Wish to work on System generation, and more...

[DraQ]

*MODERATOR SPLIT*

May I hijack this thread?
The title kind of fits. :D

I've just returned to the project with enough motivation to finally get it to build in C::B, so I'd be quite happy to try reworking a lot of stuff like system generation and post a lot of IMO worthwhile ideas (I'd like to propose a road-map of sort - open to further discussion and modification, obviously - because I fear Pioneer seems to lack direction beyond the original idea of Frontier remake) without feeling guilty about doing all of the talking but none of the work. ;)

[nozmajner]

Nice!
About the road-map: It's a good idea, but there's a reason we don't have one: most of us doesn't have much time to work regularly enough on Pioneer to stick to any. So that will mostly be a personal road-map I suspect (others: correct me of course!).
From content/art pov: I can provide aid about these, like icons, models and stuff. But don't expect anything fast. It's my summer break, but I still have a lot of stuff (Pioneer and other) on my table anyway.

[impaktor]

(I've now split this to a separate thread, since the other one was only on face gen. art. and this post has nothing to do with that.)

[impaktor]

We have a road map on the wiki, it's slightly old, and we do what we want to anyways. We've found it's counter productive to have a road map and make developers implement stuff from it that they don't want to work on. Better if we do what we want and have fun doing it, that way we don't loose developers.

And each contributor has a (looong) mental list / road map of things he/she want to do for pioneer anyway.

We all have a lot of ideas, and there is absolutely no lack of them. I think it is better if one starts to put some time into working on something and maybe checks with the others before if it is something that could cause controversy.

I/we often see people being very enthusiastic and posting ideas (usually the same ideas over and over), and then next week, pioneer is long forgotten, and the person never to be heard from again. Or worse: people telling us what we should do, like it's the smallest thing in the world.

So if you have something you want to work on, welcome, and fire away!

[FluffyFreak]

I keep my "roadmap" in my issues list https://github.com/fluffyfreak/pioneer/issues.

System generation is a good thing to work on, it's in need of some care and there's some tricky bits in there that it would be great to have fixed.

Andy

[DraQ]

Sorry for late reply, but:

We have a road map on the wiki, it's slightly old, and we do what we want to anyways. We've found it's counter productive to have a road map and make developers implement stuff from it that they don't want to work on. Better if we do what we want and have fun doing it, that way we don't loose developers.

And each contributor has a (looong) mental list / road map of things he/she want to do for pioneer anyway.

We all have a lot of ideas, and there is absolutely no lack of them. I think it is better if one starts to put some time into working on something and maybe checks with the others before if it is something that could cause controversy.

I beg to differ.

With developers coming and going and even the core team working on the project in a very on-off manner having this sort of document is the only sensible way of maintaining cohesion and keeping track of what Pioneer *is* and what it is supposed to be.
Otherwise there are as many, mutually incompatible pioneers as there are developers, and all those versions are sharing the same repo.
Yes, we might be undermanned, but driving someone off because they actually wanted to work on a different game that isn't Pioneer is still better than having them actively clash with everyone else over and over.
Plus, a roadmap may help retain people just as well as scare them off, because it shows them what they can work on that will actually be useful - attracting them towards areas that need work rather than barring them from the areas they would want to work on - chances are a newcomer to the project doesn't really have a clear idea what they can do - having a list of things that need to be done helps.
Besides, I think we are already lacking in terms of communication as it is and it shows - take that tug-of-war when re-balancing delta-v for example.
Even if we all essentially agreed on everything, a game isn't just a loose collection of unrelated ideas implemented and cobbled together - a good design has elements reinforcing each other, and it's awfully hard to propose new elements without having the previous ideas somewhere distilled and either approved or rejected (provisionally).

This kind of document doesn't need to be restrictive in regards of what can be implemented (it actually shouldn't), but it should mirror current consensus in regards to what features Pioneer *needs* in a long run, in regards to the setting and technology which determines the majority of features we might need and helps keep the mechanics consistent, and in regards to the ideas that just can't work with whatever ideas we do want.
It shouldn't be set in stone - if someone challenges part of it successfully, it should be changed - but it should represent our current idea regarding the overall shape of Pioneer.

Forum is good because we do need to come to some sort of consensus, but it's awful when it comes to retaining the ideas we've already discussed, especially the long term stuff because it's just too dynamic.
So far we have a gaping chasm between preliminary discussion and implementation and I think it's a gap that really needs to be filled.

I/we often see people being very enthusiastic and posting ideas (usually the same ideas over and over), and then next week, pioneer is long forgotten, and the person never to be heard from again. Or worse: people telling us what we should do, like it's the smallest thing in the world.

Or maybe the main reason people leave before even starting is that they throw in some ideas and those ideas just sink without a trace?

And yes, I would hate to remain that "just ideas" guy, I hope I'll be able to start some more serious work on the project shortly, but we still do need ideas, do need to discuss them and do need to collect the outcomes somewhere, which we don't.

[laarmen]

As a (perhaps emeritus?) member of the "core team" [0], I wish you wouldn't say "we". You're actually using it way more often than the people that actually do the work, and I'm fairly sure that, not knowing any better I'd assume you were a prominent member, if newly arrived, of the development team.

Which you are not.

While I welcome all input on the game itself, I do think that people shouldn't give lessons about our dev processes until they've been actually part of the processes in question, much less identify with those that do the work.

You want to collect ideas? Instead of asking people to do stuff, actually *do* it. Start a wiki page listing the ideas on the forum that seemed reasonably consensual (and no, silence does not mean consent in this case). And maintain it. Then, maybe, the discussion about maintaining a proper roadmap can take place. Oh, and if you can send us patches, they'd be welcome too ;-)

[0] The core team doesn't exist anymore per say, although I guess you were probably referring to the people having push privileges on the repo.

[DraQ]

As a (perhaps emeritus?) member of the "core team" [0], I wish you wouldn't say "we". You're actually using it way more often than the people that actually do the work, and I'm fairly sure that, not knowing any better I'd assume you were a prominent member, if newly arrived, of the development team.

Which you are not.

While I welcome all input on the game itself, I do think that people shouldn't give lessons about our dev processes until they've been actually part of the processes in question, much less identify with those that do the work.

I may not be a prominent member but I hope you don't mind if I keep using "we" for two reasons:

• I may not have contributed much but I did contribute some code (I hope I also contributed a bit apart from coding), thus having been a part, however insignificant, of the dev process, so while "we" might not exactly be spot on here, "you" would definitely be far worse.
• I don't think this needs to get any more confrontational, which it would if I started using "you".

I will also keep mentioning problems if I see them, and I'm pretty sure I can see one here.

You want to collect ideas? Instead of asking people to do stuff, actually *do* it. Start a wiki page listing the ideas on the forum that seemed reasonably consensual (and no, silence does not mean consent in this case). And maintain it. Then, maybe, the discussion about maintaining a proper roadmap can take place.

Well, the problem here is that I don't want them to be *my* ideas. I want this wiki to be part of the process containing all the ideas deemed worth integrating into the project. And sadly silence seems to be rather frequent response at some point here, regardless of the idea.

Oh, and if you can send us patches, they'd be welcome too ;-)

I have a PR in fact (or will have once it finishes uploading) - a very minor one, but I think one Pioneer really needs.

[nozmajner]

That "we" was bugging me too. It sounds like how bad bosses talk with their employees. Or a sect leader sharing the one and only wisdom. (I know I'm exagrating now, but hey) And laarmen is quite right about that none of the developers use that kind of "we" talk, at least those who I usually talk with on any of the channels we use. Or in real life for that matter, since I had the luck of meeting fluffyfreak this spring.
(I'm glad I wasn't the one who called out you on that, I can be rude/too honest sometimes, some of my students could tell you about that)
How about "Pioneer might be better with this or that"? Or "That feature seems to need some tweaking". etc.

There are good points in some of your comments on my stuff for example, but the whole tone puts me off (I can't talk for the others though), and my knee-jerk reaction is to oppose it a lot of times, regardless if I would find useful or not. I know this might be considered "unprofessional" or oversensitive (hey, I'm an artist, I'm obliged to be sensitive), but the same can be said about your style of communication too.

[DraQ]

That "we" was bugging me too. It sounds like how bad bosses talk with their employees. Or a sect leader sharing the one and only wisdom. (I know I'm exagrating now, but hey) And laarmen is quite right about that none of the developers use that kind of "we" talk, at least those who I usually talk with on any of the channels we use. Or in real life for that matter, since I had the luck of meeting fluffyfreak this spring.
(I'm glad I wasn't the one who called out you on that, I can be rude/too honest sometimes, some of my students could tell you about that)
How about "Pioneer might be better with this or that"? Or "That feature seems to need some tweaking". etc.

There are good points in some of your comments on my stuff for example, but the whole tone puts me off (I can't talk for the others though), and my knee-jerk reaction is to oppose it a lot of times, regardless if I would find useful or not. I know this might be considered "unprofessional" or oversensitive (hey, I'm an artist, I'm obliged to be sensitive), but the same can be said about your style of communication too.

Ok, my interpersonal skills obviously need polishing (though I'm not sure it would help much), but it's easy enough to come off wrong over the text (and in non-native language in my case) so maybe we (sorry! ;)) could try to err on the side of caution and assume the other one didn't mean to offend or come off as a pompous idiot trying to boss actual contributors around?

And I appreciate direct approach, even if it seems rude, as long as it is actually direct and stays on topic rather than getting personal (there already seems to be a bit of bad blood between me and laarmen).

Also thanks regarding the phrasing - I knew this "we" was awkward but any other pronoun seemed much worse to me.

Now, what I meant to say is:

• I have some ideas about Pioneer that I think are good enough to be heard.
• I generally spent quite some time ruminating on how the gameplay elements resulting from them would interact with each other making them a bit hard to discuss in isolation and the whole collection a bit big to discuss all at once.
• I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has done this sort of thing.
• I'm seriously afraid the way ideas make their way from individual people's heads to the assets and code doesn't really accommodate this kind of interlinked bits of design very well and that some sort of design doc incorporating all the agreed-on stuff would be a good thing
• Fiction in general needs consistency, Pioneer is fiction and it needs consistent universe, especially in the areas that impact the gameplay,
• I would love to see some rational discussion process when deciding whether or not something should be incorporated - with idea giver providing reasons why something would be worthwhile and others providing counterarguments if they disagree - I admit it's a bit of a sore spot for me as I tried to start something like that more than once only to see it die-off.