My Critique To PlaneShift

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

My invitations to join the team should be taken as earnest invitations.

We do in fact need the people.

I have worked with many people who were once the type to spend their time complaining rather than building, many of them actually happily call me boss now.

Estimated time to fulfill all sangwa's requests 10 years.

The team is composed of very critical, powerful, active, and dynamic minds; we are in an idea rich environment. The team is largely COMPRISED OF ROLEPLAYERS and is certainly LED BY RPERS.

Join now your critiques do NOTHING.

[Lanarel]

I just wanted to add something regarding testers. Many say 'tester first, player second', but I think for most it should be the other way around. Have fun playing, but if you find something wrong or missing, let us know. The bug tracker is one of the best ways to do so. Devs, GMs and the test team members just do not have time to play enough.
If you do like testing more and want better access to information and the devs, you might want to join the test team. We have some more resources (such as a test server with Laanx data and rules, wiki, forum), get access to new art to test before a release, and communicate with the devs. But our main job is to make sure reports in the bug tracker have correct info, are tested, etc, and to do specific tests before new releases to find new release stopping bugs. This can be really satisfying, as we prevent big bugs from entering the game every time.
If you like testing more than playing, ask me or one of the test team members (Caarrie, Peeg, Vornne, Thomphoenix) for more information, and keep an eye on the thread Caarrie recently started and which will have more info soon.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

If you feel you have to vent, please do.

Let me show a sampling of what I have done to alleviate this cycle:

http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=29670.0
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=28285.0
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=32564.0
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=32405.msg383284;boardseen#new

All of these are initiatives I pushed to give players feedback.
I have made thousands of minor changes requested by players both personally and via my team and others.

This is before you account for polls run to elicit player response and use as evidence of my arguments through the devs.

Include also the pushing of the gm police events, a specific response to MATHY and SHAMAN'S complaints.

I have done more to engage the community than any of the people who found Mathy's "witty" attack sooooo humorous, or all of them combined.

Thanks for the encouragement folks.

Draklar, If wishes were horses I would command a Mongolian hoard and have them all deposit excrement on your front lawn, however wishes don't do sh*t. 

[Mathy Stockington]

OK OK, I relent Xillix. I am not computer literate so can you briefly explain to me and your listening audience what is involved in coding a game? Maybe if we understood more then we can understand why it seems that things do not get fixed or things seem that they might not be improving? For example: I have brown hair in game and now it is white, as is everyone's elses. Is it so hard to correct this? Would it be so hard to make a child character? How about making the characters have different clothes? You get the idea.

It is always a good thing to have understanding of how things are done. This will help us all.

Thank you,

Mathy.

[Morla Phlint]

I am not computer literate so can you briefly explain to me and your listening audience what is involved in coding a game? Maybe if we understood more then we can understand why it seems that things do not get fixed or things seem that they might not be improving? For example: I have brown hair in game and now it is white, as is everyone's elses. Is it so hard to correct this? Would it be so hard to make a child character? How about making the characters have different clothes? You get the idea.

It is always a good thing to have understanding of how things are done. This will help us all.

Mathy, if you really want to understand what it takes, go and try it. Learn C++, that's the best way in my opinion. In the worst case you'll understand what the devs face, in the best case you'll be able to help them. Here are some resources you can use:
Visual Basic Tutorial by Microsoft (some say it's not be best choice to start immediately with C++)
Teach Yourself Visual C++ 6 in 21 days (here a more "hard-core" tut)
And don't tell me that you can't. Everybody can do it if they want to.

Btw XilliX is the settings leader so not much to do with "coding the game" really.

And as a final note: It is always a good thing to be nice and respect the other party.

Edit: PM me if you need help or more resources (in order to find what fits you best).

[Caarrie]

if all of that was easy do you think we would still be waiting on it?

xillix is not a coding dev so he cant outright answer any of that any better then i can. All bugs and features take time to find and fix. Not all bugs or features are just issues with PlaneShift some are issues with Crystalspace. Also there are not many coding devs with time to fix some of these issues, as they are working on other parts of the game. Also PS lacks the number devs to do some art stuff and also Talad has to approve it all before it gets ingame, and the engine then has to support what the art team does, which all takes time to do. If you have skills to offer no matter what they are apply to the correct department and help out, even if that means you apply for GM or tester it all helps out in the end to make ps a better game. Just remember just because you want x and y done and ingame does not mean it will be ingame NOW, it might take months or years to get the right people together to get it done right.

[hitancrias]

@ Mathy, Vengeance made a podcast in which he explains about how Planeshift works. You can find it herel
The bottom line: Planeshift is a huge and complex project and adding or changing a feature usually takes a lot of time, especially if unexpected bugs need to be solved. An other reason why it takes a lot of time to implement even the 'simplest' of feature wishes is that there are less than a dozen active developers and they are working on many different things. It's a matter of priorities. Also different devs have different skills and work on different things, which explains why sometimes features which may seem to be not so very important are implemented before long lasting and more crucial bugs are solved. Also, to give you an idea about how much the creation of an MMORPG involves: a commercial MMORPG is created in about four years by over 100 professionals, working full time. Planeshift is created by far less people, who work on Planeshift besides their regular jobs and often have to learn on the job. That's why every improvement seems to take forever.

Patience is the most important word to planeshift players. The best is to try to enjoy what you have so that you can be happily surprised when something new is implemented.

@ Xillix: keep up the good work! And maybe take a break from the forums ;-)
@ All other people: sorry I waisted your time by saying things you heard many times before.

[Kerol]

Amen.

(Probably my first and last one-word post)

[Lanarel]

I have brown hair in game and now it is white, as is everyone's elses. Is it so hard to correct this?

Of course not. You just convince the CS devs to fix it. Maybe you could try to convince them this is a high priority thing

Would it be so hard to make a child character?

If you have people who can do this, it is not hard. My guess of what they should do:
- create small male and female versions of the races. Maybe a good 3D art person can do one in a few days (assuming you are not content with the same but smaller). Of course after that there are all the animations, new versions of all armor, etc.
- adjust character creation so you can select to be a kid. THis requires some new life events (settings person can do that), GUI (2D person for making new selectable options), rules persons (to limit stats and skills), database changes (to store all this), etc.
- new code may be needed to make children be different from adults, by limiting stats/skills, new commands may make kids have parents, etc.
In all this (art, animations, rules, database, code) if someone makes a small mistake, there will be bugs that have to be found and fixed.

How about making the characters have different clothes?

Some art person should make a piece of clothing, and then make that look good on all races, for all animations. You want different clothes? Well, that means more work.

You get the idea.

I hope you do too . Actually, what you ask is mostly art, which I have not much clue about (and where there are hardly any devs at the moment). For new features coding wise (how difficult can it be to get rid of progression points?) the same applies. TO do things correctly, people need to spend weeks thinking how to do it properly, then implement it, and then repair all the introduced bugs. This is weeks (months) full time, so doing this in your spare time means multiply this by a lot.

For many things, different people are needed (3D art, 2D art, rules, settings, coding algorithms, coding commands, coding event handling, coding graphics handling). If one of those is not available (in this example, probably half of them), it will not be possible to implement. Or someone who is working on many other things, needs to do it.

So even if you can only help a bit in one area, it can mean more progress. If you help settings, a settings person may have time to do rules, a rules person may help code commands, and a coder may have time to take art lessons and do the rest

[Kieve]

...Would it be so hard to make a child character? How about making the characters have different clothes? You get the idea.

This makes me want to go right to your house and slap you in the face.

Add my heartfelt agreement here.

Now, personally I take issue with the way racial art is set up for this game - it's inefficient, largely redundant, and makes it exhaustingly difficult to implement even a simple change across the board (such as, say, new clothing). But that's what we have going on right now, so Mathy, YES. It WOULD be that difficult. Moreso than you seem capable of comprehending. And that goes for anyone who wants to point out how nice it would be to have new racial assets - new armor types, clothing options, the missing races... there's a very good reason they've not been added yet, and it's NOT because we're lazy, incompetent, or ignoring the issue. It's because an extraordinary amount of work is required to make each acceptable and useable in-game.

http://www.webreference.com/3d/lesson101/
http://www.psychodogstudios.com/betterbodies/vw_tutorial.pdf
http://www.cgindia.org/2006/05/tutorial-character-animation.html
Texturing tutorial

...And that's just the TIP of the iceberg. You want change? Progress? Quit whining, do some homework, and chip in.

EDIT: If you want a clear view of how character art is set up, and WHY it's so hard to implement something as seemingly simple as clothing options, just go find your characters.zip file and unzip it. Behold. You must now fill each of those folders with five separate files (_arms, _legs, _hands, _feet, _torso) with the desired clothing texture. And don't think it's as simple as copy-paste, since each race model has its own unique UVW map, and the textures will not line up nicely from one race to the next.

[Dreamcrafter]

One thing, here.  I fully realize that making whole new textures or models requires a lot of work--I've done enough of it to know.  However, changing the color of a texture (thus allowing for different clothing colors, hair colors, skin tones, etc) takes seconds.  It's as hard as 30 seconds in Photoshop to change a texture if you have a decent white template and maybe a few minutes to change a color value in a line of code somewhere.  (Although, I understand that there may be a genuine bug dealing with the 'shaders,' so that's a solid reason why that part isn't working.)  I'm not saying "do it now!"  What I am saying is that, to some of us, it's a mystery why that seems to be such a major difficulty.  I fully and respectfully believe that these challenges do exist and we, as players, need to respect those challenges and take them seriously, being patient and such.

That said, I would squee over variable hair/skin/cloth color.    Anything that made characters less generic-looking would be .

I also know I have to wait for it, and I'm willing to do so.  I just hope some of the little stuff gets tossed our way sooner, while the bigger stuff will take (understandably!) much longer.

[Mathy Stockington]

I was to say I am saddened by what I just read:

http://www.mpog.com/gamelist.cfm/game/30/view/forums/thread/196330

I am deeply sorry. All of you have no idea how very much.

Mathy.

[Rayken]

I don't think you need to worry too much about anything that particular poster has said.  He has taken the entire discussion out of context.  I think that anyone who reads through this thread will see that.

[acraig]

I was to say I am saddened by what I just read:

http://www.mpog.com/gamelist.cfm/game/30/view/forums/thread/196330

I am deeply sorry. All of you have no idea how very much.

Mathy.

No worries.  How does that saying go "Can't please everybody all of the time" .   He is free to express his opinions as he pleases.  I guess he does it there because he's afraid that bid bad moderators will come down on him if he tries to post here.   And that is our right as well since this site is paid for by me and under my total control ( yeah I am evil  ). 

[Tharos]

No worries.  How does that saying go "Can't please everybody all of the time" .   He is free to express his opinions as he pleases.  I guess he does it there because he's afraid that bid bad moderators will come down on him if he tries to post here.   And that is our right as well since this site is paid for by me and under my total control ( yeah I am evil  ). 

No offence Andrew, but could that be one of the issues here? Ever heard the "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"? As long as they stay here, you are on the control. When they go somewhere else, you lost the control.