On Oct 15, 2005, at 1:39 PM, Joseph Simmons wrote:
It's an OK idea. I think it is definitely a good idea to let more
artists have access, since right now there are, I think, 3 people
who can commit new images. We should basically give access for art
to anyone who asks for it.
Yep. Most of these people won't be skilled enough to create a decent
"new unit", but with enough of them around, I can create a small army
of sprite-laborers, doing all those menial tasks like cloning
animations that are a waste of neo/fmunoz/my/wayfarer's time.
It would get things like death animations done a whole lot faster.
Some more tutorials by yours truly, and some rearrangement of the
Forum stickies is in order before we begin any big pushes on stuff,
but hopefully we'll get some goal-based work going.
E.g, I make a really good example animation or two, and then say -
"Hey everyone! Let's get the death animations finished for the
dwarves!" Watch people change my examples to fit the new units. And
then some celebratory posts when we get it finished.
I disagree about the policy on major changes, though. Your example
of "hey, I want to add this unit to the game" -> "go right ahead"
seems fundamentally flawed to me. There have been many, many new
unit propositions in the past, most of which don't meet the set
criteria. I think that if we start allowing new units into the game
without taking a serious look at them, we'll end up having a lot of
new units in each release, most of which are gone by the next.
Personally, I think it is better for us to tell someone that their
unit is not good enough, rather than to let them put it into the
game and get excited about it being accepted, and then we have to
take it out. That would be even more discouraging for them than to
just have their unit rejected.
Yeah - though I welcome just allowing anyone to toss in new
animations (especially someone like wayfarer), I'd be a bit more wary
of people adding in *any* new units.
On the flip side of things, we should really iron out some planning
with regards to new factions and how they fit in game. I think it
would also be useful to build a bank of in-game units that might be
useful for any variety of campaigns - fmunoz made a bunch of those
for his "Path of the Summoner" campaign, units which I think would
work very well in other campaigns (pigs, water elementals, etc.) By
having them in the main distribution, it allows anyone to improve
them, rather than only the people who play a specific campaign, and
it also focuses all the efforts towards improving something at a
single target. Why have two, separate, badly done xUnits, when you
can have one very well done unit.
So that said, I think it would be useful to be more open to adding
units. So long as we require a certain level of baseline animation
before the initial commit, we would probably benefit in the long term.
About new campaigns, I do agree we should add new ones to the game
- although not very many. Perhaps 2 or 3. Remember, the campaign
server is extremely easy to access. I think what would be better
than adding new campaigns to the game itself would be to have an
"official" campaign server, which you need authorization to upload
something to. So, basically, there would instead of two tiers be
three. In-game (restricted to the best campaigns) > Official server
(which you need to have authorization to upload something to, and
there is some degree of quality assurance, but all well-maintained
campaigns would get in) > Open server (where anyone can upload new
campaigns).
This could really be done by both sorting campaigns into groups (new
unit sets, rule mods, multiplayer maps, actual campaigns), and by
allowing, either through the campaign-server web access or through
the game, users to rate the scenarios they play. Higher-rated
scenarios would be placed higher in the list.
The point is to allow people who don't want to play a "work in
progress" to clearly and easily get access to only that.
David White wrote:
Possibly. The problem is that it's often difficult to get something
included in the first place due to lack of people with SVN accounts
who take the time to review such things and then commit them. As
well as a lack of confidence among people as to what they're
allowed to commit.
In fact, I think lack of confidence is a big problem. I would like
to say that if a developer thinks that something is an improvement
that no-one could possibly complain about, then they should just go
ahead and commit it. If a developer sees an animation on the forum
that looks good, and fills a currently empty spot, then just go
ahead and commit it. Don't wait for permission.
I also think that this has been a big problem throughout our work.
