Request to focus on Z levels and NPC overhaul for next few releases

[BeigeSand]

[quote=“halberdsturgeon, post:38, topic:5349”]I don’t think it’s possible to say this without treading on toes, which I hate doing, because I honestly feel DDA’s developers are decent people and generally have their heart in the right place. But the game is suffering from the staggering amount of new content which adds little or nothing. I believe there’s still work of substance taking place, but it’s overwhelmed by trivial additions that only make the project seem self-indulgent and stagnant. I would love nothing more than a functional NPC and faction system, but instead most new builds just seem to add another array of outlandish home made weapons, or another five types of peanut butter sandwich, or another dozen sorts of beer, etc.

Here’s the list of commits I’ve made, whether personally coded or (after mid-Jan 2014 or so) others’ work which I tested & merged, to DDA.

Everything on that list either triggered or was part of a “build”; multiple commits go to one build. If you’re talking stable releases, then see the discussion of infrastructure.

Please tell us how many and which items on that list are trivial, overindulgent, or otherwise shouldn’t have happened; go back as far as you like.

Thanks for helping us get a shared perspective on what the community considers unimportant.[/quote]

Probably the cracklin’s thing, I think any sane human being would avoid that rat poison at all cost.
#Facetious

[halberdsturgeon]

Please tell us how many and which items on that list are trivial, overindulgent, or otherwise shouldn't have happened; go back as far as you like.

I don’t need to trawl GitHub to tell you which kinds of game additions come off as indulgent, unimportant or out-of-place to myself as a player. The survivor (stalker) suits; the two dozen odd holy books; the assortment of other overparticular foods and beverages, some of which are more or less the exact same thing with a different name or a brand (“toaster pastries”, “toast-ems”). Mods that let you put crossbows on your gun. The bevy of weapons that can burst into flame, given obscure names that are probably references to various things. The furry fandom items. The game honestly feels like it’s becoming a piecemeal homage to various brands/fandoms/hobbyists, and that isn’t a good thing.

You know self-indulgence doesn't manifest entirely in physical objects, right?

I just play the game. People will always push their own agendas, but that doesn’t affect me as does having to rummage through a laundry list of other contributors’ personal interests in order to find a backpack or a bottle of clean water.

Anyway, I’m sure this argument has played itself out a hundred times on these forums, and I have no delusions of changing anyone’s mind; people can take away what they like from my view as a player, or ignore it if they prefer. I’ll keep playing regardless, even if it means trimming the jsons myself and sticking to stable releases to make that process less tedious.

[jimboblordofeskimos]

[quote=“halberdsturgeon, post:38, topic:5349”]I don’t think it’s possible to say this without treading on toes, which I hate doing, because I honestly feel DDA’s developers are decent people and generally have their heart in the right place. But the game is suffering from the staggering amount of new content which adds little or nothing. I believe there’s still work of substance taking place, but it’s overwhelmed by trivial additions that only make the project seem self-indulgent and stagnant. I would love nothing more than a functional NPC and faction system, but instead most new builds just seem to add another array of outlandish home made weapons, or another five types of peanut butter sandwich, or another dozen sorts of beer, etc.

Here’s the list of commits I’ve made, whether personally coded or (after mid-Jan 2014 or so) others’ work which I tested & merged, to DDA.

Everything on that list either triggered or was part of a “build”; multiple commits go to one build. If you’re talking stable releases, then see the discussion of infrastructure.

Please tell us how many and which items on that list are trivial, overindulgent, or otherwise shouldn’t have happened; go back as far as you like.

Thanks for helping us get a shared perspective on what the community considers unimportant.[/quote]

Ill bite:
For a start im only seeing about 10 builds a day. Once only 5. A 15 hour workday is generally expected of slave workers. As someone working for free, you are by definition a slave and obviously a bad one. Most AAA titles with full paid teams can manage a patch every few months. As you are unpaid, you need to be working exponentially harder.

Im seeing many makework things like bugfixes and nothing being done on all the brilliant telepathic suggestions ive been beaming directly into your brain. I know nothing about coding but the purity of the genius of these ideas mean they will only need to be inputted into git in plain english for them to be perfectly implemented bug free. Ive been sending these ideas to you non stop for months and nothing is happening, im obviously sending them, but you arent receiving them, ergo the problem is at your end. Fix this.

On the subject of bug fixing, obviously if everything was done perfectly the first time, all this makework would go away. You need to integrate all the devs into a hivemind who work in perfect unison asap. This will probably help with your lackluster performance on the telepathic message receiving front. For even better results, let me run the hivemind, with my perfect clarity and total lack of coding experience ill have a final version out in about 3 days, 2 of which I will spend masturbating over my perfect image in a mirror while crying tears of joy. My estimation for the coding time required to wire my juggernaut brain directly into git is 30 minutes. I will have my mind tuned to receiving thoughts from the hivemind for 6 hours a day, any dev who I am not getting content from obviously has a problem at their end and will need to go find a paying job or something.

As you can probably tell, I didnt actually read anything from your link. Again, my perfect clarity has allowed me to sift the dross of your work without actually looking at it. If by some miracle of science your lazy dev mind has managed to comprehend the pure truth of my post without your brain being fried like a bug under a blowtorch I will be open to receiving your telepathic communications at times I will transmit to you shortly. Do not send messages at other times as I will be vigorously pleasuring myself to my flawless reflected visage and the psychic wash of my perfection will cause your eyes to catch fire and what is left of your stunted mind to leak out your netherparts, thus increasing the time needed to code the beforementioned superbrain/git interface up to 45 minutes and wasting another 15 minutes of my life.

Also: code in a hoverboard like from back to the future.

[Sanarr]

I like concept of “overall directions of needed stuff” so some coder/contributor could look and add some item/building/etc that are currently lacked in game, instead of adding some “whistle kettle” (because ordinary kettle was not enough).

Dont get me wrong - I like any additions, big or small, even if it is just another pack of guns/food/misc items (even kettles I personally brought one to my farmhouse). But I agree that game would be much more better if some major changes would appear, and if other changes would be softly directed by devs. Freedom is good, but freedom that contributed to some well-thought and defined goal is better, than “Do everything that you see fit”.

[Binky]

[quote=“Sanarr, post:44, topic:5349”]I like concept of “overall directions of needed stuff” so some coder/contributor could look and add some item/building/etc that are currently lacked in game, instead of adding some “whistle kettle” (because ordinary kettle was not enough).

Dont get me wrong - I like any additions, big or small, even if it is just another pack of guns/food/misc items (even kettles I personally brought one to my farmhouse). But I agree that game would be much more better if some major changes would appear, and if other changes would be softly directed by devs. Freedom is good, but freedom that contributed to some well-thought and defined goal is better, than “Do everything that you see fit”. [/quote]

This.
There’s no need to stop people developing content now that they have mod packs to do all that with, but for the mainline saying that the following changes/additions (which can be quite broad like ‘making robots better’) would vastly help bring some coherence, stop a swamp of commits in the broadest areas and allow us to make forward progress instead of endless varieties of hotpockets and fan armour.

[i2amroy]

Small note, but some direction does exist in the form of GitHub issues marked “Enhancement” (not sure how many people realize it though). If something is marked that it means that it’s agreed that it would be a good addition to the game and we’d love to merge it in (assuming no other problems).

[Binky]

Small note, but some direction does exist in the form of GitHub issues marked “Enhancement” (not sure how many people realize it though). If something is marked that it means that it’s agreed that it would be a good addition to the game and we’d love to merge it in (assuming no other problems).

That’s useful (and I had no idea about that), perhaps making a stickied forum post or document (or tacking it on to the design document) could help as well?

[Shoes]

I’d like to throw in some anecdotal evidence about being a contributor:

I have only contributed on things regarding temperature, weather, and armor/clothing. I tried to do stuff in mapgen, and that’s a whole other ball game. I tried to do stuff with inventory management, and that is another even more other ball game. My next contribution will likely be wind/humidity. Not because I think NPCs aren’t worth it, but because that’s all I know how to code.

It took me probably an entire month to understand weather/temperature/armor/player/game relationships. I am not going to devote a month+ learning a whole other entirely different aspect of the source to then rewrite it. It’s too much work for me. So instead I will add wind or humidity; not because the game needs it, but because it’s what I can do and it’s what I want to do.

[John_Candlebury]

By the way, has the ice lab enhancement been merged already, if it has I need to get the experimental, cant really check from my phone.

[Binky]

[quote=“Shoes, post:48, topic:5349”]I’d like to throw in some anecdotal evidence about being a contributor:

I have only contributed on things regarding temperature, weather, and armor/clothing. I tried to do stuff in mapgen, and that’s a whole other ball game. I tried to do stuff with inventory management, and that is another even more other ball game. My next contribution will likely be wind/humidity. Not because I think NPCs aren’t worth it, but because that’s all I know how to code.

It took me probably an entire month to understand weather/temperature/armor/player/game relationships. I am not going to devote a month+ learning a whole other entirely different aspect of the source to then rewrite it. It’s too much work for me. So instead I will add wind or humidity; not because the game needs it, but because it’s what I can do and it’s what I want to do.[/quote]

They are all really awesome contributions and I (and everyone else) understands the difficulty of coding and is grateful for the work that’s put in. Your changes are completely different though, as they’re both mechanical and useful changes - the complaints/annoyance is coming from endless json additions and really minor stuff which is at best cosmetic, but mostly just fan/vanity stuff which slows everything down and degrades the quality of the game if anything.

As I said before, it’s not that we should ignore stuff which isn’t on a plan, and we can’t possibly predict what people will want to work on, I’m just talking about saying ‘no more food, clothing or weapons to the main line’ until the next release or so.

[Shoes]

As I said before, ¸[…], I’m just talking about saying ‘no more food, clothing or weapons to the main line’ until the next release or so.

I think that’s a reasonable thing to request; I must have missed it quickly reading through the thread. But for all I know, that kind of stuff isn’t slowing the devs down, it might be all the under-the-hood stuff that people like myself are doing that’s slowing them down.

By the way, has the ice lab enhancement been merged already, if it has I need to get the experimental, cant really check from my phone.

I mentioned mapgen earlier; I was really hoping to make up some unique ice lab rooms, but I really don’t want to deal with the way rooms are created now. There was a time when someone was working on a GUI for making up map pieces… (also, now that the mod manager is in, I could probably add my my ice content “for no reason” as a mod)

[Zireael]

Speaking, of NPC’s and z-levels, was there ever a process outline made? Like of steps of what needed to happen? I’m sure there probably was, and it would be great to know where to start If someone (say me) was interested in helping move things along. Every successful code project I’ve been on, open source or no, started with a clear description of what needed to happen.

That’s a good point - any chance of getting such an outline out there?

[vache]

I mentioned mapgen earlier; I was really hoping to make up some unique ice lab rooms, but I really don’t want to deal with the way rooms are created now. There was a time when someone was working on a GUI for making up map pieces… (also, now that the mod manager is in, I could probably add my my ice content “for no reason” as a mod)

The map piece GUI editor was mine, and unfortunately I got incredibly busy and put it off for a long time. The old version is currently hosed, and I just started on a new one, so it is still some time away from being released.

[i2amroy]

[quote=“BeigeSand, post:33, topic:5349”]Speaking, of NPC’s and z-levels, was there ever a process outline made? Like of steps of what needed to happen? I’m sure there probably was, and it would be great to know where to start If someone (say me) was interested in helping move things along. Every successful code project I’ve been on, open source or no, started with a clear description of what needed to happen.

That’s a good point - any chance of getting such an outline out there?[/quote]
We’re currently putting together one for the bounty project over in the developers board. The Z-levels one currently looks something like this:

1. expand “map” object to encompass alternate z-levels (everything else depends on this, and it’s fairly large, mostly it’s a lot of updating interfaces, little to no performance work)
2. expand scentmap to spread between z-levels.
3. update monster ai to handle 3 dimensions (not much performance work)
4. process active items on alternate z levels (simple, but might need some performance love, e.g. processing some items occasionally instead of constantly)
5. expand fov calculations to 3D (performance critical, and very theory heavy)
6. inter-level interactions (shooting/throwing, falling, stairs/ladders/elevators, might be worthwhile to break into sub-sub categories) efficiency required low, theory heavy. depends on 3d fov to work.
7. 3d mapgen (fairly straightforward, but touches a LOT of code)
8. 3d vehicle movement… out of scope
9. 3d weather? really this boils down to updating the “is_inside” cache.
10. 3D map drawing. pretty close to the end of the feature set, not that much performance wise, but will require designing a workable ui, expanding the compass to 3D might or might not be part of it.

Still rather rough, obviously, but that’s the general direction of things.

[vache]

3D vehicle movement out of scope? You mean I won’t be able to assemble a motorcycle on top of an office tower and then drive off the roof (preferably while c4 explodes behind me)?

[Mrnocamera]

3D vehicle movement out of scope? You mean I won’t be able to assemble a motorcycle on top of an office tower and then drive off the roof (preferably while c4 explodes behind me)?

Or drive a motorcycle through a window while headshotting zeds with a pistol.
Or have to hack off parts of a broken helicopter to build a car so you can do a epic jump across roofs.

[kevin.granade]

"refuse submissions of new food/weapons/clothing"
No. This wouldn’t help anything get done faster, and is something I’m generally against. As has been pointed out, item additions generally don’t require careful code review, so they aren’t holing anything up on the code front. Item additions are a red herring here, they have nothing to do with overal project progress. From what I can tell the only issue is that people don’t want certain things in the game, which is a seperate issue, and the answer to blocking them on those grounds is also no.
Publishing plans for how to implement various features is a productive goal, but it’s a catch-22 in that the planning is ALSO difficult.

Re: z-level aware vehicles. falling vehicles should be fine, but don’t expect anything other than them being smashed. What is unplanned for an initial implementation is multi-level vehicles and flying vehicles.
Unplanned doesn’t mean it’d be refused if offered. Specifically these goals are planning for how to split up the z-level work into bounties, no bounty for multi-z or flying vehicles.

[vache]

What about full blown building destruction and collapses?

[Gideon]

I am looking forward to being able to go up with Z-levels, simply because I would like to make some multi-story buildings.

However, this is a MAJOR change to a game which, as far as I can tell, was originally only intended to operate on one above ground and one below ground terrain.

I understand that this will take a lot of work, and so a long time to implement, even in a partial form.

Still, I’m looking forward to it.

[halberdsturgeon]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:57, topic:5349”]"refuse submissions of new food/weapons/clothing"
No. This wouldn’t help anything get done faster, and is something I’m generally against. As has been pointed out, item additions generally don’t require careful code review, so they aren’t holing anything up on the code front. Item additions are a red herring here, they have nothing to do with overal project progress. From what I can tell the only issue is that people don’t want certain things in the game, which is a seperate issue, and the answer to blocking them on those grounds is also no.[/quote]

It isn’t on topic for this thread, but personally I don’t care whether it holds up other development or not - the addition of vanity items and unimportant clutter at this point detracts from the game for me. Having to rifle through neck ties, tie clips, hair pins, cufflinks and other trash everywhere I go is annoying. Encountering a team of dead scientists who are each carrying half a dozen pairs of panties is absurd. The “survivor suits” make me feel I’m supposed to become a walking STALKER homage at high levels. These are just examples, but it isn’t just a matter of “I don’t like STALKER so I don’t want STALKER suits in my game”. I actually do like STALKER, but this isn’t STALKER, it’s Cataclysm. And I feel like your comment about item additions not being carefully reviewed is part of the reason such a distracting amount of clutter and reference material has made it into the game at this point.