Looking back on the balancing strategy

[Lion.Kanzen]

40 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

If you want the lobby to try changes to the game as @wraitii suggested, then I would say that you would need to create a ¨(semi) progressive mod¨ for A26 that features changes and make it the standard. Then players that do nothing use and test the new changes. Then also give players the option to use a conservative mod that allows people to play A26 in a way that is closer to A25. I think even some minor changes to technologies and templates could improve the flow of the game significantly

the slow and discreet change, organic.

[Crynux]

Hi all, haven't been around here for a while ... just started reading some of these posts; do I smell the need for a modloader? I'd be interested in working on something like that.
 

Edit: Wanted to reply to Stans initial post (parts shortened/made point-form to make this post shorter):

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

I created a Personal Mail (PM) with a few individuals, in order to try to create a team-like cohesion.

I do remember getting a PM/DM at one point ... but I was very much away from the project at that time. I do really appreciate the reach-out though. Thank you a ton for that!

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

a documentation team to update the design document. The job was too hard

In-depth documentation doesn't work in "early" project stages (I know this project has been going on for a while, but it is still alpha, so I consider it early). The best that can be done, is to have clear generalized goals, and build from those once they become realized. That way the design can be done as-needed, rather than up-front when things may change in a week or two (or more).

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

I was not happy about doing things in the shadows. This whole project is a community effort, and the contributors of today are the ones that might carry the flame when I am gone

Shadows cause gossip and shut people out. In my mind it should be avoided at all cost, especially with an open community. It can be a difficult thing to do, because first nature is to create a "huddle group" and work with those individuals to fix/advance things. It seems though, that the creation of these groups can cause more harm than good. I would suggest completely transparent communication - and if a decision has been made, or something is stuck, bring that to the community for ideas.

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

So after a few internal discussions we came up with the balancing subforum, where everyone could see what was going on behind the curtains but only a selected few could interract, and anyone could ask me for a seat at the table, with some relevant experience. It came with little titles that hoped would boost morale.

Sounds fancy ... but maybe too open.

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

It created an even bigger split in the community, resulted in a huge variety of threads which is good, but which led nowhere as none of the idea was accepted enough to be implemented. And even the ideas who did get implemented did not make it.

Community involvement needs to be guided, without community guidance, too many suggestions can pile up, and eventually things just stop. There's a number of solutions for this ... mainly thru the use of technology, but it takes some time to get right!

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore.

Lock it and/or archive it I'd say.

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

So I'm asking everyone, what can we (as in Wildfire Games) do, to get more contributions about balancing, to make A26 a success.

Reading the posts here ... it seems like everyone is in their own corner so to speak. Maybe I'm just picking up on the internal strife ... or just reading into things too deeply, but it does seem like there's a problem here.

I know I'm just showing up out of the blue (literally googled open source games, a post reminded me of 0ad, and I signed in lol), but I'd be willing to help. I have some ideas on how we can get things moving again, if you're interested.

On 17/04/2022 at 5:43 AM, Stan` said:

We have some very nasty release blockers, and that leaves time for a bit more balancing patches.

Best regards,

Stan

Sounds like a prime time to re-gear so-to-speak, and tackle those nasties with a fresh outlook!

As always, feel free to ping me or whatever; yalls have a Discord?

Edited May 18, 2022 by Crynux
Replying to stan

[Freagarach]

10 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

then I would say that you would need to create a ¨(semi) progressive mod¨ for A26 that features changes and make it the standard.

Again: C++ changes offsetting balance?

We have autobuilds for M$ W[7,8,10] so I would encourage players to try SVN, that is the most "progressive mod" you'll get. (We've also got some pretty clear documentation about how to compile on *nix and moreover there is a Snap that gets updated to trunk quite often.)

[Lion.Kanzen]

10 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

We have autobuilds for M$ W[7,8,10] so I would encourage players to try SVN,

SVN enjoyer here.

We need to go further.

Even if it's creating tickets that we agree on.

How much transparency is there with the internal team forums?

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

How much transparency is there with the internal team forums?

Eh, not much, but you're really not missing out. There's been very few threads in the past few years, and mostly internal drama.

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/4545

New combat system.

this rework is already important.

But this one must go slow.

The 3 ideas not fully implemented are these:

Fire damage (development).

Naval rework. @wowgetoffyourcellphone I had proposals.

Macro-Counters (melee, cavalry, missile roles).

Battalion (Development).

Rework capturing.

That's the basics of current combat that have been discussed lately.

Not forgetting what is expected, secondary attack would change the way many units in the game.

[LetswaveaBook]

11 hours ago, Freagarach said:

Again: C++ changes offsetting balance?

We have autobuilds for M$ W[7,8,10] so I would encourage players to try SVN, that is the most "progressive mod" you'll get. (We've also got some pretty clear documentation about how to compile on *nix and moreover there is a Snap that gets updated to trunk quite often.)

I was referring to balance update, not engine updates.

If balancing is meant to be a thing that helps to define more dynamic gameplay, then we need to dare to make more changes. If the game is supposed to have a better engine in 2025, then leave engine development to the developers.

The balancing team should create a balance such that there is enough strategical diversity, regardless of the engine.

In my view it is important to see both how they are related, but also to acknowledge that they are very much their own thing (e.g. multiplying food gathering rate by 1.5 and wood gathering rate by 0.67 would do way more for balance that any reasonable engine upgrade could do).

[ChronA]

@Sevda had a good concrete-suggestion on another thread: Make it easier to play mods by automatically syncing with the host when joining a modded multiplayer game.

Their post implies a host-client simulation architecture that I assume would require completely redesigning the net code (so that is unlikely to happen), but could not the same effect be achieved by just having the players' clients automatically download and install the mod files from the host? (Subject to all parties' affirmative consent obviously.) 

For very large mods like DE this installation method would take a long time, but for small balance changes it ought to be pretty snappy. From a casual user's perspective this would make playing modded multiplayer content more like having custom map rules. It would allow more people to very easily experiment with new gameplay innovations, without effectively forking the project into two separate versions with the attendant doubling of the code-maintenance workload, as discussed previously.

Maybe there are some valid cybersecurity arguments why one would not want to support a feature like that, but this might be a case this requires soberly considering a tradeoff. 0AD is niche entertainment software with an active user base of a few thousands maybe, it's not exactly a prime target for black hats to exploit. Maybe at worst someone with a grudge might think use this nefariously against specific objects of their ire.

On the other side of the scale, I think the discussion on this and other threads demonstrate a pervasive consensus that this project is stuck in a creative crisis... Badly stuck. There are too many objectors coming out of the woodwork any time someone suggests serious design or organizational reforms that might let 0AD get un-mired from its dubiously balanced, half-finished state. The only other option you have is to start removing barriers to independent creatives to realize their own visions of the game's future, and then hope that a new consensus organically coalesces around one of these offerings so that it can become the new roadmap for 0AD:EA proper. 

link to the other thread:

 

[Stan`]

4 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Maybe there are some valid cybersecurity arguments why one would not want to support a feature like that, but this might be a case this requires soberly considering a tradeoff. 0AD is niche entertainment software with an active user base of a few thousands maybe, it's not exactly a prime target for black hats to exploit. Maybe at worst someone with a grudge might think use this nefariously against specific objects of their ire.

In general I would agree, but the DDOSers have lived to tell a different story. You also wouldn't know what you download. e.g. a modified small balancing mod could contain nasty JS code that does things it shouldn't. This is actually why we have mod signatures on mod.io. It's not fool proof, but we check all the mods submitted there. I believe it's the reason other than "Nobody coded it" why we don't have automatic download.

 

[Genava55]

35 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Maybe there are some valid cybersecurity arguments why one would not want to support a feature like that, but this might be a case this requires soberly considering a tradeoff. 0AD is niche entertainment software with an active user base of a few thousands maybe, it's not exactly a prime target for black hats to exploit. Maybe at worst someone with a grudge might think use this nefariously against specific objects of their ire.

Hackers are targeting everything. There are some groups specialized in massive attacks against specific targets but most hackers are alone and independant, looking for easy targets to keep them busy, to learn new tricks and to earn a bit of fame. 

Sadly, security is mandatory everywhere and people thinking otherwise are naive.

[wraitii]

An option with respect to that is letting people download mods from mod.io, not the host, but fetch the list of mods from the host. It's essentially the same thing but you don't need to trust the host so much.

That feature I think we only miss for lack of trying.

---

Now with that being said:

2 hours ago, ChronA said:

On the other side of the scale, I think the discussion on this and other threads demonstrate a pervasive consensus that this project is stuck in a creative crisis... Badly stuck. There are too many objectors coming out of the woodwork any time someone suggests serious design or organizational reforms that might let 0AD get un-mired from its dubiously balanced, half-finished state. The only other option you have is to start removing barriers to independent creatives to realize their own visions of the game's future, and then hope that a new consensus organically coalesces around one of these offerings so that it can become the new roadmap for 0AD:EA proper. 

I think one thing that gets forgotten in this discussion a little is that the project is still given as an alpha. The snail pace is sort of OK. It's actually less idle now than 3 years ago, for example. Should it 'die' in number of players, well it can just be rebooted later with a different visions since the objectors will have moved on. This is a different ballpark entirely to commercial endeavours, which must succeed. We can fail time and time again and it doesn't really matter.

[alre]

45 minutes ago, wraitii said:

An option with respect to that is letting people download mods from mod.io, not the host, but fetch the list of mods from the host. It's essentially the same thing but you don't need to trust the host so much.

That feature I think we only miss for lack of trying.

---

Now with that being said:

I think one thing that gets forgotten in this discussion a little is that the project is still given as an alpha. The snail pace is sort of OK. It's actually less idle now than 3 years ago, for example. Should it 'die' in number of players, well it can just be rebooted later with a different visions since the objectors will have moved on. This is a different ballpark entirely to commercial endeavours, which must succeed. We can fail time and time again and it doesn't really matter.

that makes totally sense actually. at the present rate though, the game will be finished in half a century, in fact it probably won't unless there is some kind of spur. the game is progressing so slow that it's practically stuck: major mechanics, like capturing and deleting buildings, even though they're considered to be brocken, are not being touched for years.

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, and that the best way to do that is to have more people contribute to and test the gameplay trough a faster release cycle, in the form of a recommended mod for multiplayer, that gets automatically downloaded in some way. it shouldn't be hard to make up a simple and secure way to make this work.

On 18/05/2022 at 1:01 AM, Crynux said:

Hi all, haven't been around here for a while ... just started reading some of these posts; do I smell the need for a modloader? I'd be interested in working on something like that.

what do you think it would be a good solution?

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, alre said:

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, alre said:

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, because that means we need more developers. More developers mean more cool features.

Some people have a practical mindset, some people are geniuses. Though be wary: Some people are just trolls.

[alre]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

usually it is implied that the development of something has the goal of obtaining a developed thing.

but I can see that the dev team has more of a "the trip is the goal" mindset.

[Crynux]

6 hours ago, alre said:

the game is progressing so slow that it's practically stuck: major mechanics, like capturing and deleting buildings, even though they're considered to be brocken, are not being touched for years.

I tend to agree with the speed of it to be honest ... and from what I've heard, there seems to be even less developers on the project today then there was even a few weeks ago.

 

6 hours ago, alre said:

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, and that the best way to do that is to have more people contribute to and test the gameplay trough a faster release cycle, in the form of a recommended mod for multiplayer, that gets automatically downloaded in some way. it shouldn't be hard to make up a simple and secure way to make this work.

Accelerating game development, in my mind, would be a really good idea. One step towards that goal, would be to increase accessibility of the project. At the moment, the development and source management tools are somewhat archaic; or at least they appear that way to me. (not to mention I think some are just dead? as in the main creator/maintainer no longer creates/maintains them)

There seems to be a huge resistance to moving to github, which is unfortunate, but I hear there's another option in the works. To be honest ... I think the project should just use github and move on; the visibility it'd get from it would be priceless. (Having a mirror and requiring people to then take their "patch" and make a request against the main noise ... doesn't fit the use case of improving usability and access to the project).

 

6 hours ago, alre said:

what do you think it would be a good solution?

Some sort of package manager type thing would be cool, for mod management. The details of implementation depend entirely on how complicated we get with it ... but to be honest, even a simple zip file with a config/metadata file in it would be suitable. I think the blocker for a proper modloading solution at the moment is decoupling the main "mod" from the game (If I understand correctly, anyone feel free to correct me; I've been away for a while).

On a side note, with regard to github resistance ... I honestly don't get what the problem is. So like ... it's an open source project, so they can't really steal the code. In addition ... saying "oh what if they close / delete the repo?" well ... that's what having a proper infrastructure (including backups) helps prevent entirely. If we always have multiple sources of the code ... then we really can't lose it.

I honestly think with just a few steps/actions/decisions, this project could skyrocket. The game as it is ... is really great (even though I last played it like 3 years ago lol) ... we just have to do what's best for the project, instead of our own opinions/desires. Of course, people can still work on the project in the way they do currently ... but I believe opening it up to others should be the priority at the moment. If the reason why something like github is opposed, is because they don't want others in the main (0ad/wildfire) codebase, then maybe those people should just fork it and work on it themselves, rather than hold everything back. Or in contrast ... we could just work around possible conflicts, and evolve as a team to having more hands on deck; tbh the forks kill the project. Every fork indicates effort lost on the core of the game, in my mind at least.

-My 2 cents ... don't mean to offend anyone at all. This is meant entirely as observations of someone who has been monitoring and/or contributing (minorly) to the project since about 9 years ago (first added a save menu thing lol ... was mostly xml).

Thanks!

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Crynux
need to learn to make sentences lol

[Stan`]

@Crynux you know there is a mod downloader using the mod.io platform directly integrated into the game, right? The public folder is a mod in itself, and you can dowload a few more through the game interface, install them by drag and drop or file association using the .pyromod extension.

48 minutes ago, Crynux said:

On a side note, with regard to github resistance ... I honestly don't get what the problem is. So like ... it's an open source project, so they can't really steal the code. In addition ... saying "oh what if they close / delete the repo?" well ... that's what having a proper infrastructure (including backups) helps prevent entirely. If we always have multiple sources of the code ... then we really can't lose it.

I believe that's the point here, why let them host it when we can host it ourselves (I'd rather not cause it's extra work for me, but I understand where they are coming from)

48 minutes ago, Crynux said:

I think the project should just use github and move on; the visibility it'd get from it would be priceless

I might be wrong but I don't think Beyond All Reason, Supertux, Supertux Kart, Wyrmsum and Warzone 2100 got a huge boost from it. Moving to git can't hurt if done properly though.

5 hours ago, alre said:

sually it is implied that the development of something has the goal of obtaining a developed thing.

but I can see that the dev team has more of a "the trip is the goal" mindset.

I'd like to put emphasis on the amount of work vs the velocity of what remains of the team. balancing is like 5% of the work of the project.

You have sysadmin work done by me @implodedok @user1 @Dunedan you have art that's done by me and @wackyserious you've got sound done by @Samulis and @OmriLahav you've got the simulation work done by @wraitii @bb_ and @Freagarach you've got random map work done by @maroder and @smiley you have other maps to maintain, writing the announcement, doing the trailers, answering the community, being at events, you've got the AI which is done by now retired @Silier and by hopefully @JCWasmx86 in the future. You've got the reinforcement learning interface done by @irishninja You also get all the graphic features improvements, fixes and cleanups, and maybe sometime soon Vulkan support done by @vladislavbelov then you have to update maintain fix, patch all the libraries on BSD, macOS, Windows and all the crazy amount of Linux flavour, when they get deprecated or lost to make sure you can still run the game which goes will all the work on the lowlevel part of the engine. You've got the tests to ensure we're breaking everything, you've got mod technical support which I try to do with @Lopess @The Undying Nephalim @wowgetoffyourcellphone  etc. Probably forgot to mention Networking with getting the game to work on most configurations all the Devops scripts to automate building, all the python script for various tasks such as updating mods checking for dependencies getting Translations, all the work done in all those languages and the code behind it. And making sure they don't crash the game when they are wrong. When I say there are many full time jobs, I'm not kidding. And some of us only have one hour per week Which can be spent catching up, writing long posts or actually working on the game. So sure for certain people it's just a fun toy. But for others it's much more than this. It's an opportunity, to learn to do better, to give back, to provide fun.

7 hours ago, alre said:

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, and that the best way to do that is to have more people contribute to and test the gameplay trough a faster release cycle.

Some linuxes are still stuck with A23, we do not and cannot control the release cycles there. Adding more people simply doesn't cut it.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

We've got 28 balancing advisors, do you feel balancing has made much progress compared to A25 and A24 and A23 ?

[smiley]

Moving to GitHub does nothing to bring in more patches imo. See openage and related projects. STK isn't faring much better either. Active Devs here might just exceed them to be honest. You can't make contributions unless you already know the project. In which case, are we relying on the GitHub home page featuring the repo? Discovery through GitHub is pretty bad unless you're actively looking for something.

The only real benefit is that the web interface is easier to work with. A self hosted gitlab would be significantly better than GitHub for that.

GitHub for the sake of more visibility would be a disappointing endeavour. You are supposed to direct people to a GitHub, not the other way around.

Definitely do need git though. Most people here already use the mirror.

There was also a time when it was just Philip, so all things considered, not the worst time to be visiting these parts.

Edited May 20, 2022 by smiley

[Crynux]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

@Crynux you know there is a mod downloader using the mod.io platform directly integrated into the game, right? The public folder is a mod in itself, and you can dowload a few more through the game interface, install them by drag and drop or file association using the .pyromod extension.

I saw there was a mod menu in the game ... but to be honest I opened it and had no clue how to use it lol, so I closed it. Part of the assumption (which may be a my-bad) that I was making in my response was that, it seems maybe the existing mod loading solution isn't 100% there yet? Idk, just a guess; but it also follows that there's a few sources around here (and in to code too, if I remember correctly from when I was reading yesterday), that seem to indicate there's more work needed.

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

I believe that's the point here, why let them host it when we can host it ourselves (I'd rather not cause it's extra work for me, but I understand where they are coming from)

Hmmm ... I just think it's something that has had too much thought put into it tbh. I'm pretty sure it was a topic of discussion when I last dropped in here 3 years ago. It shouldn't take that long to make a decision. I was also under the understanding that many of the devs that left would have preferred the project being on git ... I take that as an insight to the views of possible future contributors. If past devs prefer git (in any adaptation/implementation), then I have a feeling new people would prefer that too. 

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

I might be wrong but I don't think Beyond All Reason, Supertux, Supertux Kart, Wyrmsum and Warzone 2100 got a huge boost from it. Moving to git can't hurt if done properly though.

Hmm fair point lol. I just think modern tools are better; especially if anything that's being used is no longer maintained, I'd take it as an opportunity to improve dev experience.

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

I'd like to put emphasis on the amount of work vs the velocity of what remains of the team. balancing is like 5% of the work of the project.

You have sysadmin work done by me @implodedok @user1 @Dunedan you have art that's done by me and @wackyserious you've got sound done by @Samulis and @OmriLahav you've got the simulation work done by @wraitii @bb_ and @Freagarach you've got random map work done by @maroder and @smiley you have other maps to maintain, writing the announcement, doing the trailers, answering the community, being at events, you've got the AI which is done by now retired @Silier and by hopefully @JCWasmx86 in the future. You've got the reinforcement learning interface done by @irishninja You also get all the graphic features improvements, fixes and cleanups, and maybe sometime soon Vulkan support done by @vladislavbelov then you have to update maintain fix, patch all the libraries on BSD, macOS, Windows and all the crazy amount of Linux flavour, when they get deprecated or lost to make sure you can still run the game which goes will all the work on the lowlevel part of the engine. You've got the tests to ensure we're breaking everything, you've got mod technical support which I try to do with @Lopess @The Undying Nephalim @wowgetoffyourcellphone  etc. Probably forgot to mention Networking with getting the game to work on most configurations all the Devops scripts to automate building, all the python script for various tasks such as updating mods checking for dependencies getting Translations, all the work done in all those languages and the code behind it. And making sure they don't crash the game when they are wrong. When I say there are many full time jobs, I'm not kidding. And some of us only have one hour per week Which can be spent catching up, writing long posts or actually working on the game. So sure for certain people it's just a fun toy. But for others it's much more than this. It's an opportunity, to learn to do better, to give back, to provide fun.

I like the breakdown there actually. Thanks for that!

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

Some linuxes are still stuck with A23, we do not and cannot control the release cycles there. Adding more people simply doesn't cut it.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Looked up the link there ... it says it only applies to late projects ... this one is in alpha, but has been going on for years lol idk if it's late or not to be honest!

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

We've got 28 balancing advisors, do you feel balancing has made much progress compared to A25 and A24 and A23 ?

That's a lot of balancing, actually a surprising amount lol. I think it falls back to one of the things that every gaming community encounters ... and that is, there's TONS of people with ideas, but only few who know how to actually implement those ideas.

1 hour ago, smiley said:

Moving to GitHub does nothing to bring in more patches imo. See openage and related projects. STK isn't faring much better either. Active Devs here might just exceed them to be honest. You can't make contributions unless you already know the project. In which case, are we relying on the GitHub home page featuring the repo? Discovery through GitHub is pretty bad unless you're actively looking for something.

Part of my point that maybe I haven't really made yet is that git is more mainstream, or at least seems more mainstream in recent years. For example, in all of my web and software dev jobs in the past ... 7 or so years, everything has been git, or moving to git. Because of that, there's a familiarity with it. If people already know how to use the tools - then the project becomes easier to navigate, therefore easier to contribute to.

On github discovery ... I actually have found tons of things on there recently, and way more easily than using a search engine ... since it's focused. There's a lot of awesome- lists out there for every topic. Even programming-language specific, engine-specific, etc. Check it out here for example:

https://github.com/topics/awesome-list

There's lists like this: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

(which may actually be of use for some 0ad self hosting stuff)

1 hour ago, smiley said:

The only real benefit is that the web interface is easier to work with. A self hosted gitlab would be significantly better than GitHub for that.

There's more to github than a UI, it's a matter of preference of course ... but tbh I've never used gitlab, so maybe gitlab has some cool stuff too?

1 hour ago, smiley said:

GitHub for the sake of more visibility would be a disappointing endeavour. You are supposed to direct people to a GitHub, not the other way around.

Github has sponsors and stuff built in as well ... people can sponsor a project (100% contributions go to the org/dev/team/whatever if I remember correctly). Also I think there's less restrictions on github for open source stuff ... but idk if it's substantial.

1 hour ago, smiley said:

Definitely do need git though. Most people here already use the mirror.

There was also a time when it was just Philip, so all things considered, not the worst time to be visiting these parts.

I forked the mirror yesterday and built from it ... the clone took forever, but I know there's ways around that using git ... so not too worried about it. I hear svn is worse lol.

All in all ... I don't mean to argue with anyone or like make anyone's ideas or whatever seem bad. I'm just completely neutrally discussing things. Sometimes intent can be lost in text, and I just want to be clear.

Anyways ... I'm pro git. I think too much balance up-front is bad, especially if it's still alpha. IF balance is that much of a concern, then maybe there should be focus on making balance adjustments easier (or built in using options or something), so they can continue as their own "balance module" of sorts. Idk ... just throwing out ideas!

I guess (and I think I read this somewhere on here too), some contributors will be focused on balancing. Devs, however, may not care (I know I wouldn't care much ... I like making systems, rather than configuring systems) ... so I think it's possible the balance-focused people feel ignored (just guessing), when really the devs are just doing what they enjoy, which happens to not be changing a few numbers to make a thing work a bit different.

If that's the case ... then systems supporting balance changes or configuration independent of compiled code changes may be worth looking at (if this already exists, please ignore me lol), or improving.

Ok I'll stop rambling now lol ... Thank again all!

[Freagarach]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

I'd like to put emphasis on the amount of work vs the velocity of what remains of the team. balancing is like 5% of the work of the project.

You have sysadmin work done by me @implodedok @user1 @Dunedan you have art that's done by me and @wackyserious you've got sound done by @Samulis and @OmriLahav you've got the simulation work done by @wraitii @bb_ and @Freagarach you've got random map work done by @maroder and @smiley you have other maps to maintain, writing the announcement, doing the trailers, answering the community, being at events, you've got the AI which is done by now retired @Silier and by hopefully @JCWasmx86 in the future. You've got the reinforcement learning interface done by @irishninja You also get all the graphic features improvements, fixes and cleanups, and maybe sometime soon Vulkan support done by @vladislavbelov then you have to update maintain fix, patch all the libraries on BSD, macOS, Windows and all the crazy amount of Linux flavour, when they get deprecated or lost to make sure you can still run the game which goes will all the work on the lowlevel part of the engine. You've got the tests to ensure we're breaking everything, you've got mod technical support which I try to do with @Lopess @The Undying Nephalim @wowgetoffyourcellphone  etc. Probably forgot to mention Networking with getting the game to work on most configurations all the Devops scripts to automate building, all the python script for various tasks such as updating mods checking for dependencies getting Translations, all the work done in all those languages and the code behind it. And making sure they don't crash the game when they are wrong. When I say there are many full time jobs, I'm not kidding. And some of us only have one hour per week Which can be spent catching up, writing long posts or actually working on the game. So sure for certain people it's just a fun toy. But for others it's much more than this. It's an opportunity, to learn to do better, to give back, to provide fun.

I must say you're missing one very important person here: @Langbart, who tests our game very frequently and thouroughly and reports (and bisects) many many bugs.

[Stan`]

57 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

I must say you're missing one very important person here: @Langbart, who tests our game very frequently and thouroughly and reports (and bisects) many many bugs.

Indeed I'm sorry big up for langbart

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

if I remember correctly from when I was reading yesterday), that seem to indicate there's more work needed.

Well it does the job. The issue is that the UX isn't perfect as said above, partly for security reasons and because it was not implemented. But the core feature definitely works.

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

Hmmm ... I just think it's something that has had too much thought put into it tbh. I'm pretty sure it was a topic of discussion when I last dropped in here 3 years ago. I

Actually it started 9 years ago. But you don't convince an organization to switch in one day. The problem is that there are some areas where SVN is better. Binary management is one of them simplicity is another, history managment (no huge merge commits cause one forgot to rebase) might be one too. I strongly believe though that in this case the benefits of being more accessible outweighs the cons. Migrating Trac Jenkins and Phabricator (Which is now deprecated) without losing anything when doing so is the tricky part.

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

Looked up the link there ... it says it only applies to late projects ... this one is in alpha, but has been going on for years lol idk if it's late or not to be honest!

20 years

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

Github has sponsors and stuff built in as well ... people can sponsor a project (100% contributions go to the org/dev/team/whatever if I remember correctly). Also I think there's less restrictions on github for open source stuff ... but idk if it's substantial.

That kind of funding is probably not accepted by SPI the non profit behind the project. They only have Paypal and Wire.

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

t. I hear svn is worse lol.

Well SVN is centralised so unlike git if you didn't do a shallow clone you don't get twenty years. So it might be slower to get the rev but faster than to get the history.

2 hours ago, Crynux said:

that's the case ... then systems supporting balance changes or configuration independent of compiled code changes may be worth looking at (if this already exists, please ignore me lol), or improving.

Check out all the balancing mods around you can download through the game. That change stats and are cross platform because they don't require compilation it's just XML files

[hyperion]

11 hours ago, alre said:

usually it is implied that the development of something has the goal of obtaining a developed thing.

Today it's more of get something usable/marketable and continue improving it while you still can make money with or in case of oss often while people still enjoy working on it.

0ad has seen major improvements the last 2-3 years, so being appreciative is important to keep development going. Personally, I'm quite impressed.

3 hours ago, Crynux said:

and that is, there's TONS of people with ideas, but only few who know how to actually implement those ideas.

Ideas are least valuable commodity. If they are decent file a bug and stop nagging or even accuse devs not understanding your genius (not directed towards you, Crynux).

[smiley]

5 hours ago, hyperion said:

0ad has seen major improvements the last 2-3 years, so being appreciative is important to keep development going. Personally, I'm quite impressed.

Most of those changes are not visible to end users regardless of how badly they were needed. Gamesetup rewrites, renderer refactorings and SM upgrades don't mean much to anyone who don't follow development closely. Only a subset of changes are userfacing and of those only the very best or the very worst get noticed, and you won't bother posting about how good something is compared to when something is bad. From an outsider looking in, it would seem that rarely anything gets changed and half of those changes that do happen are straight up disasters. Not that development is currently going on at breakneck speed.

There were efforts to properly communicate actual progress on a monthly basis quite recently as well, but that's a story for another time.

[wraitii]

3 minutes ago, smiley said:

There were efforts to properly communicate actual progress on a monthly basis quite recently as well, but that's a story for another time.

A good community manager is something we've been lacking indeed.

[vladislavbelov]

23 minutes ago, smiley said:

renderer refactorings don't mean much

Until your game gets 1 FPS on some hardware and you receive a endless stream of complains x)