Re: [glob2-devel] We must do a game, not an engine

[Kyle Lutze]

> On Lots of days many glob2 devs wrote:
> words

GAH! can't we all get along?!

I didn't actually read the whole thread, skimmed mails here and 
there but it got long and I don't have enough time, but I thought I 
would throw in my .02. (note from after I finished writing this: 
this is long, but it is worth the read for the active developers)

1) bradley wants to do a core code rewrite, LET HIM! he's not being 
paid to help, he's volunteering his time and doing something that 
desperately needs to be done and not many are willing/able to do. 
From what I gather he also doesn't want to work on the current code 
base because it's no longer fun and causes lots of headaches 
figuring things out and I don't want to see him leave over you guys 
trying to force him to continue working on that.

2) Cyrille: you seem to think rewrites are worthless and that time 
should be concentrated elsewhere, such as neat-o graphics. That's 
good, except that the guys doing the rewrites are coders, and that's 
their passion and they may not want/be able to do graphics that 
would do the game justice. On the other hand, what's stopping you?

3) I always like to point at the kernel development for this, if we 
had more developers it would be much more practicable too (at least 
from what I read this is how they do it)

each major release, such as 2.4 to 2.6 is a complete rewrite. The 
rewrite is done when they find a block in the previous release that 
prevents them from moving forward, but they keep working on the old 
version to help it keep going in the meantime.

that skinny version in context of glob2: as bradley said, the code 
started out decent, and steph and nuage did a great job, but then 
more futures were to be added that the current code couldn't support 
and two choices were presented: rewrite all the code to make room, 
or hack it in, many chose the ladder.

This leads us at crossroads at this point as the code has been 
hacked so much that it went from the starting point steph and nuage 
had it to to something where it's been hacked by many developers 
over time (I've seen probably a dozen developers come and go while 
I've been apart of the glob2 community) to the point where we can no 
longer effectively work on the code to make the game better without 
bashing heads.

I have to be honest, I've gotten a bit addicted to a different game 
with my real life friends which is half the reason I haven't been 
around glob2 as much, the game is eve-online. They started out with 
a great game, but since then have been hacking mods in where the 
code wasn't in place for it, but since it's an MMORPG they don't 
have the time to do a complete rewrite, so they keep hacking the 
code to do patches and now any sort of battle in the game lags to 
all hell, node crashes, etc. which make the game not so playable 
making people quit, bad reviews, and players starting to disrespect 
the developers of the game for putting more "features" in before 
fixing the annoying little bugs that don't cause the game to cease 
functioning, but at the same time become very annoying to the point 
that players start questioning if the game is still worth it (like me).

Back to glob2. The code needs a rewrite so we can more easily 
implement new units, buildings, put an end to some of the pesky net 
game drop issues, etc. There is no way around this.

On the other hand, I do believe it would be nice for the people that 
aren't interested on doing the rewrite to keep working on the 0.8.23 
version right now. images can still be made and used in the rewrite, 
maps that are made can still give an example and manually remade in 
the new glob2, and making campaign stories are hard, but recreating 
the maps, waypoints, etc. aren't nearly as hard as trying to come up 
with the whole thing from scratch.

In a perfect world, how I think this stuff should be handled in the 
future:
- we have a base (currently 0.8.23) that is worked on and updated, 
etc. until we hit enough issues that it becomes better to rewrite 
than continue hacking things in. At that point some of the people 
keep working on the old release, some people move to the next step

- we have a beta group working on a rewrite. This group should be 
able to take much of the extra libs and includes for a decent start, 
and if all code is documented in the base, and notes are included on 
where things were hacked in and why, it will speed up the 
development process of the beta to get to the point where the base 
is, and be able to add in extra features without the headaches that 
originally existed.

================
I can give you guys more examples of other groups/companies that use 
this design but I think you can get the gist of it. From what I see, 
Bradley is working on the rewrite, k776 has been working on small 
updates, documentation, and other needed but somewhat boring work, 
steph has been helping here and there, but like me school is a big 
issue right now, I got addicted to a different game and feel behind 
on homework and helping glob2 for a while, so now I'm turning that 
around to get back on track, kai, leo, and and cyrille I have 
absolutely no idea, and nuage seems to have moved on.

Fill in where you would like, I'm just curious how much I'm still 
correct on as I work towards becoming more active again.

this is not an attempt to bash nuage's and steph's code. This is 
just saying that developers' time and resources need to be split 
between keeping up work on the alpha (base version) and the rewrite 
as I believe even they're willing to admit that the game has evolved 
in a way that they weren't expecting when they first started coding 
the game.

cheers,
Kyle

PS: can we maybe have a scheduled irc or teamspeak/voice meeting 
some time and do some brainstorming for the rewrite to make sure we 
make it easy to implement all currently planned features and ones 
that people are asking for, and to get everyone on the same page as 
to where the project is headed and how/where/what everyone is going 
to be working so we aren't spending so much time bashing heads on 
the mailing list from now on?

a glob2 release that has most of the current bugs squashed and new 
features added will be released - the question is how will that 
happen and when it will be done, and constant threads like this one 
don't make it go any faster.