PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Winterheaven on April 22, 2004, 04:05:23 pm
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen... elfes and dwarfs... lemurs\' and kran\'s.
I am looking more and more seldom in the planeshift forum. And it is no wonder, i think.
1) @Mogura: The other \"LAG\"-Thread was closed very fast... too fast in my eyes. Despite the fact the poster was a little bit harsh, i can still imagine the long loading time and the laggy game play, when i started planeshift first time. And to jump in the heels of Cirque was not necessary I think... he would only help.
2) @Saphire (also in the \"LAG\"-Thread): You spoke about \"un-optimized code, memory leaks, and redundant processes\". Where do you take this wisdom? Are you a programmer? Why don\'t you help the dev\'s with your deep knowledge? I think, Vengeance was very, very ENJOYED about your post. Simple throw his work of years directly in the dustbin. Did not Aineko shows you, how you can take your ideas to advance planeshift?
3) The release time is very long, indeed. I could imagine the difficulties realizing such a big project. But i remember some players (which are now DMs), which talked to me already in november, that CB is already nearly completed. Perhaps there are gaps in information, mix of wishes and reality, deficites in the oportunities of some team members (do not cry loud... we all have errors... that\'s why we are people). But then the organisation, the leaders, managers... whatever you prefer... has to go out to community and make a big sticky: CB will wait at least till... You have nothing to loose except your players. To long waits, wrong information, unbelievable hardware requirements... that all tends to produce expectation, which results in the posts, i have readed.
4) Online RPGs are heavily dependent on their community. They are CARRIED by the community. I hope the best for the future. But sometimes it is better to tell the truth than to smile always and vents your wrath to some noobs, which are simple blended by the nice words on the website and found very late to the forum.
Only some thoughts while reading your posts. Of course, you can close him, if you do not need any critical words.
br, Winterheaven.
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There is a reason for the long wait for CB. Problems cropped up and you cannot be sure how long it will take to get an idea to solve a problem. It might take a day, it might take weeks, but inspiration never comes when you beckon.
I am a programmer myself (not with C++ though) and I know what struggling around a bug feels like. It took me several weeks to program a hangman game, and I had help from a teacher for guidance.
So yeah, programming (especially a game) can be frustrating. Let\'s just try and bear with the devs.
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I think these forums are the least friendly I\'ve ever stumbled upon.
Half the replies around here go along the lines of \"I\'ve been here longer/ I know better/ shut up/ go away/ we\'re better off without you\"
if you have nothing nice to say, don\'t say anything at all. It may be a cliche and childish fraze, but so are those replies.
btw the term pre-alpha is superfluous, and the entire characterization of the game along those lines is odd. Call it what it is: an ongoing development of an opensource game.
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The game is more than coding. Sounds and art take a very long time to do. If you can\'t wait then u\'r quite welcome to leave and come back later, just don\'t complain about things pointlessly. It\'s that simple for everybody.
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Originally posted by rainmaker
I think these forums are the least friendly I\'ve ever stumbled upon.
Half the replies around here go along the lines of \"I\'ve been here longer/ I know better/ shut up/ go away/ we\'re better off without you\"
if you have nothing nice to say, don\'t say anything at all. It may be a cliche and childish fraze, but so are those replies.
btw the term pre-alpha is superfluous, and the entire characterization of the game along those lines is odd. Call it what it is: an ongoing development of an opensource game.
I really wish I could strongly disagree with your 1st paragraph.
Sigh...
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I love these boards, and I wont leave till the mods ban me :P unfriendly replies are usually spawned by questions that people feel they\'ve answered too many times, or just plain agressive behavior towards the devs for things such as the lag ingame... Regarding the \"long\" wait for CB, whether or not you choose to stay around or go look up some other promising project doesn\'t really concern this community.
We are here to support this project which has been under development for a good many years, to rush it now would be folly! There is a reason as to why the game hasn\'t been released yet, and if you knew how to develop a game you would know that it is ready when it\'s ready..
And the current version of the game is Pre-alpha!! why you can\'t get that simple fact into your seemingly small minds is beyond me! MB is not being further enhanced, it is to remain in it\'s primitive form until Talad decides to stop hosting it and put up a version of CB good enough for you to play without constant whining.. you\'ll probably forget to thank the devs for putting that extra time into smoothing the surface of the game and remove all those nasty bugs you\'d have otherwise complained yourselves to death over...
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There is one rule of software engineering called \"80-20\": when you think that you have done 80% of the work and 20% remains, it\'s exactly the other way round: 80% is remaining. Look at sw projects in general (doesn\'t apply for games only): most of them get delayed because their authors always vastly underestimate how long it will really take. Here is another rule: estimate the time, then multiply by 3 :)
And the work on Planeshift isn\'t comprised only of programming, at all.
Now with PS it\'s even worse because we don\'t have fixed staff working for fixed number of hours per week. We have no guarantee that some people who work on the project now won\'t suddenly leave for a few months, or forever. When we kept saying that CB will be out in 1-2 months, we believed it. Such estimates were our internal targets. Now it was simply decided that no release date will be given because it would probably mean another unfulfilled promise.
It\'s clear that it sucks being stuck with MB for more than one year. I personally would not wait and I would be simply playing other games and just checking if CB didn\'t come out :-/
This really sucks. I think there is certain consensus in the team that in future, updates should be smaller and faster.
Regarding the n00b flamers, yep why is the simple question
\"Why does it lag so much for me?\"
answered by
\"Ah another n00b who lacks in the brain department.\" ?
Why don\'t you just tell him that his computer sucks, or simply stfu ?
No wonder that Aendar can\'t get why Kiern was banned....
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Originally posted by Winterheaven
1) @Mogura: The other \"LAG\"-Thread was closed very fast... too fast in my eyes. Despite the fact the poster was a little bit harsh, i can still imagine the long loading time and the laggy game play, when i started planeshift first time. And to jump in the heels of Cirque was not necessary I think... he would only help.
Well, it is a common point that people post every so often that the game is \'laggy\'. It is something that everybody understands and knows about. Cirque\'s post was about par and the others were a result of these common threads popping up. On the flip side of this if we deleted all those negative posts people would complain \'Mods Suck, they deleted our posts!\' So rock and a hard place :)
2) @Saphire (also in the \"LAG\"-Thread): You spoke about \"un-optimized code, memory leaks, and redundant processes\". Where do you take this wisdom? Are you a programmer? Why don\'t you help the dev\'s with your deep knowledge? I think, Vengeance was very, very ENJOYED about your post. Simple throw his work of years directly in the dustbin. Did not Aineko shows you, how you can take your ideas to advance planeshift?
Well, it is true that there are places in the code that need to be optimized and memory leaks checked. We fix em as we see em. Aineko ( and others ) have been valuable here since many eyes can spot bugs much easier.
3) The release time is very long, indeed. I could imagine the difficulties realizing such a big project. But i remember some players (which are now DMs), which talked to me already in november, that CB is already nearly completed. Perhaps there are gaps in information, mix of wishes and reality, deficites in the oportunities of some team members (do not cry loud... we all have errors... that\'s why we are people). But then the organisation, the leaders, managers... whatever you prefer... has to go out to community and make a big sticky: CB will wait at least till... You have nothing to loose except your players. To long waits, wrong information, unbelievable hardware requirements... that all tends to produce expectation, which results in the posts, i have readed.
Well, there is the problem of people repeating things that are just wrong or unknown. I think if you listen to the right people then the information is correct. Just because somebody on the forums says \"There will be these uber swords and dragons.\" Doesn\'t mean it is true. Sometimes it\'s hard to work 50-60 hour weeks/having to commute to different cities each week/prepare for your exames/etc then come home and spend the hours needed on PlaneShift. PlaneShift is our hobby, something we do to have fun. We all work hard and to the best we can. When it will be ready? I don\'t know. We do try to set deadlines for ourselves and work hard towards them but life is life. Think of PlaneShift not as a game but a journey towards a game.
4) Online RPGs are heavily dependent on their community. They are CARRIED by the community. I hope the best for the future. But sometimes it is better to tell the truth than to smile always and vents your wrath to some noobs, which are simple blended by the nice words on the website and found very late to the forum.
And we are always thankful for the community here that understands our situation.
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Good to see a dev dropping in for a word. Can you divulge any information on the progress of the game?
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You will never find game forums better than Planeshift\'s. The reason you look at some of the replies that myself and others post and think they are unneeded is because you haven\'t been here long enough. Try spending two years answering the same questions over and over again. After a while you start to lose you chipper.
When a person comes to these forums they should first read through them and see if they\'re question has been answered before. The question of lag has been asked hundreds of times already. It would have been very simple to find. Instead he decides to take the lazy route. To me that shows disrespect.
But hey. If you don\'t like these forums you can always leave. (-=sounds like Venge now...=-)
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Well, I am adjusting the GUI at the moment to add in the new graphics that scobar has designed. After that I will be working with Vengeance on looking at the current trade/crafting system to see what needs to be fixed for release.
Vengeance is working on the spell/magic/glyph system to make sure it is working as needed.
aarobber is working on a new effect system that will make spell casting and other systems look much better.
bluecommand is working on the updater to make sure it is working. Possible thoughts about making it part of the pssetup application.
iand/Khaki/tangerine are doing general fixes and bug checking.
Talad is working on character models and making sure the attachpoints for things like weapons is correct on the new models.
Niber/Artician are working on the new maps to make sure they are fully ready.
Darkmoon is writing NPC dialog and responses. ( Several thousand responses and dialog triggers )
GeorgeD and Ellarion are working on the sounds systems. As well as schooling us in how sounds with different volumes are going to be tricky.
[Sorry for anybody left out here]
Many things are being worked on. The devil is in the details as they say. So we are trying to merge all the work from all the different departments.
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Whoa! That was cool. Thanks acraig!! Great summary. Best of luck to all of you. :tup:
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Yeah I saw the updates about the new effects system. Mobile and combinant particle systems should be fun. Or even better if it works with mesh objects too, since with blend mode options and some of those texture tricks I saw in the walktest, those can be used in special effects quite well too.
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These forums may seem like a noob haters club, but, like Aendar said, people ask the same questions over and over and over and over.... If new people would simply scroll down on the general forums, they would probably see that there are 2 threads with the answer to their question.
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Originally posted by Icefalcon
These forums may seem like a noob haters club, but, like Aendar said, people ask the same questions over and over and over and over.... If new people would simply scroll down on the general forums, they would probably see that there are 2 threads with the answer to their question.
So whens the update out then?
:D Only kidding :P
Nice one for the update acraig!
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In the defense of the forums I never had any problems (with the exception of the occasional disagreement) here. Why? Because I am analytical by nature. I tend to read all the documentation and scroll through everything before I jump up and say ?Oh, oh, look at me I have a problem/suggestion/story?. I was welcomed with open arms by, well, everyone that I met/talked to. I never had problems in game or out.
The problem with my perspective is that some people are not that way. I understand that. If everyone was like me than there would be no novice writers, programmers or artists because we would all hide in some back room somewhere until we new for certain we had it all figured out. But on the flip side I am relatively new and I get really annoyed with the repetitive questions and their frequency. I mean how many times do the moderators, players and programmers have to answer questions that are stickyed?
It?s annoying that so many computer users have no idea how to use their own operating system. Come on!
Lastly look how many people there are that pass through every day that we meet answer a bunch of questions for and never see again. It gets tiring after a while and again I?ve only been here a few months! Imagine how it is for the hard-core fans that have been here since the planning stages. Games like books are not written or coded in hours or days but in years and tens of years. I?ve been writing just the background for a game/book for seven years. Patience with the developers is paramount, otherwise -really and sadly- you are not worthy of playing. I look at it like Christmas or Boxing Day, if it aint worth the wait it aint worth havin?
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ahh this old dwarf be havin nothin but good time\'s here and in the hydlaa plaza.
i have but ran afoul of one person in here that deserved a good tongue lashin but as for the rest o the fine citizens that i have met they be good folk just a little tired at time\'s o the same querie\'s.
and that be my two cent\'s :D
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i have alot of tolerance for games and i could wait for CB atleast another year before my tolerance is tested.
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WOW that was more than I expect acraig, thank you very much for that update.
I need not repeat what my opinion is on the situation with people asking question consistantly. Just look at my locked \"Unwarranted Dismissal...\" thread.
Once again thankyou for that info acraig.
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first at Winterheaven:
I hope you see that this community is as bad as you might have thought at the moment of writing that post.
oh, and when everything else fails, just imagine how much time and effort you\'d spend beeing angry at every idiot on this world and just be happy for all the nice people you meet here :]
but seriously, i have to say that PlaneShift has one of the kindest communities i know ...alongside Gentoo and Elysiun ;)
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I for one is ready to wait as long as it takes...but it gets sorta...frustrating now...oh well will hold...
And acraig thanks for a bit of info of whats going on...:P
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Originally posted by John_Thazer
I for one is ready to wait as long as it takes...but it gets sorta...frustrating now...oh well will hold...
And acraig thanks for a bit of info of whats going on...:P
Think how fustrating it is for us. :) We see the pieces there but trying to work out the final steps is a lot of work.
For example, my widget drawing code could be made a lot faster by drawing the stuff to a texture and only having to update that texture when the window has changed instead of redrawing the entire window and all its children each frame. Now this sounds like a good idea but I have troubles in CrystalSpace because the system to draw on a texture doesn\'t work quite right ( at least for me ). I don\'t have the knowledge of CS internal drawing code to look at this myself so I have to try to talk to people on the CS team and hope they can fix it. So now I have to wait/work on something else until that is fixed because I don\'t want to spend a lot of work on redoing my drawing code if it won\'t work :).
This is the reason why patches are hard to do as well. Since one change leads to another leads to another and before you know it everything has changed!
Not to babble on here :) but this is the typical day for all of us. We work on something, find out that something else needs changing/fixing and so on. This is the reason why we don\'t want to give out release times because *everything* is in development from the engine to the graphics tools we are using. If we were using a finished engine and well defined tools then we could probably have a better idea ( but that\'s no fun :) ).
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Still there are a bunch of stuff you can do while waiting for CB.
Undoubtedly one of the funnest is keeping up with guild politics in the guild forums.
Then there\'s always discussing the planeshift settings from a scientific point of view, but I can assure you that you will not get popular this way.
Another thing you could do is wander about the wishlist forums, and post some great ideas there.
If you\'re really bored you could go look for crystalls and consider it as an investment for CB.
Others enjoy talking about the silliest things on the chatroom, although you will have to join the #planeshift channel on irc.freenode.net server, because this is where the coolest people hang out to chat idlely.
Of course, if you really have a lot of time on your hands you could download Dev C++ and find a good tutorial on programming.
Or if you\'re any good with your hands (And I mean this in the artistic way ;) ) you could try and make some models and submit them to Laanx Wheel of Wishes.
I hope this helps the idler awaiting CB.
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plus if you are in a guild, there are a bunch of ways to contribute to your guild as well...artwork, stories, ideas etc.
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Nice to hear a bit about how things are going in development lately, Acraig. :) It sounds like you still have that 80% to go yet, though. ;)
@ Winterheaven:
Hmm... don\'t remember any closed \'LAG\' thread... although, I see so many of them these days, I guess I wouldn\'t. As for the comment you picked on by Saphire, he\'s absolutely correct. He knew this information because, like everything else, it\'s an answer that has been posted time and time and time again to people who just don\'t read.
I can\'t respond with any different to your third point than anyone else has already here, except to say that the devs will not be giving any pre-warning to the release of CB. No release date = no disappointed fans. It also means they can concentrate on coding the game, rather than pandering to the community\'s impatience and ending up delivering a buggy and unfinished version. Think of it as a test of faith- the PS Team will see who it\'s real fans are: those who are still around when it finally arrives. :) Those who give up and leave are doing the rest of us a favour. :D
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Argh, i hoped i could this thread rest in peace after the (only) ignorant posts of Aendar and Xalthar. But when a moderator does not care about its words, i can not hold my tongue.
Originally posted by Mogura
Hmm... don\'t remember any closed \'LAG\' thread...
Sorry, Mogura, but as a member with the status MODERATOR it is not only your privilege to close threads or bann posters. It is also a kind of responsibility to bring threads on topic and TO HELP PEOPLE IN DEEP WATERS. Not every new member is an knowledged internet-user, not every noob was not seeking the forum because of ignorance, but only the first time he is on a forum.
It is a very sad statement, if you do not know the closed lag thread (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=8680&boardid=13&styleid=3&sid=bfce23f4003820c54f37fc2ed83757b5) from 2 days before. He is the only one closed, it is closed by you and Cirque (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=8687&boardid=13&styleid=3&sid=bfce23f4003820c54f37fc2ed83757b5) wrote additional words about this. Is there a more acrimonious feeling for any poster than this statement?
Originally posted by Mogura
Those who give up and leave are doing the rest of us a favour. :D
WRONG, very wrong, in my eyes. Is it not your task to invite people, to bring them the idea of roleplaying, to funcition as a link between the dev team, the community and the game itself?
br, Winterheaven.
p.s. Thanks to acraig for the open words. Such an overview will motivate and shows the people your hard work. BTW, i never directly asked for this information nor was it the reason for the thread opening.
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Well sorry. I have a bad memory for little details. But the thread was answered and flamed adequately both ways and had to be closed. I\'m not sure if Cirque took my post as a flame to him, because it was quite the opposite. But that\'s his problem, not mine. :)
Is it not your task to invite people, to bring them the idea of roleplaying, to funcition as a link between the dev team, the community and the game itself?
Not as far as I\'ve been told, no.
(Edit: If this is going to become a two-sided conversation between me and you, I suggest your next reply comes as a PM. I\'ll answer you as much as you like there. :) )
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Moogie was just doing her job...Moderating. The thread developed into a flame war and the question was already answered, so she closed it. Now whats wrong with that?
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Plenty, u delete the flames... and if people still persist in flaming, then u give them a warning... u don\'t just lock it and forget about it... That just tells people that they can get away with ripping apart newbies.
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I have been boarding for a LOT of years, and I have never seen that technique actually work. When a mod deletes a post rather than closing a thread, most posters will take it personally,often taking it to the extreme and flaming the mod instead(subsequently getting themselves banned) closing the thread indicates that the moderator will not tolerate any form of flaming, but does not show favoritism to any particular poster. closing threads is often a moderators simplest and most effective tool
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Well, closing doesn\'t seem to work very well here, the flaming continues as always ;)
As for mods showing favourism.. well I won\'t comment on that... we\'re not supposed to comment on how mods do their job (I think), so back on topic. :)
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The blatant flame posts could always be sent to the trash can, where they can still be viewed but do not interfere with the flow of a thread.
The Americas Army Tracker forum mods remove flaming posts and it works a treat. The thread starters commonly use their own discretion when it comes to threads they have started. If its quite clearly going off the tracks then they close it before a mod has to jump in.
If people flame the mod because their post is removed and get banned its their own problem. Do the crime and do the time.
As long as the mod views everything objectively, logically and without bias its all good.
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Over the years, the forum mods here have deleted *thousands* of posts that were harmful, flaming, insulting, pointless, spam, or what-have-you. Overall, I don\'t think people miss them, and in general I believe that people are pleasantly surprised when they come to our forums of how nice everyone seems and how helpful they are. :-) This is partly because all the hatefulness and spite is deleted.
Thread locking is also a useful tool but is used in a totally different way. I lock threads if I feel that the discussion is valuable or informative (not useless or harmful), but if I feel that everything has been said and it is getting repetitive. I often delete posts in threads I am going to lock, as well, to lessen repetition and mano-a-mano arguments at their ends, then lock them so they are clean forever.
- Vengeance