We NEED more developers!

Developer discussion of experimental fixes, changes, and improvements.

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We NEED more developers!

Postby divVerent » Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:40 am

What we need is developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers!

Seriously: the currently *active* people in Nexuiz development, apart from me, are:
  • Morphed (weapon/item modelling, graphics, effects)
  • [-z-] (graphics, web site, UI design)
  • Blµb (QuakeC, mostly client side (big thanks for that), but not experienced on the server side)
  • LordHavoc (engine, but he's also busy with another project (Darkwar) and, of course, work)
  • Tenshihan (sound effects)

So if I left, we'd have NO MORE active server QuakeC developer, and NO MORE developer who looks into engine matters on a regular basis. This would make the project die. We therefore REALLY need about two extra QuakeC developers, and at least one extra engine developer, better would be two. Things should never be depending on a SINGLE person, you know.

I spend way too much time for this, and some people being extremely thankful and supporting (Mr. "three capital letters" knows what I mean) do make me question whether it is really worth the effort. Also, any bug report goes to ME. Often people even report "high priority bugs" that are actually features we simply do not have. I will have to stop responding or even reading bug reports posted on IRC. Post your bug reports and feature requests on sourceforge, IN THE APPROPRIATE SECTION (there IS a feature requests tracker too!). I will retreat into the internal Nexuiz development channel and stop reading #nexuiz and #alientrap, so stop posting possibly important stuff there.

You guys put too much pressure on a single person, and I may end up leaving if nothing is going to change with this project.

To conclude and also name other needs, we URGENTLY need:
  • AT LEAST one extra engine developer (who should be good at reading/debugging C code, and have a basic clue about OpenGL, no enhanced knowledge needed for a start). Anyone who does not know OpenGL yet is of course welcome too, there's many things that can and should be done for the engine that do not require knowing OpenGL.
  • AT LEAST two extra QuakeC developers (and one of them should learn how EXT_CSQC works, read its documentation, try out stuff, and talk to Spike and LordHavoc about unclear stuff - knowledge of reading C is a good bonus here, of course).
  • AT LEAST one modeler who is capable of making player models for the game. Our lack of modelers is the primary reason why we still have the player models of Nexuiz 1.0(!). Note that Blender is now also possible to use for making player models, due to my bugfixes to the HL2 SMD exporter, and MD3 model format support.
  • AT LEAST one animator who can make 3D player model animations. The latter two can be the same person :)
  • AT LEAST one person who can make skins for player models. Can of course be the same as the modeler.
  • As for concept art, I suppose we do have skilled people for that on the forum. Go ahead posting concepts, once we have our modeler and animator, we can put them into the game.


Speaking of pressure - do not put too much pressure on Morphed either. The hagar trail is NO LONGER RED. Stop complaining to him about it.


edit by -z-:

Check out the following FAQ to learn how to get started programming for Nexuiz.

Once you get your development environment setup, checkout the project tracker to find some programming tasks you'd like to take a whack at. When you feel like you've got something going, submit a patch for review.

Of course, you are not limited to the tracker, you can submit patches based on your own ideas but there is no guarantee they'll be accepted.

As always, you can find extra help on IRC. #alientrap on irc.anynet.org
Last edited by divVerent on Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Taiyo.uk » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:14 pm

Woah, were you channeling Steve Balmer for a minute there? :lol:

I can do basic modeling, currently working on a playermodel.
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Postby ai » Mon Oct 13, 2008 1:44 pm

I think I can offer myself as a modeler. I have enough experience with modeling (as good as it gets pretty much) that I'm able to create anything. I can of course be an animator and I can try creating skins (if this is meant as textures). I am learning animation and currently texturing as well so sooner or later I will be good enough for that as well.
All I've been doing, however, is through Maya and with Maya's system mainly for high-poly movies. Meaning, I have not worked with games more than exporting my flag model, and helped out a bit together with Morphed and Div0's SMD exporter for Blender (and learned Blender a bit in the process :) ).

But yeah, I can assist I suppose now. But the most important thing would be programmers.
Last edited by ai on Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby divVerent » Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:13 pm

Yes, and I hope the SMD exporter will help in getting the people we need.
1. Open Notepad
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4. Open the file in Notepad again

You can vary the number of "MS", so you can clearly see it's MS which is causing it.
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Re: We NEED more developers!

Postby HarryButt » Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:47 pm

divVerent wrote:As for concept art, I suppose we do have skilled people for that on the forum.
I'd really like to make more models myself, but I have little to zero experience. I have to finish this first model anyway, before I can say, if I can do more.
Hopefully I'll be able to complete at least my first three concepts. That would be nice.
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Postby Ed » Mon Oct 13, 2008 4:00 pm

Things I can do:
- mapping although this is irrelevant to the problem
- some minor coding
- image processing, this does not mean I am an artist though

Unfortunately I spend a long time away from home working. It does mean I could pop in on most of the people on this forum as I work all over Europe (anyone in Paris this week?) but does mean I can't be expected to put time into something at short notice as I might be elsewhere.

Nexuiz is atypical for an open source project as it is a game. Whereas projects like Linux, OOo and the big desktop environments are able to get resources thrown at them by large companies who can see a way of making money out of them, these companies aren't interest in games. It falls to entirely volunteer input and as it doesn't accomplish anything productive, no one desperately sees the need to add a feature/bugfix out of necessity, it's just because they like playing the game. So, if you like playing Nexuiz, what can you do to make it better?

Can you link to a todo list from this thread? I'd be interested to see what's on it at the moment and it may be that some other people reading can pick out things that they can do.
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Postby ai » Mon Oct 13, 2008 4:13 pm

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Postby GreEn`mArine » Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:00 pm

It's really time that this was said, div :) !

However, I am feeling that the knowledge about the game engine and server code is extremely concentrated on very few persons. Back then in v2.4 times when I tried to learn QuakeC in general (in order to write server side code) I had to gather information from "dead" resources (quakesrc wiki) that only happened to be in an online cache to get started in QuakeC at first. Then, I was standing there with a HUGE PILE of code (the nexuiz server code base), which is barely documented. At the beginning I didn't even know where which function was called (by the server engine) and where everything started. It is simply a huge code base that a new coder is exposed to. Sure, a lot of stuff actually doesn't need explaining, once you know the basic concepts. I do also understand why there basically are no in-source-doc-blocks (like "Javadoc" in Java sources or whatever you'd want to call it), since the code changes so much and fast that it is hard to keep it up.

What I am suggesting to you div0: once the next release, you and other guys who I meant with the "concentrated knowledge" should extend the nexuiz dev wiki with information (so like having a "documentation session" instead of "coding session"), e.g.

- one PERMANENT :P copy of quakeC knowledge (should probably suffice if a copy of the quakesrc wiki content that is still cached somewhere gets there) so that developers who know C already can get a grasp about QuakeC
- explaining a few key concepts, such as the functions called by the engine, and how nexuiz modified the usual way it. what I am talking about are methods like ClientConnect(), the spectator/observer thing, how the gamemodes work (e.g. I have not a fucking clue how the CTF code works, it is not really understandable in less than 5h of reading and debugging code), how CSQC works (including the needed parts that need explanation on the engine side), how the weapon system works, among quite a few other things I can't even think of right now. I am not asking for detailed descriptions, but rather for the concepts.

While doing this, I think a great help would be a developer who starts from scratch and tries to understand things while coding.
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Postby FruitieX » Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:54 pm

I'd love to help with code, but am of no use as of yet (maybe a year or two :lol:) since I just started learning C++... *sigh*
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Postby take_this_cup_of_poison » Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:05 pm

Extending the documentation puts even more work on Div. That is not a solution. One solution is to try to recruit quakeC devs by looking for the emails to old or current quake mods and emailing them requesting assistance.

I, a few months ago, emailed everyone I could find in the field (including intel devs) of porcedural terrain generation (projected) on a sphere (AKA: "Seamless space to plaentary flight). I got many responses (some talking about the tech to do it and what docs to read to learn how to program and render such objects) and one, the developer of Ad Astra, said he'd donate code and help out the vegastrike devs if they would email him (also note: I explaind the GPL and such). I informed the vegastrike devs and they didn't get back to him and the VS forum admin kept deleting my post about that.

So, emailing people with the skills can work... and nexuiz is a project that I think would welcome new devs rather than ignoring the possibility of one :P.

(VS is like a cathedral in it's dev cycle really... secracy and no communication)

I think once I get home I will see if I can find still working mail accounts of those with quake C knowlege.


GreEn`mArine wrote:It's really time that this was said, div :) !

However, I am feeling that the knowledge about the game engine and server code is extremely concentrated on very few persons. Back then in v2.4 times when I tried to learn QuakeC in general (in order to write server side code) I had to gather information from "dead" resources (quakesrc wiki) that only happened to be in an online cache to get started in QuakeC at first. Then, I was standing there with a HUGE PILE of code (the nexuiz server code base), which is barely documented. At the beginning I didn't even know where which function was called (by the server engine) and where everything started. It is simply a huge code base that a new coder is exposed to. Sure, a lot of stuff actually doesn't need explaining, once you know the basic concepts. I do also understand why there basically are no in-source-doc-blocks (like "Javadoc" in Java sources or whatever you'd want to call it), since the code changes so much and fast that it is hard to keep it up.

What I am suggesting to you div0: once the next release, you and other guys who I meant with the "concentrated knowledge" should extend the nexuiz dev wiki with information (so like having a "documentation session" instead of "coding session"), e.g.

- one PERMANENT :P copy of quakeC knowledge (should probably suffice if a copy of the quakesrc wiki content that is still cached somewhere gets there) so that developers who know C already can get a grasp about QuakeC
- explaining a few key concepts, such as the functions called by the engine, and how nexuiz modified the usual way it. what I am talking about are methods like ClientConnect(), the spectator/observer thing, how the gamemodes work (e.g. I have not a fucking clue how the CTF code works, it is not really understandable in less than 5h of reading and debugging code), how CSQC works (including the needed parts that need explanation on the engine side), how the weapon system works, among quite a few other things I can't even think of right now. I am not asking for detailed descriptions, but rather for the concepts.

While doing this, I think a great help would be a developer who starts from scratch and tries to understand things while coding.
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