The future of GGS?

[Leland]

Let's see if I can make a poll out of this...

[VetLegion]

Good options. I guess everyone has to decide for himself.

Project was not exactly born dead , but has come to a virtual stand as we speak.

Everyone has his/her own reasons, and I agree, two years without even barely playable demo is really, really bad performance.
And after chrispie stopped work on the UI, all coding seems to have stopped.

So when people voice their concern or leave, it is ok. If Dan and Mark want to shut down this section of the forum, they have the basis for it - lack of activity.

However, I will remain on the project, even if only on the mailinglist and the web. I have put a lot of time in it and I want to finish it. I can not make great promises. I am a coder of moderate skill and not too much expirience. That is why I hesitated with a lot of stuff, like event system and client/server framework, I thought someone expirienced might do it better. A lot of core stuff I dont really know how to do. I And chrispie made excellent UI , but events, after some discussion, were never done.
I dont remember exactly why, but I guess noone picked up the task and said "ok, I ll do it"
neither have I, so - guilty.

What is great are the ideas people had and posted. I dont think it is all very megalomaniacal. It does however require work to implement, and I for one havent done it.

So the basic line is, yes, programmers are the critical part here and will remain to be critical part, that is the fact. If you know a good coder, invite him to GGS

my option is with the shaping up then, I dont have intention of leaving.

[Leland]

On the programming side, I think it's pure lazyness. We did some serious pondering about our alternatives and even decided to look into the Zthread library to do our event handling stuff, but then the whole thing kind of came to a standstill. My excuse used to be that I didn't have the disk space for DirectX libraries, and that is not an issue anymore. Hmm.



So if we assume that in some bizarre alternative universe I decided to get the DirectX, chrispie's code and whatever we've got and just bolted it together with Zthread-based event/thread code, would anyone else be available to join the programming effort in the slightest?

[Nath]

So if we assume that in some bizarre alternative universe I decided to get the DirectX, chrispie's code and whatever we've got and just bolted it together with Zthread-based event/thread code, would anyone else be available to join the programming effort in the slightest?

As I've said, I can't program much, but if there's anything I can do, I'll try.

[chrispie]

After I voted The megalomanic option, I have to say that's probably a bit too strong for my opinion. I'm more of the opinion of our ideas being sound, we just need to get on and start making some of them work. After several months of having mislaid my pick-axe I now think I've found it again, and I'm ready to start hacking at that big rock ( metiphorically speaking of course!! ).

I'm by no means an expert programmer, heck I've never even worked on anything this big before - I don't think we need genius programmers. All we need is semi-able programmers, and more importantly a vision to make it all fit and work together as a whole framework. I think any level of programmer can take part, maybe with some guidance from the more experienced.

It's wholey possible that we got to caught up in pety details like that of the event system, which, although crucial to the system doesn't necessarily need -that- much thought, once we've agreed on the basics of it. I'm all for it being an expandable systems, which starts with the simple, and grows as we need it to. There's nothing wrong in programming with doing something, deciding it doesn't quite work, and changing it, we don't have to write it perfect first time - I think we all know that - we just need the confidence to write the things and not worry about failing. That's the big advantage of writing a modular system, it's much easier to see where the problems are when it's all being run in seperate parts, rather than building a bigger and bigger single 'thing'.

So anyway, lets all just pull our socks up (metiphorically speaking again! ), and start thinking about what we can do to fix this little set back. I'm gunna have a look at the UI now, see if I can get it a bit better, and maybe add some new stuff in there. I'll also check the other stuff I did, like the chat thingy and the event stuff, see what I can work out from it all.

Chrispie

[Leland]

I tried to get the old UI demo to compile today but for some reason it didn't work out. I'll have to try again tomorrow.

[chrispie]

I posted the up-to-date UI as is needed to work (in theory) at www.baird78.fsnet.co.uk/GGS.zip (it's case sensitive). All the code, exe, graphics everything in that zip. The whole shabango for the UI, and even a tiny bit for the map too. I think you're missing the png library possibly, not 100% sure.

[VetLegion]

Great to see you here, chrispie!

[Leland]

Alright, I finally cast my vote. I was at odds whether to pick "project organization overhaul" or "shape up", but finally I ended up clicking the latter. I can understand that some people are terribly frustrated by the lack of results, and are therefore not the least interested in the project. My personal viewpoint just happens to be a little bit different: I don't care about the destination, I care about the journey. To me, GGS provides a lot of food for thought, be it social modelling, playability issues, software design, object-oriented programming, project organization, technical writing, historical tidbits and a plenty more. It's kind of like an intellectual exercise, and I dare to say that even if the project died right now I wouldn't say that I have lost a possible future game, I would have lost a current hobby.

I wouldn't say that the project is dead, that's up to all of us to decide. It's not dead as long as there are a couple of crackpots making stuff up, and it seems that I am not the only one whose got a few loose screws. So what if we're the laughing stock of alt civ community! I am not here for social acceptance, damnit. Nevetheless I'm kind of surprised that so far only one vote went to the "born dead" alternative, that's a positive sign.

The second alternative, that we should move on and try to get our ideas working in some other projects is basicly the most viable way of getting something done. I agree what korn469 said in another thread about us being better off making a mod or something else if we really think we have something here. Again I only have my personal views to argue for: I am not interested in doing something easy, half the fun is that this is an ambitious project which strives to create something novel, and something excellent. World is filled with small little games and mods nobody cares about, and I have no passion for contributing to that kind of things. After all, this is a hobby, not work, I should be allowed to daydream a little bit and fight the blasted windmills as I see fit. The same reasoning pretty much applies to reducing the goals of the project... for me, that would just limit my own freedom of choice as to what to do.

I don't know if this makes much sense... well, it is just my personal rationalization. I think it would be a shame if GGS suffocates to death, but to me it would be the project that I'd miss, not the product. And hey, if my little contribution can help in creating something concrete in the side, all the better!

(It would be nice to hear opinions from those who voted items 1-4, just to get a bigger picture what to do. I think the results of this poll should define to course we are about to take.)

[Nath]

Is it possible to make the cursor transparent?

[Nath]

A question with lines 45-62 of MapManager.cpp:

long i=sector[l.x][l.y].pop;
// if not on huge list, then just add amount, and check if we need to be on huge list
if(i<40000)
{
	sector[l.x][l.y].pop+=(short)amount;
	if(sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000)
		addSectorToHugeList(l);
}
else
{
	if(sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000)
		huge_sectors[i-40000]+=amount;
	else
	{
		sector[l.x][l.y].pop+=(short)amount;
		addSectorToHugeList(l);
	}
}

I'm not sure I've understood this -- if (i<40000) is false, wouldn't (sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000) always be true? When would the inner else thing run?

[Maniac]

Hurray! Great speech Leland! Couldn't have done it better.

[korn469]

The second alternative, that we should move on and try to get our ideas working in some other projects is basicly the most viable way of getting something done. I agree what korn469 said in another thread about us being better off making a mod or something else if we really think we have something here. Again I only have my personal views to argue for: I am not interested in doing something easy, half the fun is that this is an ambitious project which strives to create something novel, and something excellent. World is filled with small little games and mods nobody cares about, and I have no passion for contributing to that kind of things. After all, this is a hobby, not work, I should be allowed to daydream a little bit and fight the blasted windmills as I see fit. The same reasoning pretty much applies to reducing the goals of the project... for me, that would just limit my own freedom of choice as to what to do.

Leland basically what i meant was taking an already working engine then changing it to meet the needs of the project so that ideas could be tested from the begining instead of trying to build something from the ground up

i think that disease, religion, social stress, and many other factors have had a major effect on how history turned out...if the native americans had of been immune to small pox and had of infected the europeans with a disease that spread to europe and killed about 40% of europe's population in a one year time span i think that things would have been very different and it would great if the game could model something close to that

the way Civ3 handles strategic resources is both fun and actually give the game more depth than civ2 had and if GGS could adopt in depth but easy to understand models (they don't have to be simple, but once a model does its job any any extra complication to it is a waste) then it would be a fine game

however until there is even a half way playable engine (and i'm talking about just prealpha peices of each part) then basically the project is only fun to particicape in if you are an artist or a programmer...so if this is still a year away then the project will most likely only grow as more programmers or artists get added to the project

i dunno, i don't wanna see the project die but i don't know what it will take to get the project to grow into a thriving alt civ game

[chrispie]

A question with lines 45-62 of MapManager.cpp:


code:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
long i=sector[l.x][l.y].pop;
// if not on huge list, then just add amount, and check if we need to be on huge list
if(i<40000)
{
sector[l.x][l.y].pop+=(short)amount;
if(sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000)
addSectorToHugeList(l);
}
else
{
if(sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000)
huge_sectors[i-40000]+=amount;
else
{
sector[l.x][l.y].pop+=(short)amount;
addSectorToHugeList(l);
}
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'm not sure I've understood this -- if (i<40000) is false, wouldn't (sector[l.x][l.y].pop>=40000) always be true? When would the inner else thing run?

Hmmm, err lol! Yep you are right there Nath, I seem to have wrote a few lines of useless code there, dunno what I was thinking. The MapManager stuff is still pretty much useless anyway at this moment, none of that is implemented as yet, just something I was playing around with.

Good to see people are reading my code at least, hehe.

I would be happy to hear peoples views on the UI in particular, if anyone has any ideas for improving it (code wise or graphic wise) I'd be happy to take them on board.

When you say the cursor transparent, you mean make it semi transparent like the windows or have holes in it?

[Leland]

Nath: Subscribed to the new mailing list yet? I'm also in the process of reading and trying to make sense out of chrispie's code, so if you've got questions or comments or anything it would be quite welsome if you could take it to the mailing list (or here, if it's easier for you... I still maintain that programming and design should be kept separate).

M@ni@c: Thanks for your compliments, I notice that after my "speech" there were two new votes to "downgrade expectations"...

korn469: Excellent points. Prototyping could be a very effective design method, the problem here is again our scarce programmer resources. It's fun to make things from scratch ("it might be junk, but it's my junk!") and learning an existing engine is another threshold to overcome, so at least I haven't bothered looking into any of those, especially because of the nagging feeling of having to throw the prototypes away at some point (or settle with an engine that might be inferior to our purposes). I suppose this is again a personal thing: I think Vet and Nath are more prone to just pulling up their sleeves and just doing something (or not, I don't know for sure...), whereas myself and chrispie prefer to endlessly gloat over implementation details (examples: chrispie writing a whole new general purpose GUI when MFC or some other existing windowing system could've worked just as well for starters, and me slowing down the whole endeavour with rather silly event-based architectural considerations).

Well, it all boils down to what you said about artists/programmers (and lately not even our only artist has had any fun...): the bottlenecks of this project are those who can code, and the designers are rightfully frustrated by the lack of results. I mean, the mere fact that we have programmers implies that when someone writes a detailed design and gets positive comments about it, the design has a fair chance of being implemented and seen in practise. This, however, has not happened, and I think that could be interpreted as programmers failing to live up to our name and making fools out of designers. This is not such a good thing, and I hope that it is not too late to redeem myself and actually getting some programming done soon (unlike last year or so of empty talk).

Anyway, if I look at the poll results it seems that a slight majority wants to reduce our objectives. My personal vision for the project is that it's heart and soul is that it's a "next generation" (that term is terribly overused!) game built from scratch and a lot of things other civs take for granted are thrown away. My take on this is and has always been to build it incrementally by doing the boring groundwork first (software architecture, map, population modelling, and a million other things before getting to actual playability), so I think I lack the ability to tell which goals the rest of you consider important and which are expendable. Any suggestions? Can we do this with a regular Civ map, for instance (my opinion is definitely NO, but I am asking anyway...)? What are our core principles that separate us from other alt civs?

chrispie: The transparent controls look really cool, the only problem is that they aren't really transparent, they just copy the background whenever it's updated... if you move them around the background stays the same and the illusion of transparency is lost. Hmm. I wonder what it would take to program true transparency, the kind of which isn't lost even when moving the controls around?