10/10/2010

[NightRychune]

spidey is at least not stupid enough to know that if he goes ape@#(! with banning people it'll end badly for him

imago and others are most certainly stupid enough to abuse it regardless of this fact

everything would be better if i was in charge, i would begin by changing all of unclebuck's forum and ASGS accounts to Clownshoes as it would be far more appropriate for someone of his clownish nature

[ryjamsan]

QUOTE (UncleBuck @ Sep 16 2010, 09:57 AM) Yet spidey is trusted?



Ok heres another question. Why does a Dev lead need all those tools? Call him a ZL all you want, but why does a DEV ZL need the ability to ban people? Why does a DEV zl require that functionality?

What buiness is it of yours UB

Your all talk

Talk talk talk talk just stfu and play ffs

[Bard]

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) Don't you mean "someone that the community trusts not to abuse said power"? If the community overwhelmingly wants someone that one or two ZLs happen not to trust...what happens?

Whoa, hold on there chief.

One of the major problems with how things are laid out via ASGS is the fact that the community has NO CLUE about the powers the ZL's have.
I've been trying to be as public as I can possibly be about what I can and cannot do with the tools I have been given since I accepted the position after I threw my hat into the ring. I even spent weeks working with Imago and explaining what I could and could not do with the tools I have.

I have never been anything but completely honest about the powers that are at my discretion although I will admit I didn't make any flashy announcements about what they were in detail, I simply answered questions straightforwardly.

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) Personally, I don't get why we've allowed Imago and crew to have basically complete control over the game by allowing them the ability to modify Alleg code at will

That's simple, everyone with svn access kept it after dogbones and cort both resigned and anyone with svn access has the ability to modify the code at will.
The months and months of a lack of dev zl meant that noone had the task of checking up on that code for the sake of the whole community, so anyone with an account could commit whatever they wanted. This is the mess I'm cleaning up now.

I could give you an SVN account today if you wanted it and so could a few other people. It's not hard, it's done that way to ease development.

The reason I volunteered for the position in the first place was that noone else was willing to do the job and I had the knowledge and ability to do so based on past occupational experience.

TE really means it when he says that the ZL's are in charge of their area. Having no permanent ZL in the dev area meant having months of developers making unmitigated and mostly unseen commits to the svn (unseen in that it's the dev ZL's duty to monitor them, so someone else had to pick up the slack and do double duty). That translates into someone (me, at this juncture of allegiance history) having to go back and look in on the changes and catch up for the good of the community because releasing buggy code is BAD, as R5 taught us.

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) but we don't trust them with the ability to look up callsigns? Considering that Imago and KGJV have been in the dev zone way longer than you have, I don't really feel you're accomplishing much with your gatekeeper schtick

No offense Jimen, but unless you wish to out yourself from another nick, you may not have as much history as I've heard and absorbed by proxy. I can't say for sure, so if you don't mind too much, I'll give you a brief catch-up over the course of a few quotes. Please bear with me.

Imago and KGJV have both been around MUCH longer than I have, but they also have gigantic (and in some cases correct) arguments against the Pook/ASGS era. I'm not disagreeing with them here, but I also know that dredging up the past for the sake of arguing about minute points is a complete crock and only serves to enflame people into unproductive manners. Lookups via enforcer for callsigns are currently tied to ASGS. That means if you replace me as development zone leader today the post I made regarding privileges would hold true because ASGS is still the "secure gameplay system" for allegiance and we're stuck with it until ACSS or whatever it ends up being called goes into live production.

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) if they wanted to slip some super magic backdoor into the code, they would've (and could've) done it years ago.

And did. Ask your squadmates about force board from turret to pilot, for example.

What's been the unspoken rule since I saw R1 is that the COMMUNITY polices the code so that noone can get a true advantage.

(edit -- I should clarify this -- since the code was released by microsoft before my time, the dev team has kept a policy of leaving the svn readable to all, so that anyone can look at the code that is involved. It's a community check and balance, albeit one most players don't bother with. For those who don't know and want to explore the code, you can find it HERE )

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) Line-by-line code review by someone who barely understands it isn't going to change anything this late in the game.

Barely understands it? Late in the game?

I will agree that the wait for R6 is longer in the tooth than I'd like due to the number of bugs that R5 introduced and how much it has affected our playerbase levels because people can't actually PLAY the game, but fixing that is my focus and it's not as long as the wait from R4 to R5 yet.

When it comes to understanding C++, please point me to someone willing to do more work than I am already doing lining up the revisions for code review in their free time and I will HAPPILY accept their assistance.

We have a dearth of coders who know the alleg source code and as dev ZL, I want them focused on CODING so that the bugs get fixed. Reading code in the first step is *MY* job as dev ZL. Secondary code reviews go to the team as they are willing to take it on.

Let me show you another timeline:

Code: Select all

R1
Release date: March 1st, 2006 

R2
Release date: August 1st, 2006 

R3
Release date: December 14th, 2006 

R4
Release date: November 1st, 2007 

R5
Release date: November X, 2009

See that big gap? That's because R5 was full of some really ugly updates that our R6 development team is still attempting to clean up.

It broke the game for a lot of people and my major goal is fixing the game playability for everyone who got disenfranchised by R5 and is still waiting for R6.

I'm not going to repeat an R5 with a long-in-the-tooth over-featured R6 that doesn't work for everyone.

I cannot stress this enough:

I WANT EVERYONE WHO CARES ABOUT THIS COMMUNITY TO BE ABLE TO PLAY OR CODE FOR THE GAME WITH MINIMAL EFFORT ON THEIR PART

QUOTE (Jimen @ Sep 15 2010, 06:25 PM) I don't see any massive widespread distrust for anything, really.

I just see people trying to stir up forum drama.

Me too, and that's so incredibly counter-productive that it's really bad for the community.

I miss the days of people HELPING each other out instead of CURSING each other out.
If you're willing to help me turn that attitude around, I don't think anyone would belittle you for it.

[Orion]

QUOTE (NightRychune @ Sep 15 2010, 07:10 PM) spidey is at least not stupid enough to know that if he goes ape@#(! with banning people it'll end badly for him

imago and others are most certainly stupid enough to abuse it regardless of this fact

everything would be better if i was in charge, i would begin by changing all of unclebuck's forum and ASGS accounts to Clownshoes as it would be far more appropriate for someone of his clownish nature

Except you can ban spidey if he misbehaves, imago could easily circumvent an ASGS ban..

[Bard]

QUOTE (Orion @ Sep 15 2010, 09:06 PM) Except you can ban spidey if he misbehaves, imago could easily circumvent an ASGS ban..

You've got two halves of coconuts and you're banging then together!

[Freyja]

QUOTE (UncleBuck @ Sep 16 2010, 12:57 AM) Yet spidey is trusted?



Ok heres another question. Why does a Dev lead need all those tools? Call him a ZL all you want, but why does a DEV ZL need the ability to ban people? Why does a DEV zl require that functionality?

You're right;

Spidey shouldn't be trusted, his trust will only be validated by giving you a year long ban UncleSchmuck.

[TheCorsair]

Well coming from someone who only knows the whole dev scene has been a dramafest for a while now and concurring that R5 did break a lot of peoples alleg for whatever reason... I know quite a few could no longer play alleg after that.....it seems to me Bard and TE are taking the cautious approach to ensure as they say that any changes to the game are reviewed so that the game is not broken/buggy/open to cheating etc... this to me seems sensible. Especially as historically there have been issues such as the whole crash guarding etc

I feel that jbanks/wank, imago, YP love this game also and from their point of view want more updates pushed quicker and feel it's just taking all too long on the admin side and not enough support maybe on the testing front... now that bard has explained himself clearly, the whole process of reviewing code takes time and he is using his free time. Is more understanding/patience needed? I do think it's necessary to have people review the code and it's certainly not a reflection of the coders skills. I don't think we've officially heard what their issues are is so I'd like to hear from them as clearly as Bard has since this is all out in the open now.

[FIZ]

I have lurked because I am a lurker.

So what it seems to be is progress for the sake of progress vs. maintaining the status quo.




I found this game looking for something resource cheap and free. I fell in love with this game under easy conditions.

The exact moment was in a turreted Mustang against multiple TF SF. We we're rolling in a pack with bombers. Reminded me of Rebel Assault II how enemies would pop out of nowhere with an objective of KILL.


Now I'm playing on a machine that could run 12 Allegiances with no hickup besides that 'got durn ASGS shuts me
down at 1 account.'

I haven't played the damn game in 3-4 months and I come back having a blast in a 6 person game. I tried loading it on a PIII machine when
I was away and was frustrated.

I'm not a good programmer or one to push the limits, but seriously, coming from a cheap background, I was $#@!ing ecstatic
when I found this game. I've since made friends, awed in the development because I WAS PART OF IT. Showing up for a beta
was a badge of honor.

I don't know what is to come, but I hope anyone can show up like I did and jump into this game drama free and just have
a damn good time. Cuz that's what gaming is all about.



~Still isn't a good qualified thinker
FIZ

[the.ynik]

QUOTE (Bard @ Sep 16 2010, 02:37 AM) ...

Thanks for that long post, I think it helped understanding your position on this.

QUOTE (Bard @ Sep 16 2010, 02:37 AM) When it comes to understanding C++, please point me to someone willing to do more work than I am already doing lining up the revisions for code review in their free time and I will HAPPILY accept their assistance.

I've done some (rather random) reviews of Imago's code in the last weeks and pointed out a few bugs to him. I'll join you in a proper review of every commit if you can publish the list of what is already done and what needs to be done. And by publish, I mean readable for anyone, not just the dev team. I suggest using a simple Google spreadsheet (Table with: Revision range, Reviewer, Result), but anything works as long as it allows reviewers to coordinate.

QUOTE (Bard @ Sep 16 2010, 02:37 AM) We have a dearth of coders who know the alleg source code and as dev ZL, I want them focused on CODING so that the bugs get fixed. Reading code in the first step is *MY* job as dev ZL. Secondary code reviews go to the team as they are willing to take it on.

It's been said before in this thread: people hate bottlenecks.
It's nice in theory if you want to free devs from the uninteresting review task, but that's unproductive if the review becomes the bottleneck.
You've asked people to slow down coding so that you can catch up with the review! (see first page of this drama thread).

Also, please work on your priorities. Code reviews are necessary for R6 to be released. A working beta is necessary right now in order to test R6. I don't take code reviews as an excuse for a broken beta.

QUOTE (TheCorsair @ Sep 16 2010, 09:30 AM) I do think it's necessary to have people review the code and it's certainly not a reflection of the coders skills. I don't think we've officially heard what their issues are is so I'd like to hear from them as clearly as Bard has since this is all out in the open now.

Agreed.

I think the major problem here is that Imago and Bard use 'Beta' in totally different ways. A solution to this could be to have two testing versions:
A stable beta (updated once per week), and the latest stuff (Continuous Integration = updated with every commit)
And automate both so that Beta isn't get broken by stupid deployment mistakes for half of the time.

And I'd suggest you make replacing ASGS the main topic of R7, and make CSS part of the alleg codebase. Having 2 separate dev teams is just asking for drama. CSS is supposed to be open, so make it open and there probably will be more progress.
Make sure every dev is able to change the CSS server-side stuff (e.g. for collecting more stats, extending the leaderboard) without having to go through a million bureaucratic hurdles. Give Beta a separate authentication server that's running the latest code. And the Alpha version could use another copy of the authentication server. The alpha client probably wouldn't use the authentication part, but it allows testing stuff like the leaderboard (and its complete interaction with the latest code) - which currently has to go into production completely untested (and then stuff like 'station kills aren't being reported' happens).
Basically, make everything one big package that's versioned and tested together.

But those are just the issues I see with the current development process, I'm interested in seeing Imago's conditions for re-joining FAO.

[spideycw]

lol@unclebuck trying to make this thread about me.

that restraining order really irked him!