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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#122
kaeroku wrote:Well regardless of source, I for one am unhappy to have another promise broken.
He told me he would post the next day. I told you he said that. If anything, it was a promise to me, not to the community. Not defending him, just trying to make sure I'm clear on the matter. He didn't tell me to tell you guys... but he didn't say not to either. :P I trusted him and figured it was therefore okay to share.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#123
The longer you leave something like this (coming back after an extended leave of absence) the harder it is to actually do it.

I suggest just posting something small like, "Hi guys sorry about the delays" first then work up to a larger post if that's what you were intending. Don't try and do it all in one huge update.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#124
JohnDoe wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:Yes, all open source software is a myth
Nice strawman. If even Josh had to rewrite this unfinished piece of software several times, what makes you think a bunch of random strangers on the internet could do better?
It doesn't have to be better specifically. Although it might be fair argument to suggest that a chunk of beta code on users desktops IS better than a chunk of beta code on Josh's desktop, to misquote an old review of Frontier: First Encounters.

And speaking of Frontier, ever heard of Pioneer? You know, the community project to re-create Elite 2?

To believe that the community could not do such a thing is just as delusional. Look at the amount of mods, total conversions etc. that users create without access to a games source code.

It would be great to see the various splinter projects that might spring up as I'm sure that are interested parties out there. Anything is better than what we currently have. Sure it's not going to happen, Josh will likely that the code to his grave, but I for one would like closure. Either tell us the game will come out eventually or its dead and let us move on and reflect on our relationship with Kickstarter projects in the future.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#125
Memnoch wrote:
JohnDoe wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:Yes, all open source software is a myth
Nice strawman. If even Josh had to rewrite this unfinished piece of software several times, what makes you think a bunch of random strangers on the internet could do better?
It doesn't have to be better specifically. Although it might be fair argument to suggest that a chunk of beta code on users desktops IS better than a chunk of beta code on Josh's desktop, to misquote an old review of Frontier: First Encounters.

And speaking of Frontier, ever heard of Pioneer? You know, the community project to re-create Elite 2?

To believe that the community could not do such a thing is just as delusional. Look at the amount of mods, total conversions etc. that users create without access to a games source code.

It would be great to see the various splinter projects that might spring up as I'm sure that are interested parties out there. Anything is better than what we currently have. Sure it's not going to happen, Josh will likely that the code to his grave, but I for one would like closure. Either tell us the game will come out eventually or its dead and let us move on and reflect on our relationship with Kickstarter projects in the future.
Just to illustrate what community projects can do with source code, look at FreeFalcon and the other projects improving Falcon 4, or look at what the FreeSpace community has done with FS2. They've taken games and improved them over years, keeping them relevant even over a decade after their release. Falcon BMS is even considered to be one of the foremost flight sims out there- and it's a community undertaking! With source code, a dedicated group of coders can make amazing games and addons.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#126
Indeed. Failing to see anything delusional here. Put the source code in the hands of a 1000+ developers and you have a much better chance of something viable being released than one who has all but disappeared of the face of the Earth. Out of that 1000 just one has to succeed and release something half playable and that's better than what we have now.

It doesn't matter as it wouldn't happen but maybe, just maybe if the worst does happen and the whole thing falls through Josh will do the decent thing and release the code. But I suspect it would be more likely to be sold to the highest bidder to some larger outfit as IP and then sat on for years and the only losers, other than Josh's reputation, would be us, the backers. The Kickstarters.

If Josh is reading this then I can only hope that he doesn't take it to heart and instead uses this to galvanise him into making sure this project doesn't fail and releases a great game. If nothing else than to prove me wrong. Believe me, I would be happier for that to happen than anyone.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#127
If *anything* is delusional, I think it's the notion that Josh will release open-source code to the community in a usable form. If we can't get him to say 'hello,' and it's likely to be significantly harder to get him to give up his baby, it's not a leap to suggest it's not going to happen.

That said, community project starting from scratch to emulate what we expect from LT is an option.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#128
Just in case people aren't checking our anti-thread:
Talvieno wrote:Just got a message from Josh. :) He said something happened (unclear); the past few days have been far busier than he expected and he hasn't had much work time available. (Not apologizing for him, but just wanted to update you guys.) He said the post is done except for finalization, and he'll have time for the proofreading/checking/etc. later tonight. Apparently he wrote a longer one than I suggested, but he does seem to be (as far as I can tell from what he said) following my urging to be transparent from here on out.

So it sounds like everything's going to be all right. :)
http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php ... 90#p140261

Set hype engine for warp factor nine! :thumbup:
Image LT Backer Number: 647 of 5449.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#129
Tycow wrote:Just in case people aren't checking our anti-thread:
Talvieno wrote:Just got a message from Josh. :) He said something happened (unclear); the past few days have been far busier than he expected and he hasn't had much work time available. (Not apologizing for him, but just wanted to update you guys.) He said the post is done except for finalization, and he'll have time for the proofreading/checking/etc. later tonight. Apparently he wrote a longer one than I suggested, but he does seem to be (as far as I can tell from what he said) following my urging to be transparent from here on out.

So it sounds like everything's going to be all right. :)
http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php ... 90#p140261

Set hype engine for warp factor nine! :thumbup:
Thanks for bringing the info to this thread. However, I for one will save the "turning on my hype engine" for when:

1) I see a post talking about game content, *not* a) about what went wrong with the code/personal-life and *not* b) about what new programming miracle will have to be performed next;

2) the communication **about the game**, even if through a paragraph, becomes somewhat regular again (weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc).
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#130
jarl wrote:The longer you leave something like this (coming back after an extended leave of absence) the harder it is to actually do it.

I suggest just posting something small like, "Hi guys sorry about the delays" first then work up to a larger post if that's what you were intending. Don't try and do it all in one huge update.
This is why I fear Josh will never change his ways, and in turn why I believe Limit Theory will probably never make release.

It takes a regular person perhaps 30 seconds to write a quick online post. (as noted above)

It takes a regular person perhaps 10 minutes to write a brief post with a basic outline of what currently occurring.

It takes a regular person perhaps 1 hour to create a more elaborate post with details and forecasts for the future.

It takes Josh weeks, perhaps longer.

I really hate being the negative guy sometimes, but if Josh is truly out to turn a new leaf and change his ways, this mind set just has to be thrown out. Not everything needs to be a massive presentation. This has been explained by regular forum people to Josh, this has been explained by "friends" of Josh, I even tried to explain this to him myself when I was blessed with a private conversation with the man.

Again, I hate sounding negative, but there are times when kid gloves don't help anyone. I like the guy and admire him, but he needs a friendly smack in the back of the head I think though.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#132
Josh has finally posted: http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5659
:)

In the hapiness thread I listed what made me happy in his new gigantic post. Here I will post what made me unhappy:

1) that once again we barely got anything remotely related to game content. He himself mentions that he had worked in gameplay during the last two years. But once again, he opted to just give us nothing about that at all. He mentions that he had improved AI. Right, why not tells us about that? Or tell us about the ship construction part? Or whether the ship/station generation algorithm was touched? Etc....

2) although I can totally be fine without screenshots or videos if Josh starts talking about game content, I have to say that I found his argument for not having screenshots or videos to be rather nonsensical. He says that he had worked on gameplay, but the graphics just look identical to how they were two yeras ago. Well, that's pretty normal: once a developer finishes with graphics, by definition all screenshots and videos will always look the same from then on... What makes a difference is that the new screenshots and videos start showing scenes that are the result of new gameplay. And that, it seems, Josh has to show.

3) Josh was adamant that "therein lies the rub, the truly monumental challenge at the heart of building LT (a challenge so formidable that I've given it the title of The Fundamental Problem of Limit Theory; FPLT for short): the completion of Limit Theory demands the utmost efficiency in both run-time performance (a la C++), AND development cost". Sure, that makes a lot of sense. What still does not make sense for me is the following. He admits that such pursuit took 2 years already and since he still does not know which full solution to use, it will take more. Let's suppose that it takes 1 more year. It would have costed 3 years in total.

Question is: as much as gameplay coding in C++ is well known to be more costly - and therefore slower -, were those 3 yeas (2 already and eventually 1 more) invested in... err, gameplay coding in C++, wouldn't it be better? Or in other words, the development time that whatever new solution gives will be worth 3 years of cost? It seems to me that it won't, but Josh got into that situation in which the more late he gets with trying to solve such dillema between performance and development cost, the more he feels the need of lowering future time-costs of development to compensate for lateness - in a rather vicious circle.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#133
Question is: as much as gameplay coding in C++ is well known to be more costly - and therefore slower -, were those 3 yeas (2 already and eventually 1 more) invested in... err, gameplay coding in C++, wouldn't it be better? Or in other words, the development time that whatever new solution gives will be worth 3 years of cost? It seems to me that it won't, but Josh got into that situation in which the more late he gets with trying to solve such dillema between performance and development cost, the more he feels the need of lowering future time-costs of development to compensate for lateness - in a rather vicious circle.
He wrote about another substantial problem: "mental RAM".
As the code size increases, it gets exponentially more difficult to keep an overview about the inter-workings of the code.
Plus: when compilation times increase from seconds to maybe tens of minutes, it blocks any quick iteration on solving a problem.
I understand the need and wish to delegate a large part of the game logic to a (much more compact) and quick-to-compile-an-test(TM) scripting solution.
So writing everything in C++ might be manageable, but at one point in complexity, any developer will hit an unproductive wall.

Thats why I usually develop a separate module for a specific problem, (be it like that economy simulation, be it a path finding solution,
a networking engine, an entity sprite animation system, an inventory system, etc).
Its taken out of the "big" project, and developed separately. Important is to early define an interface to the other modules, and have
a simple mockup-engine t execute it.
Once the module is working, it can replace another placeholder-module.
Is more work that writing everything in the context of the full project, but keeps each module small enough to keep an oversight.
In the worst case I dump all the prototype code, and rewrite it. But now knowing how the logic has to be implemented.

For the presentation: Lets say he has a market simulation, that is in the current state just a long log-file with events and
trade-data. That probably would not make much of a presentable item, even if its very sophisticated at the inside.

Although for "marketing reasons" it might be nice to just showcase some random (even older) scene renderings, if they are available anyhow.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#134
Damocles wrote:
... So writing everything in C++ might be manageable, but at one point in complexity, any developer will hit an unproductive wall.

Thats why I usually develop a separate module for a specific problem, (be it like that economy simulation, be it a path finding solution,
a networking engine, an entity sprite animation system, an inventory system, etc).
Its taken out of the "big" project, and developed separately. Important is to early define an interface to the other modules, and have
a simple mockup-engine t execute it.
Once the module is working, it can replace another placeholder-module.
Is more work that writing everything in the context of the full project, but keeps each module small enough to keep an oversight.
In the worst case I dump all the prototype code, and rewrite it. But now knowing how the logic has to be implemented.
That is a problem of engine design, nothing to do with the programming language per se. Provided that the code is modular, the question still is the same: the time to be saved by finding a solution to develop faster with another language will be worth the cost of 2-3years of looking for such solution? There is a point when just slowingly going forward with C++ for the gameply pays off more than the cost of finding an alternative - the question is when is that point reached.
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Re: The General Unhappiness Thread

#135
Well if the crap hit the fan, and he has a working (albeit slow) complete game running. He could just re implement all the Script-based functionality in plain old C.
But this still would have required to -develop- the code in a scripting language to come to a working solution in the first place.
The end product would have a lot more performance, but might be unmanageable for further iterations. So the logic must be solid at that point.
(plus probably no more modding support then)

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