Regarding the rotation of staff

IanJanes · 2018-01-16 18:56:52

Often I see posts from forum users, complaining about the constant rotation of staff. This is something that has clearly plagued the community for quite some time now, and only till' recently did I know the extent to the issue. It was announced a while back that the game would be ported to unity, just with little detail as to what would occur with this change. Not only are we here left unknown to the progress of this, but we never are told If it is actually something staff wants to achieve. Not only is this roundabout of development controversial, It's blatant foolery. We have things like donate, or pay for gems, and buy gold, but does that really support development. No unfortunately, or as far as we can tell. I will not complain about the staff, or their motives, but I will scold anyone who chooses to partake in the action of delaying something so sought after. This may just be an over dramatic forum post, or a joke to some. To me, this never ending development is a shackle to the community. I have seen the way everyone acts, repetitive, unsupported, naive behavior. It is all just quite sad, no one here wants to contribute, yet we still complain about this? The only thing I could do it sit around and wait, but I do know well many of you all are very good programmers and you should be offering support. To put it simply, there is no need for this circulation of staff, for once ask for the community's help and don't take advantage of them. As for our dear community, don't expect much out of amateurs. These people's lives don't revolve around this game or forum, so don't expect things to be perfect. Partake in developing the game, and you could see change yourself. Just don't idly complain, and do nothing to support. This may be hypocritical, but as I said I'm not programmer. All I can do is offer advice.

With warm regards, Ian

N1KF, MadMagnum, Napakeun, Offensive Ray, Minimania

Bimps · 2018-01-16 19:42:52

unity was abandoned. however, i assume emalton/megalamb are planning on starting it again.

IanJanes

Napakeun · 2018-01-16 19:57:05

Nice post, I agree with everything you said.
The main thing that irritates me the most in this whole unity mess is that nobody says or talks about anything regarding to it. Staff, whoever is in charge, just constantly tries to avoid it and tries to distract with lame updates like adding more block and smileys to the game.
Even this topic discussion about fanboy 3, yes it's nice of staff to ask for community's opinion, but that definitely shouldn't be a top priority, worrying for another smiley whether should be added to the game or not.
I remember way back in time the staff asked for community's opinion for unity's new lobby redesign ideas. Now, there were some amazingly great suggestions. This shows that community does care a lot but staff somehow can't organise this whole thing because nothing came out of that thread again, just lost and forgotten.

IanJanes

LukeM · 2018-01-16 20:34:54

I agree with most of what you said, but there were a few things I don't think are correct:

One is that EE costs money to run, so at least some of the money goes towards that (not sure how much of it, but if I had to guess, I'd say probably most of it)

Another is that I'm sure that most of the programmers in the community would be happy to assist development (including me) if it would help, and many people have asked to be a developer (some more than they probably should have)
The problem is that more people working on a project is not always a good thing, as it usually makes communication more difficult, and means it's very difficult to keep track of everything, which can cause problems, especially when most people here are fairly new to programming so would need a lot of guidance

Luka504, mutantdevle, IanJanes

IanJanes · 2018-01-16 21:59:21

LukeM wrote:

I agree with most of what you said, but there were a few things I don't think are correct:
One is that EE costs money to run, so at least some of the money goes towards that (not sure how much of it, but if I had to guess, I'd say probably most of it)
Another is that I'm sure that most of the programmers in the community would be happy to assist development (including me) if it would help, and many people have asked to be a developer (some more than they probably should have)
The problem is that more people working on a project is not always a good thing, as it usually makes communication more difficult, and means it's very difficult to keep track of everything, which can cause problems, especially when most people here are fairly new to programming so would need a lot of guidance

I'm not talking about your top part of the response, as it is irrelevant and i'm sure anyone could understand that.

With the second half I agree 100% Everyone who at least plays this game who understands code, I'm sure if they had time, would enjoy wasting time coding for ee! Although as you stated, many of them would have other things to do, and probably not enough time to do anything. At the same time that ties into my post, many of the people currently in staff don't have that time to do anything. I don't even understand why they are staff when they themselves cared to join, which really bothers me. I'd rather they be what I described, people who just submit code, or offer bug fixes. But aren't within the staff, or carry a role. Only someone with a fit schedule should be carrying a staff role, and in no way should be under this if they are always on brake. I have seen that many new comers to the team leave soon after, remain on the team, are distant, and don't care to explain why they left. To me, supporting, and harboring a healthy community is committing to the role assigned. Not forgetting about it, or ignoring anything that goes on. Cola1 is the latest example of this, he became a graphics designer and then dissipated, not even caring to tend or report to the community. I am strongly against this, and believe whoever owns the game right now should choose more wisely.

With regards, Ian

HeyNK · 2018-01-18 00:00:13

uh are you a mod? no.. then why do you talk like you
rre going to be a mod and help ee? how do you rotate into this scheme?

IanJanes

den3107 · 2018-01-18 00:30:30

I don't really think any of us would have the right to say the Unity port is deliberately being delayed or anything.

The thing is, that the EE staf members have other jobs and lives outside of this. From as far as I know this is basically just a hobby they keep track of and try to organize on the side.
This obviously result in a fairly big inconsistency of progress, as it would be very difficult to create a timetable for EE. They're doing it on the side, and it's not unthinkable they've already had a long enough day of work or school and just want to sit back with a nice cup of tea.

Now regarding development together with the community...
You want the base of any project to be solid. Have a good foundation just like with a house. No foundation generally means very sloppy code and a project which is very hard to maintain.
So this foundation (basically the first official version of UnitEE), has to be done right. Sadly this means that it's a phase which is least fit for (somewhat) inexperienced contributors. As this will either hurt the foundation or will just result in a lot of rewriting their contributed code anyway.

Now once the foundation has set and the first version can roll out. THEN the project could be set "open" for public fixes (open is quoted since all suggestions would still have to get reviewed and won't pass freely, for obvious reasons).
See how I only mentioned fixes? That's because you want features to roll out in a controlled manner.
Many features would be cool, but either wouldn't fit in the game or are just fun "gimmicks" and provide nothing useful. Just cluttering the game, which is mostly hazardous when a new player wants to start playing EE.

Those are my 2 cents, and I hope my assumptions from the first part aren't too far from reality.

P.S. Obviously the whole staff's structure hasn't been that great lately either (hopefully improved now), which also doesn't help working on a project.

LukeM, IanJanes

LukeM · 2018-01-18 01:07:57

^ I completely agree with your foundation analogy, and would agree with the 'open source' bug-fixes idea in the current state of EE development, however if the UnitEE client is completed there could be some problems with that idea:

As EE currently is, nobody has a complete understanding of how it works. Some people will have partial understandings of the parts they have worked with but nobody knows the whole thing inside out (I'm pretty sure). This means the open source method could work well as whoever is fixing the bug needs to learn what that bit of code does no matter who does it (unless someone happens to have used that part before), so as long as their programming skills are equal, a member of staff would have little advantage over a member of the community.

However, when the new EE is created (assuming it's done well), whoever made it will have a complete understanding of the code, which will mean it will no longer be a level playing field and there will be little point having community members helping out as what may take hours for them could just take minutes for the one who originally wrote the code (as they would know what it does and what it should do already).

If the new EE was a direct port of the old EE though then this wouldn't be the case as whoever wrote it wouldn't need to understand what the code actually does (I guess this is why UnitEE has been delayed for so long, because (if there isn't going to be major physics / mechanics changes) someone needs to learn what every part of EE's code does if they want to actually improve it)

IanJanes

Offensive Ray · 2018-01-18 06:54:46

Bimps wrote:

unity was abandoned. however, i assume emalton/megalamb are planning on starting it again.

I talked with TechnoWolf yesterday, he said they have plans for adding Html5 to the game instead of unity, which's almost the same.
Steam doesn't take flash player games so when the Html5 will happen, the game will be added to steam hopefully.

LukeM · 2018-01-18 08:53:29

^ I'm pretty sure Steam supports literally anything (including flash)

MartenM, IanJanes, PTU

MartenM · 2018-01-18 10:47:20

Oray wrote:

Bimps wrote:
unity was abandoned. however, i assume emalton/megalamb are planning on starting it again.
I talked with TechnoWolf yesterday, he said they have plans for adding Html5 to the game instead of unity, which's almost the same.
Steam doesn't take flash player games so when the Html5 will happen, the game will be added to steam hopefully.

*cough* *cough*
Realm of the mad god

IanJanes, Offensive Ray

den3107 · 2018-01-18 11:10:49

LukeM wrote:

^ I completely agree with your foundation analogy, and would agree with the 'open source' bug-fixes idea in the current state of EE development, however if the UnitEE client is completed there could be some problems with that idea:
As EE currently is, nobody has a complete understanding of how it works. Some people will have partial understandings of the parts they have worked with but nobody knows the whole thing inside out (I'm pretty sure). This means the open source method could work well as whoever is fixing the bug needs to learn what that bit of code does no matter who does it (unless someone happens to have used that part before), so as long as their programming skills are equal, a member of staff would have little advantage over a member of the community.
However, when the new EE is created (assuming it's done well), whoever made it will have a complete understanding of the code, which will mean it will no longer be a level playing field and there will be little point having community members helping out as what may take hours for them could just take minutes for the one who originally wrote the code (as they would know what it does and what it should do already).
If the new EE was a direct port of the old EE though then this wouldn't be the case as whoever wrote it wouldn't need to understand what the code actually does (I guess this is why UnitEE has been delayed for so long, because (if there isn't going to be major physics / mechanics changes) someone needs to learn what every part of EE's code does if they want to actually improve it)

Open source fixes will always be slower when done by the community.
The philosophy behind it is that the community can, potentially, lower the workload of the main developer(s) and bring out a fix while they would be busy with other stuff.

MartenM wrote:

Oray wrote:
Bimps wrote:
unity was abandoned. however, i assume emalton/megalamb are planning on starting it again.
I talked with TechnoWolf yesterday, he said they have plans for adding Html5 to the game instead of unity, which's almost the same.
Steam doesn't take flash player games so when the Html5 will happen, the game will be added to steam hopefully.
*cough* *cough*
Realm of the mad god

For as far as I know. Steam indeed doesn't take flash games directly. You can, however, wrap your flash game into a flash player (which will probably be just a C++ program), and badabing, badaboem, you can put it on Steam.

IanJanes

LukeM · 2018-01-18 13:05:18

^on my phone so can't quote
My point is that if someone has a complete understanding of the code (which they should if they wrote it), then that developer could fix problems so much faster that it would practically be pointless to have to community working on it instead (assuming the fix is non-trivial), especially when they would probably have to spend just as much time verifying that the fix works, doesn't break anything else, and won't make the game harder to update in the future

And about Steam: iirc steam can take anything that can be exported as an exe file, so yes it would need to be exported slightly differently, but I think it's still fairly standard (I believe that what already happens with the exe client would work fine on steam)

IanJanes

IanJanes · 2018-01-18 16:10:35

HeyNK wrote:

uh are you a mod? no.. then why do you talk like you
rre going to be a mod and help ee? how do you rotate into this scheme?

I will stay out of their part in the discussion, I enjoy but can't understand how it works.

But I am not a staff member, and am not regarding myself as one. I was just giving some constructive ideas/ criticizing the current state of staff in ee.

-With love, Ian

ByteArray · 2018-01-18 17:20:43

Oray wrote:

Bimps wrote:
unity was abandoned. however, i assume emalton/megalamb are planning on starting it again.
I talked with TechnoWolf yesterday, he said they have plans for adding Html5 to the game instead of unity, which's almost the same.
Steam doesn't take flash player games so when the Html5 will happen, the game will be added to steam hopefully.

I feel I should clarify this so everyone properly understands the situation:

With Flash being officially unsupported (dead) in 2020, it's obvious EE will need to move to a different platform. And ignoring Flash and the outdated Unity webplayer (which was never going to be used by EE), any game you can play on the web is an HTML5 game. Whether the game was made directly with an HTML5 game engine or WebGL export from Unity, it's still an HTML5 game.

One benefit of using Unity would be that it can export native standalone builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With a game made directly with an HTML5 game engine, you have to package it inside a container like Electron, which essentially acts like a simple web browser. This of course means potentially lower performance than a native application, like one exported from Unity.

The downside of Unity is that when exporting to HTML5, you end up with a bloated game that takes longer to load and requires more system resources to run than a game made specifically for the web.

Now the decision of what platform to use comes down to what experience to prioritize. Should the game be primarily designed to be played on the web? Or is playing outside of the browser more important? These are some of the questions that must be considered when deciding what platform to go with.

Hope that helps you guys understand the situation a little better!

IanJanes, Atikyne, Harmonious, LukeM, drunkbnu, TaskManager, Offensive Ray, RavaTroll

Harmonious · 2018-01-18 17:39:05

Browser games have been losing popularity for some time now

TaskManager

Napakeun · 2018-01-18 18:10:44

I like playing in the browser, because you don't need to download and install anything (I'm not using Steam much anymore).

Gosha · 2018-01-18 18:15:31

Napakeun wrote:

you don't need to download and install anything

You use your internet and load the game every time, it's not better imo

drunkbnu · 2018-01-18 18:34:01

I wouldn't want to see such a simple game like this be downloadable instead of just playable on the web. If the game requires internet connection to play anyways, it's ridiculous to make it a stand-alone game.

Making it a web game should allow for easier interactions as well as the implementation of new features from the new generation of web games (.io), such as a infinite global world which all users connect to when opening the game.

LukeM, Napakeun

MartenM · 2018-01-18 19:09:18

I was going to type something that turned out to be pretty long, but it all came down to this:

I don't see EE surviving if we keep everybodyedits.com the only way to play the game.

TaskManager

TaskManager · 2018-01-18 19:37:19

the .exe is a must-have, regardless
playing EE in a separate window is much more comfortable (to me at least) than playing in a browser
theres nothing that distracts you from the game then and the game runs through it's native process, not through a browser process.

LukeM · 2018-01-18 20:35:20

We definately need both (I think everyone agrees on that), its just which should be given priority (speed-wise etc.)

If the game is made with something like Unity, which is mainly for desktop games, then the web version will be slower.
If the game is made with something like Javascript, which is mainly for web games, then the desktop version will be slower.

I dont think there is anything at the moment that runs efficiently on both and doesnt require plugins (although I think WebAssembly is looking fairly promising so that may be a solution when its become more of a standard)

ByteArray · 2018-01-18 21:27:56

LukeM wrote:

We definately need both (I think everyone agrees on that), its just which should be given priority (speed-wise etc.)
If the game is made with something like Unity, which is mainly for desktop games, then the web version will be slower.
If the game is made with something like Javascript, which is mainly for web games, then the desktop version will be slower.
I dont think there is anything at the moment that runs efficiently on both and doesnt require plugins (although I think WebAssembly is looking fairly promising so that may be a solution when its become more of a standard)

With the direct HTML5 option, as long as the game is optimized to run well in the browser, it will run at least that well in a container like Electron (because it's basically a web browser).

LukeM, Atikyne

MartenM · 2018-01-18 21:38:02

Little bit off topic maybe,
but how will you guys actually advertise the game? When you finish the new version you don't want an online player count of 0.

You can create new versions that use efficient engines but that won't directly bring new players in.

LukeM · 2018-01-18 21:49:59

ByteArray wrote:

▼LukeM wrote:
We definately need both (I think everyone agrees on that), its just which should be given priority (speed-wise etc.)
If the game is made with something like Unity, which is mainly for desktop games, then the web version will be slower.
If the game is made with something like Javascript, which is mainly for web games, then the desktop version will be slower.
I dont think there is anything at the moment that runs efficiently on both and doesnt require plugins (although I think WebAssembly is looking fairly promising so that may be a solution when its become more of a standard)
With the direct HTML5 option, as long as the game is optimized to run well in the browser, it will run at least that well in a container like Electron (because it's basically a web browser).

Just thought I'd clarify that I meant slower than using the other option. Javascript wouldnt get slower when run from an exported exe (unless you are running it in a less optimised engine), but it would definately be a lot slower than a version created to run primarily as an exe.

Edit:

MartenM wrote:

but how will you guys actually advertise the game? When you finish the new version you don't want an online player count of 0.

I'm assuming that for now the idea is that putting the game on steam will make it more easily findable, so that might be enough, and if its not then thats to be discussed after that happens.

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#1 2018-01-16 18:56:52

Regarding the rotation of staff

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