The Battle for Wesnoth needs help • Hacker News Board

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#31

Post by anon3_ » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 8:41 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #28

anon3_ wrote: post #12

I have to tell you, when I see GPL license on a game, I see the good intention you have. Have you considered changing the license of Wesnoth to MIT so commercial game developers can use their time and effort on components can port them to their own projects too? I can't justify investing hundreds of hours programming new components a project (even one I'm passionate about) that a later derivative can't be used by my…

Regardless of the merits or lack thereof of changing the license, it'd probably present an even larger problem, since they don't seem to ask for copyright assignment and they have 100+ contributors, all of whom would have to consent to the new license or have their code thrown out and cleanly reimplemented.

Agreed here. It's tedious to change license later on. So that's why there's tools to push it along, it's not the first time [1]

As a stop gap - they can implement a contributor clause starting immediately. They can also say future commits post-[ref] are until the prior code is sunsetted.

Typically there is an uppercrust where a very high percentage of the contributions lay. I haven't looked at the code (played the game all the time back in HS) but I'd bet you 90% of the code contributions are with the top 5 committers.

[1] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/2054

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#32

Post by eropple » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 8:43 AM UTC

IsTom wrote: post #23

enraged_camel wrote: post #4

Perhaps the issue is that they are looking for intermediate to advanced C++ programmers who have experience with very large code-bases. That's a tiny portion of the programmer population. I know this is a risky thing to say here, but I wonder if they should re-write the game in a more common/popular language, maybe something web-based like JavaScript. They would have a much bigger talent pool to pull from, gain acces…

I've made a litte patch for Wesnoth long time ago. While the codebase wasn't small it didn't really matter that much. There are a lot of things in the game (animation, networking, ui, game logic) that are separated enough that it's not that much of a big code mess like most commercials projects you see. Also the C++ used isn't the monster from under the bed people tell tales of. It's mostly simple OOP/procedural code…

Agreed. Wesnoth's codebase is pretty straightforward, "dumb" C++ (and I mean that as a compliment--smart C++ can get you in trouble really easily). I think most of the bits of it I've wandered through are pretty good examples of how to write C++ for games without killing yourself.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#33

Post by enraged_camel » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 8:44 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #25

enraged_camel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm saying though: they aren't able to iterate quickly because it's a huge codebase written in a programming language that is quite complex and fairly outdated. Besides, I'd assume that intermediate and experienced C++ developers are probably older on average, and are unlikely to be interested in developing games.

You would assume incorrectly.

Why is that? C++ is over 30 years old, whereas JavaScript is 20 years old. Besides, the latter surged in popularity only recently. Based on these facts alone, we can comfortably assume that experienced C++ developers are older on average.

I can see why this is a controversial assumption though.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#34

Post by pubby » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #26

enraged_camel wrote: post #4

Perhaps the issue is that they are looking for intermediate to advanced C++ programmers who have experience with very large code-bases. That's a tiny portion of the programmer population. I know this is a risky thing to say here, but I wonder if they should re-write the game in a more common/popular language, maybe something web-based like JavaScript. They would have a much bigger talent pool to pull from, gain acces…

If you're looking to rewrite the game, I'd recommend looking into Unity3D[1] instead of trying to make it in JavaScript. It'll be a lot less painful. Out of the gate, Unity3D provides a much better indie game development environment than trying to do it JavaScript. Even though their name includes "3D", their software fully supports 2D games. Plus, there are no royalties/costs for the personal edition. 1 - http://unit…

I'd expect the Wesnoth community to be against Unity because it's not free software.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#35

Post by mattmanser » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:00 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would assume incorrectly.

Why is that? C++ is over 30 years old, whereas JavaScript is 20 years old. Besides, the latter surged in popularity only recently. Based on these facts alone, we can comfortably assume that experienced C++ developers are older on average. I can see why this is a controversial assumption though.

Seriously, please drop it. Javascript is not used to code games much, C++ is. Javascript is pretty awful performance wise.

Also, porting a whole code base to another language at this stage in the game is such a colossal task.

Are you even a developer? I'm not sure you realise how infeasible what you're suggesting is.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#36

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:03 AM UTC

ectoplasm wrote: post #20

paradite wrote: post #17

The Battle for Wesnoth was the first game I that I installed and played after getting Ubuntu. I consider it the best game available on Linux platform (maybe except Braid). Sadly I am not equipped with enough C++ or Python knowledge to contribute.

Try out The Ur-Quan Masters a.k.a. Star Control II.

I second the recommendation. It's a great game. It may look simple, but it's quite deep and has a great storyline. It's the first game that actually forced me to start making notes. Also, starship duels in multiplayer (which consists only of starship duels) is so much joy!!.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#37

Post by AdieuToLogic » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:03 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would assume incorrectly.

Why is that? C++ is over 30 years old, whereas JavaScript is 20 years old. Besides, the latter surged in popularity only recently. Based on these facts alone, we can comfortably assume that experienced C++ developers are older on average. I can see why this is a controversial assumption though.

Your stated assumption was:

  I'd assume that intermediate and experienced C++
  developers are probably older on average, and are
  unlikely to be interested in developing games.

And that is an incorrect assumption. A non-trivial amount of current game development is done in C++. Couple that with the fact that to have the games considered "AAA" on the market now requires advanced techniques employed in the language producing them and that C++ is a frequent choice results in the invalidation of your statement (not harshing you here BTW).

It doesn't hurt my case that I am an experienced "advanced C++" developer which makes video games either tho ;-).

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#38

Post by vidarh » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:03 AM UTC

anon3_ wrote: post #12

I have to tell you, when I see GPL license on a game, I see the good intention you have. Have you considered changing the license of Wesnoth to MIT so commercial game developers can use their time and effort on components can port them to their own projects too? I can't justify investing hundreds of hours programming new components a project (even one I'm passionate about) that a later derivative can't be used by my…

If you can't justify that, then don't contribute. It's that simple.

The license wasn't chosen randomly - it's there exactly so you can't use their time and effort by porting their components to closed source projects. It's not an unintended side-effect.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#39

Post by exDM69 » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:04 AM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #9

Frenchgeek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason my mechanic of a brother always has something to fix on his car : A labor of love never settle for anything less than perfection.

What strikes me as strange is that you don't usually ask others to maintain your unmaintained labor of love for you, because you don't have the time and manpower. Plus, it sounded like they were complaining that they "weren't keeping up".

They were specifically asking for Windows and OSX programmers for example. Labor of love or not, doing maintenance work and testing on an OS you don't use yourself is not something most of us want to do on our free time. These guys are volunteers after all.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#40

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 9:11 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would assume incorrectly.

Why is that? C++ is over 30 years old, whereas JavaScript is 20 years old. Besides, the latter surged in popularity only recently. Based on these facts alone, we can comfortably assume that experienced C++ developers are older on average. I can see why this is a controversial assumption though.

Older on average than JS programmers, that's a reasonable assumption if you also assume that the "surge in popularity" brought a ton of kids to JS. But that they're older in general on average (i.e. not a lot of young C++ developers)? I would doubt that.

Moreover, C++ isn't outdated, it's mature. There aren't any grand new CS discoveries that are in JS but C++ maintainers haven't heard of yet.

As for "older = unlikely to be interested in developing games", I don't see where you get that from. It's like saying "older people are unlikely to be interested in writing books / making movies".