Tolerance lost while waiting for CB?

[Winterheaven]

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.

[karakth]

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.

[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.

[Xordan]

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.

[Cirque]

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...

[Xalthar]

I love these boards, and I wont leave till the mods ban me 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...

[tangerine]

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....

[acraig]

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.

[Cirque]

Good to see a dev dropping in for a word. Can you divulge any information on the progress of the game?

[AendarCallenlasse]

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...=-)

[acraig]

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.

[Mordaan]

Whoa!  That was cool.  Thanks acraig!!  Great summary.  Best of luck to all of you.  :tup:

[Wedge]

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.

[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.

[Parts]

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?

Only kidding

Nice one for the update acraig!