28 replies to this topic

[thudo]

Thanks Larkin for your understanding. Yep.. cleared up. I pledge to you guys to release far more frequently as we ramp-up for the expansion in mid-Sept. Our next one will be in first-week Aug then our final one pre-expansion in early Sept. Then, ahhem... its Relic's turn.

[Obake]

LMFAO!!!

It's a good thing that these forums aren't visited as often as they could be by the majority of the modding community, and especially the non-modders!

Discussions about release schedules and status updates should be kept private guys, not public. I know that I've mentioned before the need to keep public relations forefront in your mind, and the same holds just as true here as it did when we were discussing the issues surrounding DOS v1.1 and DOW v1.3.

The dev team for DOS has a private forum.... use it! There is absolutely no reason for non team members (such as myself) to see this kind of crap going on. Seeing these types of comments in public WILL cause more harm to the future of the mod than any kind of delay in release. Public infighting between members of a development team is a surefire way to kill any faith in that mod, and a hell of a lot faster than "oh no, we have to wait another week".

Any of you browsed the Steel Legions forum lately, or their thread at relicnews? After MaestroRobertus announced that the release was going to be delayed from his original two weeks estimate, there was some initial grumbling, but things settled down and the prevailing opinion is "take whatever time you need to get it right". Do you honestly think that you'd be accorded the same measure of patience if everyone knows exactly WHY there's been a delay?

Absolutely NOT. That's why you end up with comments of the type offered by Leto. To be honest, those comments should never have had to be responded to, nor does everyone need to know that Thud had some relationship issues over the weekend. If he wants to tell the rest of the team, that's his choice.

I'm not taking sides with any one individual here, and to be honest Larkin does raise some valid points, as does Thud. All I'm saying is keep your dirty laundry to yourself before it harms the mod!

I'll close this little rant off with one last opinion regarding releases. Short story is that I'm in complete agreement with Danimator on preferring to see polished quarterly releases from you than a new build every couple of weeks or month. Don't underestimate the importance that gets placed on polish. Take the Tau mod for example. There are some who consider the mod to be a complete joke because after all this time there has been no effort made to polish it. As it stands, it's nothing more than a proof of concept to show that the units can work in game. To call it a beta is insulting. At least a beta would have some basic balancing done, and there is none. Now, I'm not by any means criticisizing the guys who are working so hard to put that mod together. I would just rather that they at least make it presentable before they release it to the public as something to look forward to. Again I'll go back to Steel Legions as MaestroRobertus and his team are doing an exceptional job of managing their public relations. It's no small wonder that Daemonhunters are as well. Roberts on that team as well!

People are always going to bitch that they aren't getting everything they want as fast as they think they deserve it. DON'T give in to those people as they will only cause you harm. If they don't like it, let them learn how and then do it themselves!

[phordicus]

as a fan and lurker, i was going to say "take however much time you need to get it right, but keep this internal stuff private." and then i thought, hell, i'm not working on this mod, this is already their private board that they let me look at. if anything, those not directly involved in this mod need to stfu unless it's to offer requested opinions.

[thudo]

Here here! Thanks Obake and Phordicus!

Fortunately, however, we're lucky in that both Larkin and Flenser, backed up by some supreme betatesting by our gracious testers, have given the go-ahead weeks back to release the code to the public. We're in a good spot. Its enough to let it ride, then work on v1.3 for an early August release. For AI scripting, it doesn't take long for us to output "features", test em for consistency and co-operability with other scripts, then sign off that their good to then submit em to the beta team. Seems to be working quite well our little olde operation.

Also fortunate that we do have private forums just for the core development team. Yeaa thats where we should keep the personal/development stuff <<GUYS, can we do that from now on and let the public mull through these doors instead? >

Thanks everyone for your support. We really have a superior product here. I've now finished the dox (Wow.. gets bigger all the time so sending them off for packaging tonight when I get back..) and love how they turned out.

Its a distinct pleasure working with these talented bunch of fellers I tell ya. Digital Ale for all ya saucies! heheheh

Edited by thudo, 11 July 2005 - 08:29 PM.

[Obake]

Sorry Obake, I don't agree with you.

I don't care about public relation and anybodies faith into the AI mod apart from the team.
It's for free, it's fun and it does work.  Should be enough reasons for other players to try.

Anyone disgusted while reading this forum can opt to not use the mod. So what ? It's their problem, not mine.

My wish is to release earlier as long there is new code and it's stable.
Otherwise I may loose my faith which may damage the mod more than that lost faith of some spectators. Thank good there are other good coders so the mod will live very healthy without me.

Thudo is doing a great job but from time to time he can need a small (blunt) hint to get him back on track for the AI mod. He's doing lots of work for the mod community for which I don't  care as I do not plan to install any mod except the AI one.

Larkin

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We'll just have to agree to disagree then Larkin, and I'm fine with that.

Let me point one thing out though as an illustration of what I mean. A few weeks back when I first raised the issue about public relations, it was because of a couple of posts that Oozish made both here and over at relicnews. In particular, he said that 1.3 broke DOS 1.1 to the point that it was useless. While Oozish was correct in his statements based on his experience, he didn't exactly lay out with clarity what that experience was. As a result, anyone who read his comments would see "Skirmish AI sucks!" instead of "Skirmish AI isn't working as well as it used to, especially in 1v1's, but it is STILL a lot better than the default AI".

It's a matter of how things are presented. If even one person didn't download Skirmish AI because of how it was characterized, that's a loss to the mod. If you don't care about that, then there would be no reason to care if it impacted 10, or even 100 people. In that case, why even bother releasing the mod to the public at all?

You're expecting people to download the mod and try it because it's for free and it's fun. Why should they believe that when all they see are members of the dev team bitching at each other in public? People download mods because they believe in what the team is doing. That belief comes from a trust that people give to the developers to do a good job. What reason is there to trust you when all they see is fighting?

I'm not saying "don't give Thud blunt hints". I'm just saying don't do it in front of everyone else.

There's also something for you to consider with regard to code releases. There are a lot of us who play online using Skirmish AI. It's not just being used by people playing against the AI offline. Because of this, if you start doing daily/weekly development builds like a lot of projects at Sourceforge do, you could cause a lot of issues with incompatability as not everyone is going to take the time to update with every daily/weekly beta build.

Release the daily's to your beta testers! That's what they're there for, but save the public releases until you have a pre-determined feature set implemented and working the way you want it.

As I said, we may just have to agree to disagree on this one. And my opinion counts for squat as I'm just one of the guys patiently waiting for 1.2, and 1.3 and all the rest!

[Flenser]

As I said, we may just have to agree to disagree on this one.  And my opinion counts for squat as I'm just one of the guys patiently waiting for 1.2, and 1.3 and all the rest! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You do realise that all this apparent bickering in public is just a cunning plan, and is really advance PR for the release of v1.2 of the MOD?

Flenser

[oozish]

Flenser!! You should have released that comment 2 days ago!

[Flenser]

Flenser!! You should have released that comment 2 days ago!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Flenser