Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Been writing some code

2017-03-06T14:58:18+02:00

If you do manage to complete it, I will at least give it a try rather than dismissing it like others seems to, I think it is worth a shot. If nothing is done FA will die in the next few years I am pretty sure, and while this has a chance of causing a "split" it could also have a chance to save the eventual decline of this game, so I think it is worth a shot.

Statistics: Posted by galacticfear — 06 Mar 2017, 14:58

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-23T19:44:40+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
...

Aulex wrote:
...

Not included the whole quotes, but thanks for all the feedback.

To respond to IceDreamer: There's plenty of great things in FAF dev right now, but there are weaknesses too which I don't want to derail the thread with. As I mentioned previously, I am actively wishing FAF the best in everything it wants to achieve, even if I don't want to be a big part of that journey.

Aulex; if I understand correctly your main point is that it will take too long to go from scratch to being FAF feature complete, based on your assessment of my technical skills.

While I agree this is surely a big task, I think we need to avoid falling into some traps:

Keep the feedback coming; hopefully we can work together on this project someday

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 23 Feb 2017, 19:44

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-23T15:30:12+02:00

Softly,

On a serious note, I really do enjoy your enthusiasm and wish you the best, but there are few things about the game I think you could fix that would appeal to me.

Those "things" include the following:

1) Connection stability and pace (game sim speed): Although there are perhaps some optimizations that could be done to improve sim speed and connection stability, we will more than anything depend on a person's PC and their internet choice than anything. You can't code people to get better PCs nor better internet as far as I know until we are all converted to machines

2) Maps: Unless a new editor is developed that makes the process much MUCH more easy I don't think we will ever see any high-quality maps made for us to play. I have been trying to make a map in my limited spare time which has lead to me learning how to dodge editor crashes and bugs more than anything. Granted I'm having a lot more trouble than the norm, not many people are willing to put up with learning it like myself and others. The map vault is getting kind of dry with content and many players are not really willing to learn new ones like Tokyto's phenomenal "Funeral Plains." The community has so many Gap, Thermopylae, etc type players it's kind of a loss to try and improve here. You would have to somehow improve the taste in game-style of the population for me to feel your option would be better here.

3) Competitive players: How do you plan to get more people to join than FAF? Advertisement and promotion plans? Where is the $ for this? We need real $ to get things to the next level and unfortunately the one person who has that $ is tired of the community/project.

I wish you well and all but I don't know if we can really do much other than keep FAF alive and hope some game studio notices to pick it up or design a game like it for the modern age.

Until then, I hope we can all stick together and support what we have, which is a lot.

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 23 Feb 2017, 15:30

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-23T05:31:31+02:00

biass wrote:
I just came back to say "No problem" and then to agree with blackheart

People are scared that this will kill FAF? do they not know they cannot compete? "its just one guy, right?"

Softly if anything i would suggest you make your client focused towards adults and not for children too

I don't think anyone is scared for a few reasons.

1st, From the "insider" group of people, mostly referring to downlord's comment which I agree with, I don't think Softly has the technical capability to pull this off in an appealing and useable manner for users, himself and anyone who wants to help him.

2nd, He's competing with a huge codebase, even if he did have the skills, it would take him a long time to catch up. For example, downlord has shown he's capable of pumping out a competitive client, but it took a while to reach feature parody with the existing client, some of these features were blocked by issues not controllable by him, but even without these barriers downlord had the head start of building off an existing server, a luxury Softly doesn't have.

3rd, Even if he is able to build the client, server and the surrounding systems needed to run it, from what I read from the original post it will be run like a zepilot style community, which can pump out features quickly, but it isn't maintainable and generally not appealing for new developers making it very difficult for him.

4th, kind of tying the 2nd and 1st point together, he estimates he can release chatting, playing, rating and matchmaker in 3 months. If he worked on this as a day job or spent literally all his free time with it, he could probably get it up, but unless Softly is driven enough and willing to improve himself technically I really don't see this happening.

Generally though, I feel that this attempt at a pivot from the existing system doesn't really make any sense. All the code is open source and he can work on literally anything he wants to. So what I think he really wants is feature flags and allowing to test new things with a specific set of users, well why not just implement it if he's willing to go out of his way to reimplement an already working system? It's a common concept found in industry software. Overall though, Softly can do what he wants, if he wants to try make his own server and client go for it, but I'm just warning anyone who is hoping for success to not get your hopes up.

Statistics: Posted by Aulex — 23 Feb 2017, 05:31

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-23T04:59:03+02:00

I just came back to say "No problem" and then to agree with blackheart

People are scared that this will kill FAF? do they not know they cannot compete? "its just one guy, right?"

Softly if anything i would suggest you make your client focused towards adults and not for children too

Statistics: Posted by biass — 23 Feb 2017, 04:59

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-23T02:30:25+02:00

Softly wrote:
Hiding precise rating from everyone but yourself, (although perhaps a "personal best" number could be globally visible).
Making what other people see more generic, like "Player X is Bronze rank" or something similar.
Making the auto-balance options in lobby better to compensate for this lack of precision.

FAF is going to do all of these, as discussed last month during developer conferences.

Softly wrote:
Balance
I see balance right now as an unhappy middle ground between people who want more changes, faster; and people who think we're already making changes too quickly, causing bad decisions to creep in.

I want to try splitting the main balance into two mods, the first for people who prefer slower change, and the second for those who really want to push the limits of FA.

In the first mod there would be a very deliberate and slow process for making changes; with each change designed to incrementally affect the meta.
In the second mod we'd be adding in cool new stuff like nomads, blackops units (where possible), with each change designed to push the possible without imbalancing factions. (There's a big difference between balancing factions, and balancing the game)

Historically I would see myself falling into the first camp, but I've also loved getting involved in things like the nomads mod in the past too. Lets recognise that different people want different things.

This will splinter your splinter. Lovely and all-round friendly in theory, but it won't work out so well. FA doesn't have the playerbase to sustain anything close to this. Stick to mods. It's what they're for.

Overall I think this a bad plan with a slim-to-nothing chance of success. There are now two clients moving forward at good speed, game development is running smoothly, the new balance team are seriously stepping up the mark when it comes to feedback and changes, and ICE connectivity is getting better by the day. You wanna do Python? Come help Duk3. You wanna do Java? Come help Downlord. You wanna do lua? Come help me

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 23 Feb 2017, 02:30

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-22T22:53:04+02:00

keyser wrote:
hello softly,

like most of the other player, i think trying to create a new client/server, will not help. We already see that downlord client brought some conflict into the development team. And i personally think we lack of a leader that decide to drop either 1 of the 2 current client, to focus all effort on 1 client. Ofc this may result into having some developer stopping to help (being disappointed), since it's not an actual company and help is being done thanks to volunteering.
I hear your argument about competition, but i don't think this is the best way to improve the faf.
furthermore, i don't understand how you can find time to create a whole new client/server, while you aren't able to find time to contribute for the current project.

and i agree with a lot of your point on rating and balance. I think you can still invest your time in helping tokyto for making a new ladder rating https://docs.google.com/document/d/16J0 ... COMpk/edit ; and try to apply it (with change) to the global rating too. (that's only an example)

but that's only my pov, maybe you really want to create a new lobby/server, and then you should do what you want to do. That would just be a "waste" of skill for the community. Maybe you can bring more to the community by doing your own client/server, but i think that will be unlikely

Hi keyser, thanks for the well thought out reply.

I have contributed plenty of time in the past to FAF, that was always my first option for trying to support the FA community. That said, there are a variety of reasons which mean that putting more time into FAF isn't viable for me, and so having spent some time considering the options I decided that this was the best way forward for everyone involved.

You make a great point about leadership too; although I'd diagnose the problem more as organisational issues in FAF than us lacking "leaders". There's plenty of super people around!

My dream scenario is to have a community which can share improvements with FAF; if I come up with a great new rating system for example then there's no reason that it couldn't be implemented for FAF, and vice versa.

For the moment I've had enough positive feedback both in this thread and through a few other channels that I am happy there is support for me to go ahead on this, hopefully I'll be able to bring you on board in the future

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 22 Feb 2017, 22:53

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-22T22:28:45+02:00

slow-dragging-mind-games-and-gambling-efficiency-effect.gif

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 22 Feb 2017, 22:28

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-22T16:43:31+02:00

Gruffman wrote:
20% toxicity. Why `noob` players get abused is beyond me, don't we want new players or eventually the game will inevitably die out. As a community we need to start hurting/banning/restricting abusive players much harder imho

What do you mean with abusive? You can always report players that violate the rules to a moderator. I'll go through ladder games of low ranked players more often.

(Sorry for off-topic)

Statistics: Posted by lextoc — 22 Feb 2017, 16:43

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-22T16:37:33+02:00

I think the new player drop off is ;

80% because of the learning curve, the gameplay adjustments you have to make transitioning to multiplayer, the frustration of those sudden snipe kills on your acu

and

20% toxicity. Why `noob` players get abused is beyond me, don't we want new players or eventually the game will inevitably die out. As a community we need to start hurting/banning/restricting abusive players much harder imho

Statistics: Posted by Gruffman — 22 Feb 2017, 16:37

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-22T13:44:10+02:00

hello softly,

like most of the other player, i think trying to create a new client/server, will not help. We already see that downlord client brought some conflict into the development team. And i personally think we lack of a leader that decide to drop either 1 of the 2 current client, to focus all effort on 1 client. Ofc this may result into having some developer stopping to help (being disappointed), since it's not an actual company and help is being done thanks to volunteering.
I hear your argument about competition, but i don't think this is the best way to improve the faf.
furthermore, i don't understand how you can find time to create a whole new client/server, while you aren't able to find time to contribute for the current project.

and i agree with a lot of your point on rating and balance. I think you can still invest your time in helping tokyto for making a new ladder rating https://docs.google.com/document/d/16J0 ... COMpk/edit ; and try to apply it (with change) to the global rating too. (that's only an example)

but that's only my pov, maybe you really want to create a new lobby/server, and then you should do what you want to do. That would just be a "waste" of skill for the community. Maybe you can bring more to the community by doing your own client/server, but i think that will be unlikely

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 22 Feb 2017, 13:44

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-21T12:45:07+02:00

Downlord wrote:
Judging from all you've shown me in the past, I don't think you have the slightest chance of success.

it is not about success dude. It is about trying something new and bringing new perspective.

You did the same as far as I know and when you began you could not say if it will be a success or not so pls show some respect it will not kill you

Statistics: Posted by dstojkov — 21 Feb 2017, 12:45

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-21T01:31:35+02:00

Judging from all you've shown me in the past, I don't think you have the slightest chance of success.

[lextoc:] Please stay nice and keep opinions that don't contribute to yourself.

Statistics: Posted by Downlord — 21 Feb 2017, 01:31

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-21T00:49:12+02:00

Resin_Smoker wrote:
Be aware however that you need to be clear and upfront about whats in it for you.

I just feel like doing it. No other motive tbh, I'm not even interested in playing on the new platform myself.

As for what you say about web based, I'm not sure what web based means in the context. If its relevant, I plan for all the server <-> client communication to be HTTP (setting aside things like IRC chat), as well as being super simple. The client I am making is python, but I am sure that other people in the future will do a better job of clients than me, so I am very focused on making the Server really easy to integrate into.

PS: I happen to be non-religious myself, I was just amused enough by dstojkov's analogy to make it my sig for a while

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 21 Feb 2017, 00:49

Re: Been writing some code

2017-02-21T00:31:42+02:00

Either make it a web-based platform or be gone with you...

While that may come off as harsh, the fact is that in todays day and age, it's what players are expecting from a service. Pull that off and maybe, just maybe your work could stand the test of time. Possibly even see some form of intergration with FAF should it be extremely successful.

Be aware however that you need to be clear and upfront about whats in it for you. Otherwise your likely to fall victim to either your success or ego. Blowing smoke up everyones arse or making promises you can keep is sure to bring about the latter.

"before the glory there is always the cross".... well a shit load of folks died in the name of religion without really understanding what they were dying for. (Stupid people) I find it ironic that you'd use a religious reference in a distopian-future science fiction game about military conquest. Farkin hilarious in fact...

Statistics: Posted by Resin_Smoker — 21 Feb 2017, 00:31