Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Talk about anything related to Unvanquished.
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lamefun
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Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by lamefun »

This is probably what did Unvanquished in: developer burnout. Years of fruitless work on a game which nobody plays. And due to lack of players there was nobody to replace them. I now know exactly what thought that was put into the developers' minds via space rays.

Let's finish the game up first and advertise after the beta.

This thought is why the importance of gradual growth was dismissed. Fast forward a few years later... you see what came of it. However, I don't think all is lost: there have been some good times. It was when the training server was still online. Infestation cleanup maps interspersed with normal games were a perfect combination. It's not to say it was exactly popular, but at least it had some spark of life in it. So here's my proposal:

  1. Bring back the training server.

  2. Release Alpha 51 (even if it's just alpha 50 engine + current packages with backports).

The release will signal the few existing player that remain that the game isn't dead.

It also will probably a little coverage in Free Software news websites and attract a few more people.

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illwieckz
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Re: Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by illwieckz »

Hi lamefun! :grin:

Let's finish the game up first and advertise after the beta.

Sure, I've never seen that as a good idea.

This is probably what did Unvanquished in: developer burnout.

I can't talk for others but I will give my own example. In my life I have three major occupations: my job, unvanquished related development, and photography. I always do unvanquished-related development and photography after my job because without my job I will not have my house neither something to eat. So after the job, comes unvanquished and photography. I mainly photography life events (wedding, pregnancy…), and people can't wait too much for this kind of photography, so it comes first. This August I had a wedding, so I'm working on the photos: the family is waiting and I don't want make them waiting too much. At the end of September, I will have an ordination to photograph. Between I will probably find two weeks to hack unvanquished stuff a bit more, or to write some news. After that, once October is done, I will probably have no one major photography event before the next spring and I will probably be able to focus on Unvanquished on my spare time. So, even without burnout, things are slow on my end because I'm just busy.

I haven't hear about someone having burned out. Perhaps have you noticed kharnov being silent since a long time now. Kharnov have taken some distance to focus on his life but not because of a burnout. I exchanged some mail with him last month for his birthday and he is fine.

The real problem is people being busy. Some people are complaining for being too busy, and are complaining because not finding more time for Unvanquished as they would. As a good example, Supertanker just talked today on the development channel about that desire to find more time for Unvanquished. `Ishq looks very busy. That's clearly not the sign of a burnout.

But that's a real risk: if this busy moment is going to last for a too long time, some people will just move on something else. So, yes, we must care a lot of what's happening, but I haven't seen any sign of burnout yet. The major risk is not the risk of burn out, just the risk to have our lives eaten by our jobs.

I told in some comments I want to write some blog post, I will do, I have more than one to write, I'm just very busy, as everyone else. :grin:

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illwieckz
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Re: Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by illwieckz »

Also:

1. Bring back the training server.

We don't have enough free time to focus on this. Focusing on non-release things would be the best way to postpone more.

2. Release Alpha 51 (even if it's just alpha 50 engine + current packages with backports).

That's basically my idea: doing an alpha 51 with the package built from new repos (even if these packages do not contains yet some shiny thing we announced) because it works, with the new dpk format, because it works, etc. This way, we would have a release we can use as a solid basis. We have some architectural changes that are sleeping in a for-0.51.0 branch, I don't mind if the next release only contains these architectural change, this way we know we will not break it again. Even without shiny things, it would be a major milestone: it's a stabilisation milestone. Also, this a51 release will be fully supported in NetRadiant.

The release will signal the few existing player that remain that the game isn't dead.

Sure, but while waiting for two or three regressions to be fixed, we can do some blog post to advertise change. two or three blog post to summarize the work done, then the release, that would remains a lot that the game isn't dead, and would tease a bit.

It also will probably a little coverage in Free Software news websites and attract a few more people.

Sure. I'm also myself a writer on a very popular French free software website and I'm planning to forward and translate the blog posts I will write here. I'm just busy. :wink:

Last edited by illwieckz on Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:59 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.

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lamefun
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Re: Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by lamefun »

illwieckz wrote:

We don't have enough free time to focus on this. Focusing on non-release things would be the best way to postpone more.

Was the training server code removed?

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illwieckz
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Re: Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by illwieckz »

I don't know, I have no free time to investigate this.

[Edit: I would not be surprised if the training code was a mod, now unmerged for years]

Same answer to people on discord asking to revive the “norf mod” as if it was just setting-up a server and tweaking some config files.

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Tom
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Re: Proposal: bring back the Golden Age!

Post by Tom »

illwieckz wrote:

That basically my idea: doing an alpha 51 with the package built from new repos (even if these packages do not contains yet some shiny thing we announced) because it works, with the new dpk format, because it works, etc. This way, we would have a release we can use as a solid basis. We have some architectural changes that are sleeping in a for-0.51.0 branch, I don't mind if the next release only contains these architectural change, this way we know we will not break it again. Even without shiny things, it would be a major milestone: it's a stabilisation milestone. Also, this a51 release will be fully supported in NetRadiant.

This is the way to go. :thumbup:

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