Free Allegiance Forums

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ May 21 2014, 02:23 PM) Wasn't the senate supposed to deal with all this stuff? Taking volunteers and arranging things with the admin and so on? What happened there?

The senate has quietly died Because from what I have been told, didn't work work well.

We've been here over and over again and it's always the same story.

1st of all, Masta...you're stating the obvious and doing so is about as effective as it was 5 years ago. Give it a rest. There is only one way to fix the problem and that is with complete abandonment of this regime. This game is plagued with so many problems and these problems have always pointed back at TE and the dysfunctional organization he promoted. Quit asking for permission and accept the fact that we will simply have to walk away from this.

I fully endorse the development of any alternative to what we now have. To that end, I would be happy to support it financially and with testing on various platforms. I believe that even with no community to start with...many players will show if only to see the new release of Allegiance. Focus all your energy to that end and stop fighting with the regime you will soon wave bye bye to.

peet wrote:QUOTE (peet @ May 21 2014, 07:19 AM) Correct me if I am wrong, but a student license is not legally allowed to run a gamer server on. You need a "full" license server (which makes it more costly). Server 2003 is being phased out, so that leaves you with a server 2008 (or better) if you want to stick on the Windows platform.

Dreamspark license should be fine, just no commercial use allowed with it.

Whenever somebody had a problem pkk helped.
Whenever server crashed (beyond the restart) pkk was there to fix it.
Whenever someone requested something that required administration (not production though) he was there.

For a guy that doesn't even play the game I say he is great. What more do you want from an admin?

Djole88 wrote:QUOTE (Djole88 @ May 21 2014, 12:49 PM) What more do you want from an admin?

The things you listed are not administration but instead maintenance responsibilities. Proper administration would primarily be; instituting the structure that is necessary to support each vital aspect of this project we call Allegiance. The structure currently in place IS our problem. The people in a structure such as this have an incentive to retain their "control" and that incentive will always conflict with the needs of the project.

My 2 cents, I'm trying to keep the whole thread on my head so bear with me.

Graphically there's nothing wrong with Alleg. It's not shiny, but it is also the only game truely like it, and gameplay and user experience trump graphics in many cases. Providing the high res textures, UI overrides and keymaps that everyone considers "standard" these days, and updating the installer so that anyone downloading now doesn't have to go through several rounds of updates is a major step in that direction.

To that end, it's not PKK's job to release the new installer, though he might be able to update the package the fastest. The installer stuff iirc is in the repo, so anyone who wants to check it out and run with it should be able to. If PKK was somehow preventing an updated installer from being released through the download links, that's another issue.

Metz, many thanks for trying to spearhead an effort to address the above, but calling for PKK's head over it is unnecessary theatrics. When PKK was having site issues, I stepped up, got admin access to the server, and did what I could. There's more I could probably do, and might be in a position to assist you with deploying stuff. Did you ever request the authority to make the changes you wanted before you started badmouthing the admins? He seems pretty responsive for someone who's doing this as a labour of love.

Minor point, Free Allegiance isn't Alleg 2. Maybe 1.5, but it will address the issues of Windows requirements when it's done. I don't think being tied to MS's code is an issue, no one is going to come gunning for the game. Just having a client/server environment that runs on stuff other than windows, and that can easily be upgraded and updated gives us a great deal of wiggle room. I'm trying to address those issues, and more help is always welcome, but just having a linux server and/or client with the current art assets and a development pipeline that isn't as hostile as the current alleg source will go a long way.

The alleg source situation is not anyone's fault. The code is old, and the stuff it depends on is some combination of deprecated, difficult to use, and not usable with MS's free tool chain. The actual game code though, still solid. Salvaging what I can and rebuilding around established FLOSS technology has been paying off. I might even be able port FedSrv to linux once I'm ready to replace the networking layer.

Continuing to foster community development through the Friday night fights and Commander Wars is, I believe, the right strategy. We're kind of past squads, we just need quality PUGs and events with a community that is quick to welcome new players and quick to show them the ropes. Beyond that, it's just a matter of minimizing the steps required to go from download to playing online.

I'm going to keep working on my stuff, and hope it bears fruit before the community collapses. I'll probably keep working on it even if it does, because there's nothing to stop me, but the game and the community are sort of the same thing. It's just a shame that many of the people that kept me here have moved on for one reason or another. In the mean time, the current R7 release just needs some serious "Dog food testing". Look at what the experience is like for a first time user, try to identify where someone would be tempted to give up, and remove those issues if possible.

Growth is going to be hard for a game that requires a healthy population to get decent games going, for those who get in on a night that no one else is around, it's going to turn them away. I know the ad campaigns are trying to draw people in for the weekends, but to that end the time it takes to go from seeing the ad to having fun needs to be as short as possible. If someone decides to make a friday night of Alleg for the first time, they need to be online before they finish their first beer.

Since Turkey seems to have abandoned efforts on the client, I'll see if I can at least get a functional R7 debug client out of the current source to help pin down crash causes, but it may not be possible with Express Edition 2013, and all I've got on the professional edition level is VS 2005. If it had been easy to jump in with a build setup that "just works", I would have been working on the original source (Helping with R8) rather than my current project. But I think what I'm doing is something that would eventually need to happen to pave the way for the next chapter.

We can have a decent community around R7, just focus on what needs to be done now, not why it wasn't done earlier and who's fault that might have been.

Factoid, would you play this?
http://warpgate9.com/wp-content/uploads/20...creenshot-3.gif

A lot of the playerbase that we can be capturing, are now used to a better graphics than what allegiance can do. A new engine would also allow us to make better models that actually look nice.

While your project is effectively alleg 1.5, as long as scripting is implemented, it will make a not so painful transition for the game logic code.

User experience and gameplay do indeed trump graphics, but only to a certain extent. We can improve and make the game more appealing, this will keep people playing because its "fancy" until they figure out the gameplay.

Starting it as a fresh project will foster a community that does not have to be filtered through the current system. lack of MS license will permit to put it up on steam, or any other platform of the sort, which will bring a tremendous amount of attention to the game (follow any open source project that made it to steam).

blacksun94 wrote:QUOTE (blacksun94 @ May 21 2014, 12:50 AM) The people in power don't allow others to do the main stuff that needs to be done (Installer, key map, website redirection and so on ).
The thing I can't wrap my head around is why, the people in power refuse help and then we are stuck with this stupid status quo, who will eventually lead to allegiance's demise.

First off, none of those are things that "need" to be done. Are they nice to have? Sure. Are they fairly easy to do? For someone with the right skills, probably. But would it really be "the most important improvement in 14 years"? Don't be delusional. The lobby is empty, but at least the newbies have pretty pictures of rocks to stare at. Good job man. You really fixed Allegiance.

Secondly, no permission is needed. You want to build a better installer, build a better installer.

The issue is that Metz doesn't know how to do it all by himself. He needs help. Which is fine, everyone needs help sometimes, it's part of working in a team.

The problem is that Metz has no clue how to ask for help without insulting people. He has burned bridges with pretty much anyone that could possibly assist him. Unsurpisingly, no one wants to work with him. The only way he knows how to motivate people is to whine, which he has done for months, perhaps years, but it never does occur to him that his lack of success might, just MIGHT be a reflection of his own "leadership" skills.

Despite what you might hear, pkk is actually a fairly responsive guy and reasonable to work with. He doesn't get paid for any of this, and pretty much the only thanks he get is to be kicked in the balls on a regular basis.

So I hope that answers your questions, blacksun.

I can pretty much do everything by myself - though not necessary to since there are others doing stuff, now. The problem is I don't control this website, which means it'll have to be abandoned.

An entire team of people have been trying to get PKk's help for months. You wouldn't know that, because you don't actually do anything but... Well pretty much the same thing as PKK. You do nothing except hinder others.

//no. That isn't fair. PKK is good about maintenance type things. You're good at nothing.

Sheriff Metz wrote:QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ May 21 2014, 12:11 PM) I can pretty much do everything by myself. The problem is I don't control this website, which means it'll have to be abandoned.

Or the servers. Or autoupdate. Or anything really.

Please, go start your own community. You're that awesome a leader, I am confident you will have no problem. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.