2003 POTC build mods poll

[Jonty]

I've been hearing a lot about this AoP: CoAS. Saw "critics" giving like 5.6's and all that, but they don't know jack I'm sure it is better than what "critics" say...

 

[Armada]

In relation to the question at hand, I would pretty much like build 14 to be stable, and not crash often :urgh

That's what we all want, and we're trying our best to achieve it.
It's a long process, though, and every time we release a new patch, there's always something that goes wrong for someone.

Like I said here:

Plus, we need to get Build 14 pretty much perfect first. Any bugs in it have the potential to make things worse when porting to Storm 2.8.
In order to do that, we almost certainly need coders to iron out the more complex issues.

This is exactly why we need more coders either way.

 

[Jonty]

In relation to the question at hand, I would pretty much like build 14 to be stable, and not crash often :urgh

That's what we all want, and we're trying our best to achieve it.
It's a long process, though, and every time we release a new patch, there's always something that goes wrong for someone.

I understand. It must be a pain in the stern to find and fix everything

And different people are having different bugs. I guess I'm just one of those lucky ones who suffers more crashes and bugs than usual

 

[tommy61157]

Alright, if ANYONE knows any coders of ANY type, get them over here :ixi, if they don't have the game, they can buy it over amazon.com

 

[Jonty]

Problem is tommy, I heard PA! need some coders who can do certain jobs, and finding additional people is quite difficult.

 

[Jonty]

I also heard that trying to find and fix bugs can be tricky as well. People have all sorts of issues relating to different things, and trying to find the source of a bug in 100's of lines of code is not easy I hear.

 

[Armada]

You heard correctly, then. Bugfixing certainly is a messy business. :wacko:
When it comes to coders, though, we're not overly fussy about them. Ideally, anyone who can write in C or C++ would be great!
So as Tommy said, if anyone knows any coders of that type, then be sure to point them in our direction!

 

[Jonty]

All depends if anyone from outside the community will be able to see any "coders for hire" sort of thing. :nk . Is there any "marketing" going on, like on Facebook pages or YouTube?

 

[modernknight1]

Everybody keeps talking about how we need coders when in fact we do already have some pretty talented coders. In my opinion, the problem is actually that coding is really time consuming. Also fully understanding how things are instanciated and compiled takes a lot of time as well. Then there's the little matter of testing.

I don't want to insult the coders we already have by saying we need coders, cause I think this may hurt their feelings a little and make them feel like they aren't accomplishing anything for us when in fact they really are. Small steps are valuable.

I am in fact a 3rd year amateur coder myself, but I refuse to allow all my time to be consumed by coding or pouring over code to learn more about it. The reason I started learning code was that I have had dozens of coders work for me over the years and I wanted to understand what they did in detail, so I could better manage their efforts. Often they are a quiet, eccentric, and misunderstood group of folks. I would bet money that if we actually took a poll of how many people we have on the forum with code experience, everyone would be surprised.

Coders like to be given a task and know that it's their task and that it will be reviewed after a certain amount of time. When that is done, they will fix what needs fixing. Configuration management is very important to a complex software effort succeeding and if the coders aren't synchronized like members of a symphony orchestra, stuff will not get done, or be screwed up and you will have more than one person working on the same task.

I am not complaining here, but just offering some observation as I have over a decade of experience managing large scale software efforts for the military. If we could actually build some errata sheets that were basically lists of what things we need done that are code specific and have the sheet shareable by excel spreadsheet, oracle DB or whatever, and have categorizations that defined the problems in detail, gave an origin point, and stated what the desired successful endstate was ----- and then allow coders to sign up to take responsibility for a, b, c, d..... I think things may start happening for us.

In the past I have had the best results with what I call the "one to end list" by getting concurrence from a small board of knowledgeable people (no problem finding them here) and then prioritizing the list with the most desired fixes, changes, additions towards the top of the document. Now another thing that is required to get this done is a configuration/project manager. Pieter Boelen has obviously been filling that role for the Build mods for some time, but he's not always available with his sea duties these days. The Config manager has "trumph" authority over the board of subject matter experts in prioritizing the one to end list. There has to be a whip cracker that keeps people on task, reassigns tasks if necessary and gives appropriate praise and public acknowledgement for jobs/tasks completed and well done.

Bottom line is that coders like leadership. They like to be told what to do. They don't want to think about the whole elephant, just it's eye or trunk or toe-nail. So our first step is to define all the parts of our elephants and how we would like to see them changed/improved. I think you might be surprised about who signs up to work if we took a little time to put this together.

Just my two cents. I have half a mind to start compiling a detailed priority sheet for GOF. I wish I had more time. Next year I will!!!

MK

 

[Jonty]

I'm sure it wouldn't hurt their feelings asking for coders. In my opinion, if kept well organized and near enough synchronized on tasks, then more coders would ease the workload per coder I think. If I was in charge of a group of coders, I would always welcome a new member into the team :nk

 

[modernknight1]

I'm sure it wouldn't hurt their feelings asking for coders. In my opinion, if kept well organized and near enough synchronized on tasks, then more coders would ease the workload per coder I think. If I was in charge of a group of coders, I would always welcome a new member into the team :nk

How is it that you are so sure about that? Do you have experience in this area? Have you worked with coders before?

We have always welcomed new members. That was not my point. My point was that IF we had well defined, categorized work, that they could choose to jump in and tackle something they were interested in (some specific portion or project). If that's not available, then they may never volunteer or make themselves known. As I said before, coders are often reserved people.

I think this may be a better approach than social networking. People that are seriously interested in our theme already gravitate here.

Or were you just making another brief thoughtless comment to bounce your post numbers up another notch?

MK

 

[Jonty]

What's wrong? I was only trying to say that maybe anyone who is a coder would see about this. That's it. Perhaps I didn't word it correctly, or you took it the wrong way, but I wasn't planning on starting an argument over it nor set out to degrade coders... Really no need to suggest it be a "thoughtless comment". Just trying to be friendly you know

Anyway, let's stop it there. PA! is no place for arguing amongst a friendly, understanding community.

 

[tommy61157]

well, we need more coders on here one way or another unless everyone can somehow miraculously double or triple the amount of work they already put in, if the coder is a mature person, they'll understand that they're not superman, they can't format an entire game by themselves (in any decent amount of time at least), plus, the more coders we have, the more projects we can do (and at a faster rate might I add...) Not trying to sound mean at all, but the longer we dilly-dally with little issues like this, the less time we have to drink the rum!:yoho:j3

 

[Jonty]

That's what I was trying to say in a way k . I wasn't expecting to accidently insult someone along the way, so I'll just briefly apologize for that. I have a good friend who went to school with me, and is coming to college with me, and is quite a good coder in fact, so it's not like I'm completely clueless what they are like.

 

[Thagarr]

The Config manager has "trumph" authority over the board of subject matter experts in prioritizing the one to end list. There has to be a whip cracker that keeps people on task, reassigns tasks if necessary and gives appropriate praise and public acknowledgement for jobs/tasks completed and well done. Bottom line is that coders like leadership.

MK, we had similar discussions on organizing back a couple of years ago before we got the source code, I think it might have been just before you joined up here mate. You can read some of our discussions in THIS thread, if you haven't already seen it. We did have other discussions as well, I will look around and see if I can find some more if your interested. I don't think we ever did really reach a final conclusion on anything.

 

[Akella Fan]

Please read my "A very important topic" topic in Publicity&Marketing. I wrote there some ideas for expanding at least our site.

 

[modernknight1]

The Config manager has "trumph" authority over the board of subject matter experts in prioritizing the one to end list. There has to be a whip cracker that keeps people on task, reassigns tasks if necessary and gives appropriate praise and public acknowledgement for jobs/tasks completed and well done. Bottom line is that coders like leadership.

MK, we had similar discussions on organizing back a couple of years ago before we got the source code, I think it might have been just before you joined up here mate. You can read some of our discussions in THIS thread, if you haven't already seen it. We did have other discussions as well, I will look around and see if I can find some more if your interested. I don't think we ever did really reach a final conclusion on anything.

OK thanks Thagarr,

We need to do more than just discuss it. We need to agree on a course of action. I think the methods I suggest above are the way ahead to accomplish more meaningful and rapid improvements to our game/mod developments. Social Networking is honestly more fluffy talk. I know I've attracted many people to the site with my screens and you tube vids just by the number of daily views and the links I provide. However just getting people's attention is only half the battle. Once you get their attention and get them here, then what? That's why I recommend what I do above. Organization and offering defined, numbered tasks is necessary for accomplishment.

However I am feeling impeded in caring to comment any further on this subject at the moment by the recent mosquito infestation.

There is such a thing as forum ettiquette. Imediately responding to someones post with brief and useless commentary when you have 1) no real knowledge of the issue to share with the community, 2) no real solution of substance to offer, 3) the only reason your're really posting is for your own personal gain in "showboating", you become nothing but a nuisance and your posts are like pollution or SPAM.

Don't get me wrong, I feel like we in this forum truly value peoples opinions - IF there is something meaningful and enpassioned in the response. In the Army we've had a saying for years that "opinions are like assholes, everybody has one". Doesn't mean I want to see yours. We have places on the forum where folks can post one liners. Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf, or chicken little? No one listens to them. They are tuned out. Selah, thus endeth the comment. Gonna post the next installment of my story tonight (if anyone is actually reading it) and then take a break from this for awhile.

MK

 

[Thagarr]

Aye mate, I understand exactly were your coming from. There are times when we have guests that can be a bit unrefined, and it can be more than a bit frustrating. But remember from where they are coming mate, they are not used to discussions that can last weeks or even months. They are more used to the quick social fluff that has little meaning or consequence to you and I. One day, some will make the connection and realize that there is far more to life than what they are experiencing now, there are far deeper meanings and consequences to the things they thought were meaningless. The others will simply miss that completely, which is exactly what some parts of this so called civilized society wants, but that's a discussion I won't get in to here. All we can really do is have patience and tolerate them, hoping that something we may write someday will make them stop and think. There are some good ones out there MK, and a lot of them seem to find their way here eventually.

Your awesome videos have indeed helped swell our ranks a bit, well done mate! I am sure there are a lot more people reading your posts than you realize. I get the same feeling from time to time when I post news stories, but I do it just as much for me as I do it for PA. Sometimes it is ok to be a bit selfish. I very much enjoyed reading the version you had in your blog a while back, and comparing that to the one you recently posted to the front page, and I am very much wanting to read it's conclusion!! Drake and the Spanish Treasure Fleet, cool stuff MK! It's the little details that you have added, such as Hawkins wondering if there were Lutherans aboard his ships, and the dinner with the Spanish captain. Things like that bring your stories come to life mate. The fact that they are based on real events makes them even that much more enjoyable!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do we have some coders? Sure. But of the calibre we need? Not really. The only one who occasionally posts is Pirate_KK, but he isn't very active any more.
We did use to have some people who helped us a great lot, such as IncredibleHat and Hook who together managed to get Build 13 fit for release.
We'd need something similar to happen again, otherwise I don't see us getting Build 14 completely done ever
I sure can't figure out all the issues we've got; I'm hardly a proper coder at all.

I could write up a list of things to do -in fact I started on that before- but it's a lot of work to even write the to-do list and I don't have a lot of time. Not by a long shot.

 

[Armada]

I could write up a list of things to do -in fact I started on that before- but it's a lot of work to even write the to-do list and I don't have a lot of time.

Oh, I'm sure we could achieve that as a joint effort. Even just starting a pinned thread in the Build 14 forum and adding to it as and when would do. :hmm
It's definitely something we'll need to do anyway, because as MK said, advertising is only half the battle. And we do get a lot of people asking "how can I help?".

To organise things further, we could link some specific tasks to tutorials, which might encourage people to try things for themselves- whether they're coders or not.

Once the to-do list is up and running, we should also start a delegation system so that we know who's doing what and when.
Projects could also be listed in order of priority, possibly including whether coding knowledge is required or not.
However we do it, at least we'll lose this ambiguity surrounding how 'finished' the Build Mod is, and exactly what we need coders to achieve.