The value of a community @developers and map designers

[oskar669]

I love this game, and I've been playing it for a couple of years now.
Like many projects - but especially open source project I think that nexuiz limits its potential success through one key factor:
Integration of the community.
I know you disagree, just stay with me if you can

I don't know much about software. I'm a long term linux user, and my only field of expertise is audio work - I'm a sound engineer.
I see a recurrent theme with pretty much all OSS sound software and I see the same thing with nexuiz.

- Professionals in a field are usually not good with understanding the workings behind the tools that they use. They just know what they like. Same goes for players.
- Developers do not like working with people who do not understand software, but I think they should anyway.

There are two Digital Audio Workstation projects that I think demonstrate this extremely well. Ardour and Reaper. Ardour is much older than reaper. Has a very talented base of developers, is open source, is very stable, has all the functionality you need but is unusable in a professional environment because its paradigms hurt the workflow for all common tasks so much that it's by a ridiculous factor slower than DAW's of equal or less ability. What lead to this in my opinion is a pretty hostile attitude towards the end user. It was a long and tedious process to even get into the mailing list, and once you're mainly getting ignored anyway.

Reaper started out very minimalistic with a small group of developers and had a precompiled (not svn) version with installer ready for testing that was updated almost daily during alpha/beta phase.
They spread the word through all recording forums, and quickly had a base of thousands of testers. The core of the project became the forum. The developers I felt took themselves out of the equation for the most part. If a request was approved by a good part of users, and it was doable, it was immediately integrated in the next version, where it either got thumbs-up or down by the rest of the testers (tester=anyone).

I changed from Cubase SX2 (€400 program at the time) to reaper (unexpiring shareware) during its beta phase and never looked back.

They did it by giving up their preconceptions of what they want it to be like, and let the end user decide. The result is the IMO fastest and most versatile DAW that is out there right now.

I think this pretty much translates to nexuiz.
What I think you should do is reach out to the players, and ask them to comment, and if they do: LISTEN.
I know that this is happening - it's happening with pretty much every software project, but I don't think it's happening nearly enough.

[divVerent]

We do listen to CONSTRUCTIVE comments, but not to your "this sucks" you're blurting out all the time (not referring to this post of you, but to your complaints about other things, e.g. the shotgun and test99).

If you want something done - tell how to change it to make it better. If there are reasons it is done like that - fine, you then have to accept it or propose another solution that still fulfills the original demands AND your wishes. You don't HAVE to like a particular map. If you want an in-game change and it isn't agreed on as a main feature, it still can become an option that's off by default - and later be changed to on by default.

Also note that each map has an audience, and not necessarily every map is for everyone. Some maps are intentionally weird which adds to the fun, like, augenkrebs, tripzone, nordiccatsle71 (although the author probably intended it for "everyone", it is not, but still has its - small - fan base), eggandbacon (although that one actually attracted the general audience, but I MEANT IT AS A JOKE) and loof. Others are challenges for VERY skilled players, and not for the general audience, like test99 (which is currently the only map of that type). If you don't like a map, it's the map's fault and not the game's. Remember the name of the map, and don't vote for it in the future.

Well, it was people like you who made me stop developing features people want. I want a game that is fun for ME too. After all, it's a game, and the developers want to enjoy it too.

Please adjust your attitude before complaining about things that may be that way for a reason, even if it's a reason you don't agree to, it may be one that many others (and yes, these are mere players too) do agree to.

[Alien]

Personally I think, there isn't such a big problem in your mentioned part (community has it's voice and div always ask(-ed) for most of the things regarding gameplay of nexuiz), but rather in general separation of various parts regarding the project and it's size. What I mean is: there are various kind of persons and their experience varies in different fields: graphic artists, modelers, animators, sound engineers, coders (various sorts), mappers. Being skilled in one separate thing usually does not make your production qualitative enough to be included into the release because there is lack of communication between specialists of different fields (which would be a must in serious company). That means being good at 2d does not mean that you could easily create a menu, cause there is lack of info how to do it, being very good at modeling does not mean that your model will work cause you might not know what are the requirements for the model to be included and how to create that type of model, being good at sound production does not mean that the sounds your produce will be used, cause sounds might be required in some mono/stereo format, be specific length, etc, while being a coder you need to know all the stuff what the modeler, animator or any other person might experience and have ability to fix it. Same goes to mapper cause you might find troubles understanding what are current capabilities of the game, mapping engine you're developing with. What I mean is that some even lame (nobody requires nice model, menu) but very documented prototypes exposing all the available functions of the particular part of the game (renderer, mapping engine, etc...), while other people following them could fit to this model and because of their experience bring up qualitative models instead. It's very hard to produce something more than eg. minor menu, gun patches having no previous knowledge of the structure of the whole game. End of rant.

[oskar669]

Please direct me to the thread where I've been just saying "this sucks" without giving any advice for improvement. If I did, it was unintentional.

[Alien]

You haven't said that. Div was annoyed by a lot of community who were abusive (I might be included), so he is angry a bit. In addition, community had it's voice but some persons used their voice to attack div, who was the solo dev. Div left and so we have the current situation.

EDIT: wording fix, still bad grammar, i suppose

[divVerent]

Add to this that many maps were made by totally unexperienced people. I don't blame them, it actually is good that they are learning how to map. But you can't expect a tZork- or Strahlemann-ish map from a newbie. But even if they are newbies in the mapping department, this often just means the maps look bad, but still play very well. So don't judge maps by the first impression

Then there is many things the community is very divided about. For example. should it be possible to laser above building walls. There are good arguments for and against it, coming from different parts of the player base.

My solution to such things is to offer choice - which is why the map farewell_laserfun exists now. It is identical to farewell, but has no invisible ceiling. You can do the same: get NetRadiant or QuArK or some other map editor that supports Nexuiz, and do edits to maps, and post them here for discussion. Minor edits like this really aren't hard to do.

If your ideas get rejected by the majority here, don't be upset, though. You can put them on your own server. I will also happily host such maps, if the edit actually helps in some way, and is technically okay (i.e. not conflicting with anything else). For example, feel free to make a "test99 noob version" that everyone can beat, by making all dark walls portalable walls, putting less turrets, making the long jump easier, etc. actually, that would be a fun project you could try, and simple to do. Just don't call the final result "test99", but maybe "test99_for_dummies" or "test99_easy" or whatever.

[divVerent]

Please direct me to the thread where I've been just saying "this sucks" without giving any advice for improvement. If I did, it was unintentional.

That was referring to our conversation on IRC regarding the portal gun and test99. You offered no constructive help, but just complained. I looked up your previous posts here, and also found mostly complaining from your part. See my previous post on how to actually help and improve the game. It really isn't hard, just start out with the simple things.

[oskar669]

I don't think it's fair to drag in-game discussions into the forum.
Being a testing server and a couple of people named [dev] I expected them to be in some way connected to either the map or the portal gun feature.
If you made it through, you either knew what the portal gun was before you entered it, and you knew that you can create a second in-portal within a short timeframe. Otherwise it is not challanging, it's frustrating.
But that was not related to the game development, just the map design and its use of the portal feature.

[divVerent]

I agree that to beat test99, you must know the portal gun. test99 therefore is not a map you can play as first introduction to the portal gun.

Not even test01 is good enough for that, as it is already too hard - and more importantly - too easy to die in the third part, and the fourth part takes guessing. That's the hole the author of test00 filled - which is a nice introductory map for the portal gun, and not too hard.

Basically, the test* maps should be played in the order their name indicates

[Alien]

How the hell is it related to community voice? Post in the gameplay section if you want portal to be changed and let people vote.