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The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

wesnoth.org

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Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#81

Post by timdorr »

Udo wrote: post #45
kazagistar wrote: post #2

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even though they haven't been changed for decades. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent game. But declining interest seems to indicate that maybe it is just finished?

I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game…

Then, to be extremely frank, it sounds like the game is a technical failure and should be abandoned. Trying to fix an older game such as this seems like an uphill climb. Better to greenfield it and start from scratch. The original engine sounds like it needs a rewrite anyways.

Getting it running on an existing engine (UE4 can do 2d fairly well, for instance) seems like a better investment of resources. What they're building is a solved problem. It was a valiant effort to do it on their own, especially in a time when that was the only way. They could reap the benefits of all those learnings in the backend and instead focus efforts on tweaking gameplay, inventing new forms of play, and smoothing out rough edges in the UI or visuals.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#82

Post by Narishma »

timdorr wrote: post #81
Udo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game…

Then, to be extremely frank, it sounds like the game is a technical failure and should be abandoned. Trying to fix an older game such as this seems like an uphill climb. Better to greenfield it and start from scratch. The original engine sounds like it needs a rewrite anyways. Getting it running on an existing engine (UE4 can do 2d fairly well, for instance) seems like a better investment of resources. What they're b…

UE4 is overkill for such a game.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#83

Post by ObviousScience »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #79
ObviousScience wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Battle for Wesnoth looking for C++ programmers to maintain their codebase? It's not that I don't have significant programming skills myself, nor that I don't work on side projects, nor even that I don't really like Battle for Wesnoth... I've just sworn off every working on a C++ legacy codebase. So I'm not really sure what I have to contribute to a legacy C++ codebase. Ed: I went back and read, and they're look…

"I'm not interested in that kind of work" is a fair answer, but it seems pretty rude to dismiss it as an ugly hacky legacy code base without reviewing it first.

For the record, I looked at the Wesnoth codebase in college, so my opinions are outdated (by 5+ years) but not unfounded.

Rather, I'm merely repeating why I didn't help then, instead of particularly why now, which is a much more boring "I'm just busy".

I suppose it's possible the codebase has changed so much in those years that the answers are no longer relevant, but they would be the only open source project (not sponsored by a corporation) I'm aware of that happening in.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#84

Post by bjourne »

Udo wrote: post #45
kazagistar wrote: post #2

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even though they haven't been changed for decades. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent game. But declining interest seems to indicate that maybe it is just finished?

I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game…

Are you playing wesnoth 1.12 because they have significantly improved the rendering performance in the latest version. I know 1.10 could lag my computer but 1.12 is very fast and snappy. Also in my experience, playing 1.12, the game state almost never gets out of sync. If it happens it is because one or more players have different version of some add-ons. So yeah, you really should try 1.12 or even checkout and play the version from their repo because it has even more improvements to it.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#85

Post by throwaway999777 »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #79
ObviousScience wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Battle for Wesnoth looking for C++ programmers to maintain their codebase? It's not that I don't have significant programming skills myself, nor that I don't work on side projects, nor even that I don't really like Battle for Wesnoth... I've just sworn off every working on a C++ legacy codebase. So I'm not really sure what I have to contribute to a legacy C++ codebase. Ed: I went back and read, and they're look…

"I'm not interested in that kind of work" is a fair answer, but it seems pretty rude to dismiss it as an ugly hacky legacy code base without reviewing it first.

Rude like asking someone who has disposable income why they aren't donating to a specific cause? Hmm.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#86

Post by lfowles »

caf wrote: post #54
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 build a component yourself and own all the copyright in that component, then the fact that you've contributed it to a GPL project doesn't stop you from using it in your own products as well, or licensing it again to someone else under a different (non-exclusive) license. In fact in this situation you would be better off with Wesnoth as GPL rather than MIT, because that way your closed-source competitors can't…

> In fact in this situation you would be better off with Wesnoth as GPL rather than MIT, because that way your closed-source competitors can't use your component in their games.

Ehh, but there's no direct monetary loss. Not many games stay relevant for a decade, so it's likely the commercial competitors will drop support after X years while you can backport their blackbox improvements. That said, I wonder if components of games are really that able to be copy pasted. My initial impression is NO, unless that was the intent when the component was first written.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#87

Post by a3n » 

  $ aptitude search wesnoth
  p wesnoth - fantasy turn-based strategy game - complete s

  $ aptitude show wesnoth
  Package: wesnoth                         
  State: not installed
  Version: 1:1.10.7-1ubuntu0.14.04.1
  Priority: extra
  Section: universe/games
  Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers 
  Architecture: all
  Uncompressed Size: 21.5 k
  Depends: wesnoth-1.10 (>= 1:1.10.7-1ubuntu0.14.04.1), wesnoth-1.10-data (=
           1:1.10.7-1ubuntu0.14.04.1)
  Description: fantasy turn-based strategy game - complete suite (metapackage)
   This metapackage pulls in the complete set of the latest stable version, most helpful
   if you always want to have all the official campaigns installed. If you only want to
   play over the network with other players or want to play only a few campaigns you
   just need to install the wesnoth-core package and the wanted campaign packages. 
   
   Battle for control of villages, using variety of units which have advantages and
   disadvantages in different types of terrains and against different types of attacks.
   Units gain experience and advance levels, and are carried over from one scenario to
   the next in a campaign.
  Homepage: http://wesnoth.org/

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#88

Post by prottmann »

For the most companies your specified reasons are used to start with a clean fresh new Version 2.

New System, new Language, use the good parts rewrite the bad parts.

And new Language would make it more interesting for "younger" developer that start with e.g. Rust / Go / Whatever. (That did not mean the code will be better)

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#89

Post by MadcapJake »

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".

Because the car analogy doesn't perfectly fit. This kind of labor of love is a game that's enjoyed by many. So asking people to help is more like a barn raising than an "engine hoisting".

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#90

Post by tormeh »

matt_morgan wrote: post #73
nly wrote: post #44

So far we've had one major thread calling for a rewrite in a new language, one calling for a new license, and one insinuating the devs should accept the project is done and move on with their lives. Is it any wonder open source gaming struggles with this kind of broad negativity?

Put this another way: lots of people don't have a second thought about telling this /extremely successful/ project how it really should have been run.

It took me a while to realise, but HN renders text in between stars as italics.

So

    * italics *
Becomes

italics

    Indented text is rendered in verbatim monospace
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