Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 01:32:22PM +0100, Nicolas Weeger nicolas.wee...@laposte.net wrote: So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can we close the shop down? I know, it's a bit late for a reply, but I found it rather satisfying and funny. The crossfire/metalforge folks are *actively* driving away everybody who is willing to do work, and you still seem to wonder about it. Now that's weird. Contrast this to Deliantra. Content: - deliantra has had vastly improved 64x64 graphics with *working* smoothing for over a year. - almost all textures have been redone, many items and buildings are now actually 3d models. known proprietary material has been removed. - a myriad of map bugs have been fixed. - npc dialogs have been vastly improved in the server, and most content has been updated, starting from mere rewriting of many of the existing (but wrong) texts in maps to adding completely new quests, cities and even whole new contintents! - many areas have been bigworldised (this is technically very easy in deliantra). - there is a multi-stage tutorial and many areas of the world (including scorn) have been redone almost completely to work more logically and give beginners a more logical introduction to the game. of course, the server can give (optional) hints - I probably forgot a lot here, because I wasn't involved in all of these changes, sorry to our content designes if I forgot something especially important :) - Rebalancing: we worked for years on rebalancing the game play, with huge successes (you have to see it to understand it), there are no known cheats or exploits left, and players actually feel that the gaem continues after level 20. - We also almost completely eradicated the frustration of the high death penalty, keeping players from leaving (I am sure you know what I am talking about), without endangering the game balance (via nimbus and other techniques). - (oh yes, don't let me mention the region-specific monsters, server-provided music, 2d sound effects for monsters and spells, interactive in-game world map and many other improvements). many of these things have only been made possible by advances in the server, of course. Client: - deliantra distributes native OS X/Windows/Linux binaries and naturally, very portable source code going along with it. - the client is very easy to install, in most cases, you simply download and start it, no installation or uninstallation required, and certainly no obscure libraries. - the client takes advantage of opengl hardware and works even on very old hardware, is full screen, has a minimap, and greatly improves user interaction by delivering something that looks and feels like a game, not something that looks like some administration console. - (well, just look at the screenshots at http://www.deliantra.net/screenshots.html). Server: Naturally, since we have two strong programmers, Deliantra also suffers from the server being improved the most. - the server takes advantage of C++ features wherever it can: as a simple example, shared strings and objects are transparently refcounted and garbage collected, which alone fixed a lot of bugs (especially where crossfire accessed freed objects). of course, this also simplifies string handling a lot and, in most cases, both speeds it up AND fixes a lot of buffer overflows. - the server is fully asynchronous: map loading/saving, player loading/saving and many other tasks are done in the background, so the server is able to handle more than 10 players without starting to freeze shortly every time a player changes maps. - the server can load treasures, archetypes, the world map (which is actually a png file), faces, music, configuration, extension modules, books, regions etc. etc. at runtime and of course asynchronously, without disturbing the running game. - stability: the server doesn't crash. well, we fixed over a hundred crash bugs. not only that: the server doesn't lose data on crashes, at least it didn't in the last years. To get an impression of what that means: our unique 1 mascot in scorn had to be recreated on every restart (not crash!) because crossfire loses data even on clean restarts, while in deliantra, despite having had hundreds of crashes (mostly when rewriting the map handling parts a year (or two?) ago), the server was simply back up 20 seconds later without having lost a single second of playing time, no duplicated items and so on. Or to put it differently, a restart in deliantra means a downtime of 10 seconds, while in crossfire, it means a major map reset, crashes mean item loss of duplication etc. etc. - most of the server has been modernised: the skill/slot usage has been rationalised, the map handling has been completely redone, as well as the object and plug-in system. apart from the many crash bugs that have been fixed, a lot of content bugs have been
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
quoth Marc Lehmann as of Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:55:54 +0100: On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 01:32:22PM +0100, Nicolas Weeger nicolas.wee...@laposte.net wrote: So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can we close the shop down? I know, it's a bit late for a reply, but I found it rather satisfying and funny. No, it's just late, really. After 1.5 months of a lot of activity happening, your reply just came of whiny and clueless. Or did you completely miss the server rewrite thread, the news about having code and content leaders, the discussions about Tallworld? Ah, you probably did. Ok then. The crossfire/metalforge folks are *actively* driving away everybody who is willing to do work, and you still seem to wonder about it. Now that's weird. Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude. Contrast this to Deliantra. You got some stuff working? Good for you. Ranting and flaming about it won't get you anywhere, though, except for losing any scraps of respect some people (me included) still had for you and your project. Please don't post to this list anymore. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. - http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Le lundi 10 novembre 2008, Mark Wedel a écrit : I think that is really the crux of the problem - it seems to me that most of the developers are code developers, not content developers. I certainly include myself in that category. There are certainly some folks out there that do work on content - I don't mean to say that there aren't. Frankly, it is hard to keep working on content if nobody follows. Or, for what matters, if everybody keeps ignoring what the others are doing. It makes the writing of consistent material impossible, plain and simple. Having a leader of content doesn't do a lot if there are not many folks willing to write that content. So the question may be how many folks would move from doing code to content if that was the drive, and how many really just want to do code. I doubt counting the devs and the map designers would solve the issue at hand. We need somebody that establishes coordination and allocate the limited content development resources we have in the best way. Somebody that can also organize advertisement to gather more content makers. Besides that, resuming the issue as a lack of content-makers is somewhat dodging the central point of coordination and cooperation. We obviously have more than enough coders available, yet how many major changes happened recently in the source ? IMO, this sort of falls back to the past problems - from discussions, it seems that the most pressing need/desire in crossfire is new/better content, but that list above doesn't really address that at all. Again, the problem is not what kind of features are needed, but how we can organize the development resources so those features can be implemented (being scenarios, maps, graphisms or code parts). Lauwenmark. Drive defensively: buy a tank. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Are we sure it is a good idea to make that ? Quoting what somebody else said about such an idea: I figured it would detract from suspension of disbelief and immersibility of the game Something I tend to agree with. Thoughts ? I would say it really depends how it is written :) On the other hand, it would be nice to have explanations for word of recall, the bed to reality, death penalty, and such ^_- Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. The harder part is perhaps that first one - finding leaders. I wouldn't mind being coding leader, but then right now the conditions aren't really met. Code is here to be used for the game, it is not the game. Therefore, if there is nothing going on game-wise, then it's no use having a living code. I do admit liking coding, which is sometimes more important for me than content, unfortunately. Therefore we'd need a good game content leader who can make the game really fun and drive development needs. I think that is really the crux of the problem - it seems to me that most of the developers are code developers, not content developers. I certainly include myself in that category. There are certainly some folks out there that do work on content - I don't mean to say that there aren't. Having a leader of content doesn't do a lot if there are not many folks willing to write that content. So the question may be how many folks would move from doing code to content if that was the drive, and how many really just want to do code. I mean by content leader someone who can point out needs to be filled (missing a town linked to such and such story), accept or reject (saying why it is rejected) content submissions, who takes into account the whole coherence of the world and the background story, and such. And lately since there is no new content, no need to drive the development, nothing really going on, coding for CF has become some really uninteresting idea (and I admit the code is starting to be quite messy which is not helping, either). I don't necessarily know of those two are related. I know various folks have done various big projects that were not really driven by content, but rather this would be a nice feature. And in fact, your list below also falls into that - those are not drive by content, but rather features that might be nice. For the record here is what I'd like to do technically-wise: - stable server, few bugs (obvious, and not that far a goal right now) - distributed server, crash-recovery systems: server crashes, clients dynamically or transparently switch to another and go on playing maybe without even noticing - at least with minimal loss - dynamic updating of resources - no need to recollect archetypes to take into account an archetype change, or a pic change - regular releases (anyone remembers when the last one was?), as long as there is justification for that and in coordination with content leader IMO, this sort of falls back to the past problems - from discussions, it seems that the most pressing need/desire in crossfire is new/better content, but that list above doesn't really address that at all. I don't mean to say that those are bad ideas, and in fact some may be quite good, and at least for some of them, I would have comments/questions, but that doesn't really seem to be a focus right now (and you say so yourself). There are some other things I'd add to that also. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Hello. The harder part is perhaps that first one - finding leaders. I wouldn't mind being coding leader, but then right now the conditions aren't really met. Code is here to be used for the game, it is not the game. Therefore, if there is nothing going on game-wise, then it's no use having a living code. I do admit liking coding, which is sometimes more important for me than content, unfortunately. Therefore we'd need a good game content leader who can make the game really fun and drive development needs. I mean by content leader someone who can point out needs to be filled (missing a town linked to such and such story), accept or reject (saying why it is rejected) content submissions, who takes into account the whole coherence of the world and the background story, and such. And lately since there is no new content, no need to drive the development, nothing really going on, coding for CF has become some really uninteresting idea (and I admit the code is starting to be quite messy which is not helping, either). For the record here is what I'd like to do technically-wise: - stable server, few bugs (obvious, and not that far a goal right now) - distributed server, crash-recovery systems: server crashes, clients dynamically or transparently switch to another and go on playing maybe without even noticing - at least with minimal loss - dynamic updating of resources - no need to recollect archetypes to take into account an archetype change, or a pic change - regular releases (anyone remembers when the last one was?), as long as there is justification for that and in coordination with content leader And to achieve this: - well documented code, potentially linked to game features (monks shouldn't be able to wear weapons: how is it managed in the code, at which places? and such things) - unit tests where applicable - automate many things (win32 building and packaging, ...) - split the code to make it less messy. Do small atomic tasks, and chain them, instead of having one big code mess that does a zillion things and can't be easily replaced - move to C++, use Trolltech's Qt toolkit, and make a massive code refactoring (note: please don't start discussing those last points / how I'd like to do things, this is not the thread for such a discussion that I will happily ignore anyway) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Nicolas Weeger wrote: To sum up a discussion on the channel this morning: - there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff - there is no leadership who could define areas solutions: - define a common goal = need some leaders - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline / overall story) The harder part is perhaps that first one - finding leaders. I know I'm the current maintainer of crossfire, but when I took that job way back when, I had a lot more time on my hands than I do now. And to be honest, the administrative aspect is one of the less interesting aspects of all of this. Given the number of current developers, the number of leaders needed probably isn't that great. If we had 100 developers, you'd clearly want multiple leaders handling different aspects (as that 100 people would be working on different parts most likely - even if everyone was doing maps, it would be different areas, so you could have the person in charge of scorn, person in charge of navar city area, etc). I'd actually say that the common goal(s) could likely be sorted out in e-mail or on IRC - that perhaps isn't so much a job for the leader. The leader is more on the second point - to make sure that contributions don't conflict with the goal. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
To sum up a discussion on the channel this morning: - there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff - there is no leadership who could define areas solutions: - define a common goal = need some leaders - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline / overall story) Nicolas Le lundi 03 novembre 2008, Mark Wedel a écrit : Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can we close the shop down? I've been fairly busy for the past few months on a kitchen remodel which took away my time from other projects - that's finishing up just now, so will be getting more into crossfire work again. I plan to resume work on rebalancing the spells. I admit I'm not motivated at all lately. The code is a real mess, maps are pretty boring usually, and the game is going nowhere. I can certainly understand some of that. I've run into th same feeling now and again. The one that we usually always come back to is new maps. As a long term player/developer, I've played most all the maps, and playing them over and over again isn't that interesting (when I do player commercial games, I'll tend to play them through once - it doesn't really interesting me to play the game again with a different character or play the same areas over and over again with that first character - I might go explore areas I haven't done yet, but more often than not, just stop playing that game. Given how often I play such games, that tends to work out - something new will come out. At some level, it is probably unrealistic to think that new maps can be created at a pace faster than they can be played - a lot of map makers would be needed. It takes quite a bit of time to make up a good map - certainly longer than it takes to play it. And perhaps the other side of that is that it can often be difficult to come up with good maps. Everyone could sit down and spend several hours a week doing new maps, but if they are uninspired maps (more of the same), I'm not sure how much is gained. One could just play the random maps for that type of experience. The flip side is that many of the maps are so old that they predate many features since added (lighting immediately comes to mind, but probably many other aspects), so even new maps of the same type of things may still be an improvement. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
- there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff - there is no leadership who could define areas solutions: - define a common goal = need some leaders - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline / overall story) Heartily agreed! I have had no time for cf (I haven't even played it!) for over a year now. Expect this state of affairs to continue until next summer (with *very* good luck, just next January). At that point I'd be more than happy to take on any task given me by the leader(s). Do we need a leader election?-o -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Nicolas Weeger wrote: - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline / overall story) There was a in-game timeline related discussion on the IRC channel earlier today (Nov-03). I proposed, and will now be writing, lore that relates to and explains a possible reason or cause for maps to reset and allow players to run through them over and over again, why sometimes the server crashes, why player characters seem to be unaffected by these events. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJD1+dhHyvgBp+vH4RAnkJAKDuE2xbmIQkVz1V3YZVjGbWjx/7/QCg0wwb 38vo0oMki0wgl1Oi4jAuaUk= =cr+/ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Nicolas Weeger wrote: - there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff What about the TODO list(s) on the wiki? http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJD2HZhHyvgBp+vH4RAk5KAKDVi7ZhotWz3eKv4mqU3DNPNtaHRACg97D7 4KZ9tsWRa06hxmqfvjzRkcI= =sDaS -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Le lundi 3 novembre 2008, Rick Tanner a écrit : Nicolas Weeger wrote: - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline / overall story) There was a in-game timeline related discussion on the IRC channel earlier today (Nov-03). I proposed, and will now be writing, lore that relates to and explains a possible reason or cause for maps to reset and allow players to run through them over and over again, why sometimes the server crashes, why player characters seem to be unaffected by these events. Are we sure it is a good idea to make that ? Quoting what somebody else said about such an idea: I figured it would detract from suspension of disbelief and immersibility of the game Something I tend to agree with. Thoughts ? -- Lauwenmark. Drive defensively: buy a tank. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Le lundi 3 novembre 2008, Rick Tanner a écrit : Nicolas Weeger wrote: - there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff What about the TODO list(s) on the wiki? http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev_todo The TODO list is nothing more than the recollection of all ideas that were thought about. It makes no effort to coordinate the work, doesn't deal with feature priorities, and covers so many areas that it fails to give the project a clear direction to follow. What is worse is that - as you yourself underlined in your message - there is not *a* TODO List; there are *several* ones: Majro Releases, Fixes/Revamps, Feature-Based, Concepts, and even a User-based one! This is exactly what Nicolas was writing about: no common goal, everybody doing its own stuff (in this case, TODO lists). A clarified, cleaned-up TODO is of course a useful tool to coordinate project efforts - but as it stands now, it is IMHO not even usable for that simple purpose. -- Lauwenmark. Drive defensively: buy a tank. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can we close the shop down? I've been fairly busy for the past few months on a kitchen remodel which took away my time from other projects - that's finishing up just now, so will be getting more into crossfire work again. I plan to resume work on rebalancing the spells. I admit I'm not motivated at all lately. The code is a real mess, maps are pretty boring usually, and the game is going nowhere. I can certainly understand some of that. I've run into th same feeling now and again. The one that we usually always come back to is new maps. As a long term player/developer, I've played most all the maps, and playing them over and over again isn't that interesting (when I do player commercial games, I'll tend to play them through once - it doesn't really interesting me to play the game again with a different character or play the same areas over and over again with that first character - I might go explore areas I haven't done yet, but more often than not, just stop playing that game. Given how often I play such games, that tends to work out - something new will come out. At some level, it is probably unrealistic to think that new maps can be created at a pace faster than they can be played - a lot of map makers would be needed. It takes quite a bit of time to make up a good map - certainly longer than it takes to play it. And perhaps the other side of that is that it can often be difficult to come up with good maps. Everyone could sit down and spend several hours a week doing new maps, but if they are uninspired maps (more of the same), I'm not sure how much is gained. One could just play the random maps for that type of experience. The flip side is that many of the maps are so old that they predate many features since added (lighting immediately comes to mind, but probably many other aspects), so even new maps of the same type of things may still be an improvement. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
[crossfire] Seeking life...
Hello. So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can we close the shop down? I admit I'm not motivated at all lately. The code is a real mess, maps are pretty boring usually, and the game is going nowhere. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Nicolas Weeger wrote: Hello. So, anyone working on something? I've been working (and still working) on: * Giving maps unique names so the Map Index in Mapper is somewhat easier to use find the map * Creating new regions, applying said region to maps * Updating descriptions for existing regions * I went through all the trunk maps and updated their level to something more appropriate; Method for this is documented in the wiki * Also, all the trunk maps had their entrance x y coordinates corrected * Added shop header code to stores that was missing this; this still needs to happen with some of the shop template maps (these are the shops found in random maps) * Fixed a number of map bugs in the Chaos Lair * I plan on backporting the previous 4 changes to branches/1.x based on testing and feedback * Currently working on replacing the faces|graphics to Lake and River archetypes * Now that the server code has been updated, convert all payment altars so they accept all coins as payment instead of 1 particular coin type -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJDKUghHyvgBp+vH4RAtIHAJ4w/H3MGkc2FN6+o1mNs2LujOVYtQCg68ET BK22r5gkJAlTsLdP2biyxf4= =5/Sx -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
