Has anyone else noticed that the actual experimental builds (as opposed to the last official release) - seem to be declining in quality over time? Many of the more recent changes are superficially (if not -actuality-) great for realism, but are awful from a game mechanics perspective. Like the changes to receipes (I can’t remember the last time I memorized one from reading, and now its a huge PITA to actually craft anything, so I largely don’t bother) - and the stupid vitamin code, which I now always just mod out via the simplify nutrition mod.
Error messages and crashes are now not terribly uncommon either, and I think part of that is that I use a number of mods, and the modders can’t seem to keep up with some of the structural changes. But it used to be that I NEVER (metaphorically speaking) saw even error messages, let alone crashes, now I see them all the time. I’m not talking about any of this in particular, but my overall gut just tells me that it --feels-- as if the quality has gone down, from the ‘as a game’ perspective.
I’m pulling git changes every 2-3 days and rebuilding and I run with a fairly large set of mods. I haven’t noticed any stability problems or error messages beyond the usual Blazemod nonsense and even that seems to have gone down in the last month or so.
Crafting works fine: have a pile of books nearby until you memorize the recipes.
I see no problem with that whatsoever. Most of the counters to the “realism>game” argument are rooted in “if I wanted to live life I’d do it IRL”, which doesn’t really work when I want my game to be “life” with certain modifiers (zombies - how their body would work, how they’d move and attack, how they’d survive) and with certain conditions (a future in which humanity uses body-enhancing electronics and automated robots enforce laws).
“But what if nobody wants these additions?” Didn’t the devs say that you and I don’t make these decisions multiple times already? I support a realism-over-fun policy, but wouldn’t complain if it was the other way around either. CDDA is known for it being “hard” because semi-realism, but you can stretch that “semi-realism” and implement more features simulating reality without hurting the gamey-ness of the game.
Vehicles are becoming sentient, hostile god-creatures that consume all the fuel and run at a snail’s pace, all in a bid make the player bow down in servitude to his/her mechanical overlords.
Vehicles are becoming sentient, hostile god-creatures that consume all the fuel and run at a snail’s pace, all in a bid make the player bow down in servitude to his/her mechanical overlords.[/quote]
That’s what they want you to believe. The Vehicles are just pawns in game of much greater scale, Declan. I can see why you were fooled that easily though, they know how to erase their traces.
Mh? You want to know who I’m talking about? isn’t it obvious? The Lizard-people made peace with the Shoggoths and Mi-Gos and now all 3 groups are preparing for world domination. It already started, didn’t you see the Mi-Go who will be the next president? His orange ‘skin’ which is just his shell shining through his camouflage, his little crabby claws, his unsatiable appetite for…let’s stop here, I think I said too much already, I hear them coming…
That basially, but with a around a week inbetween updates. Playing with dozens of mods, barely get any errors, and I’m playing with all features active (including the dreaded vitamins). so far, I actually kinda like the changes. I’m also under the impression that most of the new features will be fleshed out at a later date, in order to balance them better. That’s what the experimental is for, after all. Bugtesting and adding/improving features.
Vehicles are becoming sentient, hostile god-creatures that consume all the fuel and run at a snail’s pace, all in a bid make the player bow down in servitude to his/her mechanical overlords.[/quote]
That’s what they want you to believe. The Vehicles are just pawns in game of much greater scale, Declan. I can see why you were fooled that easily though, they know how to erase their traces.
Mh? You want to know who I’m talking about? isn’t it obvious? The Lizard-people made peace with the Shoggoths and Mi-Gos and now all 3 groups are preparing for world domination. It already started, didn’t you see the Mi-Go who will be the next president? His orange ‘skin’ which is just his shell shining through his camouflage, his little crabby claws, his unsatiable appetite for…let’s stop here, I think I said too much already, I hear them coming…[/quote]
It all makes sense now! That orange-skinmed mi-go taking extra steps to annihilate my Latino NPC companions, and gasp grabbing all those cats!
There has been a general trend towards insufficient thought put into code quality and the actual gameplay merit of new features, not only by new and regular contributors but also by developers themselves. This has been magnified by a few low points where the three major devs have been less active than usual, reducing the oversight over less-experienced devs who are not as competent at coding and game design.
The vehicle changes are a solid example of this. They introduced many bugs, balancing complications, and code regressions. I wasn’t around to see the PRs that broke it, so I dunno whether it was a “didn’t think this through” code change or an out-of-the-blue complication that caused all these issues. But it would’ve been less likely to occur if the developers weren’t so swamped.
This is related to a “dev crisis” that was discussed on Github previously. They’re having to do more and more maintenance and been swamped because of a lower number of active developers, and they’ve repeatedly taken a self-destructive approach towards handling the influx of tasks that must be done. Less code testing, less mod checking, etc. I’ve griped about the attitude towards checking and testing mods too, as that was one example of a poorly-thought-out response to insufficient manpower.
The reason I griped was because that putting off basic idiotproofing when the PR is being worked on means more things break down the line. This creates MORE work for the community as a whole. Some of it comes back to bite the devs in the ass and make them have to work harder in the future, but a lot of the resulting burden is handled by contributors instead.
And I suspect that the increased work generated is seen as acceptable by some of the developers because the resulting increased work is spread out over the developers and contributors as a whole. I do believe Mugling himself has referred to similar attitudes (in another context) as antisocial, and this attitude is by my reasoning a strong example of this.
EDIT: Corrected myself. Term was merely “antisocial” not “anti-social programming,” and as now stated was used in a different context that the current discussion. But again, said remark is on-point outside context as well.
Merging poor quality JSON then expecting others to maintain it is antisocial. Equally developers breaking mods has also been a problem. The lint tool solves both - you have to commit good JSON and if a developer changes a JSON field elsewhere it will flag your mod as also requiring update.
EDIT: to clarify to outside observers, in context this was from an argument over the effect of the linting system on new contributors. I recall complaining about it due to the methods of identifying and fixing issues being obtuse. This was back before the commit failure message actually explained WHAT was lint-failing and why, and additionally before the online lint-fixer was implemented.
The reason I cited it earlier was because the statement within, regarding it being undesirable for a coder to expect others to fix things for them, is applicate in other contexts, especially this one.
Merging poor quality JSON then expecting others to maintain it is antisocial. Equally developers breaking mods has also been a problem. The lint tool solves both - you have to commit good JSON and if a developer changes a JSON field elsewhere it will flag your mod as also requiring update.
And as my edit in above post states, the core of that remark is applicable in other contexts. Especially regarding development attitude towards pre-emptive error management.
That comment concerns a JSON validation tool I wrote from scratch to try and improve code quality. It has the best documentation of the entire project, extensive unit tests and a web interface specifically written to help new contributors.
Again, context for said quote has already been provided. Back on topic:
Failing to adequately check code when contributing or merging and expecting others to fix it for you is antisocial by my own standards, if not your own, and it additionally neglects some work in the short term in favor of MORE work in the log term. Which is counter-productive and makes the devs even more swamped. Prevention is better than treatment.
I myself had problems with that back in day when I was a contributor, rushing things and neglecting to test stuff. I admit that.
My argument isn’t that hard to comprehend: not checking code when implementing it means having to fix it later.
All you’ve done so far is nitpick a misquote and dismiss the argument without addressing it. I provided my opinions on what caused the problems perceived by the OP and reasoning for why that’s the case, you’re the one that sidetracked the discussion.
It would be hard to recruit and motivate somebody to do that[/quote]
Oh. Hell, I’d do it, if I had the skill.
Also, I take it you two are best friends?