It is quite easy to get the impression that you are just underpaid (by that I mean not at all :p ) labor rather than a contributor.

These are the words I was looking for. The document reads as if people are treated as laborers instead of contributers. I think that's not acceptable for an open-source project.

Eliseth does seem to be pretty open though, so you might just want to stick with the skunkworks if you'd like to attempt helping.

No, for the moment I will hold back. I would like to read for myself how the daily routine is handled. If they ever open up to the public, I will reconsider. I woud prefer working on some graphics as I wanted to get into blender for a long time. My daily job is C++ development and I'm not sure if I want the same coporate style routine in my spare time. Let's see how the skunk project works out.

really, what's the mailing list somewhere else is IRC in our case.
mailing lists are usually rather slow and it's really annoying to give meaningful feedback on those.
hence we usually go for IRC where you can give advices live also getting back whether the other side understood what your issues were, etc.

I see your point and I also agree that IRC has _some_ advantages. However in my personal opinion mailing lists have many more advantages:

• You can answer whenever you have time. Even at work noone minds if you write an e-mail.
• IRC is only a live discussion if you are more or less in the same time zone (online at the same time).
• You can easily post nicely formated code snippets on a mailing list.
• IRC will kick you when posting longer code snippets for flooding.
• Mails allow you to quote single statements and answer to one specific part of a question.
• Multiple discussions at the same time can be followed more easily on a mailing list.
• Mailing lists allow multiple branches of the same discussion. This helps to analyze different aspects of a problem.

And the most important:
Mailing lists usually have a search function, so already answered questions can be retrieved by newcomers.

Additionally, having a mailing list does not mean you have to abandon IRC. A mailing list is just a nice way to ensure, that absolutely every developer receives a message. They don't need to regulary check a forum or some IRC logs, they just check their e-mails, which most people do anyway on a regular basis.

Just my two cents.

I wonder where you guys get the money from to buy a 3DS Max license. It seems this program is insane expensive. Are you using student licenses or did you just pirate it? I looked into 3DS Max and I like it a lot, but it felt kind of wrong creating PlaneShift models with a pirated copy. Do they even accept such submissions? What is the official policy here?

For Blender, we have at least a guide. It contains bananas...

Simple Modeling School

Blender has excellent tutorials on their web page, though Blender is kind of a hard to use if you are used to 3ds.
http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/

BlenderNation as well:
http://www.blendernation.com/category/education/tutorials/

tbh: mailing list is usually more overhead and getting a response is a lot slower

But people can read it whenever they have time. And if you have a good mail client it is actually much more comfortable then reading the forum or IRC.

at least during UTC daytime there's almost always someone around on IRC (either weltall or me) for engine questions and even if you have issues, you can still leave a PM here on the forum or write an email if you want to

Ok, so the engine developers are available for questions via IRC. But what about my simple question about adding images to the wiki? Where are/were all the other guys? Someone must have created that wiki in the first place.

You see what I mean? It seems there is no central place where all PS developers come together. You can reach some of them on the forums, some of them via IRC and some of them you have to send a PM.

Quote from: Getoran on November 29, 2010, 01:47:55 pm

The whole development process does not feel very welcoming to casual contributors. On most open source projects you have a development mailing list where you can send patches to. Then they decide if they want to include that patch or not. Usually they do include it but tell you to change some things first, so it better fits their overall design. I think that is the better approach to hook up new developers as someone who has already spend hours developing a patch is more likely to make a few changes to get it accepted. Once one of your patches is accepted you already have some knowledge about the system and are more likely to develop another one.

actually that's what the bugtracker is for (and crystal space uses the same development process. they are actually more strict you must always make a ticket to submit a patch even if the committer is talking with you, then it's commited it and the ticket closed if the patch is appropriate) make a bug with the patch and see if it gets approved obviously it can happen we don't accept it like in any opensource project so doing a patch without asking first is a risk for who does it.

The whole problem is less about the bug tracker but the communication process in itself. It does not matter if you finally have to create a bug report to get the patch into the game, but there is no real place to discuss your changes and send your first trys to. The forums are nice but most of the time developers do not participate in the forum threads - you weltall are an exception of this rule. When you post something on a forum you never know if a developer did not read the forums or if just noone did know the answer. On a mailing list you at least know that everyone got your message (even if they might not read it).

An example: In June last year, I thought about getting into PS development. As I didn't want to apply for the team (the recruitement page scared me away), I thought I start with something simple - adding some documentation. Adding documentation is always good because you help other newcomers and you get into the code as you have to read it to write the documentation. So I checked the "requested documents" page on the wiki and started by adding a guide how to add a spell to the database http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/doc/index.php?title=HowtoAddASpellToTheDatabase and did some other database documentation.

To find something to work on where you do not need a complete overview of the whole system, I decided that it might be worth looking into effects, as all magic effects are pretty much ugly and they all look the same. So I added the effects manual to the Wiki to get into effects development: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/doc/index.php?title=EffectsManual. The effects manual was btw not my own work but I moved it from a PDF file into the wiki so I could improve it while experimenting with effects. The effects manual contained lots of images which I wanted to add to the wiki page as well, so I just asked if someone could add image support to the wiki: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=33083.0

Well I didn't get any answer to that simple question which really is demoralizing. Did noone read that question or did noone know the answer? On a mailing list I would have at least known that all the developers received my request. Still they might not read it but chances would have been probably much higher that someone responds. The whole development process seems to lack some central communication hub where absolutely all developers of all departements come together.

I could go on describing my attempts to participate in PS development, but why that never happened is a story for another post/thread.

• get rid of the ABC license or at least

This sounds like a very good idea. It would allow PS to make use of all the CC repositories out there. Of course others would be able to use PS arts as well but is this really that bad? Isn't sharing the spirit of open source? From reading the PS license page it seems that the main fear was that someone would fork the project. At the current point it seems highly unlikely that the few developers left will also split up and start their own PS project. Forking a project that size does not really make sense if you can only gather one or two developers and no artists.

- allow self-compiled clients on the official servers

That is already possible up to a certain point. You can compile your own client and copy the artwork binaries from the main client. I did that a while back when I always got stuck on the Ojaveda road with the official client.

- come up with some rules about modified clients and what modifications would be acceptable for the official servers. (Everything allowing cheating obviously not, also not something that might endanger the stability of the server...but people including copy and paste support or a spellchecker in the client should be allowed to try out...in general don't discourage people from adding new features to PS but rather encourage them)

Well, simple rules won't stop cheaters from modifying their client. On the other hand this should not be a problem, as nearly every action is controlled by the server. Even if cheaters do find a way to cheat that should not matter either. Sooner or later obvious cheaters probably will be detected and then their character should just be deleted. Cheaters might even be a good thing as they show which part of the server code has to be improved.

I have another proposition for your long list of improvements:

• Revise the recruitement page.

The recruitement page reads like an application form for a full time job. Development should be fun and that document does not read like PS development is fun.

Thanks for your input  Nairan. I really appreciate it.

Hope we can find more people to complete this list and some people who are willing to help create sketches / textures / icons /models. At the weekend I will create a video which shows how easy it is to create simple 3D models. Nobody needs modelling experience to join this project. Everybody who wants to get into computer graphics is welcome.