Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

>implying the game isn't perfect
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ADamDirtyApe
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Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by ADamDirtyApe » #472

Today i realized why NT was split off. Not because of people, it would not of mattered the people, it is the system itself that lead to it.

NT comprises of ~70% forumites who never get on IRC (and ~10% people who were ostracized from coderbus for various reasons and ~20% people who are straddling the gap between the two branches). Coderbus prefers to do its work on the IRC for reasons explained later on. I believe this is the fundamental issue.

What happens when the forumites get mad? They make a spincycle thread of venom that coderbus might skim later and post things on IRC out of context.
What happens with coders get mad? They make a spincycle IRC chat of venom until they tucker themselves out and get back to talking about normal stuff. Forumites might get some logs posted to the forum at one point or another, most likely in a mess or something of shock value out of context.

I am not trying to say anybody is innocent. We are all apes and shitflinging comes naturally to us all. I am saying that with such an institutional divide between the parties involved, it is only a matter of time until another such event happens again.

A mutually agreed upon system of transparency should be put in place, so things are not made worse and the inevitable happens again. But what system?
There is no technological middle ground between forums and IRC.
Forums have the pro of being a visible (somewhat) easily searchable record, but the con of being slow and hard to sift through. IRC has the pro of being a snap response to any specific questions, but the con of becoming an unbearable mess to sift through once too many people start talking at once.
Throw in github being a seperate location to post about changes, and everything becomes a mess only the very dedicated can keep track of.
Based on this, I reccomend a standard procedure be made based off of the system that NT uses, with a emphasis that coders ask BEFORE doing major systems so they do not spend time on a change that would end up getting voted no.

Should any compromises be reached in order to make sych a procedure, care must be taken to prevent extreme of the tyranny of the majority over coderbus and the other extreme of coderbus silently (to non coderbus) imposing its (or even individual's) silent will upon the majority.

In the end the limiting factor is time.
SoS does not have the time to deal with every single thing. that goes on and remains the most impartial person on these forums. The headmins have all done their jobs but have become burnt out and should be replaced with a vote in due time. The headcoders are almost invisible outside of IRC, where they actually do their jobs, however ill defined it is. Coders want to spend time coding instead of bitching with players over why their stuff should be reverted, or worse, getting their changes denied after all their hard work. Players just want to have some say in the matter.

The people on both sides of the divide we have seen do not have time to make all the efforts to bridge the gap with each other. This means following such a procedure.

There is hope however. The fact that the forums are now in control of the coders means the balance of power has shifted. Errorage's rage is no longer a factor. Despite coderbus making this forum, and that the could of easily just ignored NT, space was made for NTstation on this forum. I was told this was the doing of SoS and if this is true he truly is the most impartial person here and few, if any, would of made a better host.

The existance of NT itself begets needless work. Between porting things from one side to another and all the inevitable incompatibilites between coding standards (due to a lack of oversight more than anything else). All this effort could be put to making ONE codebase better, and it will only cost more effort as the branches beocme more distinct.

I ask of you, can we not put in a bare minimum procedure for all coding in order to satisfy the needs of both parties?
Can we not make a system which wont fall completely apart as soon as a few people leave? Where people are free to come and go with their contributions? While hosts are a bigger issue, i mean everything from the humble potato player with their misinformed ideas as to the capabilites of byond who may have one single poorly phrased but useful idea; to the worldshaping coder who was came knowing nothing but with babys first code, and the help of coderbus, over time became competant in programming?

Can we not make a single unifed system that wont fall apart every few months from constant drama? A system that focuses on whats important, making content for a 2d spaceman game where you can bash a clowns face in with a toolbox for slipping you into a disposals loop?

TL;DR, nobody talks to each other across the divide between forums and IRC (unless its bitching) and unless this is fixed its only a matter of time until another split happens. Do we want to let this happen or make a system where it wont?
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Apsis » #484

It's better this way though
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Jordie0608 » #485

NTstation has an IRC channel on #nanobus
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by MisterPerson » #486

While I'm not going to say this is the biggest issue facing either /tg/station or NTStation at the moment, lack of communication is something /tg/station especially has been really bad at in general. If you're looking for ideas on how to solve this problem for both NTstation and /tg/station, I would suggest using a more general, non-project specific forum, or at least posting in both projects' topics' Idea sections.

One idea that was floated (and forgotten about) a few months ago was including a mibbit link to various important IRC channels so people can't use the "I don't have an IRC client" excuse. There's also other chat rooms that could be used, like gitchat or even Steam, that don't require downloading an IRC client. Vistapowa's recently pulled "pull request to OOC" relay bot, which I would suggest NTStation port ASAP, should also help announce proposed changes to the community if nothing else. I try to talk about changes in-game, but I don't have infinite time, I mostly talk about my own stuff, and I don't really want to spam up OOC. More polls, easier to set up code announcements, and a better changelog would all help out immensely. I'm all ears on ideas on solving the lack of communication and "INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS tower" nature that exists, either in appearance or in reality, between playerbus and coderbus/nanobus.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by paprika » #498

There's already some awesome things on NT that would have never been merged on TGs as fast as they were merged on NT. That fact alone proves NT is accomplishing its purpose. I enjoy that you took the time to make this post but there's a point where you have to realize that NT is a completely different thing than TGs' codebase and your opinion is the reason they are seperate.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Jalleo » #521

Just to clarify most people on coderbus that talked about the forums did want nt to come with us. Technically i got rock to create the NT section while he was waiting for a answer from petethegoat when he did actually have it already but missed it because as you said of the IRC.

I think maybe this should become a complete community discussion to see what ideas people come up with.

To clarify aswell Pete said they would only try it out but it appears as if errorage took it as leaving his fourm soo... They may get their own forum if it dosent go well here.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Aranclanos » #704

There's already some awesome things on NT that would have never been merged on TGs as fast as they were merged on NT. That fact alone proves NT is accomplishing its purpose.
The swiftness on merging contributions of NT already proved itself to be a failure by breaking the game constantly. See: deep friers. There's nothing on NT that wouldn't be merged on TG.
The intent and motivation on the contributions is good, but in all honestly it would be better to have everything in one codebase before the issues start to raise and raise.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by paprika » #711

Yeah NT sure is a failure by taking quite literally all of basil's population and running just as strong as basil did for a fucking week aran you sure are great at judging servers you don't play on man
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Steelpoint » #712

One thing that strikes me as a critical difference between TG and NT code is that, when there is a conflict between quality code and a interesting/good game play mechanic, each base tends to approach it differently.

TG will want high quality code over a good game mechanic.

NT will want a good game play mechanic over high quality code.

At least, this is the opinion I can get from what I've seen and heard. NT has been able to do well thus far but it remains to be seen how it will go for the future.

EDIT: To be more specific, one little nuance I noticed between the bases is that TG defines all hair styles by gender, as in female hair styles can only be used by female mobs, yet NT has no such restriction thus any gender mob can use any hair style.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Remie Richards » #734

Steelpoint wrote: EDIT: To be more specific, one little nuance I noticed between the bases is that TG defines all hair styles by gender, as in female hair styles can only be used by female mobs, yet NT has no such restriction thus any gender mob can use any hair style.
That was Dannos, He's hated the Restriction for ages.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by WeeYakk » #770

Aranclanos wrote:
There's already some awesome things on NT that would have never been merged on TGs as fast as they were merged on NT. That fact alone proves NT is accomplishing its purpose.
The swiftness on merging contributions of NT already proved itself to be a failure by breaking the game constantly. See: deep friers. There's nothing on NT that wouldn't be merged on TG.
The intent and motivation on the contributions is good, but in all honestly it would be better to have everything in one codebase before the issues start to raise and raise.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Aranclanos » #774

cmon I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm trying to be honest here, as I said, I like the motivation that the contributors have. It's really my first time of being able to talk on the forums since erro blocked me completly from ss13.eu and I'm trying to work together here.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by miggles » #803

deep friers were for the most part bug free, many of the issues with them were actually intended and happened to be disliked
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pete made a patch fixing pretty much all the bugs like a day after they came out and it was merged instantly
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by iamgoofball » #805

Yeah, 99% of the food related stuff was working as intended. You do make a good point though.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Mandurrrh » #829

MisterPerson wrote:While I'm not going to say this is the biggest issue facing either /tg/station or NTStation at the moment, lack of communication is something /tg/station especially has been really bad at in general. If you're looking for ideas on how to solve this problem for both NTstation and /tg/station, I would suggest using a more general, non-project specific forum, or at least posting in both projects' topics' Idea sections.

One idea that was floated (and forgotten about) a few months ago was including a mibbit link to various important IRC channels so people can't use the "I don't have an IRC client" excuse. There's also other chat rooms that could be used, like gitchat or even Steam, that don't require downloading an IRC client. Vistapowa's recently pulled "pull request to OOC" relay bot, which I would suggest NTStation port ASAP, should also help announce proposed changes to the community if nothing else. I try to talk about changes in-game, but I don't have infinite time, I mostly talk about my own stuff, and I don't really want to spam up OOC. More polls, easier to set up code announcements, and a better changelog would all help out immensely. I'm all ears on ideas on solving the lack of communication and "INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS tower" nature that exists, either in appearance or in reality, between playerbus and coderbus/nanobus.

Why not make a Skype group for tg? Skype is pretty common and there's creator/host/mute controls. If just for general chat would be easy.
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Re: Friends, Griffons, Spacemen, Lend me your ears

Post by Jalleo » #845

The problem is not that infact it is easily sorted at all:

since primarily all coder chat is on the irc that is what I will basically explain the underlying issues that I can see:

You go on asking about this due to time restraints that certain person who specifically did it may not be there but you know the person needs to be aware of a issue or you go on to find out a issue and try to work out when it occured due to from coder to codebase to server delay people forget who did what or specifically who made the change.

The issue is more prominent in coderbus group than nanobus due to wait for merges of new code in certain ways in others its less so since less bugs.

There are no easy issues here but one may be getting a auto updater for the game at end of each round if needed. This still does not deal with the fact when gameplay issues pop up as per the thread I started in coderbus feedback.
http://coderbus.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=63


All in all there is no easy answer here communication is the highlighted issue from per bugs dont get reported. The solution really cannot be by gibing people titles or prizes by pointing out issues or bugs or by keeping people in contact with each other it may be as simply as adding a attention to this coder question thing on forum even with adding logs and issues to it as per when they arise. That is all I can say when you need a specific answer everything else still not a clue.
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