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The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

wesnoth.org

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Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#111

Post by zanny »

tormeh wrote: post #90
matt_morgan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Its called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

But its only a very limited subset of it. For example I cannot do [thing](url) URL links like you can on reddit. Anyone implementing a comment system that wants rich text should be using it, though, if a WYSIWYG editor is too much, or if its targeting a technical crowd.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#112

Post by SwellJoe »

chongli wrote: post #14
SwellJoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Nethack. Sometimes the best games take a (long) while, and may never be finished.

Funny you should mention NetHack as the latest version, 3.4.3[0], was released on the 8th of December, 2003. I'd say it's a pretty good call to consider it finished. [0] http://nethack.org/v343/release.html

It's just taking a (long) while.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#113

Post by zanny »

copsarebastards wrote: post #93

I think a lot of these older open source projects have a tough time because they use C++ so extensively. There are plenty of people who "know" C++, but it's not a language many people can be productive in. The argument for using C++ is that it's faster and uses lower memory, but that's not actually true for naive implementations: C++ allows lots of tricks for speed and memory efficiency, but it takes work to make it…

This is the case with old code in general, though. 2003 Javascript, 2003 C++, any Java, especially 2003 C#, any C, 2003 Python, etc are all horrible messes to work with today. C++ got so much better with C++11/14 I can't even think of it as the same language. Python literally broke itself. Java is pretty much dead except for on Android (consumer facing) for good reason. C# was practically an infant in 2003 and got so much better with so many frameworks around it since then. C is still as bad as ever, and Rust / Go didn't exist, and Scala came out that year.

It is why frameworks and toolkits are so important. You want to minimize your codes aging surface area, and having individual parts you can manage and age independently kicks the pants off of starting from int main() and hoping for the best. Wesnoth's greatest library dependency is SDL, which honestly should make the engine fairly futureproof if they could get it ported to SDL2. But that doesn't change how everything else is pretty much raw C++, with just AI rules in Python or Lua.

I'd have to look into if they are giving a thumbs up to std=c++14 or not, because if they are I might go poke around just to see how much you can fix. I'll have to read more on that though.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#114

Post by hluska »

ectoplasm wrote: post #109
mproud wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This game isn't exactly simple. There's an entire meta language called WML (Wesnoth Markup Language), support for a powerful AI and Lua scripting. There's also very intricate multiplayer code that I don't think in any way could be trivial with JS. Yes, Wesnoth is hamstrung a little by its tech stack. The dev team very much wants to move to SDL 2 and support OpenGL in the future. How will they do that? With more and i…

Why don't you just stabilize everything and prepare to release a final polished version? Then, you can decide if you want to keep working, or if you want to stop and put the game in maintenance mode. Do you even have enough developers to support that? There is value in completing creative projects.

Isn't the issue that they don't have enough developer hours to stabilize everything?

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#115

Post by hluska »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #66

Out of curiosity, I dug for info on you a little bit after reading your comment. Found your Github: https://github.com/rdegges?tab=repositories Two things are clear: 1 - you have time to be prolific in open source 2 - you have significant Python skills Seems like you fit the bill for what Wesnoth needs! Why not step in and help yourself? I don't want to come across as calling you out here - I'm genuinely interested i…

I really wanted to disengage, but I've noticed that both of your comments on this article have been calling people out.

Out of curiosity, why call people out?? Has it worked for you in other projects?? Or, have you reached contributor burnout?

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#116

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

hluska wrote: post #115
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #66

Out of curiosity, I dug for info on you a little bit after reading your comment. Found your Github: https://github.com/rdegges?tab=repositories Two things are clear: 1 - you have time to be prolific in open source 2 - you have significant Python skills Seems like you fit the bill for what Wesnoth needs! Why not step in and help yourself? I don't want to come across as calling you out here - I'm genuinely interested i…

I really wanted to disengage, but I've noticed that both of your comments on this article have been calling people out. Out of curiosity, why call people out?? Has it worked for you in other projects?? Or, have you reached contributor burnout?

I've only made one top level comment on this article. I'm not trying to convince this guy to contribute, I'm trying to find out why he doesn't. Can no one just take me at my word? Yeesh.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#117

Post by ectoplasm »

hluska wrote: post #114
ectoplasm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just stabilize everything and prepare to release a final polished version? Then, you can decide if you want to keep working, or if you want to stop and put the game in maintenance mode. Do you even have enough developers to support that? There is value in completing creative projects.

Isn't the issue that they don't have enough developer hours to stabilize everything?

That was one of my questions. If that's the issue, then why consider moving to OpenGL and SDL 2?

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#118

Post by dang »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #95
[deleted] wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Click profile -> follow link to website -> click "code" His Github username is also the same as his Hacker News username. Chill out.

It's not really ok to bring someone's personal details into a thread and ask them to account for their choices. It's good that you were polite about it, and curiosity is a good intention, not an attack. Still, this is a questionable thing to do, so I don't think you get to respond rudely ("Chill out") when questioned about it, or react like what you did is normal; it's not.

Re: The Battle for Wesnoth needs help

#119

Post by hluska »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #116
hluska wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanted to disengage, but I've noticed that both of your comments on this article have been calling people out. Out of curiosity, why call people out?? Has it worked for you in other projects?? Or, have you reached contributor burnout?

I've only made one top level comment on this article. I'm not trying to convince this guy to contribute, I'm trying to find out why he doesn't. Can no one just take me at my word? Yeesh.

That top level and this one (which is in response to someone who answered your question) are both rather combative. If I wanted to create dialogue, I wouldn't attack answers as rude.

"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.

Like I said, I wanted to disengage but I see this kind of attitude repeat itself over and over within open source communities and can't escape the feeling that it only pushes people away from contributing.

Before this conversation, I planned to do some work on Wesnoth, but it reminded me of all the politics involved in contributing. I don't want to be called out when my ideas don't align with those of 'the elite' so why would I possibly get involved in a project?

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