[quote=“i2amroy, post:6, topic:5349”][ol][li] Most developers do this because we want to, not because we are getting paid to do so or we have to do so.[/li]
[li] Not all developers are that great at coding the actual game. (I personally would rank most early stages of Z-level creation over the top of my head, and I know there are others out there who would feel the same).[/li]
[li] People like to do things that are fun. Going through the code and changing every single time the map is referenced to a 3D map type is not exactly something I would qualify as ‘fun’, though there are definitely others who might. Now that’s not to say that I won’t do things that aren’t fun, but I’m not going to embark on a months-long project of just doing stuff like that; I’ll burn out and then just stop helping C:DDA altogether first.[/li]
[li] Due to the fast pace of C:DDA’s development PR’s will start conflicting pretty quickly, triply so with something of this magnitude. Every time a PR conflicts, it increases the work you need to do; so a PR that works on z-levels or NPC’s will need to be finished as fast as possible to minimize conflicts.[/li]
[li]Most of the main "dev"s do very little actually coding on the game themselves. Kevin, for example, pretty much only merges things, and KA101 is in a very similar position IIRC. It’s gotten better as more devs have been given merge power (thus freeing up more time) but it’s still enough that much less PR’ing goes on from the main devs then you would think.[/li]
[li] Glyphgryph is currently working on a bounty system for z-level stuff right now, which will provide monetary rewards for finishing specific tasks (we already have a thread discussing the specific tasks over in the developers board). Once that is finished it should provide more focus for those tasks.[/li][/ol]
In short we can’t control people. People will do what they want, and most don’t find the idea of working on extremely big rewrites entertaining enough to prevent themselves from burning out. We are working on setting up a system which should provide money rewards and incentivize progress towards things like that, but for now we are doing all we can. We’ve already laid the base of most NPC fixes in the creature class, for example, so progress is there, but it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s largely at the whims of many devs, most of them not core ones.[/quote]
I was not attacking you or any of the developers. If you got that impression, I apologize. My point to this is that z-levels and npcs are alot of work. People are used to getting lots of new content, so if those are going to get done, odds are there will have to be less of the other stuff coming. I think people would have to understand that in order for this to get done.
I aloso thought that some form of content limitation may be necessary in order to do z-levels. If lots of things are changing and the core code needs to change to support z-levels, that may not work.
KEvin: I know you don’t give orders. I made this post because I think one concern is that people would complain if you guys focused on z-levels because other content would probably slow down. So I think people would need to understand that.
