Polar's 2 cents for game development

[Archaed 2,280]

That's just turbonerd minmaxing. 

 

It reminds me of Terry pratchets night watch trying to force a one in a million shot by doing absurd things. 

 

 

[wipeout 1,355]

There is a difference between just bashing on staff for creating poor code for the sake of bashing vs voicing your opinion on finding yet another ground breaking bug that never gets fixed until it affects the staff themselves or becomes a public issue.

Sure the staff can be mostly volunteers(dating back to a time where rolf needed more work but didn't have the income to support paid staff and honestly should be changed by now) but even they should be expected a certain amount of hours per week to be dedicated to the game and if they cant dedicate that kinda time to a game across multiple months they should be let go and replaced with people who do have 1 the skills and 2 the time for it, and no don't start giving me that bs of "oh it takes 90 days to get someone up to code on how it all works" as that is bs and you know it anyone worth their weight in salt with a decently good to good understanding of java can pick up how this game works in no time.

If someone who doesn't know how to code can learn to read and understand wurm code(as seen by some of my friends) in their free time and create documentation on how certain mechanics work exactly within 3 weeks of giving them wu code then someone who can actually properly code in the language could do the same within 30 days and be competent enough at it that they can add features and or fix bugs.

See op you wanted to try and be positive to try and make it seem like there is this group of people out there who don't understand the work that goes into wurm but that backfires because most people who are vocal about it here DO know how much work it takes as they have been here for years they have seen the slow release schedules they have seen how other game devs can create miracles in far less time while they work 40 hours a week in a different job they have all seen what a dedicated developer or 2 can do for a game and then they look at wurm and its staff and see a snails pace that is slower and buggier then no mans sky was on release and subsequent updates.

Trying to create a topic to voice the opinion of bashing on people who "don't understand" the time commitment is just trying to create drama and trying to curry favor with the dev staff in hopes they will look at you in a supporting manner and it is disgusting to be honest, the players who voice their opinions the loudest are often those who have suffered for a long time with bugs and exploits being used against them sometimes multiple year old bugs who know their neighbors are using bots or live maps and know that nothing ever gets done about them no matter how many times they raise it up, they know that any new feature or skill that gets added to the game needs to be massively used in week 1 because every time such a thing happens the skill or feature is broken with obvious broken features.

Those who speak up are just tired and done with the excuses that are handed out with "oh its just a bunch of volunteers working on it" well so what? they don't have the time or skill swap them out or hire some part time or full time staff that actually know how to properly code, they are tired and done hiding behind excuses and empty promises they will voice their opinions in the way they want to.

And if you want to try and bash on those frustrated players to try and make it seem like they are a problem when they aren't then sorry to say but that will just bring you to become disliked by people it wont help you out so stop the elitism it won't do you any favors and will just make people not like you.

Also the time it takes to create something beautiful in wurm is about the same time it takes to create something great in any programming language so trust me they all know how long it takes to create something that works even if their skillset is different everyone here knows that things take time to make and are difficult to do.

[Archaed 2,280]

53 minutes ago, wipeout said:

There is a difference between just bashing on staff for creating poor code for the sake of bashing vs voicing your opinion on finding yet another ground breaking bug that never gets fixed until it affects the staff themselves or becomes a public issue.

Sure the staff can be mostly volunteers(dating back to a time where rolf needed more work but didn't have the income to support paid staff and honestly should be changed by now) but even they should be expected a certain amount of hours per week to be dedicated to the game and if they cant dedicate that kinda time to a game across multiple months they should be let go and replaced with people who do have 1 the skills and 2 the time for it, and no don't start giving me that bs of "oh it takes 90 days to get someone up to code on how it all works" as that is bs and you know it anyone worth their weight in salt with a decently good to good understanding of java can pick up how this game works in no time.

If someone who doesn't know how to code can learn to read and understand wurm code(as seen by some of my friends) in their free time and create documentation on how certain mechanics work exactly within 3 weeks of giving them wu code then someone who can actually properly code in the language could do the same within 30 days and be competent enough at it that they can add features and or fix bugs.

See op you wanted to try and be positive to try and make it seem like there is this group of people out there who don't understand the work that goes into wurm but that backfires because most people who are vocal about it here DO know how much work it takes as they have been here for years they have seen the slow release schedules they have seen how other game devs can create miracles in far less time while they work 40 hours a week in a different job they have all seen what a dedicated developer or 2 can do for a game and then they look at wurm and its staff and see a snails pace that is slower and buggier then no mans sky was on release and subsequent updates.

Trying to create a topic to voice the opinion of bashing on people who "don't understand" the time commitment is just trying to create drama and trying to curry favor with the dev staff in hopes they will look at you in a supporting manner and it is disgusting to be honest, the players who voice their opinions the loudest are often those who have suffered for a long time with bugs and exploits being used against them sometimes multiple year old bugs who know their neighbors are using bots or live maps and know that nothing ever gets done about them no matter how many times they raise it up, they know that any new feature or skill that gets added to the game needs to be massively used in week 1 because every time such a thing happens the skill or feature is broken with obvious broken features.

Those who speak up are just tired and done with the excuses that are handed out with "oh its just a bunch of volunteers working on it" well so what? they don't have the time or skill swap them out or hire some part time or full time staff that actually know how to properly code, they are tired and done hiding behind excuses and empty promises they will voice their opinions in the way they want to.

And if you want to try and bash on those frustrated players to try and make it seem like they are a problem when they aren't then sorry to say but that will just bring you to become disliked by people it wont help you out so stop the elitism it won't do you any favors and will just make people not like you.

Also the time it takes to create something beautiful in wurm is about the same time it takes to create something great in any programming language so trust me they all know how long it takes to create something that works even if their skillset is different everyone here knows that things take time to make and are difficult to do.

 

 

So many words for "I don't understand the amount of work involved" 

[Cecci 1,611]

It's not like Codeclub AB makes a fat income. Last year was the lowest since I started playing. Yelling about hiring people in a (still) indy game is just a waste of time when the cash is not there to hire with.

Last year they had 1 hired according to end year results.
If everybody payed their prem in real cash then there could be room to hire more.
(Guessing that GCG also drains some cash from Codeclub AB)

[wipeout 1,355]

1 minute ago, Archaed said:

 

 

So many words for "I don't understand the amount of work involved" 

If only that was the case I know how much work can and is involved in creating such features which is exactly why I have always had the stance of developers should not be volunteers who are too busy to work on the game they are developing as has often been the case over the years Rolf should have demanded a x min amount of time per week requirement from the get go for any staff cm/ca all the way up the chain to the top that combined with better task allocation and this game would not have had the years of nearly no development that wurm has seen a few times or the obvious lazy approach taken to serious things.

When it was just Rolf and Notch if we found a bug you could bet on it that it would be fixed before the week was over or if not that week then next week but now? Bugs can last multiple months to years.
Cave grass being an obvious bug that has been around for countless years and should have been fixed but gets thrown onto the pile of "who cares"
Being able to create 0 height cave tiles that eat accounts should have been a top priority but since it was found out multiple years ago the advice given? "oh just ignore that tile"
Cave tiles that eat all accounts including gms by creating a void tile have been a plague for just as long.

The list goes on and on of long lasting bugs that should been given top priority as they are a real threat to the game as a whole due to the corruption to the map files they can and will cause but no dev wants to take on as it takes to much time to try and fix them.

My past work of being the IT guy for 60+ schools and businesses and current job being part of a cyber security team clearly give me no insight what so ever on how long development can take right? Your attempt at trying to troll to make it seem like I don't get the time involvement with coding projects is yet another failure.

I actively work with dozens of development teams across multiple companies when they give a timeframe they deliver be it part time devs or freelancers or full time devs, small fix or major ones.
Any developer worth anything would be able to provide a proper timeline to try and get a working prototype of a feature request and then expand from there to give a clear view of when such a feature would be ready for commercial use(remember wurm is a commercial product)
If a developer refuses to allocate time needed to their job regardless of their status for said job they should move on to somewhere else, Just recently(september) we took on a bunch of junior developers some straight out of uni and you could tell within 2 weeks who had a clear passion for what they were working on and those who didn't yet they all achieved their assigned tasks on time and up to quality, hiding behind "oh they don't get paid" is not an valid excuse if them not getting paid means they do not want to spend the time involved on the projects that get assigned to them they should quit that simple.

End of the day I will say again what I said in my last post wurm players know how long things take time as wurm takes just as much time to achieve something so to state that people don't get the time required to achieve something is invalid and just a attempt to troll.

 

 

15 minutes ago, Cecci said:

It's not like Codeclub AB makes a fat income. Last year was the lowest since I started playing. Yelling about hiring people in a (still) indy game is just a waste of time when the cash is not there to hire with.

Last year they had 1 hired according to end year results.
If everybody payed their prem in real cash then there could be room to hire more.
(Guessing that GCG also drains some cash from Codeclub AB)

They would make a lot more if they lived up to their promises and didn't just let big things fall flat on their face by refusing to expand on it take steam release and subsequent silence it was their big chance to promote wurm to get the word out there and what did they do? minimal servers resulting in major lag no advertising follow-up more radio silence and broken promises so many players left.

Wurm is loosing players left and right because people are just done dealing with how things have gone over the years and those who are new don't see the point in investing as much time as we have when its clear things are falling apart they had ample chance to go big but always said "why bother" and honestly i do believe that the majority of players pay their prem with real money vs ingame silver


Then again game chest group itself is struggling big time to it seems with its value dropping big time from 10.7 sek to 0.692 sek but that is besides the point here really


The point of this topic is more so op believes that bashing players who he claims "dont understand" the time investment needed to create things is a healthy and good way to go around doing things when such elitist thinking is the main reason wurm reached a point of stagnation and decline in the first place the players are paying customers who expect a certain standard of the service they are paying for and watching that service being miss treated and abused by the staf in charge of said service is painful to watch.
So they voice their opinion and not everyone needs to be a developer knowing c++ to be able to know how long it takes to create something good.

A gardener knows that hard work and time is required to create a beautiful garden so he or she also knows that development will take time, BUT that gardener has the right to complain if the the services he or she uses to get the tools needed to do their pass time get worse in quality.
The same goes for players of any game if they see a great game being destroyed by staff who do not care it is in their right to speak up and voice their opinion but you will always have those who believe that bashing those who voice their opinion in hopes to look favorable in the eyes of developers is a great and healthy way to go around doing things when it clearly isn't.

Wurm is seeing good change at long last after multiple years of it being miss treated by staff and I hope myself that this will continue but I will still not remain silent on old issues that need desperate fixing like invisible alts or dangerous tiles or other weird issues that keep popping up over the years what wurm needs is focus and 2 distinct teams in the short term 1 focused purely on bug fixing and 1 on feature development but we won't get that.

The things that wurm desperately needs to be able to start growing instead of declining are the things we won't get due to many reasons but money is but 1 of the smallest reasons as to why we won't get that.

[Tor 530]

2 hours ago, Archaed said:

 

 

So many words for "I don't understand the amount of work involved" 

 

Try dig dirt in wurm with 99 digging toon and 1 digging toon untill they get 1k dirt and then come here and talk about in here and lets us know about which one was working more