Forged Alliance Forever

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-19T05:21:11+02:00

I feel like the "Dying Crowd" only has itself to blame for dying. I don't see much talk outside of FAF, about FAF. Nor do I see much talk inside FAF, about getting more to join FAF.

Statistics: Posted by Tanksy — 19 Sep 2016, 05:21

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-17T10:53:16+02:00

This is because there are too many "old hands" and not enough desire to let the game "grow" so those who are on the "councils" know all but how to allow the game to grow. Simple as that. It's is a dying crowd too.

Statistics: Posted by KD7BCH — 17 Sep 2016, 10:53

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-16T21:03:07+02:00

I'm not able to find much comfort in the word "soon" at this point, too many things have been "soon" and never delivered (listing examples is so easy I don't think its worth the forum space).

Morax wrote:
Dude, Softly, just get on slack and try to talk to the devs and visionik one-on-one. You can probably get a voice chat time set up and it's 1,000,000 times more effective than lengthy forum rants.

The temptation here is to make a comment on how 1,000,000 times 0 is still 0, although it would be unfair of me to say that. There is progress, although I think it is much slower than what is required.

For the record, I did join slack a week or two after making this post, although I am yet to be convinced that me being there is of any value (to me or others).

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 16 Sep 2016, 21:03

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-16T20:32:43+02:00

JaggedAppliance wrote:
Softly wrote:It seems to me we've got too caught up in defining exactly what council roles there should be and exactly what the candidates for those roles want to do, that we've missed the blindingly obvious point that the council is empty.

No the roles are defined already, it was done during a dev conference. It's pretty much waiting on visionik I think.

Attend the next meeting, things are soon to come.

Statistics: Posted by Aulex — 16 Sep 2016, 20:32

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-16T20:08:18+02:00

Softly wrote:
It seems to me we've got too caught up in defining exactly what council roles there should be and exactly what the candidates for those roles want to do, that we've missed the blindingly obvious point that the council is empty.

No the roles are defined already, it was done during a dev conference. It's pretty much waiting on visionik I think.

Statistics: Posted by JaggedAppliance — 16 Sep 2016, 20:08

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-16T19:15:26+02:00

Dude, Softly, just get on slack and try to talk to the devs and visionik one-on-one. You can probably get a voice chat time set up and it's 1,000,000 times more effective than lengthy forum rants.

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 16 Sep 2016, 19:15

Re: The state of FAF

2016-09-16T18:59:48+02:00

So 1.5 months on I can only regard this thread as an abject failure.

There was some initial optimism on moving forwards with the moderation team, but all efforts there have vanished mysteriously.

As for everything else, nothing happened at all.

It seems to me we've got too caught up in defining exactly what council roles there should be and exactly what the candidates for those roles want to do, that we've missed the blindingly obvious point that the council is empty. Its not like this is hard to solve, but I'm not sure the relevant people want to solve it.

Unfortunately I don't see any of that changing, even small things (like clan tag colours) have their progress measured in months (11 months since I started on it, and the final count for lines of code changed is likely to be less than 200) rather than minutes/hours/days.

Sorry for the downbeat post.

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 16 Sep 2016, 18:59

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-07T08:27:49+02:00

Aulex wrote:
Please don't degrade a very productive thread, if you have concerns about balance take it to the balance forums.

Statistics: Posted by biass — 07 Aug 2016, 08:27

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-07T07:41:56+02:00

Please don't degrade a very productive thread, if you have concerns about balance take it to the balance forums.

Statistics: Posted by Aulex — 07 Aug 2016, 07:41

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-07T02:58:23+02:00

LichKing2033 wrote:
Balance was fixed in Equilibrium.

Incorrect! I believe you mean: Balane fixdd was in Eqilibrium

Statistics: Posted by nine2 — 07 Aug 2016, 02:58

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-07T02:26:54+02:00

Balance was fixed in Equilibrium. I still wonder how come EQ is not a default game mode or even a separate one, like FAF Beta.

Statistics: Posted by Lieutenant Lich — 07 Aug 2016, 02:26

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-07T00:07:03+02:00

^What he said^

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 07 Aug 2016, 00:07

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-06T23:52:08+02:00

Hi there,

like Dr. Brackman I am rather new in the dev team and would like to share my experience so far.

Even if we had 100 new developers contributing, things wouldn't change immediately.
There are a couple of reasons for this:

a) Changes need to get reviewed before pushed into the codebase. This is not only an organizational requirement, but also a technical. You don't want to break the code base!
Only a few developers currently have the insight to estimate possible side effects of a change. (Game/Lua looks a bit better than the rest though.)
If these developers lack time, there is no progress. I believe this is the main reason why contributions (Github pull requests) are stalling as of now.
b) Developer testing is a complex thing. FAF has a pretty complex architecture, which is not intended to run on the local pc of any developer (it may be possible, but you would need knowledge only the main devs have). Setting it up on the test servers can only be done by the same people who can review.
c) Packaging release is not simple. Only 1-2 people can do it as of now. Furthermore you need server access for this which is restricted for good reason (access to all data player...).
d) The more changes you make, the more will break. I.e. aach server release requires a restart of the server (running games will break). After the go live you will need some time to check whether everything is running and be prepared to roll back your changes. This takes a lot of time.

In conclusion, development relies on a small bunch of people, who have a whole lot of tasks to handle. As long as these tasks do not get passed to other developers (delegating the responsibility and explaining or documenting the required working steps), things won't change until the devs have more time to spend for all of us.

So what kind of developer would like to take these responsibilites? You need to be trusted by the head staff, have decent server administration and development skills (especially python, git, docker, sql). And then you get a job, where you perform merely administrative tasks (less development fun) for no pay, but all the blame if anything fails and continuous harassement because overall progress is too slow. Step up, if you feel qualified.

Statistics: Posted by Brutus5000 — 06 Aug 2016, 23:52

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-05T03:57:58+02:00

Lich, stop trying to turn this thread into a staging ground to plug your balance ideas- this is why no one takes you seriously

As for devs? My opinion is withheld until I see them stick to their second deadline for vault. ^.^.

Statistics: Posted by biass — 05 Aug 2016, 03:57

Re: The state of FAF

2016-08-05T04:00:11+02:00

Come off it guys, this is a thread about the development part of FAF as well as communication problems.

Take your titans off into the balance forums

Statistics: Posted by TheKoopa — 05 Aug 2016, 03:44