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

[Kai Antweiler]

> I sure can't prevent him. And as long as it works as well at the end, never
> mind.

The bad thing is that you insult Bradley's work and try to prevent it.
Also you constantly propose very bad code design.


> But I am afraid that the "rewrites" are never quite complete (see nct and his
> skins)...

Uh, trying to make feel Bradley feel bad about his editor rewrite?


> But again, you seem to assume things were hacked. No, things were don in ways
> that are more convoluted, sometime for optimality reasons.

Are you sure you talk about glob2?
Maybe you looked at some of Bradleys code?


> This does not mean they are unclean! Optimized code is painful to look at.
> Example: I needed sparse matrices.
>
> 1) std::map<std::pair<size_t, size_t>, double> -- 0 lines of code, works.
> 2) operator overloading, valarrays and dedicated classes. speedup x 10 -- 50
> lines of code
> 3) clever aliasing tricks to get rid of temporaries. speedup x 3 -- 500 lines
> of complicated code

You forgot:
4) implementing everything in assembler

How about searching the work of other people:
http://www.koders.com/default.aspx?s=sparse+matrix&btn=Search&la=Cpp&li=*



> Uhhh, writing a campaign would make the game more valuable. With _no_
> additional code.

And it wouldn't improve the code.  So glob2 would slowly die, if we just
do campaigns.  Anyone for allowing improving code and creating campaigns?
I am.

By the way:  Bradley created our tutorial.




> You mean like rewriting the map format instead of fixing the desyncs?

I could say:  "You mean like doing animations instead of fixing the desyncs?"

Please stop to command us around!
We are working for free.  Get this into your head.


> I mean,
> everyone can do what he well pleases, but let us not be deluded on what is
> actually useful _from_the_player's_point_of_view_.

> From the players point of view.  The unit-building allocation was needed.
We talked about it last year.  Steph and nuage started a rewrite.

Believe it or not I have dumped games with really nice graphics before,
simply because the gaming sucked.

So doing nice graphics will not make a game.
It will help.  And I appreciate it very much.  But a game consists of
engine and other code, graphics, sound, maps, ...
Just picking something out and telling everybody who works on something
else that he's harming the project or at least not contributing is ... - bad!


> Because we are forgetting the players with all this rewrite talk, are we not?

Are we forgetting the coders when we talk about campaigns?
I don't think so.  I can keep more than one subject in mind.
And again the rewrites are very necessary.
Without them glob2 will go down.  No one will be able to work
on it anymore.


> What are the issues they raise? what works not so well?

Everytime I looked into user wishes and thought this should be easy
to implement, I recognised that the code so tangled that I can't do it
without harming the whole game.


> What are the game balance issues?

Are you telling me that the blue globs are stronger than the red ones?


> All of those points are important, and not one requires a rewrite, only
> tuning.

Ah, only tangling up the code some more.
Brilliant!


> I an getting angry.

I know.  So you try to insult everybody so that you feel better?


> THE CODE NEEDS NO REWRITE. IT NEEDS REFACTORING.

Bigger letters but still fundamentally wrong - sorry.

> most of the work in making a game is not code, it is graphics and writing and
> maps. Look at the number of each profession at Blizzard :)

And I really appreciate every commiter of graphics.
I tried to, and failed.  Face it.  Just because you would like more
graphics contributed, doesn't mean that this will happen.


> Once upon a time, a TODO was done which essentially said that the 1.0 is the
> current state, debugged, with gfx and campaign finished.
>
> Are we working in that direction? NO.

And we never should go in this direction again, because it
turns developers away.
I pray that you won't succeed in scheming this nonsence back into
the project, because I don't think glob2 would survive it.
Imaging glob2 without coders on the mailing list that you can insult.
Wouldn't be fun anymore.


> Actually, from Rama's drawing, I did ~90% of the graphics.
>
> And you know what?
>
> they need a redraw.

Huch?  Ergo crap?
Your insulting Cyrille!
Wasn't that your reasoning?

--
Kai Antweiler