because it deserve to be a thread about thanking Stan but is there a ongoing discussion on who would take the role? @wowgetoffyourcellphone would be a great candidate, but would he accept? Is there other members interested to step in it?

[Gurken Khan]

11 minutes ago, Atrik said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone would be a great candidate, but would he accept?

Wasn't he a dev and resigned because of creative differences? Don't know about his standing with the rest of the team.

Spoiler

Apart from his contributions, personally I don't know if he would be a good lead; he was the only person who felt it necessary to call me names, repeatedly. Could be the deciding factor why I stayed away from his mod...

 

[Atrik]

15 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Apart from his contributions, personally I don't know if he would be a good lead; he was the only person who felt it necessary to call me names, repeatedly.

Ideally someone reliable/mature/impartial should take the role. But I'm not sure plenty of the current staff members have extra time to even desire to be project leader. @wowgetoffyourcellphone is active and invested. But maybe there are things planned by Stan or the team that he didn't wrote in his post.

[leopard]

3 minutes ago, Atrik said:

But maybe there are things planned by Stan or the team that he didn't wrote in his post

I hope they have a plan. I want 0AD live and prosper.

[Grapjas]

Imo ideally every department should have it's own leader to spread the load, intaked and assigned by someone who knows a bit of everything. But we don't have that luxury. I think you can count all active devs on one hand. Putting everything on 1 person again will just lead to burnouts.

Btw the original post is top tier trash, at least catch yourself up to the history before saying all that. Or get your own feet wet in development instead of making demands. Like alre said, you don't even seem to grasp the concept of an open source project.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Grapjas

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

9 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Apart from his contributions, personally I don't know if he would be a good lead; he was the only person who felt it necessary to call me names, repeatedly. Could be the deciding factor why I stayed away from his mod...

I have no recollection of this, but apparently it made a big impact on you, so I apologize. 

 

If I were to be made leader I would merge DE instantly and make everyone angry.

[ufa]

I'm not privy to development stuff but surely 1,000s and 1,000s of bugs have been fixed across the numerous alphas. This thread is silly.

[man_s_our]

On 23/10/2023 at 5:45 AM, Diablo said:

I may get flak for that

off-course you do. because you speak without any Idea how is the game developed.

[Freagarach]

I feel the urge to react to the OP, so here I go.

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

0a.d. is a joke among the gaming developers community.

Haha! I like jokes.

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

No game has ever been in Alpha mode for so long.

No game has ever looked so good/worked so good in Alpha. It has become a signature, whilst still conveying that we may overhaul our code at the blink of an eye.

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

No game perpetuated bugs over and over all updates.

Do you have a reference for this?

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

fix the bugs once and for all!

I understand that when not adding features fewer new bugs will arise, but even if we fix bugs, we (may) introduce new bugs, so this is quite hard, actually. Consider how long we've been trying this!

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

Another perfect example of things that shouldn't be: I recently did the update then upgrade of my Linux laptop and it automatically updated 0a.d. No problem with that, BUT it also deleted all my saved games and removed the map I was playing on before that update. WHAT THE HECK!?

"13" (Or actually: You should blame your distro, not the ISP.)

On 23/10/2023 at 6:45 AM, Diablo said:

And why there isn't a document telling people what troops do what depending on the situation? Like, are there better troops to garrison the towers or do they all have the same effect? I had to ask around about the females vs the towers to find out they help prevent capture, but doesn't add anything. But what about the other troops? Is there one better for the towers?

Because such a document would become very complicated and unreadable very very quickly. It all depends on the situation, and there are a lot of those. Image there is a ram nearby, then the best unit to garrison would be (champion) swordsmen. If those are not close, however, you can garrison any projectile unit for added arrows. If there is merely a bunch of cavalry around, you can garrison your female workers to protect them. But that is quite useless when there is a real army on your doorstep.

See how this gets messy quickly? ^^

As for the rest of the posts: Thank you all for your unwavering support! <3

On 23/10/2023 at 11:37 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

make everyone angry

Not everyone, I guess.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 23/10/2023 at 3:37 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I have no recollection of this, but apparently it made a big impact on you, so I apologize. 

 

If I were to be made leader I would merge DE instantly and make everyone angry.

Yes and not.

In theory, DE should be the game's experiment laboratory.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 23/10/2023 at 3:37 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I have no recollection of this, but apparently it made a big impact on you, so I apologize. 

 

If I were to be made leader I would merge DE instantly and make everyone angry.

I have an idea so that no one notices.

Have you heard the paradox of Theseus?

 

It's all about changing things so slowly that you don't feel the change until it's no longer 0AD, but rather DE.

[BeTe]

I'd like to add 2 thoughts to basic idea of this post.

( Let's ignore toxic behavior and lack of culture. Which is btw very important, especially in online communication when you can't actually see person's gestures and mimics which can lead to missundertandings.)

(1) Vulcan: someone already replied. Performance and lag, especially in TGs is serious problem in 0AD. And devs really deserve to be highly appreciated for their volunter work. Not only on Vulcan...

(2) Base idea of this post is to "prioritize tasks". It can be good approach in commercial projects, but in open-source where devs do it for free and for their own soul, that can be wrong sometimes. I think devs should have freedom to enjoy their "work" but off course, leaders must make sure that it doesn't ruin release game.

P.S.

0AD is really nice project and huge job is already done and being done. Game is very playable so we should appreciate anyone who does anything to make it progress.

Off course, I have many things I'd like to be improved so it becomes more competitive, but I am aware it's not simple.

Edited March 13 by BeTe

[Philip the Swaggerless]

It's true, it is open source and I am not a dev.  So it is easy for me to complain about the poor performance in team games, even though I myself cannot put in the work to fix it.

Nevertheless, I have been asking myself recently: should I really be playing a game this laggy in 2024?  Time out of one's day is lost in games where actual time is significantly longer (2x, for example) than game time.

WAY more than the unit rebalances or new units, I look forward to performance improvements like Vulcan.  I also heard a27 will bring a way for the host to check if a player is causing lag due too just having a slow computer.  So the host can choose not let that player in 4v4 games for example.

On 22/10/2023 at 11:45 PM, Diablo said:

One good example of that is when pressing and holding the mouse to drag around and select troops. We often have troops in that selection that are no longer there! What a major annoyance!

That is annoying.  Probably what you are running into is the fact that a maximum of 200 units can be selected at a time. 2 things can help mitigate this now: 

• Hold alt while dragging the mouse to select military units only.  Holding alt + y while dragging the mouse to select will select NON-military units only.  Or,
• Play games with a lower pop limit.

A bit of self critique:  Some of the performance issues can be mitigated by choosing different options.  We DON'T HAVE to play 4v4 200 pop team games.  I think 3v3 is pretty interesting, actually.  We can play lower pop limit games (albeit this effects the defensive structure vs unit balance).

Just because we have the freedom to choose grander options doesn't mean that it's the best choice.

[alre]

On 15/04/2024 at 7:02 PM, Philip the Swaggerless said:

It's true, it is open source and I am not a dev.  So it is easy for me to complain about the poor performance in team games, even though I myself cannot put in the work to fix it.

Nevertheless, I have been asking myself recently: should I really be playing a game this laggy in 2024?  Time out of one's day is lost in games where actual time is significantly longer (2x, for example) than game time.

WAY more than the unit rebalances or new units, I look forward to performance improvements like Vulcan.  I also heard a27 will bring a way for the host to check if a player is causing lag due too just having a slow computer.  So the host can choose not let that player in 4v4 games for example.

That is annoying.  Probably what you are running into is the fact that a maximum of 200 units can be selected at a time. 2 things can help mitigate this now: 

• Hold alt while dragging the mouse to select military units only.  Holding alt + y while dragging the mouse to select will select NON-military units only.  Or,
• Play games with a lower pop limit.

A bit of self critique:  Some of the performance issues can be mitigated by choosing different options.  We DON'T HAVE to play 4v4 200 pop team games.  I think 3v3 is pretty interesting, actually.  We can play lower pop limit games (albeit this effects the defensive structure vs unit balance).

Just because we have the freedom to choose grander options doesn't mean that it's the best choice.

the game is better at lower pop imho.