Downlord's FAF Client

[Sheeo]

Anyway; I'm not against competition, but for the purposes of clarity I would like to ask you not to call your client "FAF v2" or to use the FAF logo as prominently--it's misleading since this isn't the entire community backing it, and donations towards your client do not go to the official FAF project.

Actually let me retract this for now. I'm not sure what to do here -- I'll have a talk with the rest of the council and we'll decide this.

will the new project be open source? will sheeo have the ability to maintain and publish updates to it?

He's published the current code under the MIT license, so open source indeed -- but a different license.

[Downlord]

I don't think choosing Java as a platform, or rewriting the entire client, makes up for solving them directly.

True, the choice of platform is irrelevant. But the rewrite isn't; Those issues are avoided from ground up whereas it would be a huge amount of work (as well) to fix these in the existing client raising the question: what takes longer?

of course your client is ready for such changes -- it doesn't have a complete implementation for the current interface to change

Yes and no; you're right it's not complete and therefore easier. But thanks to the software's architecture, the client/server communication is abstracted so that the actual implementation can easily be exchanged - other than in the current client, where it's hard-wired.

Currently the client isn't a priority, because the server and game code has been in much more need of improvement than the client.

And the good thing is; you can focus on the server while knowing that someone takes care of the client

but it at least fulfills the most important virtue of code: It works.

If by "it works" you mean "it fulfills its purpose", then yes. But you can't say it's satisfying for its users (you know its bugs and shortcomings as well as I do, I hope )

I would like to ask you not to call your client "FAF v2" or to use the FAF logo as prominently

No problem. (after your follow-up: No problem)

If we want to attract new users and keep the playerbase healthy I think it is hugely important to make FAF as smooth and modern as possible.

That's one of my unspoken points!

Is there anything we can use and test before giving donations?

It's not yet ready to be shipped, but I'll provide it ASAP.

[Ze_PilOt]

True, the choice of platform is irrelevant. But the rewrite isn't; Those issues are avoided from ground up whereas it would be a huge amount of work (as well) to fix these in the existing client raising the question: what takes longer?

Rewriting would take longer than a refactoring any day. Most of your issues are quite trivial to fix.

Ie. localization : Qt has a localization interface (http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/internationalization.html).
The problem is not removing the hardcoded stuff, but find someone to actually translate everything.
Splitting the client code is trivial.
The communication process is done the way it is for good reason : It can easily be changed (FAF had 3 differents protocols in the past, and the transition from one to another was trivial to do). But it's easy to do a separate class for it.

Most, if not all, of your concerns are mostly a matter of copy/pasting code around, or not related to the code at all (localization, graphic design/look).

That's one of my unspoken points!

That is not related to code. Qt is very well able to do a "modern" interface. The questions are: who is going to do it? What design? How many years it will last before looking outdated too?


Your protocol issue can be right or wrong. The questions are : What new design do you have in mind? How better it is than the current one? Is it easier to use than the current one?
Without any explanation, it's hard to tell if you are competent to decide a new way to handle everything.
Currently things are done the way they are for a very good reason, and I can argue why. Can you?

[Downlord]

I agree with some of your points but disagree with others, ZEP. Let me assure you that I can argue (and I already did) but I'm not going to start a never-ending technical discussion here which wouldn't move us forward in any way.

I hope you didn't read me as "your work is shit", I never said or meant that. I also never said or implied that the current client can't be improved or that QT isn't able to do a modern interface. My point is; there's nobody doing it in the near future. And if I'd do it, it would cost me about the same amount of time but in an environment I don't and will never like.

[Ze_PilOt]

What I mean is that if you are able to translate the UI to russian/portugese/...., or a good looking, modern UI (ie. using Qt-Quick instead of XML), you should focus on that instead of redoing code that already exists, because as you said, none is going to do it.

I had many offer to translate the lobby or redo the interface, but nothing really came out after the design phase (ie. viewtopic.php?f=42&t=8622)

Someone even forked the lobby once to redo the whole thing with qt-quick, it didn't went much further than creating a blank page

I highly doubt that it will cost you the same time to redo everything than refactoring or iterating on existing code. Or you are highly underestimate the task.

[visionik]

Downlord -

I think what you're doing is great. Largely because I am a big believer in the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" (CatB). So much so that I have a big post that will go up eventually about CatB and FAF (I even had it translated to French) and this fits right into the first 4 points of CatB:

1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
3. Plan to throw one [version] away; you will, anyhow. (Copied from Frederick Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month)Every good work
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.

I'd like to make three comments:

1. I'd really like it if you joined the quote-unquote official development team so we could discuss this on Slack

2. Please keep in mind that their is no long-term stability or implied "contract" with the current client/server/proxy protocol. It's all changing and I don't want that to be a pain in your a** when it happens.

3. I'd like to ask you to not call this FAF Client 2.0 unless we end up making this the official FAF client. FAF Client X? FAF Client D? Downlord FAF Client? Anything like that would be fine. I just want to avoid any confusion.

Keep up the great work! I'd love to see another client that has as much or more features than the current one... with a better user experience.

Please note, I also am not against the existing client. It has flaws, but all software does. And people are doing great work on it; and personally I'm more a Python fan then Java. However, CatB reigns supreme

Best,

-Visionik

[Downlord]

Thank you for your words visionik! Sheeo already asked me to rename it so I'll call it "Downlord's FAF Client" from now on. I'll replace the logo as well.

[-_V_-]

Better MVC, localization, etc... Yeah lots of stuff I hear whole day at work. And it's good.

But is it critical considering the client we currently have ? I would say hardly so, as it does the job pretty good. No bug free, but hardly critical or even major to waste more time (and money) on it.

I would love for the search to be much better, but that's about it. Worth a rebuild ?

[Aurion]

I would love for the search to be much better, but that's about it. Worth a rebuild ?

Definitely not, most heavy lifting of the search will be done serverside. Ideal would be if all replay metadata would be pushed to a search engine like SolR or ElasticSearch to make searching for replays really good.

[Downlord]

Ideal would be if all replay metadata would be pushed to a search engine like SolR or ElasticSearch to make searching for replays really good.

I love such ideas, keep them coming. You can also always contact me directly for any suggestion and questions, or just to have a chat.