I'm leaving

[kronon]

Sorry Venge, but I won\'t continue programming for the game. Main points are:
-Bad program structure (makes game slow and programming nearly imposible)
-Bad, but mostly, no documentation
-No thought truh UML diagram, looks like things are added when they are thought up
-NO UML diagram at all
-The crystal space, isn\'t as good as people get to beleave. A good friend of mine has taken a look at the source code (having experiance with other 3d engines) and has come to the conclusion that the engine is a monster (not in performance, but in the fact that it\'s an nightmare).But the engine whas developed for software render, so it could be posible that the reason lies there. I could give examples, but don\'t want to diss people, nor the engine.
-The first time I had an asignment and I whas late, I got the reply that it whasn\'t a problem and could send it any time a year( or next year if I wanted). That made me wonder how other programmers dealt with this.
-In fact people rather have me handing in my stuff 2 years later, than answer all my question (a lot of them) that I have because there is no documentation nor UML diagram\'s.

That whas prety much it.
I\'ll probably be playing the next version when I comes out. But I think that will be more of a \"IF it comes out\"

Bye all see you in the next release(if it ever comes)

P.S. Not trying to diss any one or any thing, just stating the facts and the don\'t look pink painted(translated dutch saing, for that all looks very good and the don\'t changes it ofcourse into that it doesn\'t).

P.S.S. Take an other 3d engine and start from scratch, design an flexible, well thought up program and the programming goes like butter through cake. Complex program\'s ,causing delay are nonsence, if the documentation and the program external functions are good, then you wouldn\'t even notice any \"delays\".

[elscouta]

Obviously, i can\'t comment all the things concerning Planeshift, but i may have a comment about CrystalSpace.

You really think a 3D engine can be rewritten from scratch so quickly and easily? Yes, CrystalSpace is a monster. With a lot of modules, features ... But it is still the best or one of the best (Ogre?) open source 3d engine. And i think you have missed the strongest point of CrystalSpace since i never saw you there: a #crystalspace chan on freenode where maintainers and devs are always ready to help and explain the most obscure feature.

About planeshift, i\'ll try a comment. I have looked _really_ fast at the code source in the spell manager (wonder why.... ) and i must say i have never seen code so self-explanory and clean. I had answers to my questions about how magic should work in about 20 minutes. So bad program structure? I know that the spell manager is probably not the most complex part of the code, but...

(i\'m not sure i\'m really the best suited to write this )

[Cyrandir]

I think the entire community will be saddened to see a dev go... not only because it means delays to releases, but because it means that part of the soul of this game has left.  I KNOW I\'m not qualified to speak about how the coding is done or the useability of CS, but I think I speak for the entire community when I say that we\'re sorry to see you leaving. Thank you, Kronon, for the work that you\'ve done for CB and the PS community.  May you find more joy and fufilment in your future coding endevors, and hopefully we\'ll still see you around the boards and in CB when, or as you say, if, it comes out.

/me bows deeply and respectfully

[Draklar]

1) he doesn\'t have WTB member status
2) from what I heard he didn\'t write even one line of code for PS
some delays I say

[dfryer]

I have confidence that the devs know what they\'re doing - the design doesn\'t seem to be totally chaotic, and CrystalSpace (despite it\'s bigness) is a very flexible engine- but all these things take time and talent.  So does documentation - what better way to learn a project than by documenting it?

[tangerine]

Originally posted by kronon
Sorry Venge, but I won\'t continue programming for the game. Main points are:
-Bad program structure (makes game slow and programming nearly imposible)

I won\'t judge program structure here, but possible slowness is matter of CS or matter of bad usage of CS from our side, not program structure. Regarding the impossibility to program, that\'s just funny. It seems to be possible for other people.

-Bad, but mostly, no documentation
-NO UML diagram at all

The documentation could certainly be improved (at least add comments to each method in classes) but I didn\'t notice that people have big problems to figure out stuff.

-No thought truh UML diagram, looks like things are added when they are thought up

/me agrees

I\'ll probably be playing the next version when I comes out. But I think that will be more of a \"IF it comes out\"
Bye all see you in the next release(if it ever comes)

Lol, now you show how little clue you have.

Complex program\'s ,causing delay are nonsence, if the documentation and the program external functions are good, then you wouldn\'t even notice any \"delays\".

Bullshit. Most software projects are delayed.

[tangerine]

Originally posted by Cyrandir
I think the entire community will be saddened to see a dev go... not only because it means delays to releases, but because it means that part of the soul of this game has left.  I KNOW I\'m not qualified to speak about how the coding is done or the useability of CS, but I think I speak for the entire community when I say that we\'re sorry to see you leaving. Thank you, Kronon, for the work that you\'ve done for CB and the PS community.  May you find more joy and fufilment in your future coding endevors, and hopefully we\'ll still see you around the boards and in CB when, or as you say, if, it comes out.

/me bows deeply and respectfully

No you are mistaken, he was not a dev, he was a \"prospect\" - person that is given test tasks to see if he can be admitted to the team.

[elscouta]

Originally posted by tangerine
Bullshit. Most software projects are delayed.

s/Most/All/ But it\'s true Planeshift beat records

Not really because the delay is long, but because 15 days before the expected release, the dev team still hoped to success. (or at least, this is what they said)

[SaintNuclear]

Originally posted by elscouta
But it\'s true Planeshift beat records

Not really because the delay is long, but because 15 days before the expected release, the dev team still hoped to success. (or at least, this is what they said)

*cough* Duke Nukem Forever *cough*


OT
Ok, so he wasn\'t a WTB member, and wasn\'t a dev, but I think we can say that we\'re sorry to see that someone that could help in the future won\'t do that.

[tangerine]

Ok, so he wasn\'t a WTB member, and wasn\'t a dev, but I think we can say that we\'re sorry to see that someone that could help in the future won\'t do that.

If you cried for every prospect that leaves, you would drown in tears. There are way too many people that want to join but leave very soon for whatever reason. Only small fraction stays longer.

Let me cite from The Interview:

\"But in such a team the main issue is stability and the effort required to handle new prospects. We have quite a good process for handling new people, but it happens really too often that someone decides to join and then leaves after we spent hours explaining how and what he has to do. That kind of attitude really drains a lot of time from us and delivers nothing.\"

[SaintNuclear]

Originally posted by tangerine

Ok, so he wasn\'t a WTB member, and wasn\'t a dev, but I think we can say that we\'re sorry to see that someone that could help in the future won\'t do that.

If you cried for every prospect that leaves, you would drown in tears.

Of course, but we can have a general sadness without tears.

Originally posted by tangerine
Only small fraction stays longer.

Yeah, I\'m sure it\'s hard to do such a game as volunteers. Gotta have alot of amition, and I guess that this guy just didn\'t had enough of it.

[Winterheaven]

Originally posted by kronon

-Bad program structure (makes game slow and programming nearly imposible)

-The crystal space, isn\'t as good as people get to beleave. A good friend of mine has taken a look at the source code (having experiance with other 3d engines) and has come to the conclusion that the engine is a monster (not in performance, but in the fact that it\'s an nightmare).But the engine whas developed for software render, so it could be posible that the reason lies there. I could give examples, but don\'t want to diss people, nor the engine.

I agree completely with the both facts above. Maintenance of CS and programming with it is not after the today\'s demands. Small and flexible classes/templates, common usable algorithm and a clean design are the goals for a program that will fit the needs of Engine-Users.

It was the fact in the article Free MMOG Planeshift breaks 100k Players! where I get the sentence: \"PlaneShift comprises more than 800,000 lines of code even at this early stage, including the exceptional work done on the 3d engine by the Crystal Space team.\"

I thought I could catch the monster... but I am either a bad programmer, who could not fit all needed libs, extras, headers and configuration together or I had the wrong teacher. But in my company I get my money for develop SMALL function, to keep the code base clearly-presented and to document, design and discuss for 4/5 of the working time... only the last 1/5 to implement. If the target is to make the biggest LOC-thingy... you have my respect, but my boss would kicked me as fast as he can if I work in such a manner.

I am sorry, that I am such a helpless person, because the idea of PS in general is a wunderfull thing.

It would be nice to program in such a motivated and knowledged team, which had already - questionless - procuded astonished work.

br, Winterheaven.

[tangerine]

If you think that those 800.000 LOC are one huge main() function, then you are mistaken Seriously, how is number of lines of code related to small and flexible functions and classes ? Who said that the target of CS is to make LOC record ? You simply made this nonsense up. I pretty much doubt that people working in their free time would want to waste it with such immense sillyness.  I am sorry but it seems to me that you both are trying to blame your troubles on PS/CS. Many other people succeeded to work with both. And your quote of Kronon is half claims that I am not able to comment on, and half just bullshit.

[Vengeance]

Just fyi, Kronon was one of at least 70 prospects who have contacted me about helping with the engine team and who did nothing after that.  It is not unusual at all for someone to volunteer and then discover that PS/CEL/CS/Cal3D is much bigger and more complex than they can handle--and quit.  At least the other 65 or so people who have been overwhelmed have not come back 6 months after giving up and made this kind of dramatic post about how our code sucks.  Get over it man...there is nothing wrong with the code.  It is your skills that need to improve if you are ever to contribute.

-NO UML diagram at all

This part of the post made me laugh.  :-)  PS, CEL, CS, and Cal3D together must be over 5000 classes.  Creating a UML diagram of that would take an entire city block, and wouldn\'t help anyone, least of all Kronon.  

The first time I had an asignment and I whas late, I got the reply that it whasn\'t a problem and could send it any time a year( or next year if I wanted). That made me wonder how other programmers dealt with this.
-In fact people rather have me handing in my stuff 2 years later, than answer all my question (a lot of them) that I have because there is no documentation nor UML diagram\'s.

The reason I said it wasn\'t a problem is because I know the probability of a prospect being successful with their task is about 1:10.  It isn\'t a problem because if you don\'t get it done in a timely manner, it will simply be assigned to someone else and covered elsewhere.

To apply on September 20th, 2003, get nothing accomplished, then announce to the world that you are quitting on Apr 30th is just very odd...  Oh well.

- Venge

[dfryer]

In a sense, prospect programmers *can* blame their troubles on PS/CS - many people who are familiar with some programming language find that they\'re in a whole different world once you have a large project to work with.  Suddenly it\'s a whole lot less clear than a school software engineering project.  CrystalSpace takes a while to get familiar with, but many of the design decisions make a lot of sense once you see the reasoning behind them.  Until then, you\'re faced with what seems like a mountainous learning curve to someone who doesn\'t have a lot of patience and dedication, as well as talent.

I know I have avoided offering my efforts as a prospect because I have a proven history of not doing stuff - I dabble in Planeshift and Crystalspace (as well as VOS) but without the serious time committment that I know would be required.

That said, is there much documentation?  If not, I would suggest that anyone asking for a trial be given a chunk of documentation to write